How Creative Should A Designer’s Resume Be?

Earlier this week Alyssa wrote an interesting post questioning whether freelancers need a resume/CV along with some great tips on what should be included. From my own experience, both as a designer applying for jobs and as a design instructor looking at applications coming in for the course I teach, I think it is highly beneficial to have both a website and a resume that can be printed or sent as a PDF.

For designers, the resume is an opportunity to apply their design flair to paper and make their resume stand out from the many plain Jane resumes that fall on an employer’s desk. If you’re working in a visual field, why not add some visuals to your resume? A picture can tell a thousand words, as they say, and an original, cleverly designed resume will stand out a mile. Make sure the design is good though, because you don’t want it to stand out a mile for all the wrong reasons.

Here’s a small collection of eight imaginative resumes from people working in various creative fields.

Lydia’s Cartoon Resume is witty, eye-catching and quite obviously in a comic book style appropriate to her industry.

Michael Anderson, an infographics designer produced a very slick and beautifully colored information graphic of his skills and experience.

Krista Gregg, a graphic designer created a hand-drawn style, giving the impression of a resume that was doodled together.

Christiano Pires’ design takes the form of a standard resume on a table, surrounded by personal belongings.

 

Greg Dizzia uses data visualization to display his skills and experience.

Doni Kristian Dachi goes grungy and dirty with his web developer resume.

Sofiane Yaya combines hand-drawing with arrows on torn, rippled paper on his graphic design resume.

And finally, to show that a resume does not have to be too over the top while still being creative, this example from Kenji Enos shows a clean, elegant and attractive design.

These kinds of resumes are obviously not suitable for every kind of job application. You need to be sure that you make a good impression and as a designer, that certainly gives you the right to have a more original layout and design. However, as with every type of design, your resume is a form of communication and you are providing information so make sure that your details and key skills are legible.

So how creative do you think a designer’s resume should be? Are these examples over the top or are they suitable for the industry? Have you seen other creative resumes online that you thought were cool?