I have grown up watching the brilliant designs by Saul Bass, Alan Fletcher, Paul Rand or David Carson. My fascination with art landed me into Graphic designing and today I’m successfully working as a Multimedia designer.
Graphic Design helps us to combine our artistic approach with technology and create some brilliant visuals. It helps us to unearth our true passion for art and design.
Graphic design has become a staple for every industry and while every day, the scope of this industry is growing, the competition is also growing with each passing day.
Getting into the industry and staying ahead of everyone isn’t as easy as it sounds. You have to take every effort and prove yourself capable at every point in the industry.
With every project, you’ll be assessed for your creative skills, your intelligence, and your potential to work smart.
To become a master of the Digital designing industry, it is essential to learn how not to miss any opportunity.
You must have heard that first impression is the last impression and when you go for an interview, it’s your resume that communicates on your behalf.
Despite tons of options available to individuals to show off their skills, a presentable resume still works as an asset in the industry. While you are on the hunt for a job, it is extremely essential to look presentable and marketable and a strong resume does that for you.
You’ll never be able to hit the bull’s eye with a dull and boring resume. As a Graphic designer, having a well-designed resume will not only complement your skills but also helps you get a long-lasting impact on the recruiters.
In this post, I’ll be talking about some interesting tips that will as a designer will help you in creating a top-notch resume.
Also, through this blog, I’ll also be covering some essential information that you should add in your resume
So, let’s begin.
1. What you should include in a resume?
A good way to start is to know what you should include in your resume. It is vital to provide all the significant details about yourself in the resume as recruiters meet your resume first.
Achievements always come before design. No matter how impressive your resume looks, if you don’t have sufficient skills, there are higher chances of rejection.
So before knowing how to make your resume creative, let’s first know what all you should include in a resume.
a. Essential Information:
When making a resume, make sure you don’t miss out on this information
- Contact Information: For recruiters, it only takes 10 seconds to judge the person’s capability from resume. Make sure in these 10 seconds you give your best. Place your contact right in the beginning to make it clear and visible.
- Personal Statement: Mention your objective and goals in this section. Tell the company why they should hire you and what skills you have to offer in minimum words.
- Experience: As a designer, throughout your learning process, you’ll get many opportunities to work on different real-time projects. Mention all the relevant projects that you have worked upon or currently working on in your resume. The more experience you gain, the chances of getting hired also increase.
- Education: Companies always prefer those employees who have completed their diploma/degree from a certified institute or college. It is always good to mention your educational background in the resume.
- Skills: Essentially the most vital part of the resume. Skills help the company to know about things you are good at. If there’s a certain thing of which you’re not sure, do not mention it. They might make you stuck in unfavorable conditions.
- Awards/Accomplishments: want to impress your employers? Mention about awards that you have received for related work. Even if you haven’t got any awards, you can always mention the accomplishments that you take pride in.
b. Portfolio Link
Trust me- Ditching an online portfolio will be your biggest mistake that you will ever make as a graphic designer. There are so many websites like Behance, Adobe portfolio available on the web for free using which you can easily create your portfolio.
As a designer, the online portfolio becomes a handy option to show employers your abilities at any time and anywhere without any hassles. Always add your portfolio link in your resume. Sometimes, employers can get impressed even just by seeing your quality of work.
c. Self-initiated work
Don’t be afraid to put your work in front of employers even if the work is not related to any project or anything. Showing your self-initiated work will be a perfect way to show your potential creative skills to employers.
d. Be versatile, present uniqueness
Versatile is the second key to success, first is always hard work. The designing industry is dynamic in nature and demands the same dynamicity from the people associated with it.
For designers, being a multi-tasker is an essential skill. They should not only possess good designing skills but possess good communication and marketing skills so that they can efficiently sell out their designs to potential clients.
These were basic yet essential details that every resume should contain. If you are missing out on any of this information, make sure you update it now. While we have learned about vital informative things to add, let’s move towards the presentation section.
We are now acquainted with major information, now it’s the time to learn how to present this information in a unique and interesting way.
2. How to make a top-quality resume?
Take an in-depth look at these significant tips that will take your resume to another level.
a. Choose the perfect font
When you go for a designer’s job position, it is obvious that you are aware of basic design elements and principles. You would probably know the importance of typography in the designs.
Think of your resume as another design. Using some unique font other than basic Arial and Times New Roman will be the simplest way to stand out from the crowd.
b. Fonts – What do they say?
Details matter the most. When you apply for Graphic Designer, the first thing from where your employer judges your skills is your resume.
The font that you will choose in your font will play a crucial role in your selection process. Remember, just like your designs, fonts will speak volumes. It will provide a base to the employer to get an impression of your personality.
There’s no hard and fast rule that you should apply here but there are some basic things that will definitely help you in choosing a perfect font for your resume.
- Serif Fonts: Serif Fonts can be used to show that you are a design-oriented and creative personality. I always try to avoid them in technical fields. If you want to use them, you can go for clean serif fonts and that too only for heading. Don’t use serif fonts for normal body text.
- Sans-Serif Fonts: Sans-Serif fonts have become an essential part of modern design formats. They provide a clean and professional look to the design. If you are more of a rational & logical person, you can use a serif font in your design.
- Script: People usually don’t prefer script fonts in the resume as they aren’t readable enough. You can avoid experimenting with them at least in your resume
c. Add visual emphasis
Make your resume visually appealing. Place the essential things like email address, a contact number on the top of the page. You can also add links to your social media sites in your resume if you’re going to apply for some social media designer posts.
- Icons: You can add icons to make your resume more attractive. Icons add grace and elegance to your resume. You can download free icons from Flatirons. It has millions of icons for your every need
- Whitespace: Similar to other designs, don’t forget to add basic breathing space to your resume. Whitespace will add visual flow to your resume and employers will easily focus on your details rather than getting lost in the chaotic & clustered design.
- Colors: Colors are one of the easiest ways to draw the reader’s attention. Different colors have different psychological effects on the mind of the viewer. Try to avoid warm colors in your resume. You can always choose pastel and cool colors to play.
d. Make your Content Precise
As per the research, an ordinary resume grabs up to 6 seconds from the concerned HR. So, it is essential to ensure that it is preeminent as well as clear-cut. Don’t create a resume that shows the wall of text. Make it precise as less is more.
Don’t neglect white space and try to keep it as brief as possible. Breathing space is necessary to avoid an overwhelmingly cluttered design.
You want to break the lengthier content into different headings, subheadings and bullet points. Add graphics along with content.
In order to accurately describe your specialized assets, you want to add relevant graphics and icons.
For example, to show your designing tools expertise, you can add icons of the designing tools instead of writing their names.
e. Consider it as an Infographic
Infographics can bring a tremendous change in your resume format. They let you more content in a precise way. However, infographics would be more suitable if you are going to apply for some creative jobs. If you are going for any traditional job, an infographic may not help you to stand out
f. Add your Designing Touch
Adding a personal touch is always a good idea to implement. Obviously don’t put stickers here and there but utilize your creative ability in the right way.
Get a creative border, colors to add some quirky touch. Make sure your resume looks clean, legible minimalistic and efficient.
Take care of basic minimal details. Think out of the box & sometimes try to go beyond some conventional standards
g. Choose the Right Type
Choosing the right format to save your resume an equally important task. You can invest hours in designing but it won’t do any good if you save your document in word format.
Always save your resume in PDF format so that you can eliminate all the risks.
Also, another big thing, DO NOT MESS UP WITH FILENAME. Yes, read that in caps and bold. Never ignore your filename and make sure you don’t send it like dda45.pdf.
Always add resume word in the end, for example, ABC_resume.Pdf. it will add more professional touch to your profile
Final Thoughts
While we have talked a lot about creating a well-designed resume, but I must tell you. You always need to tailor some things according to your requirements. Plan it according to the need for job profile.
A carefully designed resume can help you hit the right spot. The pleasing and eye-catching resume is a basic need for every profile make sure you spend a significant amount of time preparing it.
We know the importance of resume and portfolio in our industry and with professional practical graphic design training, we also offer special classes for resume and portfolio development so that our students get overall development and be ready for the industry.
That’s all, for now, folks, Stay tuned for more informative blogs with us. Till then, Keep Exploring!