The Creative Dork

One of the first things a fresh graduate has to do is make an outstanding resume. There are countless templates and tutorials out there on how to make the perfect corporate resume with so many rules on how to make sure you pass the standards of companies in general. But since then I was never really satisfied with any of them for one simple reason. No matter how many times I revised and updated it, it did not represent me at all.

The sort-of-perks of being in the creative industry is that we don’t even have to do everything by the book. One good example is being able to play around with the layout of our resumes and get away with it. Now I’ve seen a bunch of really cool resumes on the internet and I wanted to make one myself. In fact, every time I apply for a new job I see to it that I change the look as I update the information, which usually takes me a couple of days to do. The example above is what I submitted for my previous work, but recently, I decided to take a few steps further without making it seem too out there.

And for documentation’s sake, this is what my resume looked like before:

Hello, you boring little thing.

So before I actually started, I wrote down all the things that I wanted to achieve in my updated Curriculum Vitae:

1. The information should be straight to the point with the focus on my work experience and the things that I actually do.
2. It should be able to show off my personality and sense of humor.
3. It should showcase my creativity and good use of color and typography.
4. Make sure to let them know I am an illustrator.
5. Every thing should fit in 1 page.

I knew instantly that I wanted to maximize the entire page so I started putting related information together.

Just a quick run-through of my background.

Let’s just say I got tired of enumerating all my work experiences in the same detailed format. And because I never really had much experience in any of those companies because I always seemed to hand in my resignation before I make it to a full year. I wanted to just mention the companies I’ve worked under and make sure to stress out that I was able to balance work and studies and freelance.

Instead of allotting most of the space to the work experience, which I have minimized into a small box, I decided I want my CV to focus on the kind of work that I do and my actual experience on the actual type of work. The only way to do this, I though, is by making a pie graph. It’s visual and direct and could somehow concretely describe how much I’ve done per type of job.

Who doesn't love charts?

This would definitely be the main focus of my CV. It also stresses out that I love doing illustrations and tells people what to expect of me: I don’t do flash animation and motion graphics. Heh. With this, I opted to go for an infographics theme for my resume.

For the next bullet points, I went and included another graph to show my proficiency in the design programs. I also injected a few spelling errors so that the whole thing wouldn’t look too serious. And because of my vanity, I went and put on a caricature which also serves as a sneak peek of my illustration style.

After I was done with all the content I wanted, it’s time to put all of it together. Two days of re-arranging and re-editing later, this is what it looked like:

Looking at it, I believe I was able to accomplish everything on my checklist. And the best thing about it is it finally represented me! This is already taking into consideration the fact that I don’t plan to submit this to any corporate organizations with an interest to apply as a full-time designer. My main intention in making this is really for reference and I will be sending this out as a freelance illustrator. Wanna see a bigger version?

I think that whether you decide to follow the standard format or decide to go amok in your resume, the most important thing is to make sure that it represents you. If you’re not too comfortable in doing something like this, you can look at other creative resume ideas that doesn’t go too out-of-the-box.