It’s time to refresh the portfolio again, and I was wondering what people’s thoughts are on matching the style of your CV/resume to your portfolio. I’ve gone for a simple layout for my portfolio with a brief description of the page content in the bottom right corner. I’m aiming for a clean crisp style. With regards to the style of my CV/resume I am trying to create a visual link between it and my portfolio by incorporating the same palette, font and including a box. Please see versions A & B below and some samples of portfolio pages. More of my portfolio can be seen at coroflot.com/richardkenrickjones Please let me know your opinions on the overall graphic style and any advice on this or my portfolio in general would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Richard
style aside from a standpoint of reading the resume it is graphically hard on my eyes. i cant scan through it and find the key items that i want primarily as it doesn’t look as if you have taken a Primary, secondary, and tertiary approach to the information you are presenting…
Cheers. I think I’ve suffered from trying too hard to make it not look like it was produced in MS Word. I’m going to strip it back and return to basics. I think it so far has been a case of ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’.
Graphic design on a CV is good. But content is ultimately king. Address the content first. There is way too much info, esp. for someone who has 6-7 years of experience. I don’t need a novel on everything you’ve ever done, ever.
Consider what is important. Do I need the name of all the clients/products for the consultancy you worked for, and do they mean anything? I would guess I would need to see them for the names to add anything and know exactly what you did on the project.
You’ve also buried important info like how long you were at the positions and what was your job title. Not seeing clear contact info either.
Not a bad job graphically, but the info needs to come through.
R
If you want to use the “no space” trick on your name, that’s fine. But don’t use it throughout the CV. It makes it extremely difficult visually to read the text and the amount of content becomes overwhelming. Remember that white space is your friend. The resume looks so dense it makes me not want to read it.
Remember that with design less is more. Strip down your descriptions to what you think the bare minimum would be, and if you are applying to a position where those skills are not specifically relevant consider dropping them entirely.
Also I’m not sure the blurb in the blue box is relevant for the CV. If you want a blurb like that consider leaving it in your portfolio, or place it at the top if you feel it’s important enough to be read.
Thank you for the advice. I’m currently looking at this but will look at rewording/slimming down the job description further.
RE the blurb I had included it based on advice from a recruitment agent but am happy to get rid of it a when I read it (or any other similar statements) I feel a bit awkward. I’ll stick any bits of it that are specifically relevant to an application into the cover letter.
Edit - spellings still need correcting eg Program(e)s
The overall readability is much improved. A few comments:
-Make sure to consider your margins for safe printing. It looks like you might risk cutting off some of the text on the far sides if it were to be printed.
-Your header fonts still seem pretty big, again white space gives you room to breathe, I’d consider bumping it down slightly.
-If you bump down the header fonts you may have enough space to rotate your name back to being horizontal. Since your e-mail address is quite long readability is tricky with it being vertical. Fine for print, but since these days everything is done via e-mail it will be good to make sure it’s linked via PDF or easily copied and paste (or readable for dolts in HR who don’t understand how computers work).
Good point about linking the email. I’ve also set up a shorter email address to aid with the readability. Currently finalising the text and layout. I need to check printer margins on a printer that doesn’t offer borderless printing (even with option unchecked the page tiling margins are minimal).
A big improvement i concur with Cyber’s comments
Just a quick note to say thank you for your advice. After following it and getting my CV sorted I finished off my portfolio before applying for a couple of places. I got a 50% hit rate application to interview ratio and accepted a job offer. Cheers. Richard.
Congrats rukka!