When I sat down to do my rough sketches, I opened my resume, which is currently in a Word document, and just stared at it. It was hard to imagine it as anything else but boring, black & white Times New Roman text. So I did some googling and found a few Before & After shots of resumes, first as Word docs, then redone with graphics. Although these examples don’t necessarily follow the guidelines we were given to make our new resumes, looking at a few of these made it easier for me to start brainstorming different layouts, designs, typefaces, and color choices. It especially helped me to see how I can give my resume a new personality with these tools. All three of these started out looking the same – boring, like mine looks now – but became very different after they were made-over with graphics software. Hope this helps all of you get started brainstorming too!
P.s. these came from Pinterest boards if you want to do some searching of your own!
This was very helpful for me! Seeing the examples in class made me think my resume could never look like that; I wasn’t really sure where to begin. But this is nice having the before and after pictures!
Thanks for posting this. Sadly, my resume looks like all of the ones on the left. Not only is this helpful for us because we can see new layouts and play with a couple more ideas, but it also really shows how much better a resume can look with adding some color and rearranging things a little bit by showing the same resume in both ‘before’ and ‘after’ phases.
I think the one resume on the bottom might be a little overdone, though. There’s a lot of different colors in there, not to mention a picture, which I’ve never seen before on a resume. But, like you said, these don’t necessarily follow the guidelines we’re using.
These before and after shots are very helpful! My resume as it is is so boring and dull. I am excited for this project and hope to have an interesting, yet simple design for my resume once the project is over.
I feel that the most challenging part of this project will be injecting our own style and flare into our resumes, without overdoing them. I really want to experiment with different colors, typefaces, and layouts so I can decide what is best for my resume and what design most reflects my style. I want an employer to notice my resume and be impressed, but not be bombarded and find it hard to navigate so that he or she sets it aside. The possibilities for resume designs are endless, and I am excited to get into lab to start experimenting. I am a bit worried about using the software, but hope that this project will be a nice introduction to it and help familiarize me with basic tools in InDesign.
These are cool! In my lifetime, I have redone my resume all of 3 times now. The first and second time through, my resumes looked just like those — plain, boring and super text-heavy. I think it’s interesting to see that how much the layout and font really control the document. Also, I think this stresses the fact of simplicity in the wording of one’s content — we’re not writing autobiographies here, just trying to give employers the run down of all of our accomplishments.
Although most of you are going with something much more simple, these are great examples of how far you can really go here. Good find Kate!