A resume can be a make-or-break moment for a designer’s application for a job. Your application is supposed to highlight your skills in all areas of design. When it comes to resume design, there are no images to distract from your typography skills. I’ve reviewed a ton of applications in my career and there are some designers that have nice portfolios, but they’ve completely missed the mark on their resume design. This tells me one thing… those designers are weak in typography.
What I’ve found is that designers overcomplicate the design. There are too many typefaces. Things aren’t aligned. There are widows and orphans. There’s no contrast. All of these things are part of a foundation in typography. In this video, I cover basic typography, so you can really nail the design of your resume.
Color & Size
Keep the design to black and white. Black type on a white background is bullet-proof typography for legibility. Also, when you send your resume to an employer, it will more than likely be printed in black and white.
In regards to printing, it should go without saying, but the size of your resume should be the standard paper size in your country. I’m in the US, so we print letter size (8.5 x 11). For some of you, it might be more common to print A4 (21 cm x 29.7 cm).
Establish a grid
Always establish your grid first. Grids provide structure and they also reduce the amount of design decisions you’ll have later on, ipso facto, it’s faster to design with a grid!
Choose one typeface
Pairing typefaces is for more experienced designers and if you don’t know how to do it properly, you’re only going to showcase your weakness. Choose a typeface that has a range of fonts.
Alignment
For your resume, keep it simple and just stick to left-aligned. Easy, right?
Type Contrast/Hierarchy
You can create contrast in your type by using different font weights, but make sure to skip a weight. You can also add contrast through size. If you’re using a lighter weight, you can go up in point size and if you’re using a heavier weight, you can go down in point size. You can also add contrast through letter spacing, which in typography, we call tracking.
Create Space
You want all of your information to be readable. Creating space allows the elements to breath and make the content more digestible.
Micro-design
Fix all of your rags and widows!
Rags are the ragged edge of your text. What we want to avoid is when the text starts to create shapes. The perfect rag goes in, out, in, out, line by line.
Widows are the short lines at the end of paragraphs. You want at least 2 words or more on that last line.
You my not get it to be exactly perfect, but getting as close as you can add a level of detail to your resume.
Spellcheck
It is a hard no if you have spelling errors on your resume. In a world with so many spell-check resources, it’s hard to explain why this still happens. Attention to detail as a designer is important, so I don’t want you to miss a spot.
Conclusion
As I mentioned, these rule apply to all typography for your projects, but your resume is an excellent way to showcase your skills.
If you have more specific questions on your resume, sign up for a mentoring session with me in the description below. I’ll see you in the next video.
The typography principles I covered are part of a basic foundation in typography. Even if you’re not looking to design your resume, these typography principles can be applied to the other projects you’re working on. They should be used across all of your design projects.
You can do this. Good luck and get that job!
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