I was flicking through one of my old design scrap books earlier today and came across an old image entitled Dave on the Dole. The image was of a magazine style curriculum vitae belonging to an out of work Lancashire Designer, Dave Towers. To try and get himself noticed he had created, designed and printed his CV on found paper such as P45s (a form you get in the UK when you leave a job). The image was shown in Creative Review Magazine so it certainly got him some publicity, I wonder if it got him a job? Dave if you’re out there let us know (and I hope you don’t mind me showing your old CV).
This got me thinking: What does it take to get a designer noticed for a design job, especially a graduate with no proven design experience? I cringe to look back to when I had just left college (all those years ago) and made myself a pop up CV with my face on it 
. Mind you I think it got me a couple of interviews, even if it was just out of amusement. A friend of mine from college who really struggled to get his first job started to make individual brochure CVs targeted at the individual company he was writing to. This eventually landed him a job (would he have got it otherwise – who knows, but initially it got him an interview).
Another unusual curriculum vitae – a man screen printed his resume on to a t-shirt and wore it at a tradeshow, while handing out copies of his resume. This resulted in 5 interviews and 3 job offers, you can read about it at http://www.ideasitefor business.com.
Now everything is online, perhaps an online CV is the way to go, or does this just get lost in the crowd?
So what is the answer, I’m not sure, how creative do you think a designers CV should be? What are the most creative resumes or CVs you have heard of?
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12 Comments
it depends on who you’re showing your resume to…if you’re applying for a job in a corporate environment, or in a design studio that caters to corporate clients, your resume should probably be pretty standard….but for smaller design studios it’s probably ok to show something more “designed”. but either way it has to be clear and legible.
When I’ve recruited designers (for projects – not for full time jobs), I like to see a bit of creativity in the CV/portfolio. Not just in the examples of work shown, but in the way all those examples are collectively presented.
Hi Frank and Aaron,
Thanks for your input, some good points there.
Hello I’m Dave on the Dole, or at least I was. I got loads of interest from that CV. The Face magazine were the first people to give me freelance work and it sort of snowballed from there. It opened so many doors. I’d travel down from Liverpool on the overnight National Express and get in a phone box and ring up any designer or agency who I thought was good. Because they’d seen the article I usually got to see them that day. I love a novelty CV but its got to be a true reflection of who you are.
I’m now really really posh and head of design and typography at Lowe London, doing things like this
http://www.dandad.org/awards2007/entry.asp?entry_id=28092
Hi Dave,
Thanks for leaving a message, your CV certainly worked well for you, what a great story. You’ve certainly proved that a creative CV can work.
Todays society is so much harder than yesterday.The people sitting in in the creative directors chair picking out CV’s..it is so much harder today than it was yesterday. On the point of sillyness I could do almost anything to create a really imaginative cv. But when does it stops and become downright silly? Sure I am really creative but at some point I just can´t stand the fact that I have to create something that costs a lot of money to be seen!
I followed the ideasiteforbusiness.com link and got a little motivated as there were some great ideas, the T-Shirt resume stands out a bit – although the dog poop scoop business is pure genius, who would think that would be profitable?
Jerry
Hi. Im 14 and i am thinking of becoming a Graphic Designer in later life. This may seem like a bit of an amateur question, but i was wondering what GCSE Subjects are best for someone hoping to pursue a Career in Graphic design? Thankyou.
Hi Rory
I would definitely take art as after your GCSEs/A Levels this will be important to get onto a foundation course in Art which is the route many people go before going on to a degree or HND in graphic design. If your school offers any other design subjects this would be useful too.
Hope this helps
Tara
Thanks a lot, Tara.
I think my school has a specific A-Level course for people wishing to do Graphic Design. I’ll look into it. Thankyou.
Hi there, I’m trying to get a job in graphic design, but at this stage it’s probably with smaller local firms (I live in the West of Scotland, near Glasgow). I have an HND level qualification and have done a few bits of freelance work but have never actually been full-time employed as a designer. Should my C.V be separate from my actual portfolio of work? I don’t want to annoy potential employers by emailing loads of pdfs to them. What program should I use for the basic info?
Hi Feargus
If you don’t want to try the video approach – why don’t you set up a blog showing your work and then you can send your PDF (or just a general email about yourself offering to send them a CV PDF) to an employer with a link to examples of your work. Its pretty easy to set up a Wordpress blog if you check Gideon’s becomeablogger.com there are loads of FREE videos to show you how to do it. If you don’t want to pay for hosting Wordpress also do sites they host for you Wordpress.com. Other options for creating online portfolios are http://www.coroflot.com and deviantart.com
Hope this helps
Tara
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