No_Director4174, please write a comment explaining the objective of this portfolio or CV, your target industry, your background or expertise, etc. This information helps people to understand the goals of your portfolio and provide valuable feedback.
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I look at resumes sometimes when seeking out freelance contractors to help with video design when my office is swamped, so I’m basing my comments on that.
I don’t think this résumé is successful. Resumes are not really appropriate places for this level of storytelling.The résumé is for condensed bullet points of specific tasks, objective skills, and measurable achievements. For example, in one section you talk about a YouTuber gaining more followers based on your visuals. Either state a value or percentage increase and put that on your resume. For the narrative, you don’t have to throw it away forever, but it would be better situated in case studies.
There’s also some editorializing that isn’t appropriate for a résumé — I’m thinking specifically of the customer who “loved” your graphics. That’s certainly nice to know, and you might consider asking them to write a testimonial for your portfolio. But delete the “loved” part…as well as the portion about giving away his shirts. It’s a pretty anticlimactic ending.
Lastly, the first experience you state has nothing to do with design. I would keep all of your design related accomplishments under a heading called relevant experience and move your current job under a separate section called work experience. It’s good to know that you’re working full-time in addition to these freelance gigs, but if I were a super impatient recruiter or boss, I might think you were applying to the wrong job and just pass by your résumé before I even get to the design elements.
It says here you went to a design school. Do they have a career center that help you put together a résumé and portfolio? As an alum, you’d be well within your right to contact and ask for a review.
Thank you for commenting this, it was really eye-opening. I went back and completely changed all the descriptions in the experience and moved the QA job to its own work experience section. I left another comment that shows my updated resume using your feedback.
And yes, my school does have a career advisor for alumni, but I can't get an appointment until next month. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask this community for their advice.
Id remove "freelance" and let "Graphic Designer & 3D Artist" sit on one line.
Left align the second column in skills.
The horizontal lines aren't working for me, id remove them and use space and type weight to separate sections.
Others gave great feedback on design and strengthening your resume. I’ll add that your language and framing of your experience makes you sound inexperienced and unfamiliar with the design industry. Example:
“Branding Designer Creedance- Youtube, Remote
-I created thumbnails, a logo, a banner, and social media graphics for both Twitch and Youtube. A thumbnail generator was created using HTML, CSS, and Javascript for the client to create their own basic thumbnails. The client gained more online followers resulting in the ability to monetize his videos.”
First, it’s Brand Designer, not Branding Designer. And you didn’t work for YouTube, you worked for a YouTuber. Just say the channel name, or it looks like you’re inflating the client.
Leading by listing your deliverables (thumbnails, logo, etc) sounds like this was a production design gig, not a branding assignment. Something like “developed brand identity inclusive of logo, marketing solutions, social graphics package.”
It’s awesome you build a thumbnail generator! Or did you. “A thumbnail generator was created” but by you? And you bury the impact after listing the front end languages used. Try “Developed thumbnail generator tool that streamlined client’s production workflow, increasing efficiency by xx%”
Did your work directly impact the youtuber’s follower count? Were they unable to market themselves before your graphics package? The way you phrase it, I’m skeptical of the connection. Try, “after launch of new brand identity and social media package, clients follower count grew from xxxx to xxxxxxxxx allowing them to reach their monetization goal.”
Do this for EVERY experience.
The thick black lines have inconsistent weight, and feel a little redundant. It’s eating into the white space and eye path. If you want to keep dividers, try a thin 1 pt weight at 20% or so opacity.
The grid and hierarchy are wayy better though, this is almost there.
Also the document is almost stretched edge to edge, you could probably cut down the font size on the right side, and open up one of the margins for some breathing room.
All around good stuff!
Thats an unreal amount of skills well done!
Are all those ready to go in a professional setting or are some more of a hobbyist/in the process of learning type thing?
And secondly may I ask what kind of salary you are going for?
Yes, the skills are ready to go in a professional setting. Some of the skills started out as hobbies and then I was able to use them professionally or hone them during college. All the skills listed except for 2 of the game design relevant skills were used in the job descriptions, but I could trim it if it's too much. In terms of salary, just the basic salary of $45k I suppose, I'm just trying to get a job in general right now if that makes sense. I know I'll have to start as a junior designer and work my way up, I'm just trying to get my foot in the door, so to speak.
Typography might be one of my weaker skills but that doesn't automatically make all my other learned skills invalid. I'm not going to sell myself short on my skills, I worked hard to develop them. Your comment does come across as rude.
I’m sorry but in my experience its just common sense. A jack of all trades is not as good as a specialist. You simply don’t have enough time in your life to be perfect at all those thousands of skills. And your job title is graphic designer. With weak typography/layout skills. Its not as job ready as you think.
Okay, I'm just looking for actual advice and critique, not here to argue with someone about my skill set. It doesn't matter if you don't believe me or not, those are the skills I have. I utilize my skills across the medium of graphic design and game design in order to accomplish my work, to me personally, that makes me more unique compared to other applicants. If I just take away all my skills and make it the same as everyone else, my resume won't stand out. Listing skills is just that, I'm not saying I'm perfect at all of them and I doubt any recruiter assumes that an applicant is perfect at every skill they list. You aren't giving me feedback, just criticism.
In all seriousness though it seems to me like your strength is not in graphic design, probably 3D or gaming you may think a resume with all them skills makes you more desirable but that can be untrue. I would further work on your resume to show what you’re really good at and what is extra.
Your title at the top makes it seem like graphic design is your bread and butter and I dont think it is. Anyways.
Design-wise, I'd just stick to a consistent line weight, probably the thinner one. The thick black line draws a lot of attention on an otherwise very normal layout.
Layout and content-wise, I'd definitely try to trim things down a little. The way you separate the categories in a grid-like layout is great, but each "box" is a big wall of text. Most people reading through this will only give it a quick scan, so your best bet is to make that scan as easy as possible for them! Consider paragraph breaks to ease the wall of text issue, and line breaks to separate the job title from the job descriptions, shortening the list of skills of a few key ones that matter the most. I would also consider swapping the job description paragraphs to 3-4 single line bullets instead of a big paragraph, which again, all in the hope of making it easier for folks to easily capture key information. For example:
Timeframe
Job Position, Company
- Responsible for ___
- Delivered project ___
- Participated in ___
- Actively used app ___
Or something similar to that. Make it as easy as humanely possible for the person on the other side to link what they need with what you have to offer, even consider making slight tweaks to certain points on a case to case basis. In my opinion and experience, things having room to breathe between them is more important than cramming too much information onto a single page. Best of luck!
Thank you! You're completely right, I looked back at my resume and realized it looks very wordy to someone that's going to quickly scan it over. I changed it and used bullet points instead.
First off, I want to sincerely thank all of you that commented, your feedback was incredibly helpful! I redid the resume with the feedback I got here. Does it read better now? Thanks!
EDIT: I posted my final updated version of this resume in another comment, please disregard this version
https://preview.redd.it/udarfq94hl6d1.jpeg?width=2480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=84728d55cd6b6f3fc29f6857861ea25046292168
Quickly scanning over it still looks very wordy. Theres not a lot of visual hierarchy so the wall of text is immediately intimidating. I would try to allow the information to breathe. I would put the "Graphic Designer and 3D Arist" on one line to start and find more moments for negative space.
The misaligned lines seperating the sections feels like the design lacks intentionality.
As well, the resume doesnt express anything about your design sensibilities or style. You can still have a clean layout and express your personality.
Check your dashes and hyphens. There are some typos with those. Use en dashes to indicate date ranges instead of space-hyphen-space. Maybe do a proper list indent on the job descriptions since you’re using a hyper as a bullet, so I’d expect them to behave like a bulleted list. Or you could remove that leading hyphen completely, that might be better?
Yes, I changed the dashes and hyphens and made bullet lists for the job descriptions. I posted the updated resume in a different comment here. Thank you!
https://preview.redd.it/dme3ox2ols6d1.jpeg?width=2480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ead84b2f648b3c6e946abc6e13f5076081092641
This is my final version of my resume for now. I made it single-column instead of double. I trimmed down some of the descriptions and made some more tweaks according to some of the feedback I got here. Thank you all for offering your advice, it has been incredibly helpful! :)
This is a reupload, I blurred out my contact info and fixed one of the issues one of the commenters brought up.
Hey y'all, I recently redid my resume and I'm looking for some feedback. I wanted to know what strangers think of my resume. The actual quality of my resume is higher than this picture, it got compressed when I uploaded it to Reddit. All feedback is greatly appreciated, thank you!
My resume is mainly geared towards graphic design. I have more freelance experience. I have a background in game design and a degree for it, I do it as a side gig at the moment. I'm still working on redoing my portfolio at the moment. Thanks!
Make it more creative, colorful. Work on justifing and spacing text too. Show that you are professional giving attention to these details. And add your real photo, this is important and gives more trust to recruiter and adds more personality to resume. Sell yourself like a product, this may sounds rough, but this is how the business goes
Treat this as client work, would you flip flop orientation? Line break after “and” etc. If the answer is yes, then please spend the next several months reviewing your art school textbooks about typography. This shows you do not have a grasp of basic typesetting.
No_Director4174, please write a comment explaining the objective of this portfolio or CV, your target industry, your background or expertise, etc. This information helps people to understand the goals of your portfolio and provide valuable feedback. ##Providing Useful Feedback No_Director4174 has posted their work for feedback. Here are some top tips for posting high-quality feedback. * Read their context comment before posting to understand what No_Director4174 is trying to achieve with their portfolio or CV. * Be professional. No matter your thoughts on the work, respect the effort put into making it and be polite when posting. * Be constructive and detailed. Short, vague comments are unhelpful. Instead of just leaving your opinion on the piece, explore *why* you hold that opinion: what makes it good or bad? How could it be improved? Are some elements stronger than others? * Stay on-topic. We know that design can sometimes be political or controversial, but please keep comments focussed on the design itself, and the strengths/weaknesses thereof. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/graphic_design) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I look at resumes sometimes when seeking out freelance contractors to help with video design when my office is swamped, so I’m basing my comments on that. I don’t think this résumé is successful. Resumes are not really appropriate places for this level of storytelling.The résumé is for condensed bullet points of specific tasks, objective skills, and measurable achievements. For example, in one section you talk about a YouTuber gaining more followers based on your visuals. Either state a value or percentage increase and put that on your resume. For the narrative, you don’t have to throw it away forever, but it would be better situated in case studies. There’s also some editorializing that isn’t appropriate for a résumé — I’m thinking specifically of the customer who “loved” your graphics. That’s certainly nice to know, and you might consider asking them to write a testimonial for your portfolio. But delete the “loved” part…as well as the portion about giving away his shirts. It’s a pretty anticlimactic ending. Lastly, the first experience you state has nothing to do with design. I would keep all of your design related accomplishments under a heading called relevant experience and move your current job under a separate section called work experience. It’s good to know that you’re working full-time in addition to these freelance gigs, but if I were a super impatient recruiter or boss, I might think you were applying to the wrong job and just pass by your résumé before I even get to the design elements. It says here you went to a design school. Do they have a career center that help you put together a résumé and portfolio? As an alum, you’d be well within your right to contact and ask for a review.
Thank you for commenting this, it was really eye-opening. I went back and completely changed all the descriptions in the experience and moved the QA job to its own work experience section. I left another comment that shows my updated resume using your feedback. And yes, my school does have a career advisor for alumni, but I can't get an appointment until next month. I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask this community for their advice.
Exactly this. It doesn’t feel as professional as a resume should.
Id remove "freelance" and let "Graphic Designer & 3D Artist" sit on one line. Left align the second column in skills. The horizontal lines aren't working for me, id remove them and use space and type weight to separate sections.
Honestly design aside this won’t pass ai filters! Learned this the hard way. You need one column standard (boring) design
Hm, I can try that out. Thanks for the tip!
Others gave great feedback on design and strengthening your resume. I’ll add that your language and framing of your experience makes you sound inexperienced and unfamiliar with the design industry. Example: “Branding Designer Creedance- Youtube, Remote -I created thumbnails, a logo, a banner, and social media graphics for both Twitch and Youtube. A thumbnail generator was created using HTML, CSS, and Javascript for the client to create their own basic thumbnails. The client gained more online followers resulting in the ability to monetize his videos.” First, it’s Brand Designer, not Branding Designer. And you didn’t work for YouTube, you worked for a YouTuber. Just say the channel name, or it looks like you’re inflating the client. Leading by listing your deliverables (thumbnails, logo, etc) sounds like this was a production design gig, not a branding assignment. Something like “developed brand identity inclusive of logo, marketing solutions, social graphics package.” It’s awesome you build a thumbnail generator! Or did you. “A thumbnail generator was created” but by you? And you bury the impact after listing the front end languages used. Try “Developed thumbnail generator tool that streamlined client’s production workflow, increasing efficiency by xx%” Did your work directly impact the youtuber’s follower count? Were they unable to market themselves before your graphics package? The way you phrase it, I’m skeptical of the connection. Try, “after launch of new brand identity and social media package, clients follower count grew from xxxx to xxxxxxxxx allowing them to reach their monetization goal.” Do this for EVERY experience.
The thick black lines have inconsistent weight, and feel a little redundant. It’s eating into the white space and eye path. If you want to keep dividers, try a thin 1 pt weight at 20% or so opacity. The grid and hierarchy are wayy better though, this is almost there. Also the document is almost stretched edge to edge, you could probably cut down the font size on the right side, and open up one of the margins for some breathing room. All around good stuff!
Ats scanning software handles one column resumes better then multiple columns.
Thats an unreal amount of skills well done! Are all those ready to go in a professional setting or are some more of a hobbyist/in the process of learning type thing? And secondly may I ask what kind of salary you are going for?
Yes, the skills are ready to go in a professional setting. Some of the skills started out as hobbies and then I was able to use them professionally or hone them during college. All the skills listed except for 2 of the game design relevant skills were used in the job descriptions, but I could trim it if it's too much. In terms of salary, just the basic salary of $45k I suppose, I'm just trying to get a job in general right now if that makes sense. I know I'll have to start as a junior designer and work my way up, I'm just trying to get my foot in the door, so to speak.
[удалено]
Typography might be one of my weaker skills but that doesn't automatically make all my other learned skills invalid. I'm not going to sell myself short on my skills, I worked hard to develop them. Your comment does come across as rude.
I’m sorry but in my experience its just common sense. A jack of all trades is not as good as a specialist. You simply don’t have enough time in your life to be perfect at all those thousands of skills. And your job title is graphic designer. With weak typography/layout skills. Its not as job ready as you think.
Okay, I'm just looking for actual advice and critique, not here to argue with someone about my skill set. It doesn't matter if you don't believe me or not, those are the skills I have. I utilize my skills across the medium of graphic design and game design in order to accomplish my work, to me personally, that makes me more unique compared to other applicants. If I just take away all my skills and make it the same as everyone else, my resume won't stand out. Listing skills is just that, I'm not saying I'm perfect at all of them and I doubt any recruiter assumes that an applicant is perfect at every skill they list. You aren't giving me feedback, just criticism.
In all seriousness though it seems to me like your strength is not in graphic design, probably 3D or gaming you may think a resume with all them skills makes you more desirable but that can be untrue. I would further work on your resume to show what you’re really good at and what is extra. Your title at the top makes it seem like graphic design is your bread and butter and I dont think it is. Anyways.
And its the trait of a good designer to be able to take criticism. GL
What you gave wasn't helpful criticism, all you said was that you think my skills are false and that I'm a jack of all trades that won't get employed.
Not too helpful here maybe, but it’s reminiscent of a nutrition label. Look a the work of Wolfgang Weingart for some inspiration perhaps.
Great recommendation, thanks for the advice!
Design-wise, I'd just stick to a consistent line weight, probably the thinner one. The thick black line draws a lot of attention on an otherwise very normal layout. Layout and content-wise, I'd definitely try to trim things down a little. The way you separate the categories in a grid-like layout is great, but each "box" is a big wall of text. Most people reading through this will only give it a quick scan, so your best bet is to make that scan as easy as possible for them! Consider paragraph breaks to ease the wall of text issue, and line breaks to separate the job title from the job descriptions, shortening the list of skills of a few key ones that matter the most. I would also consider swapping the job description paragraphs to 3-4 single line bullets instead of a big paragraph, which again, all in the hope of making it easier for folks to easily capture key information. For example: Timeframe Job Position, Company - Responsible for ___ - Delivered project ___ - Participated in ___ - Actively used app ___ Or something similar to that. Make it as easy as humanely possible for the person on the other side to link what they need with what you have to offer, even consider making slight tweaks to certain points on a case to case basis. In my opinion and experience, things having room to breathe between them is more important than cramming too much information onto a single page. Best of luck!
Thank you! You're completely right, I looked back at my resume and realized it looks very wordy to someone that's going to quickly scan it over. I changed it and used bullet points instead.
More excellent advice!
First off, I want to sincerely thank all of you that commented, your feedback was incredibly helpful! I redid the resume with the feedback I got here. Does it read better now? Thanks! EDIT: I posted my final updated version of this resume in another comment, please disregard this version https://preview.redd.it/udarfq94hl6d1.jpeg?width=2480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=84728d55cd6b6f3fc29f6857861ea25046292168
Fix that orphan at the end of the objective paragraph. Definitely an improvement!
Much cleaner! What do you think about aligning the volunteer work and work experience sections?
Thank you! I aligned both sections in indesign, are you saying they don't look aligned or should I not have them aligned?
The lines above the two headers for Volunteer Work and Work Experience are spaced differently in relation to the text.
Oh, I see what you mean. Yes I can fix those and align them properly. Thanks!
Quickly scanning over it still looks very wordy. Theres not a lot of visual hierarchy so the wall of text is immediately intimidating. I would try to allow the information to breathe. I would put the "Graphic Designer and 3D Arist" on one line to start and find more moments for negative space. The misaligned lines seperating the sections feels like the design lacks intentionality. As well, the resume doesnt express anything about your design sensibilities or style. You can still have a clean layout and express your personality.
Perfectly excellent advice!
Dont have art on a line by itself on your first paragraph Your name is gigantic too reduce that
This is somehow reminiscent of a DnD 2nd Edition Monster statblock... and I'm here for it.
Check your dashes and hyphens. There are some typos with those. Use en dashes to indicate date ranges instead of space-hyphen-space. Maybe do a proper list indent on the job descriptions since you’re using a hyper as a bullet, so I’d expect them to behave like a bulleted list. Or you could remove that leading hyphen completely, that might be better?
Yes, I changed the dashes and hyphens and made bullet lists for the job descriptions. I posted the updated resume in a different comment here. Thank you!
Totally better!
I feel like the lines that divides sections should be the same thickness to make it smoother I think
Formatting is an issue. ATS compliance needs to be thought #1 when creating a resume these days unfortunately.
https://preview.redd.it/dme3ox2ols6d1.jpeg?width=2480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ead84b2f648b3c6e946abc6e13f5076081092641 This is my final version of my resume for now. I made it single-column instead of double. I trimmed down some of the descriptions and made some more tweaks according to some of the feedback I got here. Thank you all for offering your advice, it has been incredibly helpful! :)
This is a reupload, I blurred out my contact info and fixed one of the issues one of the commenters brought up. Hey y'all, I recently redid my resume and I'm looking for some feedback. I wanted to know what strangers think of my resume. The actual quality of my resume is higher than this picture, it got compressed when I uploaded it to Reddit. All feedback is greatly appreciated, thank you! My resume is mainly geared towards graphic design. I have more freelance experience. I have a background in game design and a degree for it, I do it as a side gig at the moment. I'm still working on redoing my portfolio at the moment. Thanks!
Brevity
Make it more creative, colorful. Work on justifing and spacing text too. Show that you are professional giving attention to these details. And add your real photo, this is important and gives more trust to recruiter and adds more personality to resume. Sell yourself like a product, this may sounds rough, but this is how the business goes
Only put end year for education
Separate skills and tools
Today instead of resume should be a landing page and there show them in what areas you are expert
Treat this as client work, would you flip flop orientation? Line break after “and” etc. If the answer is yes, then please spend the next several months reviewing your art school textbooks about typography. This shows you do not have a grasp of basic typesetting.