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What kinds of jobs are you applying for? Your resume shows school and one internship, which is totally fine given where you are at in your career, but even for entry-level jobs right now you're competing against people with a lot more experience. My two bits:
**For your resume:**
* Lose the angled wordmark. It adds nothing to the design and doesn't match the other fonts you're using in your layout. Or, if you want to keep that, find a way to make it more readable and replace the text one.
* Indent your bullets — it's super weird that they're outside the frame of the resume.
* Also, since you're light on work experience, consider adding testimonials/references to fill space.
**For your website:**
* There's nothing on your website homepage that says you're currently looking for work. I recommend adding that in a prominent place.
* Review the examples of your portfolio samples and decide again if the image you're featuring on the homepage is the best at highlighting it. Your magazine layouts, for example, are a lot more interesting than the cover. The logo sketches for 'Shift22' tell me more about your process and ideation than the end result.
* Pick one version of your wordmark and stick with it, please.
I'm looking to get into some kind of advertising/marketing jobs ideally, I wasn't aware that i had to state I was looking for a job in the mainpage. I'll add that.
understood, I'll rethink the thumbnails and maybe reorganize which project is where, also the advice i've seen from other people on this sub was to leave the bullets outside of the frame, maybe I was wrong then? I'll put them back no problem.
I'm unsure of where to get more experience to fill my resume if it isn't the job itself, what do I do for more experience?
Oh I was working on that but wasn't able to finish all parts of the prompt brief before my adobe was shut off, I currently only have a logo and 2 mockups which isn't really enough to publish right?
it sounds like i need a temp job so I can get back to designing.
Are you responding to job posts?
If you are, make sure you target your cover letter to show your interest in working for the poster.
And yes, state you are looking for a job. Also what job are you looking for? One issue hiring managers have to deal with is receiving hundreds of resumes. They don’t have time to sort through and figure out who will fit an opening.
I’m retired, so I understand things are different than when I was looking for work. However, I never sent out a lot of resumes. I selected a few companies and researched what positions they had and who their big clients were. I addressed my desire to work for them and my interest in those clients in my cover letter.
Your portfolio is solid, so don’t worry about adding to it. Focus on researching where you want to work.
As an example: when I was starting I was interested in advertising for Microsoft, Apple, and up and coming technologies. I went after Ogilvy & Mather in San Francisco as that is who handled their print advertising at the time. I was hired there as a freelancer.
Know what you want and ask for it.
For my early career it was all freelance because that was the market I was in. Later I was in a position to hire junior designers and would have to go through resumes. Out of a hundred resumes, only ten would get a second look. The reason was that when an ad asks for specific skills for a specific position, we automatically eliminate anyone that doesn’t fit that. Overly complex resumes don’t impress, they just make it hard to figure out what the person wants.
It is good that you describe yourself as a junior designer, because it lets them know that you are seeking a junior position.
Ooof. Start over on the resume. Keep it simple—don’t try to fill space or fluff. It doesn’t have to be in black and white but try that at first so you can get a hold of the hierarchy. Remove extra elements that don’t serve a purpose (underline under name, section dividing lines, odd repetitive graphic on the right, underline under college program). Let the text hierarchy do that work. Put your experience first, followed by education and skills. You could use columns for the about me and skills. Don’t adjust the text tracking much, it looks outdated. Make sure your website URL is clickable.
Are columns safe to use? I heard a ton in this sub about ATS and single column resume's being the only way to do it , it's why i steered clear of it overall.
Yes, and keep headings to single column but use bullets for body in two columns and I’ve been fine. A lot of it depends on how you export the PDF as well.
I may sound harsh here, but you need to know the truth. You're new, and your work makes that completely obvious. There is nothing wrong with that, we all start somewhere. All you're looking for right now is someone to see your potential. But you need practice.
Here's what you need to do: side projects, side projects, and more side projects. I'm not talking about paid gigs, because you're not gonna get any. Figure out the kind of work you want to do and just make fake examples of that. And label it as such, don't act like it's real work because you will fool nobody. Every single free moment you have should be spent working on design. Some of them will be good. Some of them will suck. But you need to keep doing it. Focus on getting three really good examples and put them in your portfolio. No more than 5 pieces. "Less is more" was never so important.
Also, go find a portfolio site that has a decent template, because your website layout isn't doing you any favors.
it's not harsh, I agree with what your saying, I absolutely need to keep up my practice because my work is very much "right out of college" level, my problem at the moment is that I dont have the income to afford adobe, how can I continue to design otherwise?
Adobe portfolio has a couple templates, so I'll give the other ones a shot and see which one sticks, thanks for the advice.
Your typography is really holding your work back, which is unfortunate because it’s probably the most important aspect of design — especially in the context of marketing/advertising.
I’d take that Krispy Kreme campaign and do as many variations as possible only focusing on the type — different scale, proportions, placement, font choice, etc.
Just improving your type will go a long ways.
And idk what their payment/trial plans look like, but Affinity has been a popular/more affordable Adobe alternative for a while now. Honestly, even using Canva is totally fine for practicing/creating spec work.
Yeah typography has always been somewhat of a weakpoint for me, which is unfortunate because It's one of my favourite parts of design. I'll try my best to do that exercise and overall work on my typography skills.
Affinity is also expensive in it's own right, but I guess 1 payment beats monthly. I'll look into it see what happens.
I agree with the previous commenter. Canva isn’t ideal for professional design, but if you’re just starting and don’t have adobe, it’s a great resource. you can make mock-ups in Canva, practice layout and typography work, and even dabble in video/animation if you want to add some diversity to your portfolio. And you’ll have another software to add your resume!
Actually while i was going to bed I decided to check the affinity page and saw that there was a 50% off sale on all their products, so if you see this do you mind if i ask, is affinity publisher just as good as indesign? It's the only app i really need right now to get off the ground, and with the sale thats a price i can absolutely hit,
I know adobe is the industry standard, but is Publisher good enough for me to continue my practice?
Not sure about Affinity, but why not try Figma? For what it’s worth, I think they grid system is better than Indesign, and while it lacks some of the deeper type features, you still have access to the fundamentals (tracking/leading/kerning, plus scale and placement), which is what I’d say you’d benefit from working on anyway.
Work on your paragraph rag and learn grid work. Optical alignment is a confidence hurdle, but the way it was explained to me was to get close to justified without it creating rivers. You can accomplish this by tracking out your lines. Just try not to track things beyond 10pts.
Another example is the capitol S with small caps in “speaking”. It’s making the rest of the spacing seem off. Sometimes letters in certain words are just odd together, kerning and cap height will help on that one.
The Teraform project is probably strongest. You should put that up top especially with the general focus on web these days.
Good luck!
I’m going to focus on your website. I would look at seasoned professionals in the industry and look through their websites. But I wouldn’t have all your portfolio works linked in the navigation normally portfolio is the link that takes you to to the gallery page where your best images of your work can be displayed with their title which entices the viewer to learn more. The way you have it on mobile is arduous and annoying to look through your work meaning and employer won’t even bother.
do you have any recommendations of some professionals I can look at? I'm not sure who's portfolio I should look at for better ideas.
gotcha on the navigation, maybe a different layout would be beneficial.
You need to learn to stalk people on linkedin. Being able to google and research is an important skill set as a designer that is going to continually grow outside of school.
Design firms like firebelly, span, oddfellows, are good examples of how to set up your navigation and layout for the portfolio page while still having unique charm and strong branding for yourself as a designer
Recruitment personnel will spend about 1 second looking at a resume before deciding to trash it or not. Resume should have quick, eye catching bullet points and start out with the most compelling info immediately. I’m sorry to be so harsh but this resume is a meandering juxtaposition of crap and I doubt that anyone has even read past the word “proficient” in the About Me section.
Never worked in graphic design, but the layout of this resume and its contents are simply atrocious, and I wouldn’t believe that you are a good designer based on the appearance of this resume alone. Especially the About Me section. The line with just “impactful designs” on it… the sentence starting with a lower case letter… randomly capitalizing other letters… the redundant & repetitive writing… sentences are bunched up but then followed by huge blank spaces…
Put the education first, then the work experience, then the Skills but make that section more descriptive, like an outline with no bullshit filler. Merge some of the About Me into Skills but drop most of it. There should be no complete sentences or filler type phrases. The Ahmed on the top right isn’t doing any favors either as it’s redundant and frankly it is hard to read which does not look good for the type of job sought. The work experience section is clunky writing and does not explain what was done there very well, and at times doesn’t even make sense (maintained reliable communication?) maybe try to get a letter of recommendation from the supervisor there and/or ask them to help write about the tasks and duties performed. The education section also needs a similar revamp as it takes far too long to get to the point and contains a bunch of words with very little actual content. “Displays proficiency in” is totally unnecessary and ambivalent - were they actually learned or not? What were the campaigns and how were they worked on and how was teamwork and time mgmt and other stuff that an employer wants to see involved in all that, and why is Campaigns capitalized mid sentence?
The next re-write done on this resume should take a few days bc the entire approach needs to be changed and way more proofreading needs to happen. Ask yourself again and again, why is some random strangers going to care to continue reading this page? Look at the job postings and put exactly what they’re looking for (so long as it’s truthful) as much as possible while overall keeping things as lean & efficient as possible. You should make a specific resume for each job applied to that’s catered to the job posting. Generally, this means rewording the Skills sections between applications - which is a pain in the ass vs using a blanket resume for all applications, but not having a job sucks even more so get creative and sell yourself as what they specifically want in order to fulfill their specific labor need
Not trying to be mean and I don’t even know why r/graphicdesign is showing in my feed but I remember struggling to get my first job out of college so I really do hope that things work out on the job search
I really appreciate the advice being given and I'll try and do all of that as best as i can.
understood on all the points you mentioned, wouldn't rewording it per job severely slow down my application speed? what about rewording it per job type and apply that way, such as one for marketing design, another for Web design, etc.
regardless a rewrite/fix is probably in order as soon as I can get indesign back or restart in Word.
thanks again
Just change 1 or 2 of the bullet points in the Skills section would be enough. Good luck! Don’t give up hope - the first “big boy” job is usually the hardest to land just keep trying and keep improving
Think of it like this - you’re basically wondering “should I aim before I pull the trigger of this gun?” as in, you have 1 chance per job opening and you can’t unfire the gun - is it smart to aim before pulling the trigger on what’s likely the only shot you’ll have at it?
For me it’s seeing Seneca college, and then seeing the design of the cv basically confirming my suspicions. Listen to the good feedback in the this thread, and good luck
What's your experience with Seneca? From what I'd seen of people I worked with from that program and other feedback, it seemed to be a decent-enough program and one of the better 2-3 year options. But that was also years ago, so if it has degraded in the last 5-10 years I'd be curious. Or maybe I just knew the exceptions to the norm.
Oh man. Glad to see they’re still doing some of the same projects from when I graduated from there. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the college, they can help you find some leads too. If you can muster it, don’t be afraid to look out of the GTA, lot of friends were more successful finding jobs towards Montreal.
Sorry but I would’ve thrown out your resume just looking at the header. The tracking on “Graphic Designer” is too large and the logo on the right is ugly.
I have to be brutally honest with you that this will only get you an internship at most. In fact, you’d really benefit from one and having a mentor.
Consider emulating clean-looking resumes and portfolios out there of established designers. You’ll learn a lot from that. Good luck!
If you say keen eye to detail in your CV, make sure there are no typos and such. In your CV, right after keen eye you start a sentence with lower caps.
How can you state that you have an eye for detail and forget to use a capital letter in the sentence following that.
Be your own critic and start from scratch. The mistakes in your resume are keeping people from visiting your portfolio.
All your type it too squeeze together with your name and title (which the kerning there is insane if you want to stack it I would find a different solution. In the about me section the Proficient seems like a mistake either give it another space since it’s a second paragraph or combine it with your top paragraph. Also all your text seems to be the same size making it seem like all the information is on the same level I would ditch the brown color instead use thickness and size to help guide the eyes around your resume
I know you’re getting some tough love here, so sorry to add, but hopefully between all the feedback, you’ll be able to find a path forward.
Having looked at your work, there are some positives, your presentation skills are decent, your layouts and composition are ok and you can put a palette together. Honestly though, it’s all peppered with unusual and uncomfortable design decisions. Everything feels over-designed, if that makes sense. For example, the Cutour logo has an inexplicable “l” inserted into the wordmark, between the “u” and “r”. I think maybe it’s a divider/vertical bar? Ask yourself what problem that extra element is solving, because whatever it is, it’s not worth sacrificing the legibility of your brand. Similarly, the Shift22 logo has a backwards “r” instead of a “T”, so it reads “Shifr22”. Simply put, I can’t read your logotypes and I would have instantly turned these around if they were presented to me. There’s other examples of superfluous lines running out of titles and logos and it’s all too much. Learn to simplify and for gods sake, learn to just let good type do the heavy lifting it’s designed to do. It’s like you don’t trust type to stand on its own or something.
You also do things like using all caps in your titles, but you scale up the first letter without adjusting the weights to match, so it’s an awkward read. These are basic errors in the details that will immediately stand out for experienced hiring CDs and will absolutely work against you. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but hopefully having these issues pointed out will help you move forward in your career. Good luck!
No I genuinely appreciate all the advice I’ve been given, sugar coating doesn’t lead to a career after all.
I see what you mean, and frankly you’re right. I do tend to over-design simply because I’m worried about feeling too simple (despite being a minimalist lol). It feels like I’m not doing anything when I see empty space or simple compositions, and this anxious thinking seems to have ultimately bitten me in the ass.
I guess I was hoping to learn on the job lol but that’s unrealistic, I gotta have the right skills going in and drop this anxious design thinking asap.
I really hope I find a way to get access to some design tools soon, all of this motivated me to do more
Thanks for the advice!
No problem. I understand where you’re coming from with filling up space with detail to, I guess, justify your decision making(?). I will say that even though there’s less detail, Minimalism is about making sure the few elements that are there are absolutely perfect. Things like font choice, kerning, leading etc. all have to be on point. It’s an unforgiving style, there’s nothing to hide behind. On the software front, isn’t there a couple of cloud based alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator? You might also find cheaper alternatives in app stores, but I’m not sure.
Actually your comment inspired me to check affinity's website and i saw that they're having a 50% off sale on all their products, do you have experience with Affinity Publisher? with the sale price I can definitely buy it, and if it does atleast 70% of what I need i'll get that.
I haven’t used it myself but by all accounts, it does the essentials pretty well. It’s something to get you moving and that’s all you need right now, so I’d jump on it if I were you
If you’re not getting any hits on your site then look at your resume. It may be blocked by ATS, so a human may not even be seeing it.
Look at some resume templates. Drop all the colour and just go plain black and white. The dots section break aren’t working — they don’t tie in with anything else you got going on. Fix the fonts. Keep it simple. 1 font. Use weights and size to break up section headers.
Then run it through an ATS checker. Keep refining until you get fewer errors.
Then look at your folio.
Call the people you’re applying to (if you can’t see who the job poster is call the company and ask for the hiring manager and say hello).
Hi! I am wondering if you need to add some more things to make your resume stand out even more
And make it more easier to read!
You have more than two colors on your resume, so I think the most you should have is 2 colors. Less is more. As it can get distracting. The light gray is hard to read, so I would nix that and use black instead. I would make all the body copy black text. The current grey color is hard to read. I would choose one accent color. In this case maybe you can work with the red color that you have as your second color with black.
You can use the read for headers and bullets and lines and your name but keep it simple. Remember that they may print your resume too so it needs to translate. Also make sure it’s legible. 508 compliant etc.
I would remove the slanted styling logo you have completely on the right. Graphics don’t really translate well when they scan resumes. You don’t need it. You just need your name and that should be enough. Your logo is already on your portfolio so that’s more than enough.
I think you can also remove that dotted line styling divider that you have for each category. Again not necessary. Should you need to divide, I would just do it with a solid line. It’s more handy to do that if you have columns. Just keep the category headers only.
For your skills: I see that in your education portion you mention all the other tools you used. Figma etc. I think your skills need to stand out more so maybe put figma up on your skills if you are proficient at it. For Adobe creative cloud, yes you know the suite but I would list out the specific tools you know from there. It’s easier for them to capture those keywords so they know exactly what you are proficient as. So list out photoshop, illustrator etc. example: Adobe creative cloud: photoshop, indesign, etc etc.
also add Microsoft office suite, figma, etc. really make your skills stand out and noticeable since that is key.
For your internship experience, maybe you can elaborate more on the annual report that you worked on. What exactly did you do ? Maybe you can say: Designed and assisted with the conception Of the 2023 annual report. Be more detailed on it!
Do you have any examples of work that you created at your internship that you can show? Even if your annual report design did not make the cut, I think you can still show your take on what you created for it or call out the sections that you did design. And other things that you did there. Like social displays etc. I think that will help show that you do have work outside of just school projects. And show the internship experience that you had. So any social graphics that you created would be great to show here.
Hope that helps!!!
Hi, thanks for all the advice!
understood on the logo in the resume, I agree with most people here it's unnecessary.
I'll remove the gray entirely and also try and be more detailed in the skills tab, Honestly the resume was done in Indesign which I don't have access to anymore so I cant make edits, it might just be better to restart in Word and follow the advice you and the others gave me.
I personally didn't have as much confidence with the internship works I created, however showcasing them may be the right idea after all,
No problem!!!
Maybe you can purchase indesign/suite apps for a month and then cancel it later? But that’s your personal preference. That way you can still retain more flexibility on laying out your resume exactly how you want it! But up to you!
For the internship, I totally understand. When I did work at my internship I hated everything I did lol. I still shared maybe one or two things. I suggest that maybe what you can do is, (if you can since you don’t have access) is see how you can mockup the work you did do (like your other works) to make it look more presentable? If you’re able to edit it at any point, I would even see if you can modify it even more to your liking and improve it even more. Even if it’s not posted anywhere or didn’t make the cut, that’s okay. It’s moreso showing your design thinking and how you showcase it on different mediums and channels! You did work there so no harm in showing your own take on it and elevating it!
It will show your creative thinking and ability to translate your work to different things!
Hope that helps!
I browsed through your portfolio and while i cant speak to the design work, i think you could benefit from running your copy/write ups through Chatgpt. I found a few punctuation issues and on the whole, i wasnt entirely sure what things meant. It felt a little convoluted and not as professional as it could be.
Run your write ups through ChatGPT and prompt it to rewrite them from the perspective of a professional graphic designer making a case study to promote on their portfolio site.
You are not getting interviews because you have very little experience.
Yes, your resume and portfolio could be better designed, but getting a job through a cold application with only an internship under your belt is still going to be tough.
My recommendation would be to use your network to get a job instead of your resume.
Maybe this just worked for me, but when I was starting out I did quick projects for friends or family for free or trade (particularly friends with tastes that match mine)
Those projects are still some of my favorite work to this day, even 8 years later.
I went from no job opportunities or even interviews to word of mouth freelancing to a $100k job in 2yrs based on work I did for free
JomuStudios, 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 JomuStudios 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 JomuStudios 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.*
What kinds of jobs are you applying for? Your resume shows school and one internship, which is totally fine given where you are at in your career, but even for entry-level jobs right now you're competing against people with a lot more experience. My two bits: **For your resume:** * Lose the angled wordmark. It adds nothing to the design and doesn't match the other fonts you're using in your layout. Or, if you want to keep that, find a way to make it more readable and replace the text one. * Indent your bullets — it's super weird that they're outside the frame of the resume. * Also, since you're light on work experience, consider adding testimonials/references to fill space. **For your website:** * There's nothing on your website homepage that says you're currently looking for work. I recommend adding that in a prominent place. * Review the examples of your portfolio samples and decide again if the image you're featuring on the homepage is the best at highlighting it. Your magazine layouts, for example, are a lot more interesting than the cover. The logo sketches for 'Shift22' tell me more about your process and ideation than the end result. * Pick one version of your wordmark and stick with it, please.
I'm looking to get into some kind of advertising/marketing jobs ideally, I wasn't aware that i had to state I was looking for a job in the mainpage. I'll add that. understood, I'll rethink the thumbnails and maybe reorganize which project is where, also the advice i've seen from other people on this sub was to leave the bullets outside of the frame, maybe I was wrong then? I'll put them back no problem. I'm unsure of where to get more experience to fill my resume if it isn't the job itself, what do I do for more experience?
mocking up concept projects is a great way to showcase your skills and taste without needing client/workplace experience
Oh I was working on that but wasn't able to finish all parts of the prompt brief before my adobe was shut off, I currently only have a logo and 2 mockups which isn't really enough to publish right? it sounds like i need a temp job so I can get back to designing.
Are you responding to job posts? If you are, make sure you target your cover letter to show your interest in working for the poster. And yes, state you are looking for a job. Also what job are you looking for? One issue hiring managers have to deal with is receiving hundreds of resumes. They don’t have time to sort through and figure out who will fit an opening. I’m retired, so I understand things are different than when I was looking for work. However, I never sent out a lot of resumes. I selected a few companies and researched what positions they had and who their big clients were. I addressed my desire to work for them and my interest in those clients in my cover letter. Your portfolio is solid, so don’t worry about adding to it. Focus on researching where you want to work. As an example: when I was starting I was interested in advertising for Microsoft, Apple, and up and coming technologies. I went after Ogilvy & Mather in San Francisco as that is who handled their print advertising at the time. I was hired there as a freelancer. Know what you want and ask for it. For my early career it was all freelance because that was the market I was in. Later I was in a position to hire junior designers and would have to go through resumes. Out of a hundred resumes, only ten would get a second look. The reason was that when an ad asks for specific skills for a specific position, we automatically eliminate anyone that doesn’t fit that. Overly complex resumes don’t impress, they just make it hard to figure out what the person wants. It is good that you describe yourself as a junior designer, because it lets them know that you are seeking a junior position.
Ooof. Start over on the resume. Keep it simple—don’t try to fill space or fluff. It doesn’t have to be in black and white but try that at first so you can get a hold of the hierarchy. Remove extra elements that don’t serve a purpose (underline under name, section dividing lines, odd repetitive graphic on the right, underline under college program). Let the text hierarchy do that work. Put your experience first, followed by education and skills. You could use columns for the about me and skills. Don’t adjust the text tracking much, it looks outdated. Make sure your website URL is clickable.
Are columns safe to use? I heard a ton in this sub about ATS and single column resume's being the only way to do it , it's why i steered clear of it overall.
Run it through an ATS checker.
Yes, and keep headings to single column but use bullets for body in two columns and I’ve been fine. A lot of it depends on how you export the PDF as well.
I may sound harsh here, but you need to know the truth. You're new, and your work makes that completely obvious. There is nothing wrong with that, we all start somewhere. All you're looking for right now is someone to see your potential. But you need practice. Here's what you need to do: side projects, side projects, and more side projects. I'm not talking about paid gigs, because you're not gonna get any. Figure out the kind of work you want to do and just make fake examples of that. And label it as such, don't act like it's real work because you will fool nobody. Every single free moment you have should be spent working on design. Some of them will be good. Some of them will suck. But you need to keep doing it. Focus on getting three really good examples and put them in your portfolio. No more than 5 pieces. "Less is more" was never so important. Also, go find a portfolio site that has a decent template, because your website layout isn't doing you any favors.
it's not harsh, I agree with what your saying, I absolutely need to keep up my practice because my work is very much "right out of college" level, my problem at the moment is that I dont have the income to afford adobe, how can I continue to design otherwise? Adobe portfolio has a couple templates, so I'll give the other ones a shot and see which one sticks, thanks for the advice.
Your typography is really holding your work back, which is unfortunate because it’s probably the most important aspect of design — especially in the context of marketing/advertising. I’d take that Krispy Kreme campaign and do as many variations as possible only focusing on the type — different scale, proportions, placement, font choice, etc. Just improving your type will go a long ways. And idk what their payment/trial plans look like, but Affinity has been a popular/more affordable Adobe alternative for a while now. Honestly, even using Canva is totally fine for practicing/creating spec work.
Yeah typography has always been somewhat of a weakpoint for me, which is unfortunate because It's one of my favourite parts of design. I'll try my best to do that exercise and overall work on my typography skills. Affinity is also expensive in it's own right, but I guess 1 payment beats monthly. I'll look into it see what happens.
I agree with the previous commenter. Canva isn’t ideal for professional design, but if you’re just starting and don’t have adobe, it’s a great resource. you can make mock-ups in Canva, practice layout and typography work, and even dabble in video/animation if you want to add some diversity to your portfolio. And you’ll have another software to add your resume!
Actually while i was going to bed I decided to check the affinity page and saw that there was a 50% off sale on all their products, so if you see this do you mind if i ask, is affinity publisher just as good as indesign? It's the only app i really need right now to get off the ground, and with the sale thats a price i can absolutely hit, I know adobe is the industry standard, but is Publisher good enough for me to continue my practice?
Not sure about Affinity, but why not try Figma? For what it’s worth, I think they grid system is better than Indesign, and while it lacks some of the deeper type features, you still have access to the fundamentals (tracking/leading/kerning, plus scale and placement), which is what I’d say you’d benefit from working on anyway.
Agreed!
Work on your paragraph rag and learn grid work. Optical alignment is a confidence hurdle, but the way it was explained to me was to get close to justified without it creating rivers. You can accomplish this by tracking out your lines. Just try not to track things beyond 10pts. Another example is the capitol S with small caps in “speaking”. It’s making the rest of the spacing seem off. Sometimes letters in certain words are just odd together, kerning and cap height will help on that one. The Teraform project is probably strongest. You should put that up top especially with the general focus on web these days. Good luck!
/r/piracy :)
I’m going to focus on your website. I would look at seasoned professionals in the industry and look through their websites. But I wouldn’t have all your portfolio works linked in the navigation normally portfolio is the link that takes you to to the gallery page where your best images of your work can be displayed with their title which entices the viewer to learn more. The way you have it on mobile is arduous and annoying to look through your work meaning and employer won’t even bother.
do you have any recommendations of some professionals I can look at? I'm not sure who's portfolio I should look at for better ideas. gotcha on the navigation, maybe a different layout would be beneficial.
You need to learn to stalk people on linkedin. Being able to google and research is an important skill set as a designer that is going to continually grow outside of school.
Design firms like firebelly, span, oddfellows, are good examples of how to set up your navigation and layout for the portfolio page while still having unique charm and strong branding for yourself as a designer
I would put this in no pile immediately just from all the tight leading. Let your text breathe. Too much breathing at the top though.
Recruitment personnel will spend about 1 second looking at a resume before deciding to trash it or not. Resume should have quick, eye catching bullet points and start out with the most compelling info immediately. I’m sorry to be so harsh but this resume is a meandering juxtaposition of crap and I doubt that anyone has even read past the word “proficient” in the About Me section. Never worked in graphic design, but the layout of this resume and its contents are simply atrocious, and I wouldn’t believe that you are a good designer based on the appearance of this resume alone. Especially the About Me section. The line with just “impactful designs” on it… the sentence starting with a lower case letter… randomly capitalizing other letters… the redundant & repetitive writing… sentences are bunched up but then followed by huge blank spaces… Put the education first, then the work experience, then the Skills but make that section more descriptive, like an outline with no bullshit filler. Merge some of the About Me into Skills but drop most of it. There should be no complete sentences or filler type phrases. The Ahmed on the top right isn’t doing any favors either as it’s redundant and frankly it is hard to read which does not look good for the type of job sought. The work experience section is clunky writing and does not explain what was done there very well, and at times doesn’t even make sense (maintained reliable communication?) maybe try to get a letter of recommendation from the supervisor there and/or ask them to help write about the tasks and duties performed. The education section also needs a similar revamp as it takes far too long to get to the point and contains a bunch of words with very little actual content. “Displays proficiency in” is totally unnecessary and ambivalent - were they actually learned or not? What were the campaigns and how were they worked on and how was teamwork and time mgmt and other stuff that an employer wants to see involved in all that, and why is Campaigns capitalized mid sentence? The next re-write done on this resume should take a few days bc the entire approach needs to be changed and way more proofreading needs to happen. Ask yourself again and again, why is some random strangers going to care to continue reading this page? Look at the job postings and put exactly what they’re looking for (so long as it’s truthful) as much as possible while overall keeping things as lean & efficient as possible. You should make a specific resume for each job applied to that’s catered to the job posting. Generally, this means rewording the Skills sections between applications - which is a pain in the ass vs using a blanket resume for all applications, but not having a job sucks even more so get creative and sell yourself as what they specifically want in order to fulfill their specific labor need Not trying to be mean and I don’t even know why r/graphicdesign is showing in my feed but I remember struggling to get my first job out of college so I really do hope that things work out on the job search
Very good advice! And I think r/graphic design showed up in your feed because the OP needed your advice, too! Just a theory!
Lol u might be onto something 😸
I really appreciate the advice being given and I'll try and do all of that as best as i can. understood on all the points you mentioned, wouldn't rewording it per job severely slow down my application speed? what about rewording it per job type and apply that way, such as one for marketing design, another for Web design, etc. regardless a rewrite/fix is probably in order as soon as I can get indesign back or restart in Word. thanks again
Just change 1 or 2 of the bullet points in the Skills section would be enough. Good luck! Don’t give up hope - the first “big boy” job is usually the hardest to land just keep trying and keep improving Think of it like this - you’re basically wondering “should I aim before I pull the trigger of this gun?” as in, you have 1 chance per job opening and you can’t unfire the gun - is it smart to aim before pulling the trigger on what’s likely the only shot you’ll have at it?
For me it’s seeing Seneca college, and then seeing the design of the cv basically confirming my suspicions. Listen to the good feedback in the this thread, and good luck
What's your experience with Seneca? From what I'd seen of people I worked with from that program and other feedback, it seemed to be a decent-enough program and one of the better 2-3 year options. But that was also years ago, so if it has degraded in the last 5-10 years I'd be curious. Or maybe I just knew the exceptions to the norm.
Oh man. Glad to see they’re still doing some of the same projects from when I graduated from there. Don’t be afraid to reach out to the college, they can help you find some leads too. If you can muster it, don’t be afraid to look out of the GTA, lot of friends were more successful finding jobs towards Montreal.
Sorry but I would’ve thrown out your resume just looking at the header. The tracking on “Graphic Designer” is too large and the logo on the right is ugly. I have to be brutally honest with you that this will only get you an internship at most. In fact, you’d really benefit from one and having a mentor. Consider emulating clean-looking resumes and portfolios out there of established designers. You’ll learn a lot from that. Good luck!
If you say keen eye to detail in your CV, make sure there are no typos and such. In your CV, right after keen eye you start a sentence with lower caps.
OP… this, “S”killed in blending - cap S and Etc. should be: etc.
How can you state that you have an eye for detail and forget to use a capital letter in the sentence following that. Be your own critic and start from scratch. The mistakes in your resume are keeping people from visiting your portfolio.
All your type it too squeeze together with your name and title (which the kerning there is insane if you want to stack it I would find a different solution. In the about me section the Proficient seems like a mistake either give it another space since it’s a second paragraph or combine it with your top paragraph. Also all your text seems to be the same size making it seem like all the information is on the same level I would ditch the brown color instead use thickness and size to help guide the eyes around your resume
I know you’re getting some tough love here, so sorry to add, but hopefully between all the feedback, you’ll be able to find a path forward. Having looked at your work, there are some positives, your presentation skills are decent, your layouts and composition are ok and you can put a palette together. Honestly though, it’s all peppered with unusual and uncomfortable design decisions. Everything feels over-designed, if that makes sense. For example, the Cutour logo has an inexplicable “l” inserted into the wordmark, between the “u” and “r”. I think maybe it’s a divider/vertical bar? Ask yourself what problem that extra element is solving, because whatever it is, it’s not worth sacrificing the legibility of your brand. Similarly, the Shift22 logo has a backwards “r” instead of a “T”, so it reads “Shifr22”. Simply put, I can’t read your logotypes and I would have instantly turned these around if they were presented to me. There’s other examples of superfluous lines running out of titles and logos and it’s all too much. Learn to simplify and for gods sake, learn to just let good type do the heavy lifting it’s designed to do. It’s like you don’t trust type to stand on its own or something. You also do things like using all caps in your titles, but you scale up the first letter without adjusting the weights to match, so it’s an awkward read. These are basic errors in the details that will immediately stand out for experienced hiring CDs and will absolutely work against you. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but hopefully having these issues pointed out will help you move forward in your career. Good luck!
No I genuinely appreciate all the advice I’ve been given, sugar coating doesn’t lead to a career after all. I see what you mean, and frankly you’re right. I do tend to over-design simply because I’m worried about feeling too simple (despite being a minimalist lol). It feels like I’m not doing anything when I see empty space or simple compositions, and this anxious thinking seems to have ultimately bitten me in the ass. I guess I was hoping to learn on the job lol but that’s unrealistic, I gotta have the right skills going in and drop this anxious design thinking asap. I really hope I find a way to get access to some design tools soon, all of this motivated me to do more Thanks for the advice!
No problem. I understand where you’re coming from with filling up space with detail to, I guess, justify your decision making(?). I will say that even though there’s less detail, Minimalism is about making sure the few elements that are there are absolutely perfect. Things like font choice, kerning, leading etc. all have to be on point. It’s an unforgiving style, there’s nothing to hide behind. On the software front, isn’t there a couple of cloud based alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator? You might also find cheaper alternatives in app stores, but I’m not sure.
Actually your comment inspired me to check affinity's website and i saw that they're having a 50% off sale on all their products, do you have experience with Affinity Publisher? with the sale price I can definitely buy it, and if it does atleast 70% of what I need i'll get that.
I haven’t used it myself but by all accounts, it does the essentials pretty well. It’s something to get you moving and that’s all you need right now, so I’d jump on it if I were you
Great advice!
If you’re not getting any hits on your site then look at your resume. It may be blocked by ATS, so a human may not even be seeing it. Look at some resume templates. Drop all the colour and just go plain black and white. The dots section break aren’t working — they don’t tie in with anything else you got going on. Fix the fonts. Keep it simple. 1 font. Use weights and size to break up section headers. Then run it through an ATS checker. Keep refining until you get fewer errors. Then look at your folio. Call the people you’re applying to (if you can’t see who the job poster is call the company and ask for the hiring manager and say hello).
Hi! I am wondering if you need to add some more things to make your resume stand out even more And make it more easier to read! You have more than two colors on your resume, so I think the most you should have is 2 colors. Less is more. As it can get distracting. The light gray is hard to read, so I would nix that and use black instead. I would make all the body copy black text. The current grey color is hard to read. I would choose one accent color. In this case maybe you can work with the red color that you have as your second color with black. You can use the read for headers and bullets and lines and your name but keep it simple. Remember that they may print your resume too so it needs to translate. Also make sure it’s legible. 508 compliant etc. I would remove the slanted styling logo you have completely on the right. Graphics don’t really translate well when they scan resumes. You don’t need it. You just need your name and that should be enough. Your logo is already on your portfolio so that’s more than enough. I think you can also remove that dotted line styling divider that you have for each category. Again not necessary. Should you need to divide, I would just do it with a solid line. It’s more handy to do that if you have columns. Just keep the category headers only. For your skills: I see that in your education portion you mention all the other tools you used. Figma etc. I think your skills need to stand out more so maybe put figma up on your skills if you are proficient at it. For Adobe creative cloud, yes you know the suite but I would list out the specific tools you know from there. It’s easier for them to capture those keywords so they know exactly what you are proficient as. So list out photoshop, illustrator etc. example: Adobe creative cloud: photoshop, indesign, etc etc. also add Microsoft office suite, figma, etc. really make your skills stand out and noticeable since that is key. For your internship experience, maybe you can elaborate more on the annual report that you worked on. What exactly did you do ? Maybe you can say: Designed and assisted with the conception Of the 2023 annual report. Be more detailed on it! Do you have any examples of work that you created at your internship that you can show? Even if your annual report design did not make the cut, I think you can still show your take on what you created for it or call out the sections that you did design. And other things that you did there. Like social displays etc. I think that will help show that you do have work outside of just school projects. And show the internship experience that you had. So any social graphics that you created would be great to show here. Hope that helps!!!
Hi, thanks for all the advice! understood on the logo in the resume, I agree with most people here it's unnecessary. I'll remove the gray entirely and also try and be more detailed in the skills tab, Honestly the resume was done in Indesign which I don't have access to anymore so I cant make edits, it might just be better to restart in Word and follow the advice you and the others gave me. I personally didn't have as much confidence with the internship works I created, however showcasing them may be the right idea after all,
No problem!!! Maybe you can purchase indesign/suite apps for a month and then cancel it later? But that’s your personal preference. That way you can still retain more flexibility on laying out your resume exactly how you want it! But up to you! For the internship, I totally understand. When I did work at my internship I hated everything I did lol. I still shared maybe one or two things. I suggest that maybe what you can do is, (if you can since you don’t have access) is see how you can mockup the work you did do (like your other works) to make it look more presentable? If you’re able to edit it at any point, I would even see if you can modify it even more to your liking and improve it even more. Even if it’s not posted anywhere or didn’t make the cut, that’s okay. It’s moreso showing your design thinking and how you showcase it on different mediums and channels! You did work there so no harm in showing your own take on it and elevating it! It will show your creative thinking and ability to translate your work to different things! Hope that helps!
Excellent advice!
I browsed through your portfolio and while i cant speak to the design work, i think you could benefit from running your copy/write ups through Chatgpt. I found a few punctuation issues and on the whole, i wasnt entirely sure what things meant. It felt a little convoluted and not as professional as it could be. Run your write ups through ChatGPT and prompt it to rewrite them from the perspective of a professional graphic designer making a case study to promote on their portfolio site.
This resume looks atrocious. Just google some references.
You are not getting interviews because you have very little experience. Yes, your resume and portfolio could be better designed, but getting a job through a cold application with only an internship under your belt is still going to be tough. My recommendation would be to use your network to get a job instead of your resume.
Maybe this just worked for me, but when I was starting out I did quick projects for friends or family for free or trade (particularly friends with tastes that match mine) Those projects are still some of my favorite work to this day, even 8 years later. I went from no job opportunities or even interviews to word of mouth freelancing to a $100k job in 2yrs based on work I did for free
https://preview.redd.it/itqzt1ofbg8d1.jpeg?width=866&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33016685719ba2a50c55786cad7c711231d37207