IxD302
CV and Cover Letter – Language, Content Planning, Design and Reviews
To start my CV I decided to start with a bubble map including all of the traits I wanted to include, based off essentials skills and qualities I have which are suited to the various interaction designer roles I will be applying for. Firstly though, I made a list of all the various names of roles I should be looking out for. These include…
- UX Designer
- Visual Designer
- Content Designer
- UX Researcher
- UI Designer
- UX Engineer
- UX Writer
- Front-end Developer
This list could go on forever, but this is a good starting point.
Below is the bubble map I created. I just thought it was a good way of getting general buzz words together collectively, it’s easily scanned and it will help me during the writing process.
Next I started to roughly plan out the order of my CV. I found Daniel’s guidance from the week two lecture (Seen Here) to be very useful. I typed up the content on google docs firstly, as I wanted to ensure that it was all correct and appropriate before beginning to work out a layout and design. I actually sketched an initial design for my CV as seen below.
At first I designed my CV on Adobe XD. This didn’t go to plan and turned out to be too complicated to use, especially when it is vital that minor details, such as white space are so important for formal documents as such.
(Draft 1) Untitled
(Draft 2) CV-emmamcgurren
As you can see, the initial design was too cramped and just didn’t look the way I wanted it too!! Daniel and I then discussed using a different software, which I wasn’t formally aware of…
Adobe InDesign was the new app I decided to use to design my CV. I definitely found it a lot better when I spaced out the content. I used the space more wisely, being aware of what a reader would want a CV to look at… easy to read, easy to find a certain section, not too cramped or messy and not too long. I read up a lot of different websites, giving advice on how to create the best, most memorable CV. Piktochart.com offered some really good advice, some of which being that the content should be skimmable, printable and as clean looking as possible, and also relate to the personality of your brand i.e. colour scheme.
Planning, Research and Review Notes
Before beginning to send off my CV, Daniel was able to provide me with some more feedback on 3 occasions. via email over Zoom. Below I have added the list of things he told me to alter over Zoom.
After my first draft had been refined Daniel then advised me…
The Final Document…
Above is the link to the PDF document containing my final CV design.
Above is the link to the PDF document where you can see the example of a Cover letter along with my CV.
Review…
Overall I am really confident with the final outcome of my CV. I found the writing part to be the easiest part for me. I’m quite a confident writer and feel that I have a good way with words and the ability to sense the tone needed for different subjects and for different readers. I am also really happy with the layout and design of my CV. I think it is very simplistic, easily read with a strong choice of font, which matches my brand. I had a really good experience with this task and found it really interesting to use InDesign for the first time. It has shown me that CVs do not just have to be formal, boring documents. In fact… they shouldn’t be! They should stick in the readers head, for all the right reasons of course!
One thing I want to work on is printing my CV out and possibly looking at other ways I could include my brand. This will come in useful for whenever I begin interviews. I am going to research more physical ways I could present my CV to possible employers… so keep the eyes peeled for more blog posts on that!