McFarland Resume

Design Strategy

Throughout the process of creating my resume, it was very important to have a strategy to solve the design problems that I faced. Issues that I confronted when forming my resume included the placement of my word mark and text boxes, creating a balance between type and white space, using a legible and yet alluring font, and putting together all of the elements to appear clean and streamlined. The audience that I had in mind when organizing the material, was a modern and respected Public Relations firm. Two areas in which I would like to enter into in PR are political and research-based sects. These specific career paths were reflected on my resume in its clean, concise and organized format, and also in the color palette I chose. Since blue and red are colors used mainly in political forums, I felt a dark blue would be an appropriate and professional hue to use; I chose Pantone280 UP for this color.

The format was difficult to create because it was vital to prune and condense the material on my resume. Also, it was challenging to design a format that was attractive to the reader, while still including all of the descriptions to each main point. At one point, it became clear that there was an excess of text and not enough space to allow the eye to rest. When arranging the layout, it was pertinent that I reminded myself how I wanted to be perceived by the writer. I wanted my word mark to say that I am approachable, and yet organized and orderly at the same time. It was also necessary to create one text box for my experience, and a separate text box for my skills, awards and education. This segmented my accomplishments so the reader could separate the most important points in this resume.

Typeface | I chose to use two fonts in the Humanist Sans Serif category. I chose Optima for my headers because of its large family index and its boldness. I chose Gill Sans for the body text because of its legibility and uniqueness.

Wordmark | Optima Extra Black 48 pt. in Pantone 280 UP CMYK. The line is the same stroke width as the column divider, at 15 pt. the ‘L’ is set at 48.28 pt. to hide in a streamlined way behind the name line.

Headers | Experience, Skills, Awards and Education |Optima Extra Black 12 pt. in Pantone 280 UP CMYK

Subheads | Optima Extra Black 10 pt. in black | Titles | Optima Bold Italic 9 pt. in black

Body Text | Gill Sans Regular 8 pt. in black | Separating lines in Pantone 280 UP CMYK

Document Grid

Top Margin | 4p0 Inside Margin | 4 Bottom Margin | 5p0 Outside Margin | 4p0