A creative resume or curriculum vitae is one document you can’t skimp – and this is true for anyone but especially designers and other creative professionals. When applying for a job, the first impression you create is the strongest and longest lasting one. The same is true when making contact with a new potential client. That first impression has to help you stand out from your competitors.

Most of the time, that first impression is made online via an online application, your website, an email, or even social media. Hopefully, you already have a strong website, either a personal portfolio or your freelance business site. And hopefully, your social media pages continue your personal or business brand look and feel. But what about your resume?

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Most job applications ask applicants to attach a CV or a resume. And after an initial, brief research on your website or social media accounts, a prospective client will often ask for a CV if they don’t find the information they need or if they need to present a list of freelancers to their boss. As such, no matter if you are searching for a job or for clients, your resume design could be what differentiates you from a competitor with similar skills and level of experience. A right kind of creative resume truly reflects the character, experience and similar things in an expressive way. A creative and truly reflective resume can open the new doors of opportunities and it has a lot to do with the future of the person.

The following are some excellent creative resume and CV examples to help get ideas flowing for your own resume design. Notice that some tend to remain more straightforward and business-like with a hint of creativity thrown in, while others go over the top in the creative aspect. Others strike a nice balance between the two extremes. Designers have discovered new different methods to showcase the skills and attributes in a bold way. You can imagine a highly creative resume, design it and then showcase your skills and abilities to the whole world.

You will need to make a calculated decision on your own CV design. If your brand look and style of work is highly artistic, then, by all means, go all out. If, however, you are applying for a job in a less creative field, you may want to tone down tons of graphics and colors, and stick with a more corporate look that still creatively reflects your own personal brand.

Check out the ready-made templates for purchase over on GraphicRiver if you’re looking for something new.

Jisan’s creative CV uses icons, color, and bold banners to add creativity to his resume design. Plus, the unusual layout helps the information to stand out well while still maintaining a professional and organized look.

Brink’s personal resume is certainly a bit more corporate in its look and feel, but definitely includes some unique touches. The large block quotes and graphs draw the eye well, and the blue color adds personality while remaining professional in appearance.

The problem with most curriculum vitae’s is that they are difficult to read due to tons of content. The brochure layout for this CV design allows Kubisova to keep all of her information to a single page spread, essentially, without looking crowded or overwhelming. A resume must contain all the attributes and related content that creates intention and curiosity.

Resume by cheektocheek

Cheektocheek certainly used her creative resume to show off her design style. The design is still organized and easy to read – a great example of balancing creativity with readability. This resume can make you stand off from the crowd and reveal the distinct qualities that show how are you better than others.

Resume by tenbiscuits

I love the odd angle of this creative resume. He also does a great job of breaking up the text using paragraph symbols, and the call to action (Hire Me) stands out well on the bold, red ribbon graphic.

Definitely visit Paula’s Behance page to see the full design, as this creative resume is only a part of the awesome self-promotional mailer. The entire layout, when opened fully, becomes a poster that includes a portfolio of this designer’s skill with hand-made creations.

Sometimes the server industry can be rough, especially when the restaurant is a popular one. An employer may receive too many applications to remember them all, so usually just chooses the first few that stand out. With a creative resume like this one, a server is guaranteed to get noticed!

Instead of using the more common graph or chart to show his talents and skills, Sunny modeled his design after a roulette table found in a casino. His “No gamble involved” note in the bottom corner further reveals his fun personality. There is no end to the creativity and creative minds think beyond the skies.

Baez’s resume design is definitely one that maintains a more professional, corporate look. The graphs, charts, icons, and other visual graphics give this one more personality than a regular resume, though. Baez has graciously offered his design for free, so simply click on the image to download it for your own use. There is pretty much space and each section is connected to the next one amazingly.

This is another creative resume design that shows off the designer’s humor as well as his wide range of skills. Even with the creative illustration and extra information, the design is still clean and organized, which says a lot about his engineering side as well.

Both clean and colorful, Yermolov’s CV design stands out well with neat columns and colorful icons. His illustrated self-portrait is a nice alternative to a photo and ensures it will look nice even if a client uses their own poor printer to print a copy.

This is another free curriculum vitae design that has both a creative as well as professional look and feel. By Pixellagency.com, this CV shows just how easy it is to add a unique touch with the use of creative fonts.

Both the format and the fold of this CV design is fantastically creative. Mieghem does an excellent job of creating intrigue and keeping attention by leading to the next page with the fold.

Done as a project, this is certainly one of the most creative resume ideas I came across. Profeta designed his CV like a packaging label for a milk or juice carton. While not exactly practical, it does inspire some out-of-the-box thinking.

While the text lines run a bit too close together, significantly reducing readability, this curriculum vitae stands out considerably. The grunge looks reminiscent of old typewriters and ink quill pens with some modern graphics thrown in and is certainly a creatively unique look for an applicant with an interesting combination of skills.

A personal logo is always a safe way to add some originality to a resume that needs to remain more on the corporate side. Robertson doesn’t stop there, though. His beautiful choice in fonts also adds to the appeal of his creative resume design.

Fitting a lot of information onto a single page is one of the more difficult parts to a resume, but darthkix solves this problem quite beautifully. The silhouette graphic on the background is a brilliant way to break up his information neatly but uniquely.

The secret identity/ Batman theme on Solanki’s graphics resume doubles as a fun element but also makes a point of his varying skills. His creative resume design stands out visually right away and shows off his abilities as a graphic designer, illustrator, and web designer. These type of visual resumes can be useful when you have plenty of boring information to reveal to your client.

The infographic look is an excellent idea for a CV design. You can fit a ton of information both neatly and creatively onto a single, long page. Even printed out, it will still look excellent and make sense due to the infographic poster design.

You’ll want to check out the rest of the pieces to Olufsen’s self-promotional package, as all are extremely well-done and, well, brilliant! Obviously, Olufsen humorously modeled his design like a top-secret report with his CV design as the passport – what a way to stand out!

This creative resume definitely shows off icART’s fine art skills. The left side shows off photography as well as design and retouching skills. The fonts are also stunning in this design.

Callens’ CV design sticks to her brand look very well. The entire design is quite clean and organized, easy to quickly browse. Yet it still looks pretty and shows off her graphic design skills. She has mentioned everything worth-mentioning in a modest way and you can extend the resume down to the bottom as well.

I love how this creative resume organizes so much content so neatly onto a single page. At first glance, it is almost overwhelming, but the lines and other graphics help to draw the eye from one section to the next quite easily. It should not take very long for the viewer to go through it so each section and detail should be connected to the next one and everything should be displayed in a rather expressive and creative manner.

The colors in this curriculum vitae brochure are fantastic! Again, a folded brochure is an excellent way to keep interest from page to page as well as break up lots of content. The animated and childish design revolves you around the whole content in a beautiful way so that you always crave for more and more information.

The bright colors in this creative resume by Bobadilla are stunningly balanced out by the excellent, clean layout of content. Plus, the custom fonts add a very nice, original touch to the entire design.

The hand-drawn look of this gorgeous CV resume shows off Trevino’s unique set of skills very well. Plus, the layout is very easy to follow, not to mention fun. Every attribute is featured in a classy and neat way. The sketch of the person reveals his personality clearly and that is so unique to see.

While quite minimal in lack of color, Walsh’s resume creatively uses a folded booklet layout with a beautiful, textured cover to pique the curiosity and make quite the impression. The inside includes icons and other graphics in a highly organized layout.

Costa’s CV design creatively uses graphics in place of text in her “Skills” and “Things I Enjoy” sections, which helps keep the rest of the text easy to digest. Her use of a color scheme is quite stunning and shows off her design eye.

Some may argue that this resume is not creative at all. I, however, found it creatively minimal. I love the layout of the letters in “MIKE” as well as the large, yellow title font on the background. His social media along the footer of the page stands out strikingly well as compared to other resumes that lump social media with other contact information in the header.

This is another “top secret” styled resume that I found to be quite clever. The “Skilldex” creatively helps Branko’s skills stand out from the rest of the content and adds to the visual appeal.

Liang shows just how easily a resume for a creative professional can replace text with graphics. The layout shows off both of Liang’s experiences: print and interactive design/ development. There exists an amazing contrast between the background colors and in-depth colors.

I highly urge you to visit Hidalgo’s Behance page to view his curriculum vitae in full effect, as the images above to not do his gorgeous illustration justice. You can copy this idea and design similar creative resumes that are more than just a resume. Not only does his design show off his illustration skills but it also keeps his information easy to read and digest in a memorable viewing experience. Beautiful!

The design itself is minimal, but using all 12 pages for a CV seems a bit overwhelming. You could choose to eliminate most of these pages in this downloadable design, however, if you decided to use it for your own. Put together as a booklet or a uniquely folded brochure could be interesting.

Handwritten fonts and illustrations are a stunning touch in this creative CV by Soto. I love how each section is divided into boxes, like graphics cards on a web page. Different calligraphic fonts have been put to use, few items have been sketched and you get a colorful resume for your work.

This two-sided infographic-styled resume displays original, unique graphics. The entire look is geometric, organized, neat, and highly creative!

I really love how this website resume could also double as a poster-like print resume design. Roberta does an excellent job of keeping a visitor scrolling with uniquely phrased section headers and the dotted lines. Different geometrical figures and calligraphic fonts have been displayed in quite skeptical and playful way. Her illustrations and custom fonts are stunning!

Whitney’s resume is actually part of a tutorial on her website, and she certainly shows what a resume needs to stand out. The boxes break up lots of content very well, and other aspects really add to the creativity, such as her logo and textured background.

Resume by xiruxiru

Xiruxiru’s creative resume follows a clever theme: “Full of Vitamin Creativity.” Each of the sections of information then includes a fruit with text in the corresponding color. And the technical skills section definitely stands out with blue strawberries as the graphic. The color of the corresponding fruit is the same as the color of the calligraphic font and the whole design looks really fruitful and enchanting.

This CV resume definitely makes a lasting impression right away. The creative design remains professional and corporate, but the little extras such as the ribbon banners give it a nice visual appeal. There are small interesting details included in the resume to impress the viewer in a, particularly unique way.

You Only Have a Few Seconds…

…to make a lasting first impression. How creative is your resume or CV design? Are you confident yours will stand out from the rest of the pile? If not, then you may want to use one of the creative resume and CV examples above to model your own design, but don’t forget to consider your audience. And have fun with it so that your creative passion shines through loud and clear.

Do you have a creative resume or CV design you’d like to share? Please do in the comments below!

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