Graphic Design Resume Example & Writing Guide

Being a graphic designer, you’d think that all you need is knowledge and creativity to get the job. And while that’s not far from the truth, you first need to display that knowledge and creativity through a graphic designer resume.

That being said, crafting a job-winning graphic design resume is probably unlike any other project you’ve done so far.

The key principles remain the same. You want to use design to convey as much information as possible as quickly as possible while following guidelines to meet the industry standard.

You’ll find all of those guidelines in this article, along with expert tips to truly master the art of resume building, so let’s jump in!

What is the Right Format to Use for a Graphic Designer Resume?

Subtlety is the name of the game. You want to show your proficiency in design, but you don’t want to overdo it to the point where it becomes difficult to read some—or all—parts of your resume.

Keep in mind that recruiters sometimes spend as little as 6–7 seconds skimming resumes. If your complex resume design gets in the way of them finding the information they want, they might simply move on to the next candidate. Plus, it could make things difficult for an ATS to scan your application document, which could result in an automated rejection.

Resume Layout

Having a captivating layout is all about striking a fine balance between crafting a creative document and keeping it professional.

For starters, your resume should be one page long in most cases.

With that in mind, use margins, white space, line spacing, and font size to make sure you keep your graphic designer resume legible while creating all the important sections.

It’s recommended to use 10–12 pt font size for the body of the text and 14–16 pt for subheadings. Margins should be at least 1 inch, while line spacing is usually between 1 and 1.15.

What Sections Should a Graphic Designer Resume Contain?

Here is where you should keep your creativity in check and strictly follow the rules to make sure you include all the required parts. The must-have resume sections are:

After including all the mandatory information, you can go for one or more of the optional sections. They are great at giving recruiters additional valuable data and making you stand out from the crowd. These sections are:

To help make your life easier, we’ve created a professional resume builder filled with ATS-proof templates and job-winning examples. Simply pick one, adjust the layout so that it suits your needs, and fill in the blanks with your information.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s take a look at the professional graphic designer resume template. That way, you’ll have a general understanding of the subject as we explore it further.

Graphic Designer Resume Contact Information

Contact information is a straightforward section at the top of your resume. It gives recruiters your name, professional title, and contact options, such as your phone number and email address. Let’s take a look at the example:

You might have noticed a website link after the email address. That’s the link to the candidate’s portfolio and one of the crucial parts of a graphic designer resume, but we’ll expand on that in the following subheading.

As for the rest of this section, it’s important to proofread and spell-check everything. 

Also, you want to make sure you’re using a professional email address. Furthermore, as a graphic designer, you might want to include a link to your social media page. Just make sure it’s relevant to the job and not a personal account with arbitrary content.

Finally, due to anti-discrimination laws, you shouldn’t include personal information such as your physical address, resume photo, gender, or similar.

With all this in mind, let’s take a look at a bad contact information section:

Graphic Designer Resume Portfolio

While a graphic designer resume needs to introduce you to the recruiter, a portfolio is there to show your work in all its glory, which makes it an essential part of your job application. That’s why you want to place it somewhere near the beginning of your resume and make it clearly visible.

We already mentioned that you should put the link to your design portfolio in the contact information section. Position it so that it’s front and center. Also, make sure that the link is clickable in the soft copy of your graphic designer resume.

Graphic Designer Resume Objective or Summary

One of the best ways to establish yourself as a competent candidate is to grab recruiters’ attention with a brief and impactful graphic designer resume summary or objective.

If you’re new to the industry, use an objective to highlight your job-specific skills and career goals. On the other hand, graphic designers with a lot of experience should write a resume summary to highlight their best work.

Graphic Designer Resume Objective

You can entice hiring managers to take a deeper look at your resume by writing a powerful resume objective. Even if you don’t have relevant professional experience, you can always include volunteer work, school projects, freelance gigs, or anything that could showcase your competence in it.

Let’s take a look at a good example:

If we take all the specifics from the previous objective, we get the following bad example that gives recruiters almost no useful information:

Entry Level Graphic Designer Resume Objective

As an entry-level applicant, you want to focus on your skills and those personality traits that make you a fast learner and a team player. Display drive and potential while being precise when describing all the career-specific skills you picked up during your schooling. Check out the following good example:

Even though they are still a student, the candidate wrote a professional resume objective. They listed plenty of important, position-specific skills and emphasized working for the company as one of their career objectives.

The next example is a bad one where the applicant barely gave any information of substance:

How to Write a Summary

If you’re a seasoned professional, pick a couple of work-related achievements that created the biggest impact and highlight them in your resume summary. Let’s see what this looks like:

Now, compare that to this bad resume summary that features nothing worth noting:

Graphic Designer Resume Work Experience

The most important section on your graphic designer resume is the one that describes your work experience, so let’s find out how to make it perfect.

No Graphic Design Work Experience

What happens when you don’t have relevant work experience to show? What if you’re still a student or a recent graduate, or perhaps you’re switching careers and your professional experience is irrelevant to the position you’re applying to?

You can boost your resume by mentioning specific school projects, internships, volunteer work, and similar activities to showcase your abilities and the skills you have developed so far.

Let’s take a look at an example:

A candidate leveraged their internship to craft a professional graphic designer resume with no experience. Note how they used numbers and action verbs and displayed results that actually carried weight.

Compare that to the following bad example:

This example lacks essential information, and the candidate listed responsibilities instead of results, which didn't tell recruiters much about their skills or how well they did at work.

Seasoned Graphic Designer

When you have years of experience and countless achievements, you want to focus on the most prominent ones instead of listing everything you ever did. Let’s pay attention to the good example:

Still, don’t include too little information, like in the following example:

Graphic Designer Resume Education Section

You don’t need to have a degree to be a successful graphic designer. Still, a diploma makes your resume more credible, which is why you should always include it in your resume if you have it.

Here’s how:

Apart from your degree, the institution issuing it, and your dates of attendance, you can also include some of your prominent achievements in the document. A GPA of 3.5 and above is always welcome on your resume, as are relevant extracurricular activities, courses, club memberships, etc.

Even though this section should be short and to the point, don't leave out important information like in the example below:

You should generally only list your highest degree, and you can include it even if you’re still studying. Just mark the graduation date as “expected” or “current.” And if you dropped out of college, mention how many credits you earned towards your degree.

Graphic Designer Resume Skills

Graphic designer resume skills are a must-have when you’re applying for a job. Even though your work experience and portfolio speak volumes about your capabilities, HR managers are always looking for a list of specific abilities when reviewing resumes.

Since design is a vast field, different positions will require different skills. That’s why it’s crucial to research the job posting to figure out exactly which ones your potential employers are looking for.

When listing them on your resume, keep hard and soft skills separate since they are different in nature.

Hard skills are job-specific and include things like particular design knowledge or proficiency in specialized software.

Soft skills are broad, transferable, and applicable in many different environments. They describe your ability to communicate, work under pressure, pay attention to detail, be great at managing time and resources, and so on.

Hard Skills

Hard skills will heavily depend on the job position you’re after. Research it and start the list with the most relevant skills that you’re most proficient in. Some of them may be:

Soft Skills

Soft skills, while important, should come after hard skills. Put more focus on hard skills and only list several of the most sought-after soft ones, such as:

Graphic Designer Resume Optional Sections

We have already touched upon the importance of optional sections and how they can distinguish you from other candidates, so let’s see what these sections are.

Awards

Awards are one of the most important ways graphic designers can emphasize their expertise. The graphic designers who won some of the most prominent awards have proven their skills and competence at the highest level.

You should make a separate section on your resume for awards after you've added all the required sections. List them in order of importance, starting with the most significant one.

Certifications

Just like your education section, certifications add credibility to your skills and knowledge. On top of that, they show that you would go above and beyond what’s necessary to learn and improve yourself.

If you have a few certifications that are tightly connected to your formal education, you can include them in that section. Otherwise, create a separate section for this purpose and list the relevant ones obtained through the likes of Udemy, LinkedIn, Coursera, and other certifying bodies.

Projects

Your projects show your passion for design, and presenting them to recruiters is another way to showcase your work. If you designed a personal blog, ran a design-focused Instagram page, did a big project in college, had a side hustle, or did anything similar, be sure to mention it in your resume.

Languages

It’s always beneficial to emphasize knowledge of foreign languages. In fact, if your future job requires international communication and cooperation, this section becomes pretty much mandatory.

You should list languages based on your skill level, starting with the highest one. The proficiency levels are as follows:

Hobbies & Interests

This section is great at showing that you’re more than just another candidate. Include something about which you’re truly passionate to show that there’s a captivating person behind the application document.

Should You Submit a Cover Letter With Your Writer Resume?

A good cover letter is what separates amateur job hunters from savvy pros. It’s a custom-built, job-specific document that you can submit with your graphic designer resume. Its goal is to show off your skills and abilities in more detail and get the attention of hiring managers.

There are a few simple steps when it comes to writing it:

Lastly, what better way to inspire you to create a perfect application document than to examine some of the job-winning graphic designer resume examples?

Job Winning Graphic Designer Resume Example

Use this example

Closing Thoughts

That’s all there is to know about crafting the perfect graphic designer resume! You went through everything—from the essential guidelines to expert tips and professional examples.

Now is the time to put your skills to use and design one of the most important documents in your professional career. Feel free to use our extensive collection of job-winning resume examples for inspiration and give our resume builder a shot. Best of luck getting your dream job!