Redesign Project 4 - Resume

For my fourth redesign project, I decided to go ahead and finally tackle redesigning my resume. This task was much more difficult than I had originally anticipated. I found it extremely difficult to spice up my resume for a career in technical communication because the field is technical and I was hesitant to put much ‘spice’ into the redesign. We saw many exiting examples of off the wall resumes in class: some successful, some not so successful, but in the end, I decided to take a much more traditional approach to the resume to demonstrate my ability to produce professional, technical documents to future employers.

I started making changes to my original resume with moving the placement of my name and my contact information. I created two columns for my information, and centered my name above the first column and centered my contact information above the second. I originally had my contact information just below my name left-aligned, but realized that it looked too uneven and there was too much white space at the top right of the page. I think spreading out this information creates more of a sense of balance and cuts down on the unnecessary white space.

Since I am majoring in technical communication, I wanted to create a technical, professional looking document to showcase my ability to create such a document. I used neutral colors, mainly greens, but avoided using plain black and white text to add a sense of variety and excitement to an otherwise standard, bland document. I bolded the information that I felt was more important and/or impressive about myself and my academic achievements so far. I used standard Times New Roman font to make the text easy to read, though I think the color of the text adds a sufficient exotic touch.

My minor is in Natural Resource Management, so when deciding on what neutral colors to use in my resume I decided on natural looking greens and grays. Since I plan on someday working for an organization such as Texas Parks and Wildlife or other natural resource management agencies, I thought using earthy green tones would add a hint of nature, yet because the colors I used are still quite neutral, I am demonstrating that I understand the concepts of practicality in document making. I did use white font in the dark green highlighted portion of the first column so that the text would be clearly visible.

I used two brownish green lines at the top of the page to separate my name and my contact information from the rest of the information in the resume because that indicates that they are distinctly different sections. I also used a thin white line between the two columns of information because it subtly separates the categories of information from the items in each category. I did not use bullets to separate the different items in each category because I felt that it would look unprofessional  and would take up too much space on the page.

Redesign Project 3 - Business Card



Here's a reminder of the old card



My redesign done as the project

My ex-stepdad’s business card looked very unprofessional, so I decided that it would be a good idea to help him out by designing a new one for him. The first thing I noticed about the original design of the business card is that the image in the background has no correlation with the subject matter. My ex-stepdad has an eBay business that he runs out of his house. (And when I say he has a business, I mean he goes to garage sales on the weekends and buys cheap things cheaply and then tries to resell those items on eBay for an inflated price. He collects disability checks because he can’t work, and he considers this pastime to be his job/career.)

Anyway, as I began the assignment to redesign this business card, I began looking at VistaPrint.com. As I looked at all the potential business card styles, I noticed that my ex-stepdad had actually used VistaPrint to design his original card. I think when he was designing his business card he just picked the first card style that was listed, and gave no real thought to design elements or the images and icons used. For one thing, the background image on his original card looks like the African Savannah, which has nothing to do with his business or the items he sells on eBay. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the African Savannah background image would be appropriate if my ex-stepdad was a travel agent, but in his case, the image is in conflict with the context and the message he is trying to send ‘potential customers.’

I chose the card design with an image of an old lamp, picture, and chair because those are all items that could easily be picked up at a garage sale and sold on eBay. The image of antique items is much more appropriate for the kinds of things that my ex-stepdad actually sells than a green landscape. I removed the slogan of the original card, which was ‘Have a great day,’ because it seemed an inappropriate and unnecessary item to include on any business card. I added the slogan, ‘The best little place to find garage sale treasures,’ because it tells the customer what type of merchandise they will find when they visit his eBay store, as well as what kind of place they are buying from.

I centered the name of his eBay store and the slogan because I feel that is the most important information the potential customer needs to decide whether or not they are interested in buying from the cardholder. I bolded the cardholder’s name (Todd Bridwell), because the name of his eBay business is bolded, and it shows correlation between the name of the business and the business owner. I also bolded ‘owner’ because the cardholder is also the owner of the business.  I put a slightly greater space between the physical address and the phone numbers because they are completely different methods of contacting the cardholder. I blocked the phone numbers together and put a slightly greater space between them and the email address, again, because they are completely different methods of contacting him and the space makes the information easier to differentiate.