Graphic Designer CV Examples

Our graphic designer CV examples demonstrate what makes an effective CV for the role: showcasing your creativity, technical expertise, and business impact. It's important not only to list your duties from your past jobs, but to explain what you achieved and which skills, tools, or workflows you worked with to achieve that purpose, e.g., Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, wireframing, prototyping, and so on.

In addition to learning what to write in your graphic design CV, you can read more below about how your document should look. Showing your creativity matters, but you should also keep in mind that many companies today use applicant tracking systems (ATS) in their hiring processes. That is why you need to be careful when it comes to your graphic designer's CV design and formatting.

As you can see in our graphic designer CV samples, the professional summary is the introductory section of your CV that briefly summarises your strongest skills and most impressive achievements.

If you're a junior graphic designer with less hands-on experience, you can focus on the competencies that set you apart from other candidates. On the other hand, seasoned graphic design professionals should focus on their specialisation (e.g., branding, packaging, digital, or print) and highlight the business results of their work, such as an increase in brand recognition expressed as a percentage.

Every strong graphic design CV example includes a diverse skill set. You should list both your creative and technical skills (including Figma, typography, colour theory, layout design, and so on), as well as your specialisations, such as packaging design, motion graphics, or print production.

It's important to note that, besides listing the skills in a dedicated skills section, every graphic designer's CV is more effective when you weave them into your job descriptions. In your bullet points, you should describe how you used a certain skill to achieve a result.

Keywords are important for ATS platforms that many companies use in their hiring processes to help identify the most appropriate candidate for the job. Keywords often match the skills required for the role, so make sure to analyse the job description in detail.

If you see keywords in the job posting, such as "brand guidelines," "visual identity," "print production," "digital design," "responsive web design," or "creative direction," make sure to include as many as possible in your graphic designer CV.

We've already mentioned the importance of keywords in a graphic designer's CV and why you should incorporate the terms ATS is looking for (like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Figma, or Sketch). Besides that, those systems also sort and structure the information found.

Because of that, it's recommended that you use standard CV section headings, such as Professional Summary, Work Experience, and so on, to make it easier for them to organise all the data. Also, we suggest avoiding overly complex designs and graphic elements to make it more readable for machines.

Although it's acceptable for graphic designer CV examples to be more creative, you want to be careful not to use colours and design elements excessively. One reason is to avoid causing parsing problems for ATS, as we explained in the previous chapter of this guide. On the other hand, you don't want to distract readers' attention from the results of your creative work.

Of course, if it's clear from the job posting that a more unconventional application will be valued, you'll have more liberty. Also, the contact info section of a graphic designer's CV should include a link to their portfolio or to any online presentation of their work.

Common mistakes in graphic designer CVs:

1. Submitting a CV without your portfolio link, since your visual work is crucial for your application.
2. Listing only names of the tools you're skilled with, without describing how you used them in your design work.
3. Not linking your design work to business outcomes such as increased engagement, brand recognition, or conversion rates.
4. Choosing a CV template that is too bland and simple, without showing any design sensibility in your CV layout.
5. Not mentioning your collaboration skills and your ability to incorporate feedback from stakeholders and art directors.