Designer CV: when the portfolio does the talking

Designers make a specific mistake: they treat the CV as a portfolio piece. The result is a document that demonstrates craft and communicates nothing, often while failing to parse at all.

Your portfolio proves you can design. Your CV has one job — to get someone to open the portfolio.

The link is the most important element on the page

Put it in the header, alongside your email. Make sure it works, loads on a phone, and does not require a password you forgot to send.

If your best work is under NDA, say so and describe the problem without the visuals. "Redesigned the onboarding flow for a fintech app, cannot show under NDA — happy to walk through it" is better than silence.

Restraint reads as confidence

A CV with three typefaces and a colour gradient signals someone who cannot edit. The strongest designer CVs are quiet: one accent colour, clear hierarchy, generous space.

There is a practical reason too. Text set inside a graphic, or exported as an image, cannot be read by an applicant tracking system. Larger studios and in-house teams increasingly use them.

Outcomes, not adjectives

The hardest discipline in a design CV is writing about results rather than aesthetics.

• Weak: "Created beautiful, user-centric interfaces."
• Strong: "Redesigned the checkout flow; completion rate rose from 61% to 74% over the following quarter."

Where you do not have the numbers, describe the problem and the decision: "Cut the signup form from eleven fields to four after usability testing showed drop-off concentrated at the address step."

Tools, split by purpose

Design: Figma, Adobe XD, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects. Research: interviews, usability testing, card sorting. Handoff: design systems, component libraries, working with engineers.

That last group is what separates a mid-level designer from a junior, and it is routinely left off.

Process is worth a section

Clients and hiring managers want to know how you work, not only what you produced. Two lines on your process — research, wireframe, prototype, test, iterate — with an example of a decision that changed because of testing.

Layout

The Atelier template is a two-column layout with a dark sidebar and a bright accent — appropriate for a designer sending a CV directly to a person or a studio. For applications through a larger company's portal, keep a single-column version in the Classic template, because two columns interleave when flattened to text.

Test both with the ATS checker.