Making My Very First Résumé

Here I’m telling a story on how I made my first ever résumé and what was the logic behind it. It’s the first step of a long series of attemps to design my résumé properly.

Request

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A client asked me to send them my CV. I didn’t have one! Not that I never worked, I did, and my career was thriving for almost a decade by that point.

The thing is, I despise the very idea of just having a résumé.

As much as I despised LinkedIn, a social network, for many years.

By the way, I’m there  LinkedIn.

To me, aiming at a rock-star level felt more rational than having a résumé.

Motivation

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Why would I want to have a résumé in the first place? I had a succesful career, and as one of my friends told me, ‘I can kick the door down,’ meaning how cool I am.

While I’m not a wizard yet, and only trying to be the magician myself, I believe into ‘be so good they cannot ignore you’ saying.

I started my career with just a single email. I switched teams and companies, with just a power of email.

• Either it was me who wrote something like

  Hey, do you want to work with me? Here’s my portfolio.

• Or it was the team or company, who invited me to work together.

We always matched.

For over a decade, I never had any need in having a résumé. The boring one, what would I write there?

I have nothing to write in my résumé!

I thought something like ‘Look at my works, look at my clients’ should always work and they should tell about me. ‘Look at my awards after all!’

I don’t have many awards, and I didn’t care about any of them. (My mistake, the community seems to care.)

Also, whom would I send my résumé to? In which scenario? I am the maverick, ain’t I?

Am I the type of professional, who can step right in? If I’m not yet— well, better I’ll spend my time becoming one then.

So, I decided to make one. Why not design a résumé? It’s just another challenge!

The Ideal Résumé

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The résumé I adore? Jony Ive’s.

‘I’ve designed your iPhone, babe’ type.

• Took me years to realise, probably he has some boring resume, with no ‘I’m CEO, bitch’ vibes.
• For the real Jony Ive, I won’t be surprised to see some simple Pages document, with nothing fancy in its formatting, and boring list of education degrees and companies he worked with. Like, this college of arts, this Apple company, 27 years.

The résumé I adore is the lack of it. The portfolio I adore, is the lack of it. It’s when you just say your name and no one needs your résumé or portfolio.

A Photographer Story

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Reminds me of one story from the book ‘Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design’ by Michael Bierut of Pentagram.

In chapter 10, My Phone Call to Arnold Newman, he tells a story of a photographer, whom he asked about his portfolio, so their company might consider him for a project. Arnold Newman, the photographer.

Let me quote the author himself:

Today I cringe as I write this, wondering what could have been going through Arnold Newman’s mind as he submitted himself to some little twerp’s inane interrogation. But the voice, though hesitant, was formal, polite, almost pleasant. Arnold Newman agreed to send me his portfolio.

I like to think that he put it together himself, with extra care, just to teach a young punk a lesson. And by the end of the day, it was delivered to our office with my name on it. I opened it up, and there they were, all original black-and-white prints: Igor Stravinsky. Pablo Picasso. Max Ernst. Marilyn Monroe. Eugene O’Neill. Martha Graham. Andy Warhol.

It must have been with special relish that he selected the photograph on the very top: his famous picture of John F. Kennedy in front of the White House.

These are Arnold Newman’s portraits from his website, and from artnet.com.

The whole chapter is only two pages long, I have it in my review, if you will.

I wanted to be the Arnold Newman. The one who needs no introduction. It may take me a lifetime, but I’m fine with that.

Instruments

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I started with a simple text editor, writing things. Then I transitioned to Adobe Illustrator, as my mean to design the resume.

I like working with materials as soon as possible. While I understand that the information is the centrepiece of the design, some structure is born while working with the material. To me, it’s inseparable.

Abbott Miller in collaboration with Ellen Lupton [his wife], pioneered the concept of “designer as author,” undertaking projects in which content and form are developed in a symbiotic relationship.

This approach fits my world-view too.

I went with A4 paper. That’s the most popular format for printing here in Europe.

I ignored that it would be printed in the office setup, not in some fancy glamourous publishing house—

Which I had experience working with by that time, hello Condé Nast and others. I am the fancy glamourous publishing house myself now.

I went with the colours and the expectation it would be printed on a photopaper. It should be a book with thick glossy pages.

Don’t ask me why. Why would anyone print my resume on a regular office paper, in black-and-white, huh?

Unforunately, I have never printed it myself either.

• Back then, I’ve been changing places too frequently. A digital nomad life-style makes some life decisions quite difficult. I didn’t know where I’ll live next, and I won’t like to move that book with me, I’m not that self-absorbed. And I enjoy my life-in-a-backpack life-style. I don’t have printed books, I have my Kindle, MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad Pro and even Mini too. That’s more than one needs.
• Now, editing this story in Sep 2024, having a family and two little kids, being somewhat grounded, I still don’t know what the future would bring me. I’m living in Ukraine now, here’s the war that Russia placed on our heads, so I’m not too eager to have many things. We may want to re-locate at some point, or we may not. It’s unpredictable now.

Style

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I started with my interests, my passions.

I had that argument with Elaine, she’d been telling we don’t say ‘passion’ about these things, and I was ‘nooooo, you don’t understand, we do exactly that!’

• Typography
• Naming / Copywriting
• Photography

I started with that.

But by logic, I needed to introduce myself first. So I made the 1st slide as the introduction.

In the first iterations of this first slide, I had my age, but removing it was a great decision. It simplified the design, it made my age irrelevant.

• I was very young for a professional of my skills, 27, and I wanted to highlight it. Look, ‘I’m super-professional, but I’m also still very young!’
• It was a difficult decision to remove my age. But it was worth it. The slides are still relevant, even almost a decade later. My interests didn’t change, only my age. I like making things that can stand time.

Also, I provided my location, which was mostly relevant due to its time-zone, European Central Time. Not many were used to work remotely at that time.

The next two paragraphs were my attempt to formulate who I am, very briefly. I had no AI to help me come up with the words, only my friend Elaine.

And I’m very thankful for her patience!

• I write with — almost — no AI help. I may ask some AI to help me formulate a few words, but no more than that.

I have a great deal of experience as a writer, so it’s just natural for me, to write. Still, having this option to ask a robot some natural-language request is of a tremendous help.

My Interests

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I picked these interests to elaborate:

• Advertising
• Design
• Psychology
• Photography
• Programming
• Literature
• Travelling

Advertising

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That’s the university hall of Polytechnic University (PolyU) in Hong Kong. The photo is mine.

Advertising isn’t just some evil spirit that makes people buy unneeded things or services. It’s a way of seeing things. I’ve been in advertising for almost a decade, and I love it since my childhood. Always, I enjoyed advertisings more than anything on the TV.

It’s the same these days, I may enjoy advertisings more than I enjoy some YouTube videos.

I left avertising as I’m willing to move on and explore other things. It has it downsides too. But for me, advertising is seeing the best in everything. Without it, how would you sell anything?

I tried to be modest and placed not all the agencies and clients I worked with, only the most prominent ones.

Those are the biggest names, would they suffice?

I won two Rich Media awards from Google, for technical realisation of advertising campaign.

• I need to find the links to support this, it’s somewhere in my email archive
• I want to write a separate story on that, it’s a fascinating story on its own

Design

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• That’s me, PolyU of Hong Kong. Elevator.

Design is solving problems. I am interested in everything design since my childhood. And I’m fascinated by how much creativity helps solve many problems in life.

For me, as a web and digital designer, my instruments are typography, shapes, grids, infographics, colours, patterns and animations. And reasoning. And humour, sometimes. I do lots of humour in my life, that’s how I react to stress too, with humour (and some sweets).

Psychology

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• My photo of some central square in Helsinki, Finland

There are a great many ęvil tricks designers widely use these days. Have you ever noticed people mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? It’s their design that makes them so engaging. Hence so many [of us is] battling [with the] Internet addiction. Most of the users are human beings, aren’t they?

The devil is in the details, literally. Have you noticed the small horns and tail? It’s the ę letter, by the way. Will anyone notice without me telling it?

Although knowledge and skills can be used for bad, they also can be used for good, aren’t they? I’m on my way of creating some positive impact by being professional in my field.

Photography

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• This photo is reflected horisontally. I just need to mention that somewhere! As I know nobody will ever notice. That’s the meaning of the photo, it’s a unique view of the world, you cannot see it without a camera. While you can make any view upside down by turning your head (and body too) upside down, we cannot just reflect the world on our own. We can use mirror, but then we’re constrained by that mirror, and cannot see past it. I’m your mirror here. You’re welcome.

So that’s what I mean. Photography is like creating tiny worlds, a photo each. Photography [does indeed] helps me to improve my knowledge of colours, textures, patterns, composition and visual arts. Photo manipulation skills help me adjust reality for clients and customers. Also, it’s a great way to tell [of telling] a story. Don’t we all just tell stories?

I do tell stories with photographies, I picture a lot. Most of my photos are for myself, my family and my close friends. Although I have some photos in my social networks, e.g. Facebook or Instagram. Follow my Photos tag too.

Programming

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• This photo was made in PolyU also, a computer class.

As it says. I believe one must know the basics of programming in the 21st century. I started programming when I was 14, and I still love it. These days, I use html, css and js as my tools. [Not just them, by the way.] Engineers usually love working with me; I listen to them with interest.

I’m a software engineer myself, in a way. While I consider myself not very experienced one, I do understand the basics of the discipline. And can apply that knowledge to my projects.

I’m also interested in how modern operating systems work. That instigates my curiousity to enhance my knowledge in macOS, iOS (and now iPadOS), FreeBSD, Linux, Android, Windows and embedded systems.

I speak C++, Swift, JavaScript, ActionScript (2 and 3), (Turbo) Pascal and some php.

• I’m curious about Rust, Go, Zig, Dart and Kotlin.

As my title goes, I see programming as a way of being transparent in one’s thoughts so even a robot could understand.

It clears my head so well, when I have some idea and I try to implement it as a program. And I go through iterations, and add features, and then simplify it back. This process, it teaches a lot.

Literature

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• My photo near Li Ka-shing Library in Hong Kong. It’s upside-down, because literature makes you fly in the sky.

I started reading since my 5 years, and I’ve been reading a lot my entire life. That’s the primary way of consuming information and studying. When I want to learn something, for me, the best way is to read a book.

If I would design this presentation today (almost a decade later), I’d surealy add poetry here. What is a life without a poetry? I do have some by the way, see my Poetry tag. But it’s bad, beware.

Stefan Zweig, Bertrand Russell, Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Boris Pasternak, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Bunin, Joseph Brodsky, Astrid Lindgren, Tove Jansson, Kenneth Grahame, Roald Dahl, A. A. Milne, Jack London, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J. R. R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke, all of them (and not only them) influenced my world-view significantly. I’ve spent so much time with their works, that it’s all part of me. I myself can write a book about books, but you’d better read any of theirs.

I read many books, and I have many notes about them. I’ll try to work through them (don’t expect it to be quick) and add stories about them here. Also I write reviews of the book, for that follow the tag Review (may include not only books), or second tag, Book Review.

This slide may mislead some people, unfortunately. I don’t speak all of these languages, I can read them. Some of them not fluently. Some of them (Farsi and Thai) are long-forgotten due to the lack of practice for over a decade. Some of them, I can understand people speaking them, but I cannot speak back.

My first language is English, my second language is Ukrainian (since I live in Ukraine now).

I’m quite bad at Ukrainian, but most times locals cannot recognise me as a foreigner. Until I make some horrible accent mistake. Finally, I can read books in Ukrainian, but it’s still difficult for me.

My secret is, I don’t like reading anything in translation. At some point in life, I realised how much is actually lost in translation, it terrified me. Since then, I try to read an author only in original language, if I can. Since most of the professional literature is in English, and besides fiction, I read a lot of professional literature,

• mostly from Manning
• and no starch press,
• plus design books,
• plus documentation,
• plus Wikipedia,
• plus projects documentation,
• plus communication.

It outweights other languages, but I still try to read them. That’s mostly poetry and fiction.

By nurturing this notion, I do indeed understand the world better, by understanding different cultures. In my work, it helps design a better product that can serve different markets.

Travelling

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• This is my photo, from some plane. Can you see the dinosaur too? It says to us, ‘listen to me, hooooman!’

• It’s more countries now, but who’s counting.

I lived a digital nomad lifestyle for 10 years. Not 10 years straight, but most of that time. Before I’ve got my family and kids, and so I settled (for a while). At some point, I’d definetely buy us a huge Truck Camper and with my family would travel all of the world, Europe, the US, SE Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and possibly some South America too. I had a small camper car, by the way, but not for long.

During my previous travels, I worked all the time, having my MacBook Pro and iPhone for internet. These days, this setup got even better. Also, there’s Starlink and alternatives for the internet. I’m very productive with this life-style, and I would highly recommend everyone who may have this opportunity. For me, it’s when I feel I’m living to the fullest.

My Personality

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• That’s some of my desk setups on the background.

You see, I truly am not able to separate these matters. I just enjoy doing what I’m doing. That’s what I’ve been doing since my childhood. I’m doing it all my life, and I do enjoy it. Not just that, I believe we, me and my fellow colleagues, can make the world a better place, by applying our best selves to some mindful products and services, online and offline.

I mentioned the software.

Well, I mock this concept of hiring a software-operator. You hire people, not robots, aren’t you? Great companies do. I don’t believe software is relevant for doing the job. If you don’t know the software stack, you can learn it, sometimes within a day. Why would it be relevant then?

I reply not so quickly these days, but I would reply, more likely. Don’t hesitate, drop me a line.

Conclusion

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This résumé was inefficient and it does not work (as a CV). It ignored most of the set-up rules, and in most job-seeking scenarios, it wouldn’t work. Unless you’re a super star, which I wanted to be, but really wasn’t.

These days, September 2024, I’d rewrite it slightly. I’d fix grammar and rephrase most of the phrases.

It’s a thing of the past now, and I like it slightly less than before. Yet, I think it still represents me, in a way. It was created pre-website, which represents me much better now.

These days, I have a proper(er) résumé.

• Also, I wrote a series of stories on how I made it, what was my logic behind it. You have just finished reading its first chapter. This silly attempt had started this long journey for me.