Paper – …resume?

I’ve been doing a ton of reading on papercraft. I’ve always loved origami – I grew up folding paper dinosaurs, and more recently learned how to fold a Firefly. But it wasn’t until the epiphany of the folding terrain that I realized how much more there is to this hobby than I had expected. There are a lot of people making paper terrain, paper models, entirely paper games. I threw my name into the hat because I could, because I wanted to make terrain for myself, and because I wanted to see if there was a long tail I could make a couple bucks from.

One book I read was specifically about folding for visual design. Brochures, pamphlets, marketing material (I think that’s just 3 ways of saying the same thing…). I’ve recently been told I’ll be laid off in December, and my brain leapt to a foldable resume!

Here’s a draft:

There are a number of design goals to be met:

• Keep the most important information most visible — name, contact, work experience, education
• Have space to put some less important information, but make it visually less important — other contact info, interests
• Have fun!
• Allow colour.
• Ensure that it looked good while entirely unfolded.
• Ensure that it looked good while folded.
• It had to be understandable still!
• There is a flow to how people read things, and that needed to be respected (in Western culture, it’s usually left->right, top->bottom)

The draft picture is 1 of 4 that I designed while trying to find the right layout. After I was happy with the layout, I threw on some scribbles trying to see if I had enough space to fit all the information I wanted to include.

Here’s what I came up with, this is my first coloured draft:

There is another version after that I didn’t photograph, but it’s pretty close. You can see how I met my design goals:

• My name is front and very prominent, with contact information just below it. The contact information stands out in person because of the little icons that help orient what that section is about.
• Work experience and education are next, as they are some of the most important pieces of information on a resume. I’ve left out a bunch of jobs, leaving only 2, because these are the 2 that will get me the work I want. I’ve got space to dedicate a good paragraph to what I did at each job.
• I’ve included some call-out words that are also big and slightly colourful (but not to much) to give a reader some idea of a few values that I bring to my work.
• In the back panel, there is a section for my interests (which is more readable in the final — it’s stuck in the corner here due to a mistake in my layout that didn’t get caught until this nearly final stage! This is what design is about!) and a section for a bunch of technologies I’ve worked with.
• I really love the fake sticky note. There are 4 of them on the paper, and they are instructions for a reader on how to make the resume fold! I wanted someone to be intrigued by what they had, maybe print it and cut it out and fold it themselves. I plan on bringing them folded to interviews, but if an interviewer took the time to put it together, that’s someone I’m more interested in talking with!
• Even better, most of the sticky note instructions hide when it’s folded! They are on the center fold, which is perpendicular to the camera in the photo!
• I think it looks great folded.
• It looks a little funny unfolded, but not so funny that it isn’t usable. The reading-layout is weird, because my eyes are drawn to the big teal sections which are in the middle of the page, then to the big yellow sticky on the right, and then to my name. This isn’t a bad reading order (it would be bad if you were drawn to Interests or Keywords first!), but it is odd to notice.

I haven’t done anything with it yet, but here’s hoping it’s well received when I do put it out into the world!