Recently I wrote an article on resume/CV templates available for free, or to purchase, from all across the web. They ranged from print media, to fully fledged, CMS run pages. That’s all fine and well, and they are all fantastic templates, but what if you want to express yourself through your CV? Plenty people do, and the result is some stunning CV’s that potential employers are reading. Below I’ve round-up 40 incredible resume designs that some great designers have created for themselves from DeviantArt, in the hope that they will inspire you to create your own stunning piece of work to represent yourself.

1. Resume by xiruxiru

The designer here has used fruit, and the caption “Full of Vitamin Creativity” to appeal to

2. Rei’s Resume by Rei-pash

A lovely background texture with a spotlight effect creates a beautiful backdrop for this resume.

3. Resume by zxcxvxc

The paint splash here shows the artists creative side.

4. Resume by brazilnut

This resume has been lain out beautifully with lines, and the logo merging well.

5. Typographic Resume by mac1388

I’m not sure whats with the tilting trend, but I love it here, especially with the name centrepiece.

6. My Recent Resume by pixelprop

This resume appeals to an employers humorous side with a horror film poster theme.

7. My Resume by darthkix

A personal favourite, beautiful colours, nothing over the top, and plenty information.

8. Resume by cheektocheek

This resume also takes on the arty poster persona, and it works brilliantly!

10. Resume by KevinPire

With bold, attention grabbing titles, and the use of lime green, this is an eye catcher.

11. Resume by Kyuzengi

This artist uses the contrast between the black and white to separate the headings, and information which works incredible well.

12. Resume by heydani

Subtle but powerful, this resume puts typography to its uses with its awesome header.

13. Resume Upgrade by mac1388

An update to a previous resume, this time with less bold headers, but equally powerful.

14. Resume Updated by twolapdesigns

Clever usage of colour and outlines mixed with a different choice of typeface make this resume stand out, but maybe less readable.

15. icART resume by icasialnrdy

The fact that is an artists resume is instantly apparent with the media images alongside the persons skills and education.

16. Resume by Akashrine

Getting personal with rabbit/squirrel gives an insight into the personality of this resume’s owner.

17. Resume Espanol by rogaziano

The avatar here alone, and the bright colours used show this persons love for colour, and art.

18. Resume by bdechantal

This resume makes use of browns and greys, and along with the logo, and title font, gives a nice old feel.

19. Curriculum Resume by toromuco

Beautiful graphics are used here to get across the information in a pleasant way whilst showing off the authors skills.

20. Resume by puziah

A mix of gradients and splashes here work well alongside a personal picture to sell this person’s resume.

21. Personal Resume 2010 by heeeeman

An absolutely stunning infographic style resume which shows Steve Duncan’s life in a sort of time-line.

22. Resume W.I.P. by AchisutoShinzo

A interesting usage of a train/underground map to show this persons life paths.

23. Resume by ILICarrieDoll

Getting fairly personal with this resume which shows what the user has around them.

24. Server Resume by rkaponm

Making use of a waiters notepad to get a job as a waiter? Very clever!

25. My Resume by littlearashi

This resume gives the feel of old school ink printing for this Graphic Designer.

26. Resume by LordGabsta

This black and white CV shows creative things that interest the applicant.

27. Resume by spen

Another life info-graphic here, though I did find it slightly harder to follow.

27. The Birth of My Resume by NoviceXyooj

The oriental nature of this resume is perfect, especially in making it look more arty.

28. Resume by tenbiscuits

The curly brackets, texture, and drop shadow used in this resume allow it to have some depth, making it almost look like a scrap book style resume.

29. Creative Resume First Edition by NikonD50

The bright colour, shades of purple, and beautiful typography here work. They work incredibly well!

30. My Old Designer’s Resume by ExtremeJuvenile

Very bright and cartoony. It’s certainly an attention grabber.

31. Curriculum Vitae by arbrenoir

This is as much a piece of artwork as it is a resume. Absolutely stunning.

32. My new Resume by living2prove

A less illustrative, but equally informative info-graphic here.

33. CV by Verine

Again, the use of bright colours on the time-line gives an artistic feel.

34. Updated CV by xchingx

Simple and to the point, this resume puts the information down, and subtly registers the persons interest in art.

35. CV by Giemax

I’m unsure how practical this is, but you can’t deny its intricate beauty.

36. CV by Johnnywall

Rotation here is used to split up the text, and create easily definable sections without having to create dividers.

37. My Creative Resume by liagiannjezreel

Very personal, this takes the approach of being cartoony and artistic, but it doesn’t offer much of a professional feel.

38. My curriculum vitae by flaterie

A purely lack and white CV that gets across all the info in a clean and precise way.

39. CV Tudor Deleanu by iTudor

A very creative approach to a resume. Instead of a piece of paper, what about slide out cards?

40. Adam Balazy CV by Balazy

The grungy texture, and flowing icons really top this resume off.

Further Discussion

Well there you have it; 40 truly inspiring examples of how you can get across more than just your life achievements in your CV / Resume, but show off your creative, and illustrative side as well. If you know of further fantastic examples of inspiring Resume designs, then as always, get them down in the comments for us all to see!

You know how important getting new clients is for your business. Getting a constant new stream of clients is often the #1 challenge for most freelancers. Unfortunately, most of the advice provided online on this topic is often filled with ambiguity and doesn’t give you clear tips and instructions you  can use to start getting web design clients NOW.

I’ll assume 2 things here:

1. You’re a web designer and provide web-design related services
2. You’re competent in what you do. If you can’t provide at least a decent service for your clients then this article is not for you

No worries if you never had a client before. There’s a section of this article for you as well.

How to Use Your Existing Clients to Get New Ones

Without doubt, word of mouth is one of the most powerful types of marketing in existence. Many studies have shown that people trust friends recommendations over ads and even genuine review sites.

There’s a good probability that many of your clients know someone who might need or currently needs a web design service (I’ll assume most of your clients are some type of business owners so they know other business owners as well). How can you make sure your existing clients recommend you to their friends? There are certain things you can do:

- Service Excellence

You do this by providing an excellent service your customers love. You fulfill their expectations or go way beyond them. This is an ongoing process and not a destination. You’re constantly adjusting/coming up with and testing new ideas and seeing how those ideas appeal to your clients etc.

How can you over deliver on your service? One way is to stand out. I assume you already know most of the basics on web design. What about usability? What about the science and the art of colors and copy writing? Or behavioral psychology? There are a lot of things you can learn from many other disciplines that can help you excel in this web design business.

- Customer support excellence

This is an entire process of communicating with the client till completion. Focusing on over delivering here doesn’t help as much as focusing on making the whole interaction as effortless as possible for the client.

For example:

• Reduce the waiting time for answering his question (if it’s a common question, make a FAQ and send that FAQ once he contacts you with that question)
• Make it easy for him to give you feedback. Give him easy-to-follow instructions so he knows how to give you suggestions on the finished design.
• Reduce the number of times your client needs to repeat the question. If you have to redirect him to another department, you should redirect the question and not tell him to go to that department and ask the question again.

‘Customer effort’ has been found to be a pretty strong predictor of customer loyalty .

How to Get New Clients (if you’re starting from scratch)

One word comes to mind here: EXPERIMENT. First, start by going to as many websites as possible. Here are some ideas:

- Freelancing sites

oDesk, Guru, Freelancer or eLance, these are the 4 biggest freelance sites on the world wide web. Try them all. Create a simple profile and start bidding for some jobs. Bid for cheap and expensive projects…don’t just think ‘they’ll never hire me for this expensive project’ because that isn’t true. You simply don’t know…test and experiment (and in this case, testing = just bidding for the project and seeing the results). You’ll learn a lot at least.

There are also some not so obvious sites you can use to get clients…

- Internet business sites/forums

Most of your clients are probably small/medium businesses who want to establish a presence online. Why not go to them directly where they hang out?

Check out the WickedFire Design section, for example. There are many people who pitch their design services there for a price higher than many ordinary freelance sites. And guess what…people are willing to pay that price (if they get a decent service).

WickedFire is just one example of many. Try writing related:http://www.wickedfire.com on Google to find some similar sites. Many of them have a ’services’ section where you can offer your web design services.

- Classified ads, job boards

You could try these as well. The important thing here is to experiment with different websites and see what’s working for you. For example, you might find that e-business forums are ideal for you because you realized you’re looking for a steady job and projects from the same client. Or maybe freelance sites are ideal because you want to get very diverse tasks.

- Long-term Approaches to Getting New Clients

Over time, you’ll want to increase the probability of getting new clients that will come to you. This is a long-term process and it takes time…but trust me, it pays off.

- Have a website

The most important element to having a good web design website are:

• Good web design (duh!)
• Good PORTFOLIO – most of your clients will first take a look at this so be sure to keep it updated regularly and feature the best projects at the top.

- Get involved in the web design community

You have various web design forums (again, experiment to see which ones are best for you). By participating on web design forums you’ll meet new people who do the same you do, learn more about the trends in web design and, guess what, many business owners go to web design forums to find people to do various web design jobs (so you should find projects to work on there as well)

- Learn how people make decisions / behavioral psychology

Why learn this? Because, ultimately, you’re dealing with people and you need to know more about them overall, on how they make decisions. You can use this knowledge to influence them (ethically!) so you get more clients and gain other advantages as well.

Some of the best books for starters are:

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini

After you read influence, take a look at 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by the same author

Prediction Irrational by Dan Ariely, explores some mind-blowing principles on why people behave irrationally sometimes when they buy stuff.

- Focus on the 3 most important aspects in your business

I wanted to finish this article with this concept, and although I know it doesn’t directly helps to get new clients, I feel I need to share it because it’s the most important lesson I’ve learned while having my own online business. In order to get the most out of your business, focusing on these 3 things simultaneously helps a lot (most businesses focus on 1 or 2 but not on all 3):

a) Your PRODUCT (or in this case your service) – making it better, etc.

b) Your PROMOTION - experimenting with ways of getting new clients, getting more referrals from existing clients

c) Your MONETIZATION - experimenting with different ways to make money like selling web design templates, logo creation services and so on.
There’s no magic pill to having a successful web design business and getting new clients. It mostly involves working consistently (notice I haven’t said ‘hard work’, working regularly for 10 days is better than working ‘hard’ for 1 day and then doing nothing for 9 days) and working smart.

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