I have spent the last day or two working on Illustrator trying to take my resume and make it into an infographic. I am not sure how much good it will do but I thought it would be a good way to learn how hard it is to actually create something along those lines. So this is the result of my efforts so far. I sometimes feel as though I can’t seem to find the way forward through the maze. Like luck has all but bypassed me although but then I think of what I have learned and I how much I continue to learn about who I am and then I feel as if it has been worth the struggle even in the very dark days and there have been many of those.
The timeline took a while as I was trying to figure out the best way to do it because there was so much to put in. I used icons and colour to distinguish between positions. I made jobs that I there were done justify left with the icon on the left hand side and those that I was still doing justified right along with the icons. In case that was not clear enough I put big arrows at the end of the ones I was still present at. Before I thought the starting and ending points would be curved and if I was still working it would not be curved but that didn’t work out so well so arrows it was. I think it turned out alright but it may change.
I was inspired by a resume infographic I saw and used that is the spark. I didn’t know what kind of facts or figures I should put into this thing. So what I did was take the parts of my regular old resume and make them into statements that I used as text blocks. I needed to have at least one chart so I used the posts I have made as the basis of that since I have done a bit of freelance writing for more than one blog. I battled against Illustrator as there were times I wanted it to play more like Photoshop. I am not a pro at it but I can use it fairly well. I love a good vector graphic but I wish there were times when I could make it behave like an image in being able to modify vectors like images.
I was looking at the collection of vector graphics I have amassed and really liked the film one because it is totally old school and who even knows what film is these days. So I used that as the basis for the title bar. Then I started to use it for the timeline and the blocks but it started getting too messy. That is what I was told on twitter by @pshag and I immediately knew he was right. I had crisscrossing lines, then I had circles that made the timeline look like film but it was a bit much so I cut that off. The timeline is already very busy so I didn’t want to make it worse.
Currently it is still a work in progress, I just corrected a few errors and formatting issues and continue the art of tweaking. Although sometimes it feels that it will never be finished I am glad I got to this point already. YAY! The bottom section is probably the part I will play around with the most, the timeline will stay the rest can be in flux depending on the job to be applied for. I am not sure what is the best format to use but I may do it as a pdf so that links are easily clickable but I am not sure about that yet. Hopefully I won’t have to be unemployed for much longer. It anyone is looking for a social media dude, writer and or ad guy someone let me know (a total shot in the dark but what can you do LOL!