So creating a cover letter is not always easy. While a CV will get you to the door the cover letter is what will open it for the next step which is the interview. It is all about what you are saying in those few paragraphs that will be the difference between the trash can and a phone call or email. Since I was creating a new CV I thought about making the CV and cover match. I love National Geographic daily wallpapers and I used those for the images in the boxes along with my own images. I download them ever few days cause the pictures are amazing.
*I just wrote this up quickly and so it will not be perfect, it isn’t an article or anything just my own thoughts on my CV if only so I can remember what I did if I ever come back to it. 🙂
Here is a PDF version of my CV, Metro Style 🙂
I took a similar track with the cover letter as I did with the CV, taking inspiration from the Windows 8 Metro interface for tablets and making that the base. I found the background image online from mahirh on deviantart. This person created a custom Metro interface and I used the background for my CV. Thanks mahirh, your work is amazing. It was truly inspiring.
So I just thought that boxes for both my CV and cover made a lot of sense. I used Microsoft’s Segoe UI san sarif font and I got the icons for some vector files I had. The one break I had was with the green tile in my CV. I cut a part out because of the space I could use for my twitter info. There are 8 pictures in the CV and every box that is not a continuation for the last column has an icon within.
I know that having images can make reading type hard so I used a drop shadow to make sure that the fonts were not merged with the pictures. I had trouble finding the right images to make it work but I didn’t want it all to be boxes with colour. That would not lent itself to the visual style that I was using as my inspiration.
For the cover letter I did the same thing but used a main box for the letter and the contact information and signature broken down below it with the date above like your standard cover letter. I may not always get a chance to use this cover format and I have no doubt it will change again but I wanted to use it at least once or twice when they ask for a cover on those online job systems instead of just making it be text.
The format for my cover letter
Obviously I kept my name and image the same. I know the image is odd since I am holding a spatula to my head but I use it for most of my profile pictures so it made sense (to me). I use the name in place of the Start text that would be here if this was actually Windows 8 for obvious reason. I hope that there is a consistency to both the CV and cover letters that makes sense but I don’t know. This was made to be viewed on the screen not on paper.
If I were to make a printed version I would have probably gone with white as a background and kept the boxes as outlines with shadow. I would still have the images but would not use them behind the text unless I had one that had a strong contrast with the type. The other images I would keep because they were awesome and the type would be coloured a dark grey instead of black because I have always thought it looked better on paper but that is just my opinion.
I tend to use a lot of blue in every CV I have created I think maybe next time I ll try to go outside my usual colour spectrum but for this one I will keep it, at least until I find something else that makes sense.
I am not sure if that following that logic was a good choice but it made sense given what I used as my base. When I did my CV as an infographic the operandi modi focused on the timeline whereas this the emphasis is on the words framed around a visual oriented display. I did my last CV as if it was on an iPad so taking the Windows 8 Metro interface just felt like a natural fit for me.