It's Up To You - Business cards and CV

To design my business cards I wanted to refer back to my front cover of my design process poster/booklet, and use the same angular design, but perhaps altering the colour.

I kept the logo consistent with the rest of my promo pack, and kept it simple in order to lend itself to the design. After experimenting with a variety of colour schemes, I decided to keep it low key, in white and charcoal grey.

I felt that the colour scheme should definitely be kept consistent on the business card so when I incorporated the triangular design, I altered the colours, making them each a subtly varied shades of grey. By using a dark grey as the basis for the card it appears a lot less harsh than if I were to make it black and white, and neutralises the design effectively.

I added just my contact details on the card to keep it simple, and gave those a white backdrop in order to make sure the type was legible, as I planned on that too being a shade of grey used in the design.

I used Geo Sans Light, which is totally stripped down but when centred and kept at a subtle colour it still demands most of the attention from the viewer.

I added a white border to outline the box as the grey edge was seemingly getting a bit lost in the design of the backgrop. This really directs the viewer to where their focus should be, which is on the details in the middle.

I wanted a similar theme to transfer to my CV, but with the incorporation of some of the symbols I had used before in my Design Process poster.

I planned to incorporate infographic representations of my skills, knowledge and interests. I initially brainstormed a variety of infographic responses before selecting a few that would accomodate the level I am trying to communicate for each category.

I decided to use a variety of the info graphic responses I had in mind to represent different aspects of my CV and did some experiments with that would work best for which area and why.

I really wanted to use a timeline to represent my education and experience as a sort of alternative perception of it, and by using this heart rate style timeline I was able to make each high point representative of a milestone education or experience wise, with the height of each peak depending and translating to the importance or impact the experience had on me career wise.

I decided to incorporate the same basic angular border for just the top of my CV as the one used for the business cards. But I altered the colour to varied shades of green to respond better to the colour scheme I was using for the inforgraphics. This boarder at the top of the page would be partnered with my logo, also changed to green and I made the whole page quite central.

After  designing this I realised that when printed, the border might seem more sparse and would be cut off at the top so I moved it down and minimised and centralised the other content. I continued to use GeoSans Light as I found it so light that having it scattered around the page created a balance rather than overwhelming it with both the infographic and the text.

I printed my CV onto thick white paper but found that it formalised some elements of it and changed the tone entirely. I made some quick decisions about stock, and landed on using brown sugar paper, half because I think it partnered well with the informal tone, and also because it seemed to create a medium between the cardboard tube and the other white paper, linking the two to each other more.