Writing a Designer Resume That Works Alongside Your Portfolio

A designer's resume must look good and still be easy to read. What to include, how to link your portfolio, and how to write case studies that show real work.

Many designers spend days making a resume as beautiful as a poster, complete with circular charts showing Photoshop at 90%, and then hear nothing. Others use a plain document template that hides who they are. The truth is that a designer's resume has a different job from a portfolio, and once you split those jobs clearly, the two work together to get you into the interview room.

How are a resume and a portfolio different?

• Your resume answers who you are, what you have worked on, which tools you use and what results you created. People read it quickly.
• Your portfolio proves how you think and work. People only open it once the resume has made them curious.

So your resume does not need to be a portfolio. It just needs to look like a designer made it: clean layout, clear hierarchy, and a path to your portfolio link.

How designed should the resume be?

Many companies take applications through an ATS that reads text from your file. With multiple columns, icons instead of headings, or text inside images, information can go missing. The safe approach:

• One column, or a simple two-column layout, with text headings.
• One or two typefaces, one accent colour, and room to breathe.
• Drop skill-level charts. A figure like 90% means nothing to a hiring manager.
• Keep two versions: a plain one for applying through systems and a fully designed one to send directly to people.

Read more in Designed resumes vs ATS.

What to include in a designer resume

Headline and summary

Name your specialism, such as UX/UI Designer for mobile apps or Graphic Designer focused on branding, followed by a two-line summary of the work you do best and who you do it for.

Experience that shows outcomes

Write what your design changed, not just what you did. For example:

• Before: Designed app screens for customers.
• After: Redesigned the in-app sign-up flow, ran usability tests with six users, and cut the flow from five screens to three.

Use only numbers you actually know and are allowed to share.

Tools and skills

Group them, for example Design: Figma, Illustrator | Prototyping: Figma, ProtoPie | Research: interviews, usability testing. Use tool names that match the job post.

Portfolio link

Place it near the top beside your name. Use a short link that opens immediately without requesting access. Test it on a phone and in a private browser window before sending.

A personal website, Behance, Dribbble or a PDF can all work. What matters is that it loads fast, the order of projects is clear, and the first page tells people immediately what kind of work you do best. If you send a PDF, compress it so it is easy to attach to an email.

A portfolio hiring managers read to the end

Choose three to five projects that fit the role rather than everything you have ever made. Write each as a short case study:

1. The brief: what was the business or user problem?
2. Your role: which part you did and who you worked with.
3. Process: research, sketches, options you dropped and why.
4. Final work: screenshots or the real piece.
5. Outcome and learning: what changed, and what you would do differently.

What about work under NDA?

Blur brand names and client data, show the process instead of the final screens, or create a fresh redesign that demonstrates your thinking. If unsure, always ask the company for permission before publishing.

Your resume makes them want to click. Your portfolio makes them want to talk to you.

What to avoid

• A resume file so large it cannot be attached to an email.
• A portfolio of pretty images that never says what problem you solved.
• Team work shown without saying which part was yours.
• Broken or expired links.

How to start

1. Choose one target role and pick the three to five projects that fit it best.
2. Write a case study for each using the structure above.
3. Make a plain resume that systems can read, with your portfolio link at the top.
4. Ask a friend outside design to read it for one minute and say what you are good at.
5. Practise presenting your main case study in three minutes for interviews.

Check your resume before sending in Resume Lab, and prepare to present your work with How to prepare your portfolio for an interview.