I’m looking for a small personal logo I can attached to my resume. The resume program I have has a set of very attractive temples and some have sample logos which would be nice to replace with something personalized. I have very little graphics arts skills and I’m hoping there might be an easy way to design something like this for myself:
Ummm, what’s the question? Are you looking for help designing it or looking for ideas on who you can contact in your area to help you design it?
Also, is having a personal logo on your resume common? It seems a bit pretentious.
I re-read the question so let me ask you a different question. Do you have something to design it on (Photoshop, GiMP etc) and you’re looking for help on using those programs to design something from scratch? Do you having something in mind already? Or are you just staring at a blank piece of paper with no idea of how to start?
If you can come up with a rough idea you could probably take it to a designer (hell, even the art guy at Kinko’s can do it) and have it turned into something usable for probably $100 or so. Even if you take in some of the samples like you showed us and tell them you want something similar but with your initials it would speed the process along. If you’ve got nothing and you need someone to spend time asking you questions like “So, tell me about you” it’s going to cost you more.
Like I said, if you have a good idea of what you’re looking for I’d skip over the $300/hour advertising guy and see if the local Kinko’s has an art person, maybe check out a local non-chain sign shop or the person advertising their custom wedding invitations on Facebook, even a tattoo artist would probably do it for their normal rates which are typically about $100/hour.
It’s been a while since I went through a job search, but my impression is that most resumes are submitted not on paper but either into a web form or via plain text in email. So how often is anyone going to see your logo? And I also get the impression that graphic designers are the only sort of people who would have a personal logo, and that mainly to show off their skills.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I’m cheap and looking for a free personal logo…I did one in Word just now and its ok but falls pretty short of the more clever items in the link above.
Pretentious…hmm, I see what you are saying. Still, its not entirely uncommon and I think it makes the resume stand out. Out of the 50 or so templates in my resume program about 10 of them have a spot for a logo and I think they really look nice. I know graphic designers often include them but I haven’t seen many in IT which is my field. Once I have a logo I’ll send it out to some friends and see what they think…not doing me any good if the person getting it thinks I’m a dick for including one. 
Cool, I’ll check Kinkos.
If you want your own personal logo…you have to design it yourself or pay someone to design it for you. Any sort of logo that you might find on the web wouldn’t really be your personal one.
And as someone that recruits experienced and college hires, a personal logo on a resume would look kind of stupid. But if that’s the message you want to put out there…go for it.
I’ve seen personal logos appropriately used more in the realm of personal stationary, wedding invitations, etc.
Given the OP’s name, I wonder what his personal logo might look like, especially on a job application.
Maybe he’s applying for a job at Graffix.
(Funny, 7 years out of college and I still remember that brand name and logo like it was yesterday…forgot all my calculus though, which was my major.)
No help on creating it, but some feedback on having one. I don’t know if it is standard in some industries but earlier this year we received a resume for program manager position (in online banking) that had one.
The resume did stick out (for many reasons other than just the logo) but it was because of the logo that it got passed around and laughed at.
Speaking as a professional graphic designer, I strongly recommend the OP thinks long and hard about the above statement. Why are you willing to diminish the content and experience of your resume trying to do things that you’re not adept at? What kind of message does that give your potential employer?
Resumés generally don’t have logos and you are doing yourself no harm by not including one. The chance that a novice is going to create a good-looking logo is far less than the likelihood of creating one that looks amateurish. The more professional the place that’s interviewing you, the higher the bar will be to impress.
Most of us (even professionals) lack the detachment it takes to objectively evaluate our own work. While your friends can tell you what they like, can you determine if their assessments are objectively qualitative or is it simply personal preference? And if any of the solutions you’re considering need work, it’s rare that a person can deconstruct what’s not working and rarer still to articulate that in a prescriptive manner.
Let me put it another way. Do you intend to show up to the interview in a suit you sewed yourself?
Pay a professional freelance designer. Just keep this in mind:
-
you get what you pay for.
-
explain what your trying to convey, let the designer take over from there.
-
a good designer knows what you need more than you do.
Our logo, professionally done, altogether (counting the cost of the first person that didn’t work out) ended up being about $10,000. Based on other business owners I know that have had new logos made over the past 7 or 8 years, that seems to be about average for a good professional (not freelance) logo.
I get the feeling the “personal logo” the OP is looking for, based on the samples he included, is something more along the lines of a monogram.
To echo what **Omar **said, it is uncommon, and would stand out only in a negative way.
The content of your resume is what makes it stand out. All of the other tricks – using non-standard paper, printing in color, etc. only detract from your presentation.
The only way a logo could possibly be appropriate would be if you were a graphic designer, but even then it’s probably better suited to a portfolio than to your resume.
Speaking as someone who’s worked with graphic designers for decades, it’s my experience that very few of them use personal logos (of course, they prefer to let their portfolios speak for them.) If graphics professionals don’t think it adds anything to the resume, I doubt if an IT hiring manager would.
But here’s my real concern for the OP. The difference between a good logo and a bad logo is subtle, hard to define, but really, really easy to spot by someone who knows what they’re looking at. So unless the logo you use is really good, it won’t impress someone who doesn’t care about logos, and may turn off someone who does.
What I think you need is something that cleverly combines your initials with a strong graphic element that embodies the qualities that an employer is looking for - what it is that makes you tick and why you would be such a reliable member of their workforce.
So, with that in mind, this is yours for $4,995.
This. A designer with a college degree and years of experience can give you a much better product than something you picked up free. And if you’re simply copying the style of an existing logo, what makes you think a prospective employer hasn’t seen it too?
Oh what the hell, I’ll help - free (and, yes, I’m a designer with a college degree and years of experience).
PM me with the info you want on the logo and I’ll do the design part. What I won’t do is get it ‘camera ready’ for you. I’ll do a pencil sketch if you can find an Illustrator jockey.
Oh, I’m assuming the resume I get from Bongmaster would have the first Scratch-‘N’-Sniff logo ever…
A bong water scented resume probably wouldn’t make for a good first impression.