Designer Resume Examples, Template, & Writing Guide

Designer resume template (text format)

Interior designer resume

Check out our interior designer resume example for inspiration when writing your own resume:

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Interior designer resume highlights

• Strong summary: There is a clear, concise summary at the top that highlights the candidate’s experience and key skills so that the employer can make a quick assessment of how well they’d fit into the open role.
• Extensive skill set: The candidate lists technical skills that are directly relevant for interior design like SketchUp, Autodesk, Revit, AutoCAD, MS Office, etc. This helps hiring managers match their skills to the job.

Product designer resume

This resume example showcases how to present your skills, experience, and achievements in the field of product design:

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Product designer resume highlights

• Shows dedication: The candidate mentions how they’re passionate about creating products that are not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing and emotionally engaging. This suggests a designer who deeply cares about the user experience.
• Comprehensive skill set: The candidate has experience bringing products from concept to production, showing the ability to see a design through the full product lifecycle.

Costume designer resume

Reference this example when you write your resume to help you effectively communicate your value as a costume designer to potential employers:

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Costume designer resume highlights

• Professional expertise: The resume demonstrates extensive experience in costume design across diverse productions, from theater to opera, showcasing adaptability and a broad skill set.
• Technical proficiency: The candidate specifies knowledge of industry-standard digital design tools, suggesting that they can handle modern costume design workflows well.

Fashion designer resume

Use our fashion designer resumes as a reference when you write your resume:

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Fashion designer resume highlights

• Concrete examples: The candidate provides examples of collaborating cross-functionally with teams like merchandising and production. Teamwork and communication skills are essential for success as a designer.
• Hard numbers: The candidate quantifies achievements on their resume, such as contributing to $25M in yearly sales in their current role. Using specific numbers makes the accomplishments more impactful and gives hiring managers a sense of the scope of the candidate’s work.

How to write a designer resume

As a designer, you probably know a thing or two about eye-catching resume design. However, creating a successful resume for a design job isn’t just about creativity.

Higher-paying jobs for designers are extremely competitive. To get a job in this industry, your resume needs to quickly and clearly communicate your skills and accomplishments to employers.

To help you get started, here are four tips for writing an job-winning designer resume:

1. Highlight your design skills

Employers in the design industry are always looking for candidates who have a well-developed set of skills, especially when it comes to design-related software. To impress them, make sure your skills section showcases your most marketable and up-to-date design expertise.

To show prospective employers that you have the skills needed for the position, here are some skills that are commonly required for designers:

• Adobe InDesign
• Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom
• Adobe Flash
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe After Effects
• Adobe Dreamweaver
• CAD
• HTML
• CSS
• Print design
• Photography
• Logo creation
• Branding
• Typography
• Color theory

2. Open with a strong resume summary

A resume summary serves as a “greatest hits” of your resume, quickly communicating your most relevant skills and important accomplishments to employers. Hiring managers for design jobs typically have little time to read through each resume, so they’ll want to be able to quickly get a sense of your qualifications.

For design jobs, you want your resume summary to communicate three important things:

1. Years of design experience, job title/s, and your main responsibilities (creating infographics, UI / UX related tasks, etc.)
2. Professional successes completing or managing projects
3. Your most valuable hard skills or qualifications (Adobe Creative Suite certified, any web design skills, etc.)

To see what this looks like in action, here are some examples of strong designer resume summaries:

3. Describe your work experience with strong action verbs

Make your resume stronger by including strong action verbs in your work experience section.

Specific verbs make your resume come alive and illustrate the impact your design efforts made at your previous job. For example, while you may be tempted to say you “designed” various projects (you’re a designer, after all), using action-specific verbs makes your resume more engaging to read and helps showcase more of your skills.

Hiring managers want to see all those skills you have in action, so in addition to providing a portfolio of your work, use examples on your resume that illustrate your accomplishments.

Here’s a list of verbs relevant to designer jobs to help improve your work experience section:

• Manage
• Create
• Generate
• Negotiate
• Conceptualize
• Model
• Visualize
• Prototype
• Formulate
• Produce
• Photograph
• Illustrate
• Arrange
• Style

Try mixing up your action verbs to show what you can do and keep hiring managers engaged.

4. Fill in your education section

When writing your education section, list your degrees in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent or highest level of education.

Include the name of the institution, the degree earned, and the year of graduation. If you have completed relevant coursework or have any academic achievements, such as a high GPA or honors, you can include them as well.

Here’s an example:

Average designer salaries in the US

After you’ve written your resume, make sure you use it to apply for jobs within a fair salary range.

The following table includes information from the most recent US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics report (May 2024). Here are the ten states with the highest salaries for designers, as well as the national average for your reference when applying for work.