Self promotion - Creative CV

This task envolved us adding some creativity to our already existing CV'S, the design had to say something about us as an illustrator and it also had to be fun and interesting to look at. At first i was a little worried about making up a new CV as i feared that i would not have enough room for all of the important details. Before i started doodeling out some ideas i thought it would be best to research some already existing Creative CV'S so that i could get some inspiration. I found some really cool designs, a lot of them were not actually restricted to the standard A4 format, a lot of them folded out and had some cool interractive features. Below are some of the examples that i found.

There were so many creative CV's online, some were really heavy on the information and had little illustration where as others were really visual but only highlighted the necessary information. I think that when i come to making my CV i want it to be incredibly visual and fun, i will need to review my CV and narrow down the key points of information if i want to do this. 

These are some initial sketches that i mapped out after doing some general CV research, Following on from the last module i wanted to keep my style consistent. I used a lot of geometric Aztec style imagery for the last module and i instantly started to draw using elements from the previous module, i instantly started to draw tiki heads as it seemed appropriate. I had an idea which consisted of creating a monster CV, the mouth would be open and inside there would be an image of me sitting inside of the monster, the tongue would then fold out and my details would be written there. I also liked the tiki head idea as it would allow me to keep my document with an A4 boundary which would make it easy to print. We wee given roughly a week to mock up a CV and i thought that for the short time period that we were given it would make more sense if i were to make a tiki head CV. 

I searched around for some tiki head designs and they came in a range of shapes and sizes. It was quite hard to find tiki heads in the style that i wanted but i managed to montage a couple of images together. I really liked how decorative the tiki heads were as their symmetry seemed to compliment whatever medium they were a part of. The surf board for example is perfectly symmetrical and works really well with the shape of the board. If this CV is successful i will definitely make some other products that keep within the same theme so that my work will tie in with itself.

Above are some of my tiki head sketches, the images on the lower right hand side are the early templates for my CV design where as the others were just experimentation imagery to get the feel right. The image on the far right is good but i do not think that i will have enough room for the information, i will colour it and see how it looks before i move on. 

The coloured version looks pretty good, unfortunately there is not enough room within the mouth to fit the appropriate information inside. I could maybe use this as a business card design though so i will hold on to it for future reference. 

I went ahead an coloured the other version that i made and it looks a lot better, i also managed to narrow down the original CV and fit all of the important stuff within my tiki's mouth. After showing my fellow illustrators the rough mock up i was then told that the text was pretty boring, they said that the text almost let the image down because i had put so much time into making the image and the text was just dropped in. I then decided that they were right, i wanted my CV to be fun and easy to read, my image deserved better than that. I looked back through my original sketches and decided that it would maybe be a good idea to mix my two original themes together, keep the large tiki head but give it a large fold out tongue that would hold all of the important information. 

Above is my finished CV, the tongue folds out three times, when the tongue is folded up it looks pretty silly but i think it really comes to life once opened up. I initially printed out a cheaper quality version of this and after some talks with the lecturers i decided to change the font to the one above, it is a lot more legible and it seemed to work better with the image and concept. This CV was printed in two parts and then stuck together with glue, the paper had a medium gloss finish which helped to bring out the colours really well. I originally went for really toxic colours and it was pretty harsh on the eyes so i am glad that i toned the colours down slightly. 

After making the CV i began to think about products that i could make for my promotional pack. Going back to me envelope task i mentioned that i wanted to make a huge monster totem pole, using that idea and going along with the tiki theme i came up with the above images. The plan was that they would all fold up into a little zig-zag print and then extend into this tiki totem pole, once they were coloured and printed off they were roughly the size of business cards. It would have been cool if my details were on the back and each tiki head were perforated so that the owner could tear one off. I am pretty happy with how these guys turned out and i will include this product as part of my final promotional pack.   Also after the success with my badge packs i decided to make some tiki themed badges, below are my my results. 

The images were made using some of the earlier sketches a starting point, i really like the one in the middle but i think that the green one is the strongest image.