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ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

For any given job, most of the other applicants will have perfectly polished interviews.  In a stack of competitive resumes, you might think there’s nothing you can do to impress the hiring manager.

However, there is something you can do. Brush up on graphic design! Personally branding your documents is an easy way to show off your personality and make yourself more memorable. Here’s how Adobe training at ENTITY enabled me to build my personal brand.

1 Do some soul-searching. Find your brand keywords.

Before you design anything, you need to have a clear understanding of who you are. More specifically, know your professional interests and values, what kind of image you project and how these all overlap. Without looking at your resume, answer these questions and figure yourself out.

Once you’re done with that, streamline that information into three to five brand keywords. You can use anything, so long as they’re professional and reflect you.If you’re having a hard time, make a list of things or qualities you want associated with yourself and then narrow them down.

Here’s my list, for reference:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

I ordered my keywords after an acronym, but that’s not necessary!

2 Create a color scheme for yourself.

Keeping your soul-search results and brand keywords in mind, generate a color palette for your brand. Remember that these brand colors represent the version of yourself that you want others to see. Because of this, your colors may not (and probably shouldn’t) involve all your favorite colors.

Make sure your colors are pleasing to the eye and go well with each other. My advice is to pick two or three main colors first. Then, find a few more colors within those same color gradients so that everything blends together.

My color palette looks like this:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

Make sure to include hex codes so that you’ll use exactly the same colors every time! If you’re having trouble picking colors or finding hex codes, check out Kuler.adobe.com and play around.

3 Go font shopping!

Now that you have an image for your brand and some colors to go with it, it’s time to go font shopping! You’ll want to pair a font suited for headings, such as a Display or Serif type, with easy-to-read body paragraph font, such as a Sans Serif type. I recommend using Google Fonts, because they’re free for commercial use.

This is my choice of fonts:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

When you’re picking from a selection, make sure to test how your name looks! If you don’t like how your name looks in your font, other people won’t enjoy looking at it, either.

Also, make sure to test the fonts’ capitalization. If a font is too crowded in caps, it’ll be difficult to read. If you really like a font, but it looks too cramped or distant, play around with the letter spacing until you like how it looks.

4 Create a mood board.

Using your colors and values, make a mood board. Pick out five or six pictures that you feel best represent your brand and its vibe. If you’re spending lots of time picking pictures, either your brand doesn’t resonate well enough or your brand is too complex.

I’m an urban city rat and I love geometric patterns, so I made sure my mood board reflected this. It looks like this:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

5 Compile all of the above information into a style sheet.

Put all that information into a single file, and save it for future reference. Make sure that the document is clean and easy to understand, so that you’re not confused the next time you look at it.

I used Adobe InDesign to compile my brand information into a single style sheet:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

6 Design your logo!

The other important part of creating your brand is, of course, creating a logo! You’ll want to think long and hard about your logo; it should be clean, professional and unique. Make sure you include your name somewhere, too.

I created my logo using both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

Since my name starts with an “A,” I thought using the Eiffel Tower to represent my initial would be clever. In retrospect, it isn’t as creative as I anticipated. That’s completely fine! When creating a brand, anyone can take as many trials as they need. I’ll definitely be playing around with both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create a new logo that represents my brand better.

7 Revamp your resume.

The easiest way to show off your proficiency in graphic design is through your resume. Not only are you giving potential employers proof of your skills, but you’re also making an impression. Make sure you’re leaving a memorable impact.

It’s tempting to fill up the page with exciting designs, but stay aware of your resume’s cleanliness and readability. If you overdo it, you might leave the wrong impression. In this respect, it’s fine to play with more conservative designs.

Here’s my old, boring resume:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

For comparison, here’s the new resume I created using Adobe InDesign:

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

As you can see, the revamped resume is easier and more exciting to read, despite having more information on it. It’s up to you whether or not you’d like to include your logo on your resume; I chose not to include mine.

8 Create cool business cards that reflect your brand.

Although they’re a little old-fashioned, business cards are a great way to showcase your brand and graphic design expertise while exchanging contact information. They’re sure to leave a statement with the receiver, even if they won’t remember your face. If you feel like one-sided business cards aren’t big enough, you can add designs to the back of the card as well.

Here’s the double-sided business card I designed using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign:ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

ENTITY shares tips on personal brand building using Adobe.

Although I stopped at business cards, you can also design e-commerce banners, flyers, letters, portfolios… just about anything that you’d like to promote your brand!

Closing Thoughts

You might be looking at my pictures thinking, “Why is a Political Science student writing an article about personal branding?” It is a valid question.

Personal branding is an asset that every individual engages in, whether they are conscious of it or not. We engage in personal branding when we’re talking about ourselves, choosing an outfit or posting on Instagram. Because of this, we should take advantage of graphic design resources such as Adobe Suite and visually mold how we want to be perceived.

Having graphic design experience will give any individual a more competitive edge regardless of the career they pursue. For example, local businesses and nonprofit organizations, such as law offices and small charities, are beginning to launch their own web pages. If they have the right graphic design skills, they could build their webpage from scratch rather than hire a specialist to design it for them. If they want to launch social media accounts, they could also create high-quality graphics and video productions without hiring a graphic designer to produce them.  You can see how mastery of the Adobe programs and graphic design makes such employees indispensable to their workplace.

Businesses grow increasingly reliant on graphic design. The most successful brands don’t just rely on traditional billboard advertisements and TV commercials anymore. They now utilize stunning graphics for product packaging, social media and online advertising to attract customers. Like Microsoft Office, It looks like Adobe Suite mastery is quickly becoming a professional requirement.

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