Good CV design helps someone understand your experience without searching for it. Your name is easy to find. Job titles and employers are distinct. Dates make sense. The important work has room to breathe.
You can achieve this with a plain document. You can also lose it in an attractive template that gives more space to decorative elements than to your experience. Start with the reading experience, then make the page look like a coherent whole.
This guide is for a CV or resume used in an ordinary job application. Academic CVs and specialist portfolios have different expectations.
Decide what the reader should notice first
Before choosing fonts, put your sections in a useful order. For someone with relevant work experience, a sensible starting point is contact details, a short summary if needed, experience, skills, and education. A student may put education and relevant projects earlier.
The order should answer the reader's likely question. If your recent job already makes your fit obvious, a long summary may add little. If you are changing careers, a short introduction can explain a connection that would otherwise be missed.
Do not let the template make this decision for you. A large skills sidebar is not helpful if your strongest evidence is a recent achievement buried at the bottom of page two.
Use a layout that has a clear reading order
A single column is a straightforward starting point for online applications. It gives you a predictable sequence and makes longer job descriptions easier to format. Use headings such as Experience, Education, and Skills so readers do not have to interpret creative labels.
There is also a practical reason to avoid complicated construction. Greenhouse lists columns, graphics, and some header or footer content among potential causes of resume parsing problems. That does not mean every decorative CV is automatically rejected; it means simpler construction removes avoidable uncertainty. See Greenhouse's parsing guidance.
Keep your name, email, and links in the main document content. Use readable link text rather than an icon as the only indication of what a link does.
Set a small number of type styles
One familiar, readable font is enough. Use size and weight to distinguish your name, section headings, and body text. You do not need a different font for every level.
As a starting point, try body text around 10.5–12 points, section headings slightly larger or bolder, and a clearly larger name. These are design starting points, not hiring rules. Different fonts occupy different amounts of space, so inspect the final PDF at normal size.
Avoid long stretches of all-capital text and very light font weights. If you need to zoom in to read your own CV comfortably, the design needs another pass.
Use bold to mark structure or a small amount of emphasis. When half a paragraph is bold, nothing stands out.
Make spacing consistent before making it compact
Space communicates relationships. A job title should sit close to its employer and dates. The next role needs enough separation to be recognized as a new entry. Section headings need a little more space above than an ordinary bullet.
If a page feels untidy, inconsistent spacing may be the problem. Fix that before reducing every margin.
Start with comfortable margins, roughly 15–20 mm where the page allows it. Keep a consistent gap between roles and between sections. If the document runs long, edit repeated information before shrinking the body text.
An entry can be simple:
## Experience
### Product Designer — Example Company
March 2022 – Present
- Redesigned account setup after reviewing support requests and
observing where new users became confused.
- Worked with engineering to test error states before release.
This is an illustrative structure. The finished page should make the title, organization, dates, and achievements easy to distinguish without boxes around each element.
Use color as a finishing detail
Dark body text on a light background is a reliable starting point. If you use an accent color, apply it consistently to something small, such as section headings or links. Check that it remains readable in grayscale.
Skill bars, star ratings, and proficiency circles take space without explaining much. “Python: four out of five” leaves the reader guessing what four means. Describe the skill and show its use in your experience instead.
A photograph may be expected in some markets and unusual in others. Follow the employer's instructions and the conventions of the market you are applying in; do not add one just because the template reserves a space for it.
Choose page length after editing the content
One page can work well when it comfortably holds your relevant experience. Two pages can be justified when there is more useful evidence. Neither length compensates for repetition or missing context.
Check where the page breaks. Avoid leaving a job heading at the bottom of one page and its bullets on the next. If only a few lines spill over, remove weak material or adjust spacing modestly. Do not solve the problem by making all the text tiny.
The one-page resume guide has a more detailed approach to shortening a draft.
Review the exported file in three ways
First, look at the page without reading every word. Can you distinguish the sections and follow the employment history? Second, read the content at normal zoom. Is the text comfortable, with enough context to understand each role? Third, test the file: click the links, select and copy text, and check any application fields populated from it.
Selectable text is a useful check, not a guarantee that every application system will interpret everything correctly. Follow the requested file format and review the submitted information.
You can adjust fonts, spacing, and colors in the MarkdownResume editor. Make those adjustments after the structure is working. A CV looks professional when its choices are consistent and the reader can find what matters.