CV design and typography

Name (18-22pt), section headings (12-14pt bold or small caps) and body text (10-11pt). Three sizes make the structure obvious at a glance; five leave the eye with nowhere to start.

One family for the whole document. Sans for screen reading (Inter, Source Sans, Calibri, Helvetica) or serif for classic profiles (Georgia, Source Serif). Avoid decorative and condensed faces: they tire the eye and some embed badly in PDF.

Margins of 1.2 to 2 cm, line spacing 1.15, and clear separation between sections. White space isn't wasted space — it's what lets a recruiter find your achievements without reading every word.

A single accent colour for headings and rules, dark enough to print well. Full-page colour backgrounds drain ink, dull the text and in some converters end up covering whole lines.

Important details in headers and footers, text boxes, tables used for layout, icons as the only label for a field, skill bars, and two columns with a confusing reading order. All of it can reach the filter scrambled or empty.

Copy the whole PDF and paste it into a blank document: if the order holds and nothing is missing, the filter will read it too. Then print it in black and white and view it at 25% zoom — it should still be legible and still have hierarchy.

A CV is read in a zigzag from the top left, so the layout has to place what matters in the first third of the page: name, target role, statement and the most recent job. Margins of 1.2 to 2 cm, line spacing of 1.15 and clear separation between sections give the air needed to find an achievement without reading everything.

If you use two columns, keep experience and education in the main one — the content read in order — and put only standalone details in the side column: contact, languages, skills, licences. When narrative content is split across columns, automated parsing interleaves lines from both and your experience arrives scrambled.

One typeface family for the whole document and three sizes: name at 18-22pt, section headings at 12-14pt bold or small caps, body at 10-11pt. Three levels make the structure obvious at a glance; five leave the eye with nowhere to start. Sans for screen reading, serif for classic profiles, and never decorative or condensed faces — they tire the eye and sometimes embed badly in PDF.

Colour: one, dark, with a job to do. It belongs on headings, rules and your name; not on full-page backgrounds, which drain ink, dull the text and in some converters end up covering whole lines. Check contrast by printing in black and white: if a pale grey heading disappears there, it also disappears on a dimmed screen.

First test, copy and paste: select the whole PDF, paste it into a blank document and check the order holds with nothing missing. Whatever comes out scrambled or empty is exactly what the software will read, so this is where tables, text boxes and badly planned columns reveal themselves.

Second, the 25% zoom test: the hierarchy should still be visible even when the text isn't legible; if it all looks like one grey block, the size contrast is too weak. Third, a black-and-white A4 print: correct margins, nothing clipped, no heading lost. A CV that passes all three reads the same on a recruiter's screen, on a phone and on paper.