Iain Blaike is a professional headmaster with a long and illustrious career as a transformative leader. He’s the man you call when your institution needs to usher in a new era of excellence. He’s also the man you call to save a sinking ship and captain your institution toward a brighter future. Quite simply, Iain Blaike is a truly effective leader. To kick start the project Iain had initially sent me his CV. There was nothing wrong with it but it just didn’t leave an impression or say anything about the man himself. It was also very long, as is often the case with over qualified people.

My immediate instinct was that I needed to ensure that the CV got to the point instantly, and sparked a visceral reaction in the viewer; leaving the impression that this is a trustworthy man of honour and integrity and also a man bold enough to show it.

When it comes to a good CV, a little bit of extra effort in the design department, especially in an unexpected field, tends to go a long way. Iain is the kind of forward thinking and open minded individual that understood this, and entrusted me to come back to him with something elegant but effective.

The process started with reconfiguring and rearranging the information on the previous CV to make it fit on fewer pages. This also involved prioritizing the most important information and determining what information would need to be consistently presented on each page. I also wanted to make sure that the CV was in some sense modular, offering my client the ability to send just one page and still make a lasting impression. Each page need it to be able to stand alone or even be reordered if need be.

I then went on to determine the best colours and theme for the overall look and feel. The main inspiration for this came from a book I love by Dr. Stephen Covey called “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People”. The elements were designed to create a sense of transparency, gentility, strength, precision and decisiveness.

The following illustrates the results of my creative process...