Resume Formatting and Design Without the Templates

A resume has one job: let a stranger extract the relevant information in a few seconds. Design serves that job and nothing else. Every decision below is about making the information easier to find — there is no aesthetic argument to be had once that is understood.

Typography: three decisions

Two typefaces at most, often one. A sans-serif for everything, or a sans-serif for headings and a complementary one for body. If you are unsure, use one. Mismatched pairs are the fastest way to make a document look amateur.
Two sizes at most for body text, plus headings. Around 10.5 to 11 points for body, 1.15 to 1.2 line spacing, and headings a step or two larger and bold.
Standard fonts. Sans-serif options such as the system default, Calibri, or a widely available grotesque. An obscure typeface embedded in a PDF may substitute badly on someone else's machine, which changes your line breaks and can push content onto a third page.

A serif for headings with a sans-serif for body is the other safe combination, and it reads as slightly more editorial. Both are fine. What is not fine is a document where the font choice is the most noticeable thing about it.

Hierarchy

A reader should be able to skim the page and see the structure without reading any words. That means: your name is the largest thing, section headings are clearly distinguished, job titles are visually distinct from the employer or the dates, and nothing competes.

Section headings in bold, sentence case, with generous space above and less below.
Job title bold, employer plain or in a slightly muted colour, dates right-aligned or on the same line.
Bullets indented under the role, with a consistent marker.
No more than one bold weight in the body. If everything is bold, nothing is.

Spacing and margins

Use 2 to 2.5 centimetre margins, which is close to every default already. White space is not wasted space; it is what makes a dense document scannable. If a page is full to the last millimetre, the reader will feel that the document is trying too hard.

Keep spacing consistent rather than optimised. Irregular gaps between sections are more noticeable than generous gaps, and consistent spacing survives being exported and re-imported better than anything clever.

Colour

One accent colour for section headings is plenty, and it must have strong contrast against white. Avoid light grey for body text, which is the most common accessibility failure in resume templates, and check the contrast of anything that is not pure black. If you print in greyscale or the reader has a monochrome screen, a light grey heading disappears.

Page breaks

For a two-page document, control the break yourself rather than letting it fall where it falls. Keep a role together where you can, and if a section would be split awkwardly, adjust the spacing above rather than shrinking the font. Never reduce the body size to make something fit, and never let a heading sit alone at the foot of a page.

Should you use a template at all

Templates are useful for exactly two things: establishing a baseline of reasonable spacing and type scale so you are not designing from nothing, and saving time on the mechanics of a table-based layout. They are a poor use if you keep the decorative elements.

Do start from a plain, single-column template and then edit it heavily.
Do check that it is genuinely single-column and that the contact block is normal text.
Do not keep a sidebar, a photo, a skill bar, an icon, or a colour block.
Do not use a template whose fields you cannot edit without fighting it — you will end up with a document you cannot maintain.
Do build a master document once and adjust it each time, rather than starting from a fresh template per application.

The final check

Print it

On paper, at actual size, in greyscale if you can. Problems with contrast and density are obvious on paper and invisible on a bright screen.
Look at it from a distance

Squint, or shrink it on screen. If the structure is not legible as shapes, the hierarchy is not working.
Read only the top third

That is all many readers will read. It must contain your name, your target role and your two most relevant achievements.
Paste the text into a plain text editor

Confirms the document survives text extraction. See the ATS guide for what to look for.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

Is a designed or infographic resume a bad idea?

For almost every role, yes. It is hard to read quickly, hard to extract text from, hard to print, hard to read on a phone, and inaccessible to anyone using a screen reader. The one partial exception is a portfolio-based creative role where a designed document is itself the demonstration — and even then, attach a plain version alongside.

How small can the text be?

Ten and a half points is the practical floor for a printed document, and eleven is better. Below that, people print at 90 percent, some of them are older, and some will read it on a phone where it is unusable. Cutting font size to fit content is fixing the wrong problem — cut the content.

Should I add a header or footer with my name and page number?

Page numbers are fine on a printed document and generally unnecessary on a PDF. A header with your name is a design convention, but headers and footers are the first content an extractor discards, so never put contact details or anything you need there.

What about a QR code?

It adds noise, it will not survive text extraction, and a recruiter with thirty applications is not going to scan it. If a portfolio link is worth including, the link itself works everywhere including a printout.

Where to go next

These are the services referenced above. Compare them on your own terms before you sign up for anything.