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What should I include in my application PDF?
What should I include in my application PDF?
This page focuses on the documentation preparation requirements of your application, which is to provide a 4-part (not necessarily 4-page!) PDF detailing your Experience, Interests, CV and Work Samples.
For full details on other submission requirements, please refer to the checklist on the Students Page (and the linked Moodle site found there).
Preparing your application isn't about meeting strict 'rules' for page numbers; your profile and desired job scope might mean you add more context for one section, and less information in another. That said, you shouldn't be preparing a 20-page CV either! Use this question as a guide: how do you want to reviewer to react when they look at your application, amongst the many others?
1. Experience
1. Experience
This is a 100-word statement about your relevant experience or studies. Together with the Interests section, you can see this as the 'cover letter' for your application.
This can include key past experience, and role(s) you have played, for example, in student clubs. Significant and relevant subjects you have taken might be worth sharing here, to make your application stand out.
2. Interests
2. Interests
Along with your Experience summary, your Interests can form the second part of your 'cover letter'. Share a little bit about your own personality and what interests you (up to 200 words). If you have any hobbies you'd like to share, along with any other activities and interest groups you find yourself engaging in regularly, this will be a good place to add a sense of uniqueness to your profile.
3. CV (curriculum vitae)
3. CV (curriculum vitae)
Keep this to a maximum of 3 pages, and text-centric (but well laid out). Visualise this as a summary statement of your work and achievements that allows the reviewer to scan through your profile easily. We recommend that a design intern-specific CV have the following:
Personal information (name, contact details, socials)
Education (degrees, institutions)
Work experience (positions, responsibilities)
Skills (relevant abilities)
Publications, presentations, and research projects
Awards, scholarships, and honours
Everything should be concise here – you can showcase your work in detail in the next section.
4. Work Samples
4. Work Samples
Likely the more significant component of your PDF in terms of effort needed, your work samples (maximum 10 pages) provide a sense of the quality of work you have produced, with suitable captions and short descriptions to accompany each work. This can include recent university projects or things done externally. Describe your role(s) in these projects.
There is often the temptation to add too many projects here. Less is more – curate and showcase relevant projects that will catch the attention of your reviewer(s).
If you are applying for a position advertising for graphic design or illustration, it's probably not a great idea to showcase your industrial design or architectural renders as the first entry – you might not even want to show them! Again, think about who is reviewing your work, and why they are looking for specific roles/skills.
If you have a very focussed folio and design practice (e.g. typography), highlight the best work there, and talk about how each of the works have contributed significantly to your design learning in the area. Link this capability to the job description(s).
You can also showcase versatility by selecting work that cuts across related creative disciplines. For example, an industrial designer with photography skills, or a communication designer with the penchant for spatial design / model-making can be advantageous in your application.
If you have an online professional folio website, this will certainly make your application stand out.
Pro Tip: Design your folio and prepare your PDF!
Pro Tip: Design your folio and prepare your PDF!
As this is a Design WIL Internship after all, reviewers are looking out for your ability to communicate your abilities as a designer. Having a well-designed suite of the above goes a long way in proving that you are able to design beyond the expectation of work done in your academic units.
This requires time and effort. The good news is once you have a good layout set up, making future edits is easy.
General Pointers
General Pointers
Other than the key skills each position requires, reviewers are also looking out for your ability to communicate as a designer. Having a well-designed and written application PDF goes a long way in proving that you are able to design beyond the expectation of work done in your academic units.
You probably won't want to submit these default Word templates as part of your design folio 🤔
We have seen too many folios with formulaic layouts, callouts and styles that are just one colour or typeface away from another similar-looking template.
How can you design your application to be uniquely yours?
Here are some tips to help you produce your CV and folio:
- Writing your CV
Consider starting with a GDoc / Word template to understand your CV's content structure, but design and lay out the document so that it showcases your attention to detail, and your creativity. Software packages such as Adobe InDesign or Figma do a much better job in allowing you to design your layout precisely. Avoid Word.
Spell check – spelling and grammatical mistakes suggest that you do not pay attention to important details. In this age and time of AI-assisted writing tools, there is no reason for you to submit CVs with such mistakes.
Socials : If you have been curating a social media account that showcases your professional work, you should definitely include it. Personal social media feeds should generally not be included.
- Design Consistency
Typography – what typographic families reflect your style, and how do they work together?
Colour palette – what works for the type of work you create? Will they distract from your folio samples? Do you instead want a bright palette to complement your equally-colourful personality and/or work?
Margins/spacing – are you adopting a consistent spacing for text/image margins, gutters and other gaps?
Layout – what 'invisible grid' layout system will you adopt to help organise the grouping of works? See this Pinterest board for inspiration.
Online folio – this is highly recommended. Consider subscribing to a web publishing platform that allows you to easily set up your online presence. See services such as SquareSpace, Webflow, Wix.
- PDF Exporting
Exporting PDFs is not as directly or straightforward as you might think. Reviewers will appreciate that you have produced a suitably compact file size for your PDF. Having to download a 500mb PDF, or view an A0 spread that you didn't think to resize, is not fun!
Use the highest resolution images you have of your work, then use Adobe Acrobat to compress them. If you work in Adobe InDesign, it already is capable of exporting relatively compact file sizes (that Acrobat can further reduce, see next point).
In Adobe Acrobat, the Compress a PDF feature (under the File menu) is NOT recommended, as it does not give you the option of selecting compression settings. This often leads to very low-quality images. Instead, use File > Save As Other... > Optimized PDF..., which offers full control in setting up image export quality, flattening of layers, transparency etc.
Useful Links
Useful Links
This Pinterest board curated by MyCre8iveLife consolidates some interesting approaches you can take while laying out your CV design:
Monash University offers an online module for students to take, that walks you through the general tips on preparing the contents of your resumé/CV:
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