Creative Diploma?

I was asked by a family friend a while back to design her a diploma she could give students of her classes. I scoured the net looking for some inspiration that was outside of the norm. What I  got was a lot of super scripty and gothic text, intricate line borders–you know the stuff that you could draw with your Spirograph when you were 8. I found it difficult to be different and professional at the same time. There is reason some things just don’t change, certain things are so ingrained in the North American brain that it would seem proposterous to change them.

I had forgotten about this project until I was recently emailed by Jason Rewald of the freshly squeezed www.jfrewald.com asking to share what I came up with. Well here ya go Jason! Some inspiration from our friend Google and some of the options I had originally come up with.

This one works well for a Graphic Design graduate but I don’t think it would be applicable to much else:

This is not a diploma but a Spa Gift Certificate, I pulled some inspiration from this one in one of my options:

And here are three that I had come up with, not too far off the norm but in my opinion still professional looking. I will include the logo here as well which I didn’t create but mirrored the shape of in the borders to create something cohesive.

 

 

 

I hope this can inspire some creative diplomas from you!

Creative Resume

I was just asked to design a course completion certificate. I informed my prospective client that there are Word templates of certificates as well as different online resources with free certificates. Being that they still want to go ahead and hire me for the job, I have to assume they want something more interesting than the generic variety that you can get for free. Now how do you even begin to get inspiration for something that has essentially looked the same since the dawn of education? Intricate border printed in a mutual tone, black heavy gothic type, and all of it printed on a nice piece of beige paper. Boring!  So what will still look professional while still being unique? And why aren’t art schools or graphic design schools handing out creative looking diplomas?

And then I remembered an awesome resume I once saw and it gave me hope. Resumes have also looked the same since the dawn of jobs. Sure, sure we all got taught how to make one look more professional than that other one. But what really makes it stand out for the human resources person sorting through them? Do you think they really have time to check out your leading and typeface choices? Or are they looking for your GPA and notable past jobs?

This one would stand out, and would probably get an interview even if it didn’t have work experience or a boring certificate from a fancy design school.