Friday, November 30, 2007

Resume: A Tale of Desire, Intrigue, and Formatting

This blog has moved to http://www.zackgrossbart.com/hackito.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really enjoy your personal account of trying to retool your resume. I only wish your advice here was helpful to more individuals. There's a lot of value, but the use of InDesign and a commercial font does limit how much we can generalize from your experience. Perhaps someday you'll, just for fun, see how close you can get to your ideal using simpler, or at least cheaper and more accessible alternatives.

Zack Grossbart said...

I still fight with using InDesign and a commercial font. However, the basic version of Scala costs $44 and you can go a long way with the free open source package Scribus. The biggest investment here is your time.

Brian McFann said...

Why, even though you are a programmer and prefer open source, did you not look at TeX and LaTeX as an option for typesetting and page formatting? Just Curious (I am assuming that all programmers know about it's existence, but perhaps I am wrong about that.) I own InDesign, but used TeX because I was more familiar with it. I was able to set up Adobe Caslon Pro (OpenType) to use with LaTeX. But I could have used any of the fine fonts that are bundled with it, including the default Computer Modern. If I have some time, I will try to re-do my resume with InDesign just for the exercise. If you want to reply you can use the email address you find on my website.

Zack Grossbart said...

I've used LaTeX for many years, but for my resume it didn't feel like the right tool. Maybe it was because I had just read The Elements of Typographic Style, but InDesign was a very exciting tool and it just felt right for the purpose. Since writing this article I got my hands on a copy of InDesign and I'm very happy to be working with it again. I really like open source software, but I'll go with the proprietary option if it is a lot better.

Ed said...

An interesting read. I'm also an amateur self-taught (Bringhurst!) typography fan.

Did you come across Gentium, Charis, Tallys or Vollkorn in your quest for pro-quality noncommercial fonts?