Categories
GoodMaker Designs
I created this brand as an evolution from my time as an entrepreneur. I had an online presence for myself as a B2C service provider, but once that venture ended, I needed of a portfolio for traditional employment. And since I’m continuously building my skills in web design and development, this seemed like a good opportunity to develop a full personal and professional portfolio, so I would continue having a website to work on.
Logo
Brand Colors
Brand Fonts
Resume Lezlie
I created this brand from scratch with absolutely no prior experience. Everything I did or created over the next 7+ years was self-taught. I dove deep into understanding branding, color psychology, font pairings, graphic design, web design, SEO, copywriting, social media marketing, and everything else I could about about trying to grow a small service-based business.
Logo
Brand Colors
Brand Fonts
Over the years I paid attention to the market and did my best to grow and change along with popular trends. I started the brand with a very ‘professional distance’, approach – only using stock photos, using ‘we’ in copy to make my business sound bigger, etc. – and transitioned to a more personalized, me-forward brand as I learned more about best practices.
Brand Evolution
After my transition from navy/yellow to navy/seafoam/salmon, I noticed several different brands were using similar colors, and have noticed that trend continue over the past 5+ years. So much so that the trend has begun to evolve into a purple/turquoise/fuchsia, which I’ve also evolved my Real Life Lezlie brand into.
“Soul-Sucking”
In my business, I tried hard to pay attention to what my clients were telling me, the positions they found themselves in, the aspirations they had for their careers, and the feelings they had about all of the above.
For a while, one common thing I was hearing was that so many of them felt like they were in a soul-sucking job. I heard that from so many clients, I started to take note. And I incorporated that idea into my marketing; my website, my LinkedIn profile, and my blogs and visual media.
And it resonated with my audience in a big way:
Individual Branding (Clients)
Created using Microsoft Word & Adobe Acrobat
Senior Manager / Executive
Page 1
Page 2
Statement of client needs and objectives
Prior to working together, the client specified that they would be targeting operations leadership roles (SVP, VP, Director). They had an impressive history of transforming operations for the better and helping businesses to go beyond surviving and actually thrive in challenging and downturned markets.
Their top strengths were in leading change/turnarounds, structuring for high-growth, and continuously improving processes, efficiencies, and ultimately revenues.
Summary of resume writing strategy and rationale
Their career had been an arduous journey through market challenges spanning from 9/11 to the 2008 economic downturn. This resume was about telling the story of how they continuously showed growth and success through each challenge.
It was important to bring out their unique value of taking an asset that’s struggling and turning it into a performing aspect of the business.
It was also important to show their deep understanding of how the Human Capital piece of a business could make or break the whole operation. They knew relationship skills were super important in hospitality at all times, and they were an excellent relationship builder who could implement top-notch customer service practices. They said they built empathy training into the customer service training.
In this resume, the visual elements serve to bring out the theme of his career story, which was their consistent success in the face of struggle.
Program & Project Management
Page 1
Page 2
Statement of client needs and objectives
Prior to working together, the client specified that they would be targeting positions in the healthcare industry focused on strategy, solution design and implementation.
Their top strengths were in financial and data analysis, business case development, vendor contract negotiation skills, presentation development (ability to tell the right story at the right time), and being a data -driven analytical thinker who can also working in the “gray” area (aka take limited information and put structure and a plan around it).
Summary of resume writing strategy and rationale
They said they had flexibility and experience that allowed them to become an effective leader and team player with progressive management responsibility in leading and coaching teams of all sizes. Their unique value was in being able to both ideate and strategize a plan and also implement and improve it.
They were coming off of a role that had really provided them with the most growth and success so far in her career, so it was important to dedicate a lot of space to showcasing that.
Because of their numerous and varying achievements, I opted not to include graphs for specific achievements, but instead to use visuals throughout the resume to ‘thread the needle’ of their story together: that they provides vision/strategy, makes huge impacts on business through continuous improvement, and provides a multi-faceted approach including program direction, executive support, solution design, and integration strategy.
Functional & Logistical Notes
- All resumes are written with the goal of being successful in both online Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and with human readers.
- All graphics should be ATS-compatible (meaning they should be invisible in ATS).
- All content within the graphics is represented textually within the body of the resume.
- Colors have been chosen based on commonly accepted color psychology, client industry, client preferences, and resume best practices.
- The conscious choice has been made to use numerals (as opposed to words) to represent all numbers, even those 10 and below. This is a personal decision made with the belief that numerals draw more attention than words. (This is, of course, a ‘loose’ rule which may vary in certain specific cases.)
RVer Job Exchange
For the RVer Job Exchange, I was a veritable Swiss Army Knife of content strategy and creation skills.
Re-Branding
FROM:
Circle Logo
Horizontal Logo
TO:
Stacked Logo
Horizontal Logo
The RVer Job Exchange brand, while familiar and relevant in the RVing world, was struggling to resonate with corporate remote work employers, which were our next target audience. So we (myself, the executive team, and relevant department heads) very seriously discussed and began planning for a rebrand.
I personally developed a new brand name and logo that would bridge the gap and speak both to the RVing audience and the corporate audience: NomadWrx. This incorporated the term ‘Nomad’, which has become well-known in the corporate world (largely from ‘digital nomad’) and is already well-known in the RVing world.
By shortening ‘Works’ to ‘Wrx’, I was able to align the name with an available url, and was also able to incorporate the letter ‘X’, which is a meaningful symbol for the larger parent group, Xscapers (which uses the ‘X’-with-a-compass-through-it symbol in their logo). While this change was ultimately shelved due to a larger restructuring (and budget cuts) throughout the organization, these suggestions were well-received and seriously considered by the leadership team.
While this change was ultimately shelved due to a larger restructuring (and budget cuts) throughout the organization, these suggestions were well-received and seriously considered by the leadership team.
Employer Page
Created using WordPress
(Before)
(After)
(The dark overlay disappears when you scroll over each half of the page)
- Started as a single page targeting 3 very different types of employers
- Created a split selection page in order to create 2 different flows to properly target the 2 (very) different types of employers
- Combined 2 employer types into 1 (for a new total of 2 employer types), then created 2 different employer pages to target each type
Remote Work Employers
Camping & RV Employers
Pricing Strategy
Remote Work Employers
Camping & RV Employers
- Ideated and implemented separate pricing for the 2 different employer types
- Researched market and trends to identify best pricing and structure for each employer type
Side Projects
Created using WordPress
To further develop my WordPress and web development skills, I took on a couple of side projects. I created everything for these brands, including colors, logo, website, copy, etc.
UnknownNormal.com
RV Travel Blog
I created this website as a place for my partner and I to track and blog about our adventures in full-time RV travel.
LomaPalomaTX.com
RV Park
I created this website to help an RV park in far southwest Texas with no website and a dying business. Since I built this, their business has increased significantly.
Full disclosure: Because these were started when I was very inexperienced (and, thus, have been Frankensteined with updates over the years), they don’t perform as well as I’d like. Speeds are slow because the themes I chose were heavy and I’ve only been able to offload so much. But each has been a phenomenal, hands-on learning experience that continues to help me learn more and improve my skills over time.