The CV Inn

LaTeX Guide to putting a picture in your CV

Alessandro — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:00:24 +0000

A recurrent question on this blog and in general concerns the insertion of a picture in a common Curriculum Vitae, with or without LaTeX.
On this topic, my opinion is that a Curriculum without a picture definitely looks more polished because it’s very hard to insert a picture that fits the professional requirements of a resume.

A very nasty but, alas, common occurrence is that of putting a random picture of yourself just for the sake of putting the picture in. Well, let me put this straight:

NEVER put your Facebook/ picture in your CV, unless you use that very social network for business and professional reasons (designers, entrepreneurs, etc.)

Some very straightforward principles apply when putting the picture in your CV:

The picture should be clear, small, in business attire (if you apply for a corporations that has a business attire policy). In any case, try to be the person you want to be at the interview, which is not necessarily your Facebook self. Even better, delete your public Facebook Profile if that’s gonna show a picture of you sucking up a 5 pints keg of beer.
The picture should not be in utter typographical clash with the rest of the CV. A picture of you trying to lift the “Leaning Tower of Pisa”? No, thank you.
White background is the way to go. Either if you are a Photoshop/Gimp master or if you just happen to shoot a photography with a pretty white wall behind, do get a white background photo (examples below)

Now back to LaTeX, how do we code this up?

The textpos package

From the documentation of the package,

This package facilitates placing boxes at absolute positions on the LATEX page.

Just make sure you include the package in your document preable, like this:

\usepackage{textpos}

and you are ready to go.

We also include dimension references for the units we will be using:

\setlength{\TPHorizModule}{10pt} %controls horizontal movements
\setlength{\TPVertModule}{10pt}  %controls vertical movements

This means that for every time we call the command

\begin{textblock}{}(,)
\includegraphics{picName.jpg}
\end{textblock}

hpos and vpos get multiplied by 10pt (that is, the length we have set \TPHorizModule and \TPVertModule to).

Option 1. Full Body & White Background

In this option, we set a full body with with background on the left of the text, without any impact on the horizontal and vertical motion of the document’s typographical appearance.

\begin{textblock}{1}(-10,0) %
\includegraphics{picName.jpg}
\end{textblock}

Option 2. Face only & White Background

This second option is also acceptable, in my opinion. Just tweak a bit and play with textpos to get the best result out of the picture you have (yours might differ!). I’ve played with the parameters at least 20 times before getting it acceptable.

\setlength{\TPHorizModule}{10pt}
\setlength{\TPVertModule}{10pt}
\begin{textblock}{1}(30,0)
\includegraphics{picName.jpg}
\end{textblock}

Option 3. Face Only & Color Background

Sorry to break it to you, but this is not acceptable!
The picture with this full blown coloured background is just a punch in the eye.
The rectangle at this position of the document breaks its typographical beauty and, more importantly, its horizontal motion.
In other words, the reader and his/her eye do not expect a rectangle at this point, as they’re reading some text and following its flow naturally. In other words, it’s as if they’re hitting their head against a wall all of a sudden.
Also the vertical motion is damaged, because the vertical lines of the rectangle make it difficult to identify the margins of the document.

\setlength{\TPHorizModule}{10pt}
\setlength{\TPVertModule}{10pt}
\begin{textblock}{1}(20,0)
\includegraphics{picName.jpg}
\end{textblock}

Lesson Learned

Don’t put a picture in your CV, unless you know what you are doing.
I, for one, don’t have any intention to throw my picture in my CV any time soon.

CV Tip: Align Columns of Different LaTeX Tables with \settowidth

Alessandro — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:24:23 +0000

The problem with tables in a CV is that they are usually typeset as pairs of date => some job title, or piece of research.

For example, on the left, you can see three different sections:

A Work Experience section;
The Education section;
Another Section for Scholarships

So what happens when you are typesetting the columns of the document, especially the ones with dates?

Dates can be of different length, consider for a moment how Summer and Fall 2010 will generate totally different column width, and the style of a one page document like a CV will suffer from this asymmetry.

So the idea I tried to implement in the document is that of considering all dates as if they belong to the same column (and to the same table obviously), therefore the leftmost column contaning the dates will be as wide as the widest date element.

This date element happens to be Summer 2007, which is quite long indeed, therefore all we need to do now is to create a new length that will store the Summer 2007 length and apply it to the columns.

1. Length Manipulation Macros: \setlength, \newlength, \settowidth

1.a Declaring and Naming a new Dimension Container

\newlength{\datebox}

1.b Storing the length of a Text String into the just created Length \datebox

\settowidth{\datebox}{Summer 2007} % string of text works here
\typeout{\the\datebox} % outputs 75.84961pt

1.c Manually assigning a value to a previously declared Length

\setlength{\datebox}{} % string of text doesnt work here
\typeout{\the\datebox} % outputs pt

Example usage of \setlength might be

\setlength{\datebox}{1em}
\setlength{\datebox}{1mm}
\setlength{\datebox}{1cm}
\setlength{\datebox}{1pt}

2. Setting the Fixed Table Column Width

Option 1 involves setting the left hand side column as a justified paragraph of length \datebox.

%Table 1
\begin{tabular}{p{\datebox}l}
% first row
[...] & % first cell - width: \datebox
[...]    % second cell - width: variable
 
%Table 2
\begin{tabular}{p{\datebox}l}
% first row
[...] & % first cell - width: \datebox
[...]    % second cell - width: variable
\end{tabular}

Another option is to use \parbox{dimen}{text}

%Table 1
\begin{tabular}{rl} %notice r in place of p{\datebox}
% first row
\parbox{\datebox}{[...text...]} & % first cell - width of the parbox: \datebox
[...]    % second cell - width: variable
 
%Table 2
\begin{tabular}{p{\datebox}l}
% first row
\parbox{\datebox}{[...text...]} & % first cell - width of the parbox: \datebox
[...]    % second cell - width: variable
\end{tabular}

3. Final Result, as per Option 2 \parbox

Useful Links on the Topic: Wikibooks

CurrVita & ClassicThesis LaTeX CV Template – 100 lines of code

Alessandro — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:45:37 +0000

The PDF Document is available here and the tex source here.

We are going to typeset a very clean and easy layout for a curriculum vitae using LaTeX, currvita and ClassicThesis. While I’m not extremely familiar with those styles, I took inspiration from the code snippet for a CV which is to be found at page 202 of “L’Arte di Scrivere con LaTeX” by Lorenzo Pantieri, available in Italian at [PDF] the author’s website.

As always, a preview of the final document follows (those screenshots are from multiple documents and variations thereof).

1 The Preamble

\documentclass{scrartcl}	% classe article di KOMA

1.1 Margin Notes

In the economy of this document, margin notes will be fundamental markers as the following image clearly shows

First we need to set margin notes to default to the left margin (reversemarginpar), then I create a new shortcut command which will set the notes ragged left, italic, and small.

\reversemarginpar
\newcommand{\MarginDate}[1]{\marginpar{\raggedleft\itshape\small#1}}

1.2 Style and Currvita helper package

For a more in–depth analysis of the packages, refer to CTAN and the appropriate documentation.

\usepackage[LabelsAligned]{currvita}	% CV package
\usepackage[nochapters]{classicthesis} %  ClassicThesis style

1.3 Miscellaneous Commands

\usepackage{url}	% per gli indirizzi Internet
\renewcommand{\cvheadingfont}{\LARGE\color{Maroon}}
\renewcommand{\cvlistheadingfont}{\large}
\renewcommand{\cvlabelfont}{\qquad}
%Setup hyperref package, and colours for links, text and headings
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{	colorlinks,breaklinks,
			urlcolor=Maroon,
			linkcolor=Maroon}
\usepackage{eurosym}

1.4 Boxes and Dimensions

We will need to know the width of the biggest entry in the work experience “period”, in this way we make sure we have enought space for all the periods to align neatly.

\newlength{\datebox}
\settowidth{\datebox}{Summer 2007} 
\newcommand{\Sep}{\vspace{2em}} % a trivial separator
% the following is for languages
\newlength{\langbox}
\settowidth{\langbox}{English}

1.5 Helper Commands: NewWorkExperience and Description

NewWorkExperience creates a Date – Job coupling, with a third argument for a location.

\newcommand{\NewWorkExperience}[3]{\noindent\hangindent=2em\hangafter=0 \parbox{\datebox}{\textit{#1}}\hspace{1.5em} #2 #3%
\vspace{0.5em}}

while Description is simply a ragged right text box which contains a description of the job.

\newcommand{\Description}[1]{\hangindent=2em\hangafter=0\noindent\raggedright\footnotesize{#1}\par\normalsize}

The Document

The document is very simple, there is nothing particularly fancy and it is mostly self–explanatory.

\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{cv}{\spacedallcaps{Marco Tullio Cicerone}}
\vspace{1.5em}
 
\spacedlowsmallcaps{Personal Data}
\vspace{0.5em}
 
\NewWorkExperience{}{\textit{Born in Matera,}}{13 November 1920}
 
\NewWorkExperience{email}{\href{mailto:name.surname@gmail.com}{name.surname@gmail.com}}{}
 
\NewWorkExperience{phone}{+123 456 7890}{}
\vspace{1.5em}
 
\noindent\spacedlowsmallcaps{Work Experience}
\vspace{0.5em}
 
\NewWorkExperience{Current}{Trader at Enoi spa,}{Milan}
 
\Description{Provided analysis of spreads, \MarginDate{Physical Natural Gas Trading}
in particular time and location spreads, with emphasis on trading
opportunities on the curve, also taking into
account the availability of storage facilities. Became familiar with logistic implications of physical gas trading and developed knowledge of continental virtual hubs for gas exchange.}
 
\Sep
 
\NewWorkExperience{2008--2009}{Lehman Brothers,}{London}
 
\Description{Developed spreadsheets for risk analysis\MarginDate{Commodities Exotics Trading} on exotic derivatives on a wide array of commodities (ags, oils, precious and base metals), managed blotter and secondary trades on structured notes, liaised with Middle Office, Sales and Structuring for bookkeeping}
 
\Sep
 
\NewWorkExperience{Summer 2007}{Lehman Brothers,}{London}
 
\Description{Received pre-placed offer from the Exotics Trading Desk as a \MarginDate{Summer Internship} result of very positive review.
Rated ``truly distinctive'' for Analytical Skills and Teamwork}
\vspace{1.5em}
 
\spacedlowsmallcaps{Education}
\vspace{0.5em}
 
\NewWorkExperience{July 2008}{Bocconi University,}{Milan}
 
\Description{110/110 \textit{summa cum laude}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  Major: Quantitative Finance\MarginDate{Master of Science in Finance}\newline Thesis: ``Sublinear and Locally Sublinear Prices'' \newline Advisor: Prof.~Erio \textsc{Castagnoli}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  Gpa: 28.61/30}
 
\Sep
 
\NewWorkExperience{July 2006}{Bocconi University,}{Milan}
 
\Description{110/110 \textit{summa cum laude}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  Major: Quantitative Finance\MarginDate{Some Other Education}\newline Thesis: ``Sublinear and Locally Sublinear Prices'' \newline Advisor: Prof.~Erio \textsc{Castagnoli}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  Gpa: 28.61/30}
\vspace{1.5em}
 
\spacedlowsmallcaps{Additional Information}
\vspace{0.5em}
 
\Description{Sept. 2006	Scholarship for graduate students with an outstanding curriculum (\euro\ 30,000) }
 
\vspace{1em}
 
\Description{June 2006	Gmat\textregistered: 730 (q:50;v:39) \MarginDate{Gmat}96\textsuperscript{th} percentile; \newline\textsc{awa}: 6.0/6.0 (89\textsuperscript{th} percentile)}
 
\vspace{1em}
\Description{\parbox{\langbox}{\textsc{English}}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  \ Fluent}
 
\vspace{0.5em}
 
\Description{\parbox{\langbox}{\textsc{French}}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  \ Fluent}
\MarginDate{Languages}
\vspace{0.5em}
 
\Description{\parbox{\langbox}{\textsc{Italian}}\ \ $\cdotp$\ \ \  Mother Tongue}
\vspace{1em}
 
\Description{\LaTeX\ \ $\cdotp$\ \ Typography\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  Programming\ \ $\cdotp$\ \  Other\MarginDate{Interests}}
\enlargethispage{\baselineskip}
\end{cv}
\end{document}

The PDF Document is available here and the tex source here.

CV Tip: Letterspacing your name with XeLaTeX + Fontspec

Alessandro — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:20:11 +0000

Typographic Principle:

Letterspacing may increase the readability of your text, whereby the principle applies to
a) text set in bold;
b) text set in small caps.
It does not apply to text set in lowercase. In other words, don’t letterspace text set in lowercase.

How does this apply to a Resume?

There are at least two cases in which we can enhance the readability of our Curriculum Vitae or Resume, one which is especially important.

In fact, if you think about it, your name and surname are sitting at the top of the CV, which makes them a focal point where the eye is attracted instantly. This is the reason why your name must be typographically distinguished in some way: typically it is set in bold face, or small caps, or even ALL CAPS!

Problem is, sometimes bold text and small caps benefit from a little letterspacing, so we will see how that is achieved with fontspec and its easy to implement [LetterSpace = <number>] option when calling the \fontspec{some font} command, as we will shortly show after a visual preview of what we can do.

Here follows the XeLaTeX code to typeset the examples above (which are gathered in the pdf file at the end of the post).

% typeset the lowercase text
\newcommand{\text}{Kramer Seinfeld}
\fontsize{36}{36}
\fontspec{Fontin} %make sure you have Fontin installed
%\bfseries %if you want text in bold face, the second example
%\scshape %if you want text in small caps, make sure you have the font installed
 
\marginpar{\scshape\addfontfeature{Color=FF0000} letterspace}
\text\marginpar{0.0}
 
{\addfontfeature{LetterSpace=2.0}
\text\marginpar{2.0}}
 
{\addfontfeature{LetterSpace=5.0}
\text}\marginpar{5.0}

Letter Spacing in XeLaTeX

Next CV Typographic Tip will be about emphasizing text, how much should you emphasize your text so that it doesn’t look like this (see the Not so short introduction to LaTeX)?

By the way, anyone ever heard of “Seinfeld”?

The “Linux” LaTeX CV Template

Alessandro — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:46:40 +0000

I decided to call this template generally “Linux” because I had had the opportunity to bump into the very interesting project called Linux Libertine which intends to develop, build and distribute a new typeface alternative to Times Roman that embraces the principles of open source and free “software”.

On wikipedia, Linux Libertine is described as:

[…] a serif proportional font that looks like a 19th century book type, though it has been developed for today’s usability. It contains more than 2000 Unicode characters, including support for many different languages of the western Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew typeset. Additionally it offers several ligatures (such as ff, fi, ct, …) and has special characters like IPA characters, arrows, floral symbols, Roman numbers, oldstyle numbers, small caps etc. The OpenType implementation allows automatic positioning and substitution like true fractures, ligatures and kerning

You can find more about Linux Libertine at their website, a few examples of glyphs and characters are shown below, together with a preview of the CV Template that we will build using this typeface:

Features:

Grid Based with my custom style file (more on this in the following weeks)
Linux Libertine Font and Qlassik Medium for the name header
Nice and Clean color structure based only on shades of grey
Custom itemization of Computer Languages with gradient bullets
Support for inserting in an easy way a picture
Support for a personal quote, a very short summary, or a career objective right below the name, emphasizing its importance

Check out the code and the final result and let me know your feedback…

LaTeX Linux CV Template

The document with its grid can be seen here and a zip bundle with the .sty to generate the grid is at this link

 % ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------%
%	Created by Alessandro with TeXShop						%
%	---->	Sep 1, 2009										%
%	Compiled with XeLaTeX, on Mac OS X 10.5					%
%	Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported	%
%	Share, change, spread, and have fun!						%
%	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/					%
%	You can find more at http://cv-templates.info				%
% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------%
 
\documentclass{article}
%% LaTeX Preamble - Common packages
 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % Any characters can be typed directly from the keyboard, eg √©√ß√±
 
\usepackage{textcomp} 	% provide lots of new symbols
\usepackage{graphicx}  	% Add graphics capabilities
\usepackage{xcolor}		% Colors 
 
% Define Colors
\definecolor{lightg}{HTML}{999999}
\definecolor{medg}{HTML}{666666}
\definecolor{darkg}{HTML}{333333}
 
\usepackage{wrapfig}
 
%FONTS
\usepackage{fontspec} % not using this much although I should have
\font\head="Qlassik Medium:letterspace=4" at 34pt % http://www.dafont.com/qlassik.font
\font\subhead="Linux Libertine O Bold" at 15pt
\font\Quote="Linux Libertine O Bold Italic:mapping=tex-text" at 16pt
\font\Text="Linux Libertine O" at 11pt
\font\Textit="Linux Libertine O/I:+onum" at 11pt 	% /I select Italic
\font\Textblack="Linux Libertine O/BI" at 9pt 	% /BI select Bold Italic 
\font\Textsc="Linux Libertine O:+smcp" at 11pt 	% +smcp selects Small Caps
\font\wdate="Linux Libertine O:+smcp, letterspace=4,+onum" at 9pt % +onum old style numerals
 
\usepackage[margin=10mm]{geometry} % Margins
 
\usepackage[pdftex,bookmarks,colorlinks,breaklinks]{hyperref}  % PDF 
 
\usepackage{setspace} % leading
 
 
% Commands to keep the code clean
% Below experience section you can see this structure
% WorkDate -> Keyword
% ^^ Multi line WorkDescription ^^
 
\newcommand{\workdate}[1]{%
	\textcolor{lightg}{\wdate #1}}
 
\newcommand{\workdescription}[1]{%
\raggedright\textcolor{medg}{\Text \begin{spacing}{1.1818}#1 \end{spacing}}}
% Variation with reduced leading
\newcommand{\workdescriptionVAR}[1]{
\raggedright\textcolor{medg}{\Text \begin{spacing}{1.1}#1 \end{spacing}}}
 
%Styling Itemizations
\usepackage{enumitem}
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{\textcolor{lightg}{\symbol{"F6B9}}}
% Bullets
\definecolor{noteone}{HTML}{999999}
\definecolor{notetwo}{HTML}{848484}
\definecolor{notethree}{HTML}{424242}
\definecolor{notefour}{HTML}{212121}
\definecolor{notefive}{HTML}{000000}
 
\newcommand{\fivenotes}{%
\textcolor{noteone}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notetwo}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notethree}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notefour}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notefive}{\symbol{"2022}}
}
\newcommand{\fournotes}{%
\textcolor{noteone}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notetwo}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notethree}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notefour}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
}
\newcommand{\threenotes}{%
\textcolor{noteone}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notetwo}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notethree}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
}
\newcommand{\twonotes}{%
\textcolor{noteone}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{notetwo}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
}
\newcommand{\onenote}{%
\textcolor{noteone}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
\textcolor{white}{\symbol{"2022}}
}
% Important: This is not an official package, is a customized typogrid
% .sty file which I wrote and enables the 5 column grid
\usepackage[draft, columns=5]{mytypogrid}
 
\begin{document}
 
\parindent=0cm
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.59\linewidth}
 
\head \textcolor{darkg}{RICHARD STALLMAN}\\ \\
\begin{wrapfigure}{i}{0pt}
\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{gnu.png}
\hspace{25pt}
\end{wrapfigure}
\raggedright\Quote\color{darkg} \kern -10pt``\ I like computers, music and butterflies --- among other things.''
\vspace{3em}
\hrule
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.38\textwidth}
\Textit \textcolor{darkg}{born}\ \textcolor{lightg}{ March 16, 1953}
\vspace{2.2em}
 
\subhead \textcolor{darkg}{Contacts}\\\color{medg}
 
\Text \textcolor{medg}{
Free Software Foundation\\
Boston, Massachusetts, USA}\\
\textcolor{darkg}{phone} : 123 456 789\\
\textcolor{darkg}{email} : rms@gnu.org
\vspace{1em}
 
\textcolor{lightg}{http://www.stallman.org/}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{2.3em}
 
\subhead \symbol{"E000}\ Experience
 
\hspace{0.205\textwidth}\begin{minipage}[t]{0.38\textwidth}
\vspace{0pt}
\workdate{1983}\hfill\Textblack Manifesto
\workdescription{Published the GNU Manifesto, which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix.}
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.387\textwidth}
\vspace{0pt}
\workdate{1985}\hfill\Textblack Emacs
\workdescription{Popularized the concept of copyleft, a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License.}
\end{minipage}
 
\vspace{1em}
 
\hspace{0.205\textwidth}\begin{minipage}[t]{0.38\textwidth}
\workdate{1987}\hfill\Textblack GNU
\workdescription{The first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of the GNU system had been completed.}
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.38\textwidth}
\workdate{1991}\hfill\Textblack Linux
\workdescription{Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, used the GNU development tools to produce the Linux kernel}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{3em}
\hrule
\vspace{4.1em}
 
\subhead\kern -13pt\symbol{"E000} Computer Specialties \symbol{"E050} Programming Languages\\
 
\hspace{0.205\textwidth}\begin{minipage}[t]{0.38\textwidth}
\hfill\Textblack ...in words...
\workdescriptionVAR{\vspace{5pt}
The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. \\\vspace{10pt}GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain. 
\\\vspace{10pt} As well as being the official compiler of the GNU operating system, GCC has been adopted as the standard compiler by most other modern Unix-like computer operating systems, including GNU/Linux, the BSD family and Mac OS X. \\\vspace{10pt}GCC has been ported to a wide variety of processor architectures, and is widely deployed as a tool in commercial, proprietary and closed source software development environments.}
 
\end{minipage}
\hspace{3.1mm}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.38\textwidth}
\Textblack ...and in bullets.
\vspace{5pt}
\begin{itemize}[leftmargin=25pt, rightmargin=55pt, labelsep=10pt, itemsep=0pt, topsep=0pt]\Text
\item \textcolor{medg}{C++}\hfill \fournotes
\item \color{medg}C\hfill \threenotes
\item Lisp\hfill \fivenotes
\item Bash \hfill \twonotes
\item GNU/Linux \hfill \fournotes
\item Lisp\hfill \fivenotes
\item Bash \hfill \twonotes
\item GNU/Linux \hfill \fournotes
\item Lisp\hfill \fivenotes
\item Bash \hfill \twonotes
\item GNU/Linux \hfill \fournotes
\item Lisp\hfill \fivenotes
\item Bash \hfill \twonotes
\item GNU/Linux \hfill \fournotes
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage}
\vfill
\raggedleft\wdate Typeset \today
\end{document}

Non-prehistoric LaTeX Resume Template — Advanced Graphics and Typography

Alessandro — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:15:52 +0000

The Typographer

Most of the templates built with LaTeX look like prehistoric documents and are embarassing in that they are usually designed with the standard font, with the standard class, no colours whatsoever, no creativity.

Plain LaTeX — what one would do when writing a math paper, just load a few packages and you’re good to go.

I wanted to showcase the possibility that XeLaTeX offers to customize a lot of aspects of the style of your document, and for the purpose of this tutorial I figured I was a web designer and wanted to showcase, along with my computer skills and my experience, example thumbnails of work as a designer and finishing off the document with a fancy contact section.

A preview follows

1 – Toolkit: Packages and Preamble

1.1 – Graphics and Colours

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
 
%Load Graphics and Colours
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{backgrounds}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\definecolor{linkcolour}{HTML}{2b2b2b}
\definecolor{text1}{HTML}{2B2B2B}
\definecolor{headings}{HTML}{CC3300}
\definecolor{backgroundColor}{HTML}{CC3300}

This is the color combination that will be used

1.2 – Margins and Leading

%margins
\usepackage[hmargin=1.25cm, vmargin=1cm]{geometry}
\linespread{1.2}
\usepackage{setspace}

Things to notice:

the linespread command is used for the whole document;
the setspace package is used to address specific paragraphs;

1.3 – Styling Itemization

Styling Itemization with Custom Calluna Symbol

The package enumitem allows you to apply a custom style to your enumerations, and many other things like spacing and indenting: check out the documentation on CTAN.

%Styling Itemizations
\usepackage{enumitem}
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{\symbol{"E052}}

1.4 – Fonts for XeLaTeX; Calluna and Helvetica Neue

We will use the following two professional fonts:

CALLUNA

Calluna Regular — A wonderful new free professional font

HELVETICA NEUE BOLD

Adobe Helvetica Neue Black

Helvetica Neue is a commercial fonts and may not be available to your system: I suggest taking a look at some other free fonts for headings, for example Qlassik Bold

%Fonts and Tweaks for XeLaTeX
\font\headers="Helvetica Neue Bold:letterspace=5" at 20pt
\font\SectionHeaders="Helvetica Neue Bold:letterspace=5" at 14pt
\font\Career="Calluna:color=2b2b2b" at 13pt
\font\Text="Calluna:color=2b2b2b" at 11pt
\font\TextAlt="Calluna:color=CC3300" at 11pt
\font\TextSC="Calluna:+smcp, color=2b2b2b" at 11pt
\font\slash="Calluna:+zero, color=2b2b2b" at 40pt
\font\slashAlt="Calluna:+zero, color=CC3300" at 40pt
\font\ContactHeaders="Calluna" at 170 pt
\font\trick="Calluna:color=FFFFFF" at 0.1 pt

Other things to notice here:

letterspace is modified to allow for headings to be more legible. This is usual practice with all caps text;
color is given to the command setting the font name;
+smcp is XeTeX syntax to recall Small Caps in the font table;
+zero is XeTeX syntax to recall Slashed Zero in the font table;
trick will be used as a workaround to hyperlinks not working properly for images in XeLaTeX;
I decided to use this syntax, however you could more easily access font features with the well-known fontspec package.

1.5 – Hyperref Package

%Setup hyperref package, and colours for links, text and headings
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{	colorlinks,breaklinks,
			urlcolor=linkcolour,
			linkcolor=linkcolour}

1.6 – Custom Sections

%custom \section
\usepackage{titlesec}				
 
%CV Sections inspired by:
%http://stefano.italians.nl/archives/26
\titleformat{\section}
	{\SectionHeaders\raggedright}{}{0em}{}
 
\titlespacing{\section}{0pt}{0pt}{5pt}
\thispagestyle{empty}

Continued at NEXT PAGE

LaTeX Fonts: 9 Fonts You Don’t Know (and How To Use Them)

Alessandro — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:15:26 +0000

Has the Computer Modern Font already bored you?

While I find it extremely clean and elegant, I don’t want people to recognize my typesetting system by the font — especially my Curriculum Vitæ. Indeed, it’s very easy to associate a document to LaTeX when it’s typeset in Computer Modern, headings are not customized, and the style is elegant yet totally predictable (i.e. the “I’ve already seen that elsewhere” syndrome).

Hereby you will find a list and the necessary commands to typeset your document with different, and hopefully more refreshing fonts.

LaTeX Fonts vs. Xe(La)TeX Fonts

Font installation in LaTeX is not immediate: you can’t use your system fonts directly or with simple commands.

The installation process goes beyond my knowledge.

At this point, lazy people will do one of the following things:

change typesetting system — lazy+not-so-smart people will go back to Word, lazy+smart will discover XeTeX;
ask themselves whether their LaTeX distribution (i.e. TeXLive, MacTeX, MikTeX) has some other fonts bundled, and how to select them in a document;
read some 200 pages tutorial on how to install Fonts in LaTeX, and learning font tables + metrics + so many other things in the process — they’re lazy people, this violates our main assumption.

Here, here, and here we have been using XeLaTeX and a few professional fonts (Fontin, Hoefler Text, Gill Sans).

Now we say we haven’t got these fonts, so how do we proceed?

Custom LaTeX Fonts

Much of the information that follows is taken from this wonderful page. Thanks!

1. Computer Modern (Default)

From Wikipedia

As implied by the name, Computer Modern is a modern font. Modern, or “Didone”, fonts have high contrast between thick and thin elements, and their axis of “stress” or thickening is perfectly vertical. Computer Modern, specifically, is based on Monotype Modern 8a, and like its immediate model it has a large x-height relative to the length of ascenders and descenders.

Computer Modern

2. Venturis Old

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{venturisold}

Venturis Old

3. Bookman

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{bookman}

From Wikipedia

Bookman was designed as an alternative to Caslon, with straighter serifs, making it more suitable for book and display applications. It maintains its legibility at small sizes, and can be used successfully for headlines and in advertising. In 1936, Chauncey H. Griffith of the American Linotype foundry developed a revival.

Bookman

4. TeX Gyre Schola

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tgschola}

From the TeX Gyre website

The TeX Gyre Schola family of serif fonts is based on the URW Century Schoolbook L family distributed with Ghostscript. The original was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1919, for the American Type Founders. The constituent 4 standard faces contain nearly 1250 glyphs each and are available in PostScript, TeX and OpenType formats.

TG Schola

5. Times

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{mathptmx}

Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper, The Times, in 1931, designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent at the English branch of Monotype.[1] It was commissioned after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times.

Times

6. Computer Modern Bright

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{cmbright}

CM Bright

7. Utopia via Fourier package

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fourier}

Fourier

8. Latin Modern

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}

Latin Modern

9. Helvetica

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvetica}
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault} %% Only if the base font of the document is to be sans serif

From the Wikipedia entry

Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Die Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

Helvetica

10. GFS Didot

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{gfsdidot}

From the Wikipedia entry:

Didot is a name given to a group of typefaces named after the famous French printing and type producing family. The classification is known as modern, or Didone. The typeface we know today was based on a collection of related types developed in the period 1784-1811. Firmin Didot (1764–1836) cut the letters, and cast them as type. His brother Pierre Didot (1760–1853 ) used the types in printing. His edition of La Henriade by Voltaire in 1818 is considered his masterwork. The typeface takes inspiration from John Baskerville’s experimentation with increasing stroke contrast and a more condensed armature. The Didot family’s development of a high contrast typeface with an increased stress is contemporary to similar faces developed by Giambattista Bodoni in Italy. Didot is described as neoclassical, and is evocative of the Age of Enlightenment.

GFS Didot

Alternate Row Shading in LaTeX Table

Alessandro — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:07:31 +0000

This tutorial has been contributed to the wikibooks project. You can find it at this link (currently accepted)

Table Data are notoriously hard to read line by line.

In the very same way, grades in a Curriculum can be hard to read.

A nifty and quick workaround is to shade alternate rows with different colours, preferably one white and the other a little darker.

Confused?

Apple will give you a hand: just look at your iTunes — and I will make your job easier by posting a screenshot here (click on them!).

So usual question: how do we go from a normal table to a table with shaded rows, in LaTeX & Friends?

In images, how do we make the transition from the first to the second screenshot?

The answer is simple and it is all a matter of looking into the xcolor package documentation, which provides you with the command which we will be using in order to get the shaded rows.

The package documentation is available, as always, on CTAN.

Let us start with the preamble of the document:

\documentclass{article}
 
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\definecolor{tableShade}{HTML}{F1F5FA}   %iTunes
\definecolor{tableShade2}{HTML}{ECF3FE} %Finder
 
\begin{document}

things to note down are:

we use the xcolor package;
we invoke the [table] option, otherwise we won’t be able to use the table color features;
we define a new color which will be used to shade odd (or even) rows.

For our examples we use the following two colours, grabbed from iTunes and Finder on Mac OS X.

All you need to get your table now, besides the data, is ONE command (!).

I repeat: a single command will produce a table with odd rows and even rows of alternate colours.

The command in question is \rowcolors{1}{tableShade}{white}, to be inserted right before your table.

The syntax is pretty easy: \rowcolors{<starting row>}{<odd rows colour>}{<even rows colour>}

and we are done!

The code follows

\begin{center}
\rowcolors{1}{tableShade}{white}
%SOURCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_craters_on_the_Moon,_T-Z#X
\begin{tabular}{l|c|l}
\scshape Crater		&	\scshape Diameter	 & \scshape Eponym\\ \hline
Zach		&	70 km	&	Franz Xaver von Zach (1754-1832)\\
Zagut		&	84 km	&	Abraham Ben Samuel Zagut (circa 1450-circa 1522)\\
Zähringer	&	11 km	&	Joseph Zahringer (1929-1970)\\
Zanstra		&	42 km	&	Herman Zanstra (1894-1972)\\
Zasyadko	&	11 km	&	Alexander Dmitrievich Zasyadko (1779-1837)\\
Zeeman		&	190 km	&	Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943)\\
Zelinskiy	&	53 km	&	Nikolay Dimitrievich Zelinskiy (1860-1953)\\
Zeno		&	65 km	&	Zeno of Citium (circa 335-263 B.C.)\\
Zernike		&	48 km	&	Frits Zernike (1888-1966)\\
Zhiritskiy	&	35 km	&	Georgiy Sergeevich Zhiritskiy (1893-1966)\\
Zhukovskiy	&	81 km	&	Nikolay Egorovich Zhukovskiy (1847-1921)\\
Zinner		&	4 km	&	Ernst Zinner (1886-1970)\\
Zöllner		&	47 km	&	Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834-1882)\\
Zsigmondy	&	65 km	&	Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (1865-1929)\\
Zucchius	&	64 km	&	Niccolo Zucchi (1586-1670)\\
Zupus		&	38 km	&	Giovanni Battista Zupi (circa 1590-1650)\\
Zwicky		&	150 km	&	Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974)
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
 
\end{document}

which produces

While this is a useful example, you should consider leaving table headings and the first row white, and using the shade colour from the third row onwards (by specifying 3 instead of 1 in the starting row argument.

Moreover, if you for any reason want to eliminate shading from a particular row, this can be easily done via the \hiderowcolors command, and reactivate shading via the \showrowcolors command.

this second table with custom end line is typeset by the following code:

\begin{center}
\rowcolors{3}{tableShade}{white}
\begin{tabular}{lcc}
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\textsc{Exam}}
		&\textsc{Grade}	&	\textsc{Grade Points}\\ \hline
Corporate Financial Strategy	&	A	&	4\\
Derivatives			&	A	&	4\\
Money, Credit, and Banking	&	A	&	4\\
Business Strategy 		& 	A-	&	3.5\\
				& 		&	 \\
\hiderowcolors			&\textsc{Gpa}	&\textbf{3.875}
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

XeLaTeX Source

PDF Output

Wrapping Text in Rounded Corners ColorBox in LaTeX with TikZ and PGF

Alessandro — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:40:20 +0000

How the heck do we make a text box with a color background have its corners rounded? I wondered.

In images, how do we make the transition from the first screenshot below to the second, and maybe even to the third one?

Turns out the answer given from google’s results is more complicated than life (and LaTeX) requires, because, at least given my poor knowledge of LaTeX, \ovalbox and \oval commands don’t necessarily play nice with colours are overall less flexible than the TikZ package.

Now a word of warning: using TikZ for this purpose is a bit like using an atomic bomb to kill a bug, nonetheless using it may entice yourself (and me) to learn it more extensively and exploit it for its other much more powerful applications.

So let us get started with some quick code: it’ll only take a few lines to get our result.
Here’s the preamble:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
%symbols - the ones you see on the left of the email and of the phone
\usepackage{bbding}
%\usepackage{hyperref}
\definecolor{shade}{HTML}{D4D7FE}	%light blue shade

I am currently having an issue compiling with XeLaTeX and getting hyperlinks to work, so that is why the hyperlink package is commented out, and the email will not be enclosed in the \href command.

I am looking into the issue though, and will update the post when a solution is found: unfortunately I am no expert of LaTeX and even less of PGF and TikZ.

After the preamble, we begin the document and start the picture which is encapsulated by the tikzpicture environment:

\begin{document}
 
%\begin{tikzpicture}
 
%	\node [fill=red,rounded corners=5pt]
%	{\href{foo}{	bar bar bar}};
 
%\end{tikzpicture}
 
\begin{tikzpicture}
 
\node [fill=shade,rounded corners=5pt]
{
\begin{tabular}{c|l}
& Born in Wonderland, Italy July 3, 1912 \\
\raisebox{-3pt}{\Phone}
& +39 123 456789\\
\raisebox{-3pt}{\Envelope}
& einstein.einstein@gmail.com
\end{tabular}
};
\end{tikzpicture}
 
\end{document}

This will produce the second screenshot.

The code is mostly self-explanatory, just remember that you need to define the shade color and the symbols are available if you load the bbding package.

The commented out part at the beginning will show you the problem of the hyperlinks I mentioned before.

Anyone able to hack it so it works with XeLaTeX? Let me know.

For the moment you can enjoy the two-column CV with a rounded corners box, if you like it.

XeLaTeX Source

PDF Output

Advanced two-column LaTeX CV Template | Part 2 + TeX Source

Alessandro — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:10:13 +0000

In this part we will cover the following:

1. Splitting the document with vertically aligned minipages;
2. Designing the Work Experience and Education Section;

The first part of this tutorial is to be found at this post.

Just for a quick recap, this is what we want to achieve as our final result

After the title, whose code we have seen in the previous post, we are going to setup the document so that the it is nicely divided into two columns.

In order to achieve that with the maximum flexibility, we will make us of minipages, that is, the minipage environment.

You can find more information on this environment at the following link.

I apologize in advance for the indenting, but the code highlighter is kinda funky.

The left-hand side column

We start the left hand side column with the following code:

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth} %START of left-hand side minipage

The previous code means creating a minipage, i.e. a page within the page, whose vertical alignment is t = top (where other possible choices in the standard non-generalized minipage environment can be b = bottom and c = center).

Moreover, the page width equals 0.5 times the textwidth, which is not the same as the paperwidth!

Now a little trick which will make things easier for the alignment of the two minipages:

\vspace{0pt}

now the reason for this is not 100% clear to me, so I will redirect you to page 25 of the [PDF] epslatex package documentation.

And now the easy stuff: Section Headers, Dates of Employment, Company, Position, a Description of your daily activities…if you’re not sure about how to structure the document, you can refer to this post.

The code for this is pretty straightforward:

% NEW SECTION
 
\section{Work Experience}
 
%WORK EXPERIENCE -1-
 
\raggedleft
 
\emph{Current}, from \textsc{Jan 2009}\par
\raggedright\large Trader at \textsc{Enoi} s.p.a., Milan\\
\emph{Physical Natural Gas Trading}\\[5pt]
 
\normalsize{Provided analysis of spreads, in particular time and location spreads,
with emphasis on trading opportunities on the curve,
also taking into account the availability of storage facilities.
Became familiar with logistic implications of physical
gas trading and developed knowledge of
continental virtual hubs for gas exchange.}\\[10pt]

After listing here a few of your work-related experience, you should consider putting here some more interesting stuff which requires a little more than a single line, for example your participation to conferences, the awards and scholarships you received, or international certificates and qualifications you might have.

% NEW SECTION
\section{International Certificates and Awards}
\raggedleft{\textsc{Sep 2006}}\par\raggedright
Scholarship for graduate students with an outstanding curriculum (\euro\  30,000)\normalsize\\[3pt]\raggedleft{\textsc{Jun 2006}}\par\raggedright
 
\textsc{Gmat}\textregistered: 730 (\textsc{q:50;v:39}) 96\textsuperscript{th} percentile\\ \textsc{awa}: 6.0/6.0 (89\textsuperscript{th} percentile)\\[10pt]

%% NEW SECTION
\section{\textsc{Computer Skills}}
 \begin{tabular}{rl}
Basic Knowledge: & \textsc{php}, my\textsc{sql}, \textsc{html}, Access\\
& \textsc{Linux}, ubuntu, {\LaTeX}\\
& \\
Intermediate Knowledge: & \textsc{Vba}, Excel, Word, PowerPoint\\
\end{tabular}

and we are done with the left-hand side column

\end{minipage} %END of left-hand side minipage

The right-hand side column

Just like the first minipage, the second is obtained with the following command:

\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.44\textwidth} %START of right-hand side minipage
\vspace{0pt} %trick for alignment

notice the \hfill command which puts the minipages as far as possible in the text width. This wouldn’t make sense if the minipages where 50% of the width each, but please notice as well that the right hand side column is slightly smaller, which makes the document look a little more stylish.

It also helps giving more focus on the work experience part, that is, the left hand side minipage.

As for the right hand side section, remember to keep it simple and short, otherwise the content will flow out of the margin, resulting in the common warning of “overfull box”.

The “contact” box

The contact box is the box at the top right of the minipage, with the nicely colored background.

Contact Form

How do we obtain this? The package xcolor and color will give us a hand…
Also, the symbols need a little bit of tweaking as well.
This is the code to produce the box:

\colorbox{shade}{\textcolor{text1}{
\begin{tabular}{c|p{7cm}}
& Born in Wonderland, Italy July 3, 1912 \\
\raisebox{-3pt}{\Phone}  & +39 123 456789\\
\raisebox{-3pt}{\Envelope} &\href{mailto:albert.einstein@gmail.com}
{einstein.einstein@gmail.com}
\end{tabular}
}
}\\[10pt]

The \Phone and \Envelope symbols are provided by the bbding package, which we loaded at the beginning of the document.

A little tweaking is required to the vertical alignment of the symbols via the \raisebox command, although I am not sure as to the reason why this happens.
The next section is very easy to obtain, so I won’t go into the details of its typesetting.
This is the code:

\section{Education}
\begin{tabular}{rl}
 
%EDUCATION -1-
\textsc{July} 2008 & Master of Science in \textsc{Finance}\\
& \textbf{Bocconi University}, Milan\\
& 110/110 \small\emph{summa cum laude}\\
& Major: Quantitative Finance\\
&\normalsize \textsc{Gpa}: 28.61/30\\
&\\
 
%EDUCATION -2-
\textsc{July} 2006 & Undergraduate Degree in\\
& \textsc{Law} and \textsc{Business Administration}\\
& \textbf{Bocconi University}, Milan\\
&110/110 \small\emph{summa cum laude}\\
&\normalsize \textsc{Gpa}: 29.85/30\\
&\\
 
%EDUCATION -3-
\textsc{Fall} 2005& Exchange Semester at \\
& \textbf{University of Southern California} \\
&Los Angeles\\
&\\
 
%EDUCATION -4-
\textsc{July} 2003& \textbf{Liceo Classico ``E. Duni''}\\
& Matera\\
& Final Grade: 100/100\end{tabular}\\[10pt]

and this is the result:

That’s all for this document.

If you so wish, you can view the text source of the document online at this link.

Alternatively, feel free to download the source and the pdf of the finished document below

XeLaTeX Source

PDF Output