If you’re applying for a graphic design job, you need to showcase that you’re the perfect applicant the company talked about in the job description. One of the ways you can do this is with a cover letter. If you want to impress a potential employer and shorten your job search, here are some cover letter writing tips you can use.
Do you want to write the perfect cover letter? Here’s a great example to use as a starting point:
Dear Mr. Smith,
When I designed a multimillion-dollar corporation’s website home page, I realized that becoming a graphic designer had become both my dream and my reality. Throughout the years, I’ve worked with everyone from indie game developers to gigantic media corporations, always creating websites and designs that meet their specific needs. I want to bring my web design and technical skills to the graphic designer position at Company Name.
My experience with Adobe Creative Suite, specifically Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, has made it possible for me to conceptualize and create just about any design for a better user experience while simultaneously designing something quite easy on the eyes. My experience with CSS and HTML also allows me to align my graphic design experience and web development skills, bringing a complete graphic design experience to every project.
I want to create better graphic design projects for the company and by extension for the people who are looking for a specific design. I look forward to sitting down and talking to you about how my graphic design skills are the perfect fit for this position.
Sincerely,
Jerry Lister
Although this is one of the shorter cover letters you might see, it’s a helpful starting point to writing a great cover letter.
Before you start with the actual letter, you need to start with the header. Similar to a resume header, a cover letter header typically has your full name and contact information with your phone number, email address and job networking links, including your LinkedIn profile. Once you’ve created this part of the cover letter writing process, you can move on to writing the rest of the cover letter.
You need a hook to make a hiring manager take notice at the very beginning of your cover letter. In this situation, the applicant mentions designing the home page for a multimillion-dollar corporation. Although he doesn’t mention the corporation by name, chances are it’s in his resume’s work experience section. This shows he has the experience for this new job and it’s an interesting bullet point for the hiring manager.
Now that you’ve captured the attention of the hiring manager, you can continue with more of your skills and achievements. You’re trying to cement the idea in the hiring manager’s mind that you’re the perfect person for this job. Draw on your hard skills and soft skills, talking about the top 4-5 skills that you think best showcase your knowledge. The applicant here mentions Adobe Creative Suite, web development experience, and a combination of the two.
Finally, in the closing paragraph, you have the call to action. Here, you directly ask the hiring manager for an interview. This applicant uses an assumptive technique, stating “I look forward to sitting down and talking with you.” That assumes an interview, which is a great way to create an incentive for the recruiter to reach out to you.
Yes. Cover letters are always important for any job application you turn in. They provide many benefits to the average job applicant. Not only do they allow you to talk directly to the recruiter but a cover letter allows you to go over elements of your graphic designer resume template that you didn’t have ample space to explain on your resume. Plus, you can even ask directly for a job interview, which can show your enthusiasm and confidence.
You should aim to make your graphic designer cover letter template from half a page to 3/4 of a page, which is about 250-350 words. This gives you enough time to talk about all of the important elements of your graphic designer resume while also not making the letter so long that a hiring manager might not be interested in reading the entire cover letter.
Yes. You don’t need years of experience to create a unique, professional cover letter. You just need to know what your skills are and how you can incorporate those skills into the cover letter you write. Although this graphic design cover letter sample leans heavily on work experiences, you can write a very similar resume using this cover letter format but utilizing other elements of a graphic designer position.
