Typesetting your academic CV in LATEX

Typesetting your academic CV in L^AT_EX

[Example of XeTeX-typeset cv] Several dedicated packages are available to typeset a curriculum vitæ or a resume in L^AT_EX, such as europecv or ecv. For some reason I have always found these solutions not flexible enough to suit my needs. This is why I opted for a standard article class as a basis for my CV.

Some T_EX engines such as XeTeX allow you not only to benefit from the advanced typesetting features available in L^AT_EX, but also to use in your documents expert fonts such as Hoefler Text or Adobe Garamond Pro and to edit T_EX sources in your native (Western or non-Western) writing system.

For my CV I use a template compiled in XeTeX with Libertine as the main typeface (get it from GitHub). My developer portfolio is set in Titillium. The following are custom templates I designed to typeset an academic curriculum vitæ in XeTeX. You are free to download them and modify them to typeset your own cv (get them all from GitHub).

Features

Access to expert font features (such as ligatures, contextuals, glyph variants) (via the fontspec package)
Unicode-ready templates (so you can write natively in Kanji, Cyrillic or Arabic without loading any extra package)
Custom heading fonts (via the sectsty package)
Clickable hyperlinks (via the hyperref package)
Hanging notes
Alternate ampersands

Requirements

(All required software is bundled with the MacTeX distribution)

A XeTeX distribution
The fontspec package
(optional) A graphical T_EX editor, e.g. TeXShop
(optional) Expert fonts (see below)

1. Fontin

(Requires the free fonts Fontin and Fontin Sans)

Downloads

source: cv_template_xetex_fontin.tex
output: cv_template_xetex_fontin.pdf

Version

0.3 (1 June 2010)

2. Gentium Basic

(Requires the free font Gentium Basic)

Downloads

source: cv_template_xetex_gentium.tex
output: cv_template_xetex_gentium.pdf

Version

0.3 (1 June 2010)

3. ITC Officina

(Requires the commercial fonts ITC Officina Sans and ITC Officina Serif)

Downloads

source: cv_template_xetex_officina.tex
output: cv_template_xetex_officina.pdf

Version

0.3 (1 June 2010)

4. Caslon

(Requires the commercial font Adobe Caslon Pro)

Downloads

source: cv_template_xetex_caslon.tex
output: cv_template_xetex_caslon.pdf

Version

0.3 (1 June 2010)

5. Hoefler Text+Optima

(Requires Hoefler Text and Optima, two expert fonts bundled with Mac OS X)

Downloads

source: cv_template_xetex_hoefler.tex
output: cv_template_xetex_hoefler.pdf

Version

0.3 (1 June 2010)

6. Linux Libertine

(Requires Linux Libertine a free, OFL-licensed OpenType font)

Downloads

source: cv_libertine.tex
output: cv_libertine.pdf

Version

0.3 (24 June 2010)

Getting expert fonts

X_ƎT_EX gives the best results with expert fonts such as those based on OpenType technology. Most of them can be purchased from digital foundries, but Mac OS comes bundled with a number of excellent fonts with expert features (e.g. Hoefler Text, Optima, Skia, Apple Chancery, Zapfino). More free OpenType fonts are available on the net. Check out for example the Gentium, Charis SIL and Doulos SIL fonts from SIL, Cardo by David J. Perry, the free fonts designed by Jos Buivenga (the creator of Fontin), or the amazing Font Squirrel.

Disclaimer

The above templates are provided for free and without any guarantee that they will correctly compile on your system if you have a non-standard configuration. Fonts used in the above templates are not included in the downloads and must be already installed on your system. You can modify the fontspec settings in the document header to use any TrueType, OpenType or AAT font available on your system.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Will Robertson for the fontspec package and help, readers of AcademicProductivity.com for their comments, the MacTeX people, Dick Koch in particular, for their kind support, Yan Brailowsky, Sam Cox and Karim Dharamsi for reporting various issues. François Briatte helped solved an annoying issue with unprocessed floats in v.0.2. This article, the PDF samples and T_EX sources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. A backlink is sufficient for attribution.

External Links

fontspec: An automatic interface to feature-rich fonts in X_ƎT_EX by Will Robertson.
ecv: a fancy Curriculum Vitae class.
europecv: an unofficial class for European curricula vitae.
LaTeX Resume Tips by Matthew Boedicker.
LaTex: Professional Résumé layout made simple by Kamil Wójcicki