Resume Place

Honoring the legacy. Writing the next chapter.

Resume Place, Inc. has been the preeminent federal job experts since 1973. The first-ever federal resume writing service. The publisher of the Ten Steps to a Federal Job® curriculum. The agency-training partner behind a generation of federal hires. Workhorse delivered a complete brand identity, a refreshed website architecture, and a campaign banner system that ships against ongoing federal-news cycles.

The work happens across three audiences. Federal job seekers across GS levels. Federal agency procurement and training teams. The Ten Steps Certified Trainer and Coach community. The brand system holds all three on a single visual language without code-switching.

We wrote the book on federal resumes. Literally.

Resume Place team, K Street office, 1980s. Behind: PRINTING / PROOFS / WRITING DRAFTS / PURCHASE / REFERENCE BOOKS / PAPER & ENVELOPES.

We wrote the book on federal resumes. Literally.

In 1972, before there was a USAjobs.gov, before there was a federal resume as a category, Resume Place placed its first ad in the Washington Post classifieds. "RESUMES. Excel. quality professional resumes, type-set & printed. The Resume Place. 298-7890." The studio was a print shop on K Street with storytellers on staff. People walked through the door with a job announcement and walked out with a federal resume.

Five decades later, the engagement begins on USAjobs.gov and the SES interview prep room. Kathryn Troutman, who founded the practice in 1973, still leads it. The brand carries fifty years of Washington-rule changes forward as a credential, not a museum.

Five decades. Washington Post archives.

The brand kept buying classifieds in the Washington Post for decades. Each ad reads like an artifact of its hiring era. The 1972 type-set classified. The 1974 column. The 1981 federal-jobseeker workshop announcement. The 1993 expanded service listing. The voice has held.

1972
1972
1974
1974
1978
1978
1981
1981
1988 workshop
1988 workshop
1993
1993
The Resume Place helps people write new chapters in their story of service and commitment to America.

Brand manifesto

From the brand book · Color

Tangelo leads. Midnight carries the weight.

Fifty years of federal credibility needed institutional weight without reading like an agency itself. Tangelo Orange holds the recognition the brand already owned; the Midnight and Deep Blues carry procurement-grade seriousness. The full eleven-color architecture, with its Pantone assignments, lives in the brand book.

Tangelo Orange
#F94D00
Primary · Pantone 1655 C
Deep Blue
#1C3664
Pantone 8783 C
Midnight Blue
#223240
Canvas
#FAF7F0
Brand canvas
Open in the brand book →Resume Place · Color

From the brand book · Type

One family, three cuts.

Messina Sans, Serif, and Mono hold editorial print, marketing, and product UI on a single family. The serif carries the federal-aesthetic moments; the mono handles the OPM and SES shorthand the audience reads daily.

Display
Messina Sans Black
Hero headlines and the wordmark.
Federal careers, served.
Editorial
Messina Serif
Long-form publishing and federal-aesthetic moments.
A brand that has held a category since 1973.
Mono
Messina Sans Mono
House treatment is all-caps with extra tracking.
OPM · SES · ECQ · CFJST · CFCC
Open in the brand book →Resume Place · Type
/ The System

Everything this brand is made of.

The marks, the palette, the type, and the designed work that carries them. One source feeds the live brand and this wall. Click any tile to open it.

Live brand book

The Resume Place system is live and navigable.

Tokens, voice, components, and patterns rendered from the source on disk. The same record powers this engagement, the product, and the agents on stack.

What are you working on?

Studio for founders, experts, and the institutions they run.

Living, working brands. Built with your team to keep growing.

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