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.

DeliverablesWhat we shippedview all 7

Document · September 2024 · liveBrand book v1.1/brand/resume-place

Document · spec.json + spec.md for AI toolsSpec endpoints/brand/resume-place/spec.json

System · Tokens · components · patternsDesign system/system/resume-place

Website · Federal Resume Builder + Ten Steps curriculumResume-Place.comresume-place.com

Campaign · Monthly cadence · ongoing through 2026Federal-news banner system

Document · Curriculum publicationsTen Steps book series

01Legacy

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

1974

1978

1981

1988 workshop

1993

The Resume Place helps people write new chapters in their story of service and commitment to America.

Brand manifesto

02System

The brand book is a URL, not a PDF.

Workhorse moved the Resume Place brand book off the deck and onto the web. Two surfaces hold the canonical work. /brand/resume-place is the live brand book: foundation, voice, color, typography, logo, audience personas, surface-keyed do/dont copy, and a pre-baked prompt kit agents can call by id to author on-brand work without a designer in every loop. /system/resume-place is the productized design system: live tokens, foundation page, components, patterns, screens.

A spec endpoint at /brand/resume-place/spec.json serves the structured spec to AI tools. /brand/resume-place/spec.md serves the same content as agent-fluent prose. The brand book is alive. It versions in git. It ships every time we change it.

Wordmark, orange

Wordmark, blue

Lockup, stacked

Logomark, orange

Logomark, blue

Lockup with tagline

03In production

Resume-Place.com

A homepage rebuild that reorganizes 50 years of services into five clear entry points, with a self-serve consultation tier above the fold.

Five service entry points: Agency Trainings, Career Books, Certification Programs, Federal Resumes, SES. Above the fold, a self-serve consultation tier ($210 Federal Resume Review, $780 Initial 3-Hour SES ECQ Consultation) so visitors transact without a sales call. Below it, the founder section anchored by Kathryn Troutman holding the Federal Resume Guidebook with the National Resume Writers Association recognition badges.

Newsletter signup. Career blog grid. The Federal Resume Guidebook promo. Three audiences served on one homepage without forcing any one of them to scroll past the others.

Homepage comp, revision 5

Homepage comp, revision 6

Live page, May 2025

SES page updates

Staging, June 2025

Federal Career Newsletter

Banners that ship against the news cycle.

Federal hiring is event-driven. OPM rule changes. SES ECQ updates. Transition windows. New-graduate recruiting cycles. Merit-hiring debates. The campaign banner system is built so the team ships a fully on-brand banner in under a day when a topic surfaces.

Same chassis every time. Tangelo Orange or Midnight Blue ground. Messina Sans headline. Messina Sans Mono kicker. The wordmark or checkmark in the corner. A clear next-step CTA.

Capabilities, 2026

Merit Hiring, 2025

New Graduate Government Careers, 2025

Transition Resume, 2025

Determination, 2025

SES ECQ Updates, January 2025

Books, certificates, and the printed shelf.

The Federal Resume Guidebook (10th edition) is the brand's longest-arc credential and the source material for the certification curriculum. Trainer certificates are issued at completion of the Ten Steps Certified Federal Resume Writer (CFRW), Federal Job Search Trainer (CFJST), and Career Coach (CFCC) programs. Print on cover stock with a foil seal. The Ten Steps shelf is the most prominent way customers engage with the brand.

The Ten Steps shelf

Federal Resume Guidebook, 10th ed.

Back cover

Trainer certificate, 2025 master

Capability statement

Sell sheet

One-pager, SES ECQs 2026

Hiring steps chart

Folded poster

Catalog spread

Presentation, cover

Presentation, spread

04By the numbers

Engagement window: 2024 to ongoing

A fifty-year-old brand, in production.

Brand book v1.1 shipped September 2024. Website rebuild, campaign banner system, and certification surface in active production through 2026. The Ten Steps shelf, the SES workshop, the agency-training contracts, and the federal job seekers all run through the same identity.

01 · Founding year

1973

The first-ever federal resume writing service. Still the originator of the category.

02 · Years of federal-career expertise

50+

Half a century of responding to Washington's changing rules, regulations, and culture.

03 · Brand book release

v1.1

Last updated September 26, 2024. Lives at /brand/resume-place. Versions in git, not in Dropbox.

04 · Service entry points, one homepage

Agency Trainings, Career Books, Certification Programs, Federal Resumes, SES. Each its own funnel, all under one brand.

Production ledger

2016 – 2019

Named brand colors

Tangelo Orange leads. Midnight Blue carries the institutional weight. Mahogany, Spiced Tea, Cool Blue, Deep Blue, and a four-step neutral ramp fill out the system.

Type cuts in the Messina family

Sans for the workhorse copy. Serif for long-form and the federal aesthetic. Mono for kickers and meta.

Campaign banners in 2025

Merit Hiring, SES ECQ Updates, Transition Resume, New Graduate Government Careers, Determination, plus the 2026 Capabilities deck.

$210 / $780

Self-serve consultation tier

Federal Resume Review and 3-Hour SES ECQ Consultation. Above-the-fold transactions without a sales call.

Attendees per SES ECQ workshop

1- or 2-day in-person training. $5,486 government rate per cohort. The agency-training surface that anchors the institutional revenue line.

Ten Steps®

Curriculum + certification shelf

Books, the trainer/coach certification (CFJST/CFCC), and a recurring conference the brand has anchored for decades.

Brand book v1.1 released September 2024. Live at /brand/resume-place. Design system at /system/resume-place. Campaign program in active production through 2026.

05Closer

Designed to outlast the next fifty years.

A brand that has held a federal-services category since 1973 has earned the right to a system built for the long arc. The work codified what was already true (the warmth, the craft, the institutional teaching role) and gave it a contemporary surface that holds whatever the next administration, the next OPM rule change, or the next platform shift puts in front of it.

The brand book lives at /brand/resume-place. The design system at /system/resume-place. The work continues at resume-place.com. Honoring the legacy. Recommitting to the purpose. Writing the next chapter.

System / Artifacts

The system, in your hands.

Tokens in DTCG format. Figma library. Code package. And a live voice demo so the AI reads this brand back to you, not some generic studio voice.

Live · Productized

See the live system

Download ↓

Figma library

Design file

Open ↗

Voice demo

Hear Resume Place speak

Pick a prompt to see a response drafted in this brand’s voice.

Related Work

Brand & Web

Velocity One

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.

Open brand book Design system →

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