Elon Musk's Resume of Failures

It's very common for super successful people to have their fair share of failures along the way. But Elon Musk has an astonishing amount of failures that has led to his massive success! In fact, so many that Kickresume has created a resume out of them. The Elon Musk's Resume of Failures highlights his major negative business and personal moments in his adult life. Probably more of a timeline than a resume.

Failure is frustrating. Failure is something you don’t put on your resume. On the contrary! One does not simply write a resume of his or her failures (Hint: we’re going to do it). At the same time, if you attempt great things, your failures are probably going to be just as impressive as your accomplishments.

There’s probably no other person alive today who embodies this notion more than Elon Musk.

Sure, he’s considered a genius who also happens to be worth $14 billion.Certainly, many of his ideas have turned into realities. Arguably, he revolutionised every industry he has ever touched: eCommerce (PayPal), automotive industry (Tesla), space flights (SpaceX), and sustainable energy (SolarCity). Still, all of these accomplishments pale in comparison to his ability to fail.

Read more at https://blog.kickresume.com

Thanks to Tomas for sending in the link!

534 Apple Products On One Giant Poster

534 Apple Products on One Giant Poster are included in The Insanely Great History of Apple 3.0 poster from Pop Chart Lab. It is the new and improved list of all Apple products ever made! You can buy a 28"x 42" print of the infographic here.

Newly refreshed with recent Apple products including the 9.7" iPad Pro and the iPhone SE, the world's most comprehensive mapping of Apple products is back just in time for Apple's 40th Anniversary--and is now printed on demand on beautiful exhibition canvas! This classic gallery of proprietary gadgets displays every computer, handheld, peripheral, software, and operating system released by Apple from 1976 onward. Over 500 items in all, chronicling how Apple has invented—and reinvented—insanely great products.

What's more, this canvas print comes bundled with laser-engraved System 6 Window Bar Rails for a throwback-OS mounting solution.

Found on Fast Company Design!

Choosing the Right Explainer Video

Are you choosing the right explainer video? Infographic from Yudle takes a close look at the different types of videos that can be used to explain your business or product to audiences.

We all love an explainer video whether we’re informing ourselves on the mechanics of black holes, looking for an easier way to recruit new staff, or finding out how to fix that leaky tap. The question is, if you’re looking at creating an explainer video for your global organisation or startup company, do you know what you’re looking for?

This helpful infographic from our team here at Yudle Animation provides a guide for anyone who wants to get an animated explainer video made.

Great information, but too much text in this design. A few stats are also only shown in text, and should have been visualized to make a bigger impact on the readers.

The URL directly to the infographic landing page should be included in the footer of the infographic itself so readers can find the original, full-size version when people share smaller images of the infographic without linking back to the original.

Thanks to David for sending in the link!

The Infographic Resume by Hannah Morgan: Interview & Giveaway

The Infographic Resume is a fabulous book by Hannah Morgan from Career Sherpa! I have a chapter dedicated to infographic resumes in my book, Cool Infographics, but this is the only entire book I've seen dedicated to infographic resumes anywhere. Find more on Hannah's book page.

This month I am giving away one signed copy of The Infographic Resume! Register on the Giveaways Page by June 30th to be entered.

Infographic resumes are in, and they’re not just for designers. Free online tools are popping up every day to help anyone create a dynamic, visual resume—adding panache without sacrificing substance for style.

The Infographic Resume provides essential tips and ideas for how to create visual resumes and portfolios that will make you stand out from the crowd. Richly illustrated in full color and including lots of inspiring examples, the book will teach you how to:

• Create a powerful digital presence and develop the right digital content for your goals
• Build your self-brand and manage your online reputation
• Showcase your best work online
• Grab a hiring manager’s attention in seconds

Packed with dynamic infographics, visual resumes, and other creative digital portfolios, The Infographic Resume reveals the most effective tools, eye-catching strategies, and best practices to position yourself for any job in any kind of business.

Everyone should follow Hannah Morgan on Twitter (@careersherpa)! She shares her wisdom and insights on resumes, hiring and career issues openly. You can download her Infographic Resume Cheat Sheet, and she maintains a Pinterest Board gallery of Infographic and Visual Resumes.

Hannah answered a handful of questions about The Infographic Resume:

How would you define an infographic resume?

Hannah: An infographic resume converts your work experience into visual pieces such as charts and graphs. Instead of finding the right words to write about your skills and achievements, you can present the most important parts of your experience visually. While this may sound difficult for some people, especially those without design skills, it can actually be liberating. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Chapter 1 was great! Could you summarize your chapter on How We Got Where We Are Today?

Hannah: You may have noticed infographics and other visual elements appearing more often in newspapers, marketing materials and social media than in the past. We are inundated with information and rely on our smart phones for on-the-go access. Reading large blocks of text takes time and it is even more difficult to read on a mobile device. Studies indicate that the brain processes pictures faster than words. Other studies say pictures increase comprehension, increase the time people spend on a website, and increase sharing of updates on social media. Job seekers can leverage these trends to their advantage. Savvy job seekers know today’s job market is highly competitive. To make matters worse, almost every company has an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) which typically weeds out candidates and results in the dreaded “black hole” of no response. Technology has enabled job seekers to break out of the standard “apply online and wait” mold. By applying out-of-the-box marketing strategies such as social media campaigns, personal websites and infographic resumes, job seekers can do more to stand out and garner the attention they crave (and deserve). 

How would you describe the current state of the market for infographic resumes?

Hannah: Infographic resumes deviate from the expected and that is the very reason to use one. Most job seekers will not use one either because they don’t know about them, don’t know how to create on or think it would be risky to try and use one. In my opinion, the rewards outweigh the risk. Go ahead, use an infographic resume.

What are some of the more unexpected jobs or careers that you have seen candidates use an infographic resume?

Hannah: The early adopters of infographic resumes were people who had graphic design skills. But infographic resumes are being created by technical writers, sales representatives, information technology specialists and many other types of occupations. Infographic resumes demonstrate creativity and innovative thinking which are qualities valued in marketing departments, information technology, and start-up organizations, just to name a few. Consider the culture of the organization and the requirements of the role to help determine if an infographic resume might be successful opening doors.

Are there any risks associated with infographic resumes?

Hannah: There are some things you should know before you use an infographic resume. First, and foremost, do not use infographic resumes when submitting through applicant tracking systems! The technology used in ATSs cannot read visual content. You should also take into consideration who you are sending your infographic resume to. Typically, people in human resource and recruiting roles expect to see the traditional, conservative text resume. These roles often have to review hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes and do not have time to search your infographic for skills and work history. A better strategy is to send your infographic resume to the actual hiring manager or to a contact you have made inside the organization. Infographic resumes also make a great addition to your LinkedIn profile as embedded media in the summary section. If you have a personal website or online portfolio, an infographic resume works well there too. If you are proactively networking with people in your field of interest, bring your infographic resume to the meeting and share it to guide the conversation. And why not bring an infographic resume to an interview to impress the interviewers?

What types of reactions to infographic resumes are you hearing from hiring managers and recruiters?

Hannah:  About a year ago, I polled the recruiters, human resource professionals and career coaches in my network to get their feedback on infographic resumes and the overwhelming response was positive. In fact, 68 percent said they would look at an infographic resume, 32 percent said it would depend and no one said that they wouldn’t look at one. Here are some of the comments I received: 

“I would welcome a fresh, newer idea, which this is, as opposed to the same old resume.” -Hiring Manager

“Shows some creativity.”  -Other

“Yes! I would be thrilled with the creativity, and it would definitely be a resume that would stand out from the pack.” – Hiring Manager

“Yes, because normal resumes are boring.” -Other

Do you have your own infographic resume that I could share?

Hannah: Since I don’t have design skills, I rely on tools that convert my LinkedIn profile into an infographic resume, like this one created using vizualize.me. There are so many tools available to help create infographics so even people without design skills or familiarity with design software can dabble in infographics. I’ve written about four of those tools here: http://careersherpa.net/4-templates-for-infographic-resumes/

Hannah's Bio:

Hannah Morgan is the Founder, CareerSherpa.net and a Job Search Strategist. She is a speaker and author on  job search and social media strategies. She delivers fresh advice and serves as a guide to the treacherous terrain of today’s workplace landscape. Hannah’s experience in Human Resources, Outplacement Services, Workforce Development and Career Services equip her with a 360 degree perspective on job search topics. Recognized by media and career professionals, Hannah is an advocate who encourages job seekers to take control of their job search. Hannah is frequently quoted in local and national publications and she writes a weekly column for U.S. News & World Report.

Hannah is the author of “The Infographic Resume” (McGraw Hill Education, 2014) and co-author of “Social Networking for Business Success” (Learning Express, 2013). You can learn more about Hannah on CareerSherpa.net and by following her on Twitter at @careersherpa.

The Process of Designing an Infographic

The Process of Designing an Infographic is an interactive design that outlines my own infographic design process. My data visualization and infographics design company, InfoNewt, uses this process when designing infographics for clients, and I teach this process in my workshops and classes. The team at Visme.co created an interactive infographic version of it using the Visme design platform. Visme.co is a fantastic online design platform for infographics, presentations, reports and more.

Most of my designs follow this 5-step process:

1. Data Research - Start with the data. What's the insight or story?
2. Wireframe - Wireframe your story before you start any design work 
3. Design Concepts - Experiment with design ideas by creating rough concepts that visualize your data in a handful of different ways
4. Iterate - Choose one design direction or combine a few different ideas from your concepts.
5. Finalize - The final step is to finalize your design with the appropriate Copyright or Creative Commons license, and export the final design to a few different file formats as necessary. 

One of the advantages of using Visme as the platform to design your infographic is that you can create interactive elements in your design. In this case, you can see the original interactive version on the Visme site, that includes additional information when you mouse over each process step. This is built in Javascript, and anyone can share the interactive version by using the embed code on their own website.

You can embed the interactive infographic on your own site by using this HTML code:

<script src='//my.visme.co/visme.js'></script> <div class='visme_d' data-url='the-process-of-designing-an-infographic-d25a0c' data-w='800' data-h='2982'></div>

The Fallen of World War II

The Fallen of World War II from Neil Halloran on Vimeo.

The Fallen of World War II is an animated infographic video by Neil Halloran showing the scale of deaths in the U.S. and other countries involved in the war. He also has an experiemental interactive version at fallen.io

An animated data-driven documentary about war and peace, The Fallen of World War II looks at the human cost of the second world war and sizes up the numbers to other wars in history, including trends in recent conflicts.

Visit fallen.io for more information.

Love this! Very well done animated infographic video.

The stacks of icons shown for each country are 20 across, which is hard for most people to comprehend. We live in a Base-10 society, and showing the icons in rows of 10 would be much easier for audiences to understand.

There are a couple discrepancies as well. For example, the narration mentions that France lost 92,000 in the Battle of France, but the visualization only shows 86,000.

Also available on YouTube:

How to Make an Animated GIF Infographic

Eleanor Lutz has done some amazing design work with her company Tabletop Whale. She is known especially for her work creating animated infographics using animated GIF files. She has posted How to Make An Animated Infographic as a 2-part explanation that lays out her process in Photoshop (as an animated GIF file of course!).

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking for a tutorial on how to make animations. So this week I put together a quick explanation for anyone who’s interested. I archived it as a link on the menu bar of my website, so it’ll always be easy to find if you need it.

This is just a run-through of my own personal animation workflow, so it’s not a definitive guide or anything. There are plenty of other ways to make animations in Photoshop and other programs.

I’ve never tried making a tutorial about my own work before, so sorry in advance if it’s confusing! Let me know if there’s anything I wrote that didn’t make any sense. I’ll try to fix it if I can (though I probably don’t have room to go into detail about every single Photoshop function I mention).

I’m seeing more infographics as animated GIF image files online. Their advantage is that they are a self-contained image file that’s easy to share. No need for embed code or Javascript for readers to share the animation on other sites or social media.

I met Eleanor recently at the Malofiej Infographics World Summit, where she gave an amazing talk about her animated designs, her process, and even some discussion about when not to use animation. Check out the video interview with Eleanor by Visualoop at the conference:

Also found on VizWorld

The Anatomy of the Perfect Sales Presentation

Good infographics tell stories to the audience, and you sales presentations should too. The Anatomy of the Perfect Sales Presentation from Clemence Lepers (@PPTPOP) uses an infographic story to help people learn to tell better stories with PowerPoint. Very meta isn’t it?

You’re not gonna like it, but if you’re willing to start making some solid sales presentations that’ll help you generate more business, you’ll have to print the next sentence in your brain. Nobody cares about you. I repeat, nobody cares about you.  People care about how YOU can solve their problems and deliver the outcomes they are interested in. To grab prospects attention and close more sales, you need to bring consistent, clear solutions to their problems.

Easier said than done, right?

To help you with that, I’ve created an infographic that breaks down the key elements of a highly effective sales presentation. Follow them, and you’ll be set to get your value proposition across, communicate a compelling message and convert more prospects.

There’s a structure to a story, no matter what medium is being used to tell it. Don’t just throw your data and talking points into an infographic (or a presentation). Tell a story that makes your data meaningful to the audience.

5 Ways to Market Yourself Visually

Visuals communicate complex ideas into something more digestible. Large amounts of text make it harder for our brains to find pertinent information in a timely manner. This problem can be remedied quite easily, by adding images and visuals into marketing yourself.

Visuals can help turn a complex idea into something more easily digestible, with less effort and time spent by the person viewing it. By putting extra work in on your end, you position yourself to leave a more lasting impression, and stand out from a pile of resumes. Especially when marketing yourself to a recruiter or HR department - making it easier for them to understand your most important work. In Cool Infographics, I cover how visuals are 6.5 times more likely to be remembered than text alone, and there’s no better time to be remembered than when you’re applying for a new job.

Below are five ways to start marketing yourself visually right away:

1. The Infographic Resume

Pinterest Board Gallery of over 900 Infographic Resumes

Infographics are an excellent visual tool to have in your arsenal. They are the pinnacle of displaying complex information in an easily digestible way. Either pay a talented infographic designer, or do one yourself. If you’re not comfortable using graphics design software, check out an excellent free option online like Visme.co - that will have you designing infographics in no time.

Take a look at this Infographic Resume Pinterest Board with over 900 examples for inspiration, and check out the great book The Infographic Resume by Hannah Morgan when you’re ready to get serious about developing your own.

2. Visualize Your LinkedIn Profile

via Richard Branson’s LinkedIn profile

It should be no big surprise that a prospective employer will look at your LinkedIn profile prior to checking you out in person. LinkedIn allows you to add photos and visually rich imagery, so take advantage of these opportunities. If you add companies that Linkedin recognizes to your work history, your profile will automatically display their logos.

Examples could be photos of you working at a trade show, product prototypes you designed, or a photo of you giving a presentation (LinkedIn has Sl SlideShare integration, so embed the presentation in your profile as well). Other images or PDF files work as well, like an advertisement you designed.

3. Create A Visual Portfolio of Your Work

Talking about your creative work only goes so far, you need to provide visuals. Visuals help the employer see what you’re capable of, and gives you the opportunity to control the work they see. Websites like Behance and Dribble are excellent options for creatives of all types. Not only do you get to upload all of your projects, but you get to interact with their creative communities as well - having the chance to inspire others, and be inspired yourself.

4. Create a Blog Post to Provide More Information and Visuals of Your Work

A resume should be a brief overview of skills, previous employment, education, and best works. One page is best. If you would like to expound further upon your projects, then create a blog post - loaded with visuals - that delves deeper into your work.  Tumblr is a great free option for keeping a personal blog.

Include links to any additional content you publish in your Linkedin profile and even on your text resume. Make it as easy as possible for hiring managers and recruiters to find your work.

5. Content Curation

Similar to the idea of creating a blog post to highlight your best work, create a content curation site to highlight the best infographics, articles, quotes, YouTube videos, podcasts, brands, inspirational work, thought leaders, TED talks, and books you’re reading. Show your future employer that you have a passion for gaining knowledge, and are an expert in your field. Pinterest is a great option, and if you’re looking for a design-centric curation site, Designspiration has got you covered.

What other ideas would you recommend?

Update on Wednesday, December 24, 2014 at 9:34AM by Randy

Thanks to The Huffington Post for also picking up the article!  

Marketing FAIL: Infographics Hidden Behind Registration Walls

There’s a growing marketing practice that I think is a huge marketing mistake. I’ve seen a number of infographics being published by companies that require the reader to enter their name, email address and other contact information before they can even view the design. This “registration wall” is a way for marketers to gather the contact information from the readers so they can send out additional marketing emails later. In my opinion, publishing an infographic behind a registration wall just doesn’t make any sense.

Here’s an example of what you might see on one of these registration wall pages:

I completely understand putting valuable content behind a registration wall as a method to capture the contact information from potential leads. I get it.  Assuming the hidden content is closely related to the company’s business, the audience interested in that content is likely to represent a pool of potential customers. If they’re willing to give up their valuable email address to gain access to that content, they are probably a fairly strong potential customer (or a competitor checking out your valuable content!).

However, infographics are the wrong type of content to use for this purpose. The companies I see that are hiding infographics behind registration walls are missing the benefit of infographics, which is to deliver easy to understand information to the audience in a format that’s also easy to share because it’s completely contained within the image file.

First, online infographics are meant to be shared. Infographics are popular online for two reasons, easy to understand information and easy to share. Much easier than text articles or blog posts. As soon as one reader shares the hidden infographic image file on their blog or posts it in social media, the infographic is released to the public and available to everyone without registering. Even if you ask people not to share it publicly, the accepted practice online is to freely share infographics.

Second, the research commissioned by Janrain from 2012 indicates that 86% of people may leave a website when asked to create an account. Most of the audience will just leave instead of going through with the registration process to gain access to the infographic. They never see the infographic, never read the data and never hear the message. 

Third, the search engines can’t see past the registration wall. No keywords, no meta-data, no text. The search engines can’t index the content behind the registration wall, so your infographic won’t show up in search results. Only the short, publicly accessible teaser information on the registration page has any chance of being indexed to appear in results.

Here’s what I recommend. Use a compelling infographic as a top level summary of the more detailed content you put behind the registration wall. All of the people that share your infographic, are effectively advertising your more detailed information. You could even make the infographic landing page on your website also the registration page to get more information.  

This way the infographics are available publicly to view and share, and the free content draws in readers to the registration page. The truly interested readers will also give you their contact information to gain access to the more-detailed report or white paper that you have available behind the registration wall.  Now you have built your brand credibility with a widely shared infographic, and you have gathered a pool of potentially valuable leads.

For more statistics and information about registration walls, check out The Registration Challenge infographic from Janrain:

How to Solve the Online Registration Challenge infographic published by Janrain in 2012.

How often have you become frustrated filling out online registration forms? There is a better way. Janrain has compiled data on some of the most challenging aspects of online registration forms and simple solutions to improve the user experience…and conversion rates.

Update on Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 10:54AM by Randy

This post was also featured on The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-krum/marketing-fail-infographi_b_5318544.html