ASSIGNMENT

Create at least one chart that tells an interesting story about you.

The bulk of the course is made up of thinking and drawing exercises, so your chart does not actually have to be résumé ready-- a rough drawing is a perfectly acceptable project format. In fact, you might want to submit a sketch to get feedback from others before generating a final version. Your goal for the project should simply be to share something that makes you unique in a visual format.

DELIVERABLE

Submit the image file of a computer generated chart or photo of your hand drawn chart. Make sure that your chart includes the following:

Title
Axes and datapoint labels
Legends for color, size, shape, etc.
Helpful annotations where things might be confusing
A quick description that could be used like a voiceover to the drawing

Bonus points if you also share:

Any process screenshots or photos (would love to see a lot of SFDs!)
Why you decided to tell this story
Any questions you have about how to improve this or take it to the next level

RESOURCES

If you need help deciding what story to tell, consider these factors:

Content- What do you want to say? What makes you unique?
Audience- Who would you like to say this to? How might they like to see it?
Format- Where will this end up? (It could be embedded into your actual resume, or just be a standalone chart like some of my own examples)

EXAMPLES

Check out some examples to get your creative juices flowing:

Ideas for basic chart types

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A simple visual story

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A detailed visual story

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LINKS, SOURCES, FILES, EXTRAS
Listed by each exercise

Part 1: Shitty First Drafts

I first heard of the “shitty first draft” from Maria Giudice in her interview on Design Matters
More fun thoughts on the SFD
Example SFDs

Part 2: Breaking Down the Traditional Resume:

Part 3: Getting more creative

Creative Resume Ideas to Stand Out Online
Why not visualize some of your failures? The idea of the “relevant resume” comes from the FuckUp Nights movement

Part 4: Digital Drawing

Adobe Draw Website
Adobe Draw Lynda.com tutorial
Teela Cunningham’s Skillshare class on iPad Lettering
My other skillshare classes: Drawing Data, Sketchnotes

Part 5a: Static Charts

Anne Emery’s blog has great guides for creating specific chart types as well as how to make your charts look clean and clear:

Part 5b: Interactive Charts

Tableau Public
- How to use Tableau… where to get started thanks to Brittany Fong
- Introductory training videos on Tableau.com
- My interactives on Tableau Public
- How to video for the lollipop Gantt chart in my visual resume
- Other people’s visual resumes on Tableau Public
Infogram is another Interactive chart builder which has a slightly lower learning curve than Tableau

Part 6: Additional Resources

The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking
My Life in Graphs: A Guided Journal
Me on Twitter, Instagram, my website

Matthias Ackermann

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