Resumes have been around since at least 1482 when Leonardo da Vinci tried to sell his skills to the Duke of Milan, and visually, they hadn’t changed much, until now. Lately, some modern job seekers are creating infographic resumes in the hopes of giving employers a whole new reason to take a second look.
Leonardo Da Vinci Resume, Hoepli edition
Resumes have been around since at least 1482 when the not-yet-famous Leonardo Da Vinci sent a list of his skills and accomplishments to the Duke of Milan. Da Vinci hoped to get a gig as an architect, sculptor or even, perhaps, as an inventor of war instruments.
That was over 500 years ago and the resume has hardly changed at all. The standard, imageless, single-font resume is about as thrilling to look at as a page in the phone book.
In prehistoric times almost everyone did what we now consider the “dirty work.” But ever since the Sumerians developed an agricultural system (circa 5000 BC) most people have been angling to get out of doing the most menial, repetitive, mindless grunt work. But is there an advantage to doing the thankless and lowly task? High wire master Philippe Petit says, “Yes.”
In prehistoric times almost everyone did what we now consider the “dirty work.” But ever since the Sumerians developed an agricultural system (circa 5000 BC)—which created a stable supply of food allowing the population to grow, settle down and develop a division of labor that included skilled and unskilled work—most people have been angling to get out of doing the most menial, repetitive, mindless grunt work.
But is there an advantage to doing the thankless and lowly task?
Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, has quoted Steve Jobs, who cited Picasso’s apocryphal line, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” No one knows for sure exactly what Picasso meant (or, for that matter, if he ever even spoke those words), but what is not in dispute is that Picasso was very clever when it came to theft. Instead of stealing from the celebrated artists of his day, which would have made him a second-rate version of Cézanne or Van Gogh, Picasso stole ideas from artists far outside his own milieu.
In 1907, he saw an exhibit of African art and promptly stole the exaggerated features and non-perspectivized visuals for his own work. When Picasso unveiled Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, his first work influenced by African art, he was hailed as a groundbreaking artist, at least by those who didn’t call him an immoral heretic. Continue reading “Steal Like Picasso: How Outside Inspiration Can Fuel Innovation”
From “The Art of Doing” Photo Album, “I’m a Superachiever.”
Look what happens when everyone from NPR’s Peter Sagal to Austin’s own Toni Price wears their superachiever skills on their sleeve, or heart, or hand, or….
Moving through the ethereal streetscape were the hot dog vendors and children on scooters, bike riders and pedestrians on cell phones, lovers and fighters, traffic cops, garment workers, parking meters, water ice stands, wig shops and newsstands that we so often take for granted or notice only for a fleeting moment as we hurry past. These visuals captured from daily life were rendered so bizarre and unexpected that we assumed it was trick photography or that the whole endeavor had been staged.
Terroir wines have been cultivated in Europe for centuries. But could it be done in the New World? Visionary vintner Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard took up the challenge, asking himself: “Am I capable of such a transcendental feat?” Read more here.
Randall Grahm by Karen Barbour with excerpt from “The Art of Doing”
When we wanted to find someone to portray the wildly imaginative Northern Californian vintner Randall Graham we thought of the wildly imaginative Northern Californian artist Karen Barbour whose work—in its joyful organic complexity—looks like how we imagine Grahm’s mind to be with its visionary thoughts floating and exploding.
Grahm is the wine world’s renegade, a viticulture rebel, who knows as much about the grape as anyone and yet has ceremoniously rejected the cork (and held a mock funeral), slapped on full-disclosure ingredient lists to his bottles “to keep himself honest” and prodigiously markets his tongue-in-cheek vintages like Le Cigare Volant (The Flying Cigar), named after U.F.O.’s feared by Frenchmen in the Rhone region in the1950’s.
But that was all before Grahm took the ultimate step, eschewing millennia of man’s attempt to tame Nature to produce the wine of his dreams—vins du terroir. These are the wines, Grahm explains, that so embody the essence of the soil and microclimate from whence they come that when tasted, they express a sense of place. These wines only exist in the Old World where they have been cultivated in centuries’ old vineyards. Continue reading “Visionary Vintner Randall Grahm: An Artist’s Interpretation”
Mark Frauenfelder, coeditor of BoingBoing and producer of Gweek podcast, interviews Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield about “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well.”
We spoke with Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing co-founder, DIY-Maker proponent and all-around pathologically curious Man about the Internet for his Gweek podcast about our book, secrets of success, what makes Sergio Corbucci‘s original “Django” so good and judgmental parents (as analyzed by Katie Roiphe) so bad, Josh’s fine art projects Gigi Gaston and Fathom Butterfly, Camille’s favorite movie of the last year “All About My Wife,” and a whole lot more.
Frauenfelder, who we interviewed for our book in a chapter “How to Create One of the World’s Most Popular Blogs,” told us that one of the principles he applies to all of his work is to: Appeal to the Novelty Gene. He told us:
“They say that there is a novelty-seeking gene. It causes people (like me!) to crave excitement, and to want constant hits of surprising things that don’t fit the conventional model of the way the world works….Ninety-nine percent of what’s out there is crap. Our job is to put in the hard work to find that 1 percent that’s fascinating because a lot of our community has the novelty-seeking gene, too.”
You can listen to our conversation on Gweek 087 here.
In the wake of the Jonah Lehrer scandal in which he was caught fabricating quotes for his best-selling book Imagine, How Creativity Works, we thought back to the words of Michael Sitrick a Hollywood crisis manager to the stars and prominent CEO’s, known as the Spin Doctor.
“Public Relations is about persuasion and persuasion depends on credibility, so you can’t lie.”
You could just as easily substitute “journalism” for “public relations.” Although we understand that writers like Lehrer shape a narrative by massaging quotes and emphasizing some parts of the story over others, our belief in a writer’s carefully constructed arguments is dependent on our belief that he or she has more or less accurately reported the “facts.”
Lehrer risked his credibility by fabricating quotes of Bob Dylan in the service of creating a more persuasive argument. It was a form of writer’s Russian Roulette. The story might have been more effective with the fabricated quotes but when he got caught lying by Michael Moynihan of Tablet Magazine he lost his credibility and his ability to persuade us of anything. This is in turns made him a pariah to those who have given him a vehicle for his work. They had to protect their own credibility. Lehrer resigned as staff writer from the New Yorker and his publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has withdrawn his book. Continue reading “Blast from the Past: On Jonah Lehrer and Lies”
It may be human nature to bitch and moan about what’s wrong with the world, but many successful innovators when faced with life’s aggravations don’t just complain. Instead, they take personal responsibility and marshal all their resources to figure out how to improve what’s wrong.
Ryan Howard the 33-year old powerhouse cleanup hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies has been in a slow decline ever since his 2006 season when he hit 58 homeruns and won the Most Valuable Player award. Read how an injury and time on the bench changed his mindset and may lead to his best season in years. And what falling in love with his work again may mean for the rest of us.
Ryan Howard the 33-year old powerhouse cleanup hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies has been in a slow decline ever since his 2006 season when he hit 58 homeruns and won the Most Valuable Player award.
Howard, the Phillies’ first baseman, was given a massive and controversial long-term contract extension of $125 million just as his hitting weaknesses were exposed. Opposing teams got smart and shifted their players to the right side of the field, where as an extreme pull hitter, Howard was more likely to hit the ball. Late-in-game left-handed relief pitchers were brought in to throw him breaking balls in the dirt that he would often flail helplessly away at. He walked less and struck out more, no longer the feared hitter that he once was. Continue reading “The Struggles of a Slugger Who Forgot How to Have Fun”
