Meet Visme’s “Visualize Me” Contest Winners!

This past September, Visme launched its first “Visualize Me” infographic contest, and the entire team is now pleased to announce the winners of this fun initiative which challenged participants to create unique visuals of their life stories or resumes.

To ensure the most objective and impartial selection process, we recruited a judging panel of six visual and digital content experts:

• Randy Krum: Founder of Cool Infographics
• Barry Feldman: Founder of Feldman Creative
• John Rampton: Founder of Due
• Larry Kim: Founder of WordStream
• Payman Taei: Founder of Visme
• Nayomi Chibana: Editor of Visual Learning Center

And after identifying the top 25 most-voted entries on social media, we asked our judges to score each project according to the following three criteria:

• Originality (40%): Overall, how original, creative and/or unique is the project, on a scale from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the most creative and 1 the least)?
• Design (20%): How visually appealing and impactful is the design, on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest score possible and 1 being the lowest?
• Content (40%): How much thought and effort was put into the story and/or content behind the visual, on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible score and 1 the lowest?

Now that the contest is over, we want to send a special thank you to our judges and all those who participated and challenged themselves to think visually. Congratulations on a job well done!

(If you’re curious to see all of the unique and creative projects submitted, you can still visit our contest gallery here.)

And now, without further ado, here are this year’s “Visualize Me” winners!

Thom Gibson — 1st Place Winner

One of the most entertaining and creative entries of this year’s infographic contest was Thom Gibson’s “How to Propose to Your Girlfriend” visual.

A middle school robotics and math teacher at Headwaters School in Austin, Texas, Thom had the bright idea of creating an interactive flowchart of the steps to follow when proposing to your girlfriend, a process he actually went through five years ago when he asked his now-wife to marry him.

“I’d never actually made an infographic before. I was pretty curious as to how to do it, but never had the resources to do it. With free access to a huge amount of templates, it was easier for me to find ideas, and I came up with this flowchart which I thought would be interesting for others to look at and learn from.”

View Thom’s Infographic that won the Visualize Me contest.

He was impressed by Visme’s large icon and image libraries, as well as the ability to apply colors from a wide selection of color presets, which came in handy when he wanted to achieve a harmonious look but didn’t have the time to search for his own colors.

As for other Visme projects, he also created the slide deck below which helped him convince his school’s administration of the need for a new drone.

He found it smoother than other presentation tools, such as Google Slides or PowerPoint, as it did not present the usual glitches when navigating through slides with embedded videos. (You can read his entire review of Visme on his blog, where he frequently publishes reviews of educational software.)

What is he going to do with his $2,000 prize? He says he wants to invest in some good external speakers for his computer and put some toward his next vacation with his wife (who, by the way, is quite happy he decided to tell their story in infographic form!)

Luisa Torres — 2nd Place Winner

Another story which is sure to warm your heart is this visual of how Luisa Torres, originally from Colombia, met her now-husband who lives halfway across the world from her in Japan.

A freelance graphic designer, Luisa was searching for infographic contests online when she stumbled upon Visme’s “Visualize Me” challenge. Having created many infographics for clients in the past, she thought she would have a good chance of earning one of the top prizes–and she was right!

She immediately began sketching her ideas and thought it would be interesting to tell the visual story of how she and her husband first met.

“A lot of people here in Japan ask me how and why I came here, since it’s such a different culture from the Latin one, so I decided to tell my story in a creative way and show how I made this big decision in my life.”

View animated version here

Using a bright color combination and animation effects, Luisa was able to use Visme to translate her love story into a visual which nicely sums up the milestones in her happy relationship.

She says she was impressed with how much faster she was able to create an infographic with Visme, compared to other tools she uses such as Illustrator or Photoshop. She also enjoyed the fact that she was able to customize any element, apply her own color schemes and upload her own images.

“I like the interactivity that Visme provides. You can create projects with videos, links, and other embedded media so that viewers can access all the information they need in one spot; they don’t have to go anywhere else.”

As for her prize, a new GoPro Hero4 camera, she says she can’t wait to use it! And she will definitely make the most of her free 1-year membership to Visme’s Premium and Iconfinder’s Starter plans to create visuals for her clients.

Carolyn Whitfield — Most Voted Project

This year’s participants weren’t only limited to creating visual stories or biographies, but also visual resumes. This was a perfect fit for Carolyn Whitfield, an executive resume writer with more than 10 years of experience helping clients develop power-packed personal campaigns.

She came across the “Visualize Me” contest after receiving an email newsletter and was excited by the possibility of putting her newfound knowledge of infographic resumes to the test.

To start, she created this fictionalized version of one of her client’s resumes and was pleased with the results. As it was her very first attempt at creating an infographic resume, she decided to create a second one with her own information, which you can see below.

“You can really stand out from a pile of resumes by making yours visual. Here, the use of appropriate icons, logos maps, etc helps make the information much more memorable and digestible, which is an advantage if you consider that hiring managers typically sift through hundreds of resumes.”

image: http://blog.visme.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Carolyn-Whitfield-Infographic-Resume.jpg

View animated version here

She thoroughly enjoyed combining textual content with visual graphics to create a stand-out end result and was pleased to learn that she actually CAN create her own infographic resumes.

As far as her prize, she says that plans to use her 1-year memberships to Visme’s Premium and Iconfinder’s Starter plans to the fullest in creating a range of infographics.

Your Turn

If you haven’t already taken the challenge of creating your own visual resume or visual story, you can take Visme for a trial run here and use it for free for as long as you like.

Don’t hesitate to drop us a line below and let us know what you think!