A meeting of 2 generations yesterday, when I sat down with a retired graphics designer who spent his professional live designing logos and visual corporate identities (some of which are highly visible icons in the Israeli high street). He has not used a computer ever to support his design work, and is now focussing on art.
I opened my lap top and showed him some of my work. Some of the points he made:
- “Each of your slides looks good and makes the point. The visual connection between them is weak though.” He suggested to put logos and/or other corporate graphics on each page. I do not agree with him, but he had a point that using images of paintings, “real photos” and stock images created a mixing of styles
- “Each point does not need a slide.” I agree with him for live presentations, and I am actually retreating more and more from the avalanche of slides approach for these types of presentations. For an online presentation though, one slide per point is the way to go though
He showed me his own slide deck that an assistant prepared for him, mainly filled with copies of his own work (logos, paintings, building exteriors). What struck me is the breathing space around each slide. I also use a lot of white space in my slides, but keep the margin around the slide very small. Maybe time to change that.
An interesting meeting.
4 comments
White space is so essential.
I mainly coach young designers at college, and it is always refreshing to see how minimal their slides are from the start.
Too many slide decks look like random collections of picture postcards...
A slide deck is more like a magazine; and a recognizable overall "style" helps keeps ideas together.
It would be great if you could add an example as to white space.
I too subscribe to the slide deck of a 'random collection of picture postcards' and would be curious to see ways to link them all together.
I do agree though that a logo is not the way...
thanks for a great post, as usual!
Fascinating post.