SlideMagic Blog

Designing presentations is a creative process. Churning out slides and racing towards the deadline will not give the best results. I like to think about a presentation, let it rest, think about it again, drop it again to nurture the best creative ideas.

While reading this post on Cameron Moll’s blog I discovered that there is a scientific name for this, the creative pause: the time between the moment you stop actively thinking about a problem and the time the solution pops in your head unexpectedly.

Cameron goes further to analyze why taking a shower can help closing this creative pause:

• Minimal distraction
• Minimal mental strain
• White noise
• Change of scenery

All valid points (going on a bike ride or excercise in general creates a similar environment). One addition: people tend to take showers in the morning, I think that that long night of sleep with your subconscious mind griding away might have made the biggest contribution to cracking that difficult issue.

Via Hacker News

Videos of presentations of the TED conference are released throughout the year. This one just got posted. Tim Brown is the CEO of the “innovation and design” firm Ideo (Prada store in New York). He talks about the (powerful) relationship between creativity and play. In the rush to the deadline, we very often forget that designing presentations is a creative process.

UPDATE: The McKinsey Quarterly has interviewed Tim Brown, read it here.

I discovered that the subconscious mind really works, and it changed the way I design presentations. Partly driven by my experience as a strategy consultant at McKinsey where presentations are mostly associated with presenting recommendations at the project deadline, presentation design used to be a focused and exhausting sprint to the finish line. I changed my approach: dropping work on a presentation for a day, doing a few detailed charts, taking a break, sketching high-level stories, sleeping on it, working on the color scheme, working on a different project, finding a great closing image, etc. Maybe you should try it as well.