SlideMagic Blog

I think there are 4 different type of visuals,  Have I forgotten any? (The images below are taken - out of their context - from previous posts on this blog)

1. Big picture, big emotion slide. A huge image of a squeezed orange “the competition is killing us!”, a big picture of an audience asleep “presentations are boring!”, swimmer dives in the pool “let’s go for it!” (lot’s of cliches here, but I have seen many good ones as well). These slides are an emotional shortcut, they unlock an idea/feeling that is already present in everyone’s brain quickly.

2. Location port, a big image of a place, a street, a country, a customer. Pretty much like a movie director opening a film to bring us to a different time, a different place. An image of the interior of a messy store is much more powerful than a list of bullets: isles are not straight, labeling is unclear, lighting is poor.

3. Relationship slide. Shapes/boxes with text, arrows, to show how issues are related, impacting each other, are dependent on each other, sit in different places on the same map.

4. Data chart showing us a trend, or comparing numbers.

An incredibly dense relationship or data chart should actually be in the “location port” category, the U.S. army spaghetti chart is an example: it is not so much about understanding the chart in detail, rather the viewer understands immediately that “it’s complex” (earlier post).

One of the things I find the most difficult in presentation design is to get a consistent look and feel across all slides in the deck. It is tempting to come up with the killer chart for each concept that you want to communicate. Each slide is great, but if you look at your slides in the slide sorter, nobody would guess they are taken from the same story.

So, we have to add one more constraint to the design process: consistency. Some visualization ideas might just not work given the overall context of the presentation, sorry.

In the design process, I always start with the most important slides that convey the heart of the message. Brainstorm, sketch these, and then freeze the look and feel of the entire presentation based on these few slides:

• Fonts
• Colors
• Position of titles
• Type of images (cartoon, nature, vintage, people, color)

Think of your presentation as a movie that runs in the background, it is set in a time, a place. You pick them all, but stay inside the world of your presentation.

Image credit: Copeau,

This image tells 2 things:

1. Have the courage to deviate from standard visual cliches
2. Simple shapes can still convey a powerful message

The image was added by Robin Benson and taken from this book:  Graphic Design, Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design (affiliate link)

Stock images are often staged, not natural, lacking spontaneity. Images with a creative commons license on Flickr are an excellent alternative, with one drawback: it is a bit harder to find the right image.

Here is what I do. Now and then I take a Flickr “deep dive” and just randomly browse/search images not using a functional key word such as “chair”, “pilot”, or “apple”. Rather use characteristics that a photographer would use to describe an image. As an example, see what a range of beautiful images comes up when searching for “focus”.

Browse through the images and bookmark them or save them to a tool such as Evernote for later use. An example, a very detailed image of the Manhattan Bridge by See-ming Lee.

I often have to explain the concept of “the curse of knowledge”: it is actually harder for an expert to explain something than a reasonably intelligent outsider (here is why presentation designers should be reasonably intelligent :-) ).

Dan and Chip Heath use a musical metaphor in their book “Made to Stick”:

1. The presenter thinks of a musical piece and imagines the full symphony orchestra giving all it can
2. He taps the tune with his fingers on the desk, it all makes perfect sense
3. The audience sees/hears someone tapping…

For executives who are keen to load their slides with data for an external audience, I use the cockpit analogy. A pilot can interpret all the signals of all the instruments in a split second and understands the situation the plane is in. The novice needs a bit more time to digest the information…

Thank you Brett Morrison for this beautiful picture of a Space Shuttle cockpit.

This ad by Webroot Internet Security reminded my of many discussions with clients in the technology sector. The VP Product is meticulously scanning the slides to make sure ALL the product features have made it in the deck.The result: a bored audience that will not understand the value your product brings.

Still, there is a way to include them though, but with a different headline: cram them all in page using a neat table in 7pt font with a title: “Powerful specifications”. The audience will believe you without reading all the text.

Via Ads of the World.

I came across this closing screen of an ancient King Kong movie (via FFFound).

1. Vintage closing screens actually make a nice final slide of a presentation, you Google lots of them
2. Always close your presentation with a sentence that makes it clear that the presentation comes to an end. “End that is how…”. Don’t say explicitly “well, this is the end”. Let questions come up spontaneously, and don’t say: “OK, I have time for 5 questions”, there just might be chance that no questions will come up (a bit awkward). I have seen many great presentations without questions.

What a nice chart by Mobile Analytics. Perfect blend of data, logos/icons, and typography.

The new shape subtract feature in PowerPoint 2010 (review) enables you to make shape cutouts in a more elegant way than before (see the old approach here). A step-by-step guide using a great image by Gregory Bastien.

Sometimes it is necessary to adjust the characters in a sentence manually. Look at this image (with a deep quote) and see how letters line up vertically. Standard horizontal and vertical spacing in PowerPoint will not get you this effect. Put in the characters as individual text boxes and align them to get it just right…

Image via FFFFound