SlideMagic Blog

Here is a nice about typography: Practical Typographyby Matthew Butterick. As the title says: very practical (Typography in 10 minutes, Summary of key rules), and in a nice format: simple HTML pages that look great on any device.

Most PowerPoint decks are not designed for standup presentations to large audiences, rather they are documents that are used to get a smaller group of people to agree business decisions (the implementation plan, next quarter’s budget, etc.). The language used in these documents has changed over the years.

First, there was the memorandum that was dictated and written on a type writer, later replaced by a word processor. It was full of fluffy and formal language and people quickly learned how to skip most of it by jumping straight to the “Executive Summary” on the first page. All of these documents looked sort of the same.

In the 1930s, the management consulting profession was invented. Engineering mixed with business resulted in scientific charts full of frameworks with fancy names and buzzwords. Like the executive summary, managers had to acquire a method to skim through the content quickly, ignoring padding and business school speak to cut through what the document really wanted to say. All of these documents looked sort of the same.

I think it is time to create a new business language that injects good design into the management consulting-style charts and I am trying to write my upcoming presentation app around it. Yes, all of the documents it produces will look sort of the same, but it will make business decision making easier and more beautiful on the eye.

Young companies often have an ambiguous strategy. Nobody is really clear, and everybody has a different interpretation. The moment you need to write a press release or an external presentation it all has to be clear. That is why it can take a long time to agree on 1 single page of text.

Market positioning can be difficult for a product manager. Your product has so many features, you know the detailed spec comparisons versus all your competitors. Everything is not simple or black and white. But marketing is about making choices: who to target, with which benefits and turn that into a really simple story. And that means making decisions about what to cut out.

Designing a presentation is similar. Your story might have many angles, many background stories, an interesting history of how you got where you are, interesting perspectives on how your competitors are positioned in the market. A clear presentation has eliminated these distractions.

Remember, a marketing presentation is not a lecture about your industry, your company, or yourself but about solving your customer’s problem.

We have all been in them: museums full of densely packed displays of artefacts with tiny description signs that provide factual information rather than the story behind the objects. Crowds of people pass by without anyone paying attention.

Good museum design involves empty walls with just a few pieces to focus on. The explanation and background text are prominent, it could even be bigger than the object itself. People take a moment to absorb the piece, get interested in the story, read it, ponder the artwork a bit more, maybe take a picture.

Think about these 2 different approaches in the context of presentation design.

I had to swap my hard drive a few days ago and the experience was quite a different one from similar accidents that happened to me in the 1990s. What is different?

First of all, the total lack of panic. After I diagnosed the problem, I did not have to think long about hitting the delete hard drive button. All my data is in Dropbox.

A hard drive crash would have been an excuse to splurge on a new machine a decade ago. Then, there were dramatic performance degradations in just a few years as PC software become more powerful, especially because of the improved graphics. No such thing in 2013, software does not get more complicated, often the opposite is true as PC software is replaced by web applications.

I decided to rebuild my computer from scratch rather than recreating it from a Time Capsule backup. The machine got a little slow and cluttered full of applications that I tried once but never used again afterwards.

One decision: I did decide not to re-install my virtual Windows machine that I put on my machine the first day I bought my Mac to calm down my fears that the whole transition just might not work. PowerPoint 2013 for Windows is better than PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, but not enough to justify breaking my Mac file system workflow and colour picker, and to sacrifice disk and CPU performance to a huge virtual machine (Parallels).

Some things to remember with Dropbox. Move the default photo directory of your Mac inside Dropbox so you have your personal pictures backed up. (But then again, 99% of my personal pictures are actually sitting on my cell phone now, and the reason that it is very important to back up your phone, personal photos on your phone are more important than PowerPoint files on your PC). And secondly, move your Mac download folder into your Dropbox. Some software that you bought online do not allow for re-downloading the installation file (stupid).

These are the best client situations. A presenter who has delivered a story a thousand times, the story flow is great but completely disconnected from the (poorly designed) slides. When I receive the existing slide deck without explanation I cannot make much of it. But as soon as the presenter ads the verbatim (“This is what I usually do…”) a powerful story comes out that is usually told over slide 1 of the presentation.

When redesigning a presentation, start with the audio track and ignore the existing slides.

This post by Nancy Duarte about how taking long walks inspires her, resonated with me. She describes the experience of shutting down your brain to help you focus and be more creative. Almost all pleasures in life are someway or another about cutting out noise, worries, and random thoughts out of our mind.

Ancient oriental wisdom encourages us to focus deeper on the natural experiences of enjoying what we eat, making love, meditation. Artists try to create a disconnected world through a good story or beautiful craft. More brutal, unhealthy, and/or illegal ways to reach that stage of disconnection are alcohol and other banned substances. Mass media tries to achieve that same escapism through retail therapy, (loud) music, or bone-shaking visual effects in movies. Endurance sports fanatics can even get hooked to to beta endorphins that are released as the result of heavy exercise.

Nancy choses hiking, I use mountain biking as a way to shut down the brain. It is the perfect combination of being outdoors, doing a physical workout, but also requiring your brain to focus heavily on obstacles on the trail ahead of you and being aware of the balance and flow of your body at all times. There is literally no time to think of anything else.

When you are designing a presentation for either your boss or a client, there is always the temptation towards the end of the project just to do the required changes and stop thinking creatively with the finish line in sight. Slowly, your original radical design idea can be diluted into a more ordinary and less powerful presentation. Resist the temptation of becoming a remote-controlled slide editor and protect your work of art.

If you have the freedom to pick the colours of your presentation yourself, try if you can find ones that have enough contrast both with black and white. The Idea Transplant orange for example can be a background for both white and black text. Skype blue also works. Design is always a combination of aesthetics and practicality.