SlideMagic Blog

Three different ways to show off your client list, depending on what you want to emphasize:

1. Page of logos to show that they include the biggest names in the industry (here is how to design one)
2. Map with dots to show that they are scattered around the globe
3. Bar chart with sales number ranking to show how much you sold them (if you can share this information)

Mixing them up might not give the best picture: logos of completely unknown companies, a world map with lots of dots in New York City.

Most of the time, it is more powerful to show events that are about to happen rather than the event itself. It is very well done in the ad below for an automatic braking system that anticipates the movement of objects on the road. It brings great tension to the visual, almost making the still image move.

Commenters on Ads of the World were less enthusiastic though. Maybe the plusses and minuses should have been made a bit bigger. And well, if there is something wrong with the chart, it is in its 3D composition. The dog is too close and actually not running towards the cat. But I am probably the only one who bothers about that…

Images with objects isolated on an empty background are not always cropped perfectly. Centring the image will not center the object. Draw a some quick guide lines and you can align things properly.

A question that came in yesterday:

Jan, I have a question about presentations to investment bankers/analysts. One of my clients getting ready to go on a road show says their investment banking consultants have told them to present what I would call (ala Garth Reynolds) a “slideument” that will also serve as a leave-behind. The consultants claim this is the way it’s always done and if they don’t do it this way, their audience will disregard them. Your thoughts?

Yes, in financial services people are used to very text-heavy slideuments for fund raising and IPO roadshows. And in most cases, people will print out the full 200 page deck for each participant in the meeting room.

Now, in finance presentations you need a few pages that are dense (financial statements for example). But there is no reason why the general lessons for presentation design do not apply in finance. In the end, investors are people, and it is harder to convince people to do something (invest) with a boring presentation.

And I have seen it work myself. After the initial resistance, people were actually very impressed with a different style fund raising presentation (and proved it by wiring money).

So what to do? My advice would be to take both approaches. A fund raising roadshow is a big deal and usually people have enough time/resources allocated to it to prepare both a visual, and a dense deck. Present the visual presentation, and selectively jump to appendix charts if you have to. Let the audience read the appendix in their own time.

A few days ago there was Kickstarter, and now Mailchimp has put its annual overview online. I like these blends of web design and presentation design.

From a form perspective, the presentation is clever. Widen and narrow the screen and see what happens, as you make the window narrower, first the infographics move closer to each other, then the design switches from a 2 column to a 1 column layout.

From a content perspective, there is some work to be done. Data is not rounded up and makes it hard to read, and some of the information presentation is not terribly relevant to the viewer (pizzas served). Then, the objective of the site is to show that a lot of stuff is going on at Mailchimp, and with that in mind, they succeeded conveying the message.

P.S.: another cool annual report: Warby Parker(h/t Duarte)

Screens on computers and mobile devices are getting better in 12 month cycles. I design presentations on 2 giant 27" displays that show a lot of detail and reveal the most subtle color shade differences.

Then you put your presentation on a conference room overhead projector that has been sitting there since 2002… The screen resolution is so small that it takes you 5 minutes to find your application windows, and when you finally get to show the slides in presentation mode you will notice that white and light grey is the same color, and that almost black grey is actually bright grey, and that orange means pink.

Test run your designs for the crappy conference room projector.

I am not a fan of 1990s-looking presentations full of childish Microsoft clipart, but this site Open Clip Art can still be useful resource for presentation designers. Firstly, clip art designers are moving into full illustration designs. Secondly, the site is a good place to find icons for your presentation. All material is free to use. As with all user generated content sites, there is no professional reviews before designs get posted, you need to select the poor from the great yourself.

Usually, I find infographics too forced, trying to be cute at the expense of being understood. This visualisation of a big organisation over time is an exception. It must have taken some time to construct though…

Via Fast Company Design.

In some professions people have gotten used to a certain way of communicating. Lawyers use complicated language, medical diagrams look incomprehensible (people want them to look realistic).

Recently, I changed a medical diagram to make it look less realistic, but a lot clearer to explain. I am still convincing the client that it is the right thing to do.

Tom Tunguz claims that this is the origin of the elevator pitch:

The term elevator pitch originates from the very first demonstration of an elevator with a safety brake. At the time, elevators were hazardous, routinely plummeting down shafts when their hoisting ropes fell, destroying their payloads. In 1852, Elisha Otis invented a locking system that would catch and secure plunging elevator. Unable to drive much interest in his innovation, Otis organized a demonstration in New York City. He stood in the elevator as an assistant severed the hoisting ropes and the safety brake engaged. Otis’ innovation paved the way for humans to ride in elevators. Today, the Otis company’s products transport 7B people every three days.

If true, this is a more interesting tale than the story that I thought was the source: finding yourself next to your client CEO going up in the elevator and having 1 minute to sell your idea.