SlideMagic Blog

When designing a table there is always the question: which dimension to put in rows, and which in columns. Personally, I do what looks best, without applying any specific rules.

• If one dimension has labels that are very long, I prefer to put them in rows
• If one dimension has lots of data points, I tend to put them in rows (16:9 screens give more flexibility for wide designs though)
• Years usually go in columns
• Big options (1, 2, or 3) usually go in columns
• Ranking different values usually is better vertically, it is easier to compare a column of numbers than have your eyes move across a row of numbers.

Art: Lyubov Popova, Air, Man, Space, 1912

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Many people think that the wide screen 16:9 format looks modern for presentations, a slide fills the entire LCD screen, rather than being framed by 2 black bars or worse: stretched/distorted while you cannot find the screen remote in the conference room.

There is a problem though. Widescreen was designed with movies in mind. For text it is a disaster. Even at a decent font size, there are too many words on a single line, it is hard to follow for the eye.

Solutions:

1. Even bigger fonts
2. Rather than list things vertically, try putting them in boxes that are horizontally spaced out
3. Stick to 4:3 and find that sticky, dusty, old, remote control in the conference room (look for the ASP button)

Management consulting stories are always divided in 3 or 5 components (optimally starting with the same letter), and each of these is then divided into 3 sub components as well.

Connect, communicate, control. And to achieve connect we need to aggregate, accumulate, and accelerate. This works reasonably well in documents for reading (if the verbs are chosen meaningfully and not using a dictionary looking for words starting with C).

Verbal pitches are a bit different though. A human, person-to-person story is flatter, more linear. It is hard to go up one level, down to the second point if we do not have the hierarchical structure in front of us. Also, using too many words that start with a C make you sound like a consulting report, not like a genuine speaker.

Listen to yourself: if it sounds wrong it probably is wrong.

If you pitch your product as a direct alternative to something else, the purchasing manager might say that it is a nice solution, but we already spent our budget on something that is acceptable. Often, it is better to convince the buyer that this is a new market, a new product, that has no substitutes yet. An opportunity for startups that are out there to change the world.

Thomas Leuthard (web site, Flickr) is a street photographer who published his work under a Creative Commons license on Flickr (attribution is required). His work is of very high quality. His images make great backgrounds for presentations that need an urban setting.

There are so many wonderful things to say about your idea. all the problems it solves, all the things it can do, all the thought you have put in to make it perfect.

In the middle of the “and also, and also, and also, and also” the audience gets bored and wonders what it actually boils down to. In 99% of pitches I have designed, there is one original idea that is more important than all the other features.

Design your presentation around this. When describing the problem (always easier to do than selling the solution), focus on the most important issue. When presenting the solution, hammer in that one crucial innovation. After that is done, you can mention other elements of your story as a “by the way”. But, watch out not to get carried away here.

Prioritising that one big idea out of all your smaller ideas is not a matter of diluting things with generic terms: “we deliver ROI”. It should be highly specific.

Many presentations degenerate over time. What started fresh, clean, and straight to the point gets diluted over time.

More people start editing the presentation. They do not understand all the slides 100%, so they add bubbles and bullet points with text just to make sure that the point gets made somewhere in the presentation. Bits of the same messages start appearing on slides throughout the document.

Over time, the company positioning can change a bit. Rather than starting with a clean sheet, the old presentation gets adjusted. The result: a bit of the old, a bit of the new.

Do spring cleaning now and then.

I often get this issue in client discussions. So we start out, and in that first meeting, it often turns out that the client can explain it in 5 to 10 minutes. The difference? Me impolitely interrupting monologues where I got the point already, and asking questions inviting conversation about issues that are not covered.

How to do it without the help of a probing presentation designer? Take a radical approach to how much time you spend on each element of your story. If a certain section is incredibly important, but at the same time totally obvious, old news, and well known, cut it to the minimum. On the other hand there might be a tiny detail that is completely counter intuitive and merits a total 5 minute deep dive.

You are not writing an essay about your brilliant idea, you are racing against the clock to explain your idea in 5-10 minutes.

I admit that this is easier to do in 1-1 conversations than in formal presentations. Test your story in 1-1 conversations with smart people before pitching it to larger audiences.

Professors, researchers, and teachers like to start their lectures with an extensive discussion of the background and/or context of an issue. Talking about the background is useful if it adds to the story, if it does not it is boring content that fills up those important first minutes of your talk where the audience is still sharp and awake.

Some examples of excess background:

• Tangents, side steps
• History that is important to you (when your company was founded), but irrelevant to the audience (unless you are a Champagne house that goes back to the 1700s)
• Preaching to the converted: spending slide after slide with data the audience is already familiar with, or arguing about issues the audience already agrees with

You are not giving a lecture in economics or history, you are trying to sell an idea.

Some technology solutions appear to be magic, almost too good to be true. Complicated algorithms that are hard to apprehend for example. Your audience might not believe you, because they cannot understand it, you are trying to sell snake oil. How to pitch magic?

• Do not start of your audience on the wrong foot by claiming yourself that it is magic. It does magical things, but it is not snake oil, everything is science and engineering.

• Use two stories:

• One: a powerful analogy/story that explains the fundamental approach your system takes. This is to explain the concept.

• Two: a super detailed, super in-depth deep dive on one aspect of your algorithm, show how it works on one micro example. This is to show that it is tangible and real

Many people try to make story 1.5: an analogy that is too forced and complicated to understand quickly, and a technology explanation that is too vague that it leaves people wondering whether they are looking at a magician instead of an engineer.

Strangely enough, it is a visual analogy that might drive you to story 1.5. A simpler, verbal story might do a better job here.