SlideMagic Blog

A presentation should have a consistent look and feel on each slide. When you are using just text and PowerPoint shapes, this is no problem: just use consistent fonts and colors. Images complicate things because they usually come from different sources and - as a result - have different styles:

• Colors
• “Real” images versus studio shots
• “Real” images versus computer-generated renderings
• “Real” images versus “real” art versus stock image art
• Vintage versus modern images
• Portraits, landscapes, objects

Have a look at well-designed books with many images: the images are different but somehow fit together. You as a presentation designer can do a number of obvious things to harmonize image styles:

• Actively pick an image style when you start out designing a presentation (or - like me - adjust the image style as you go through the design process, replacing images as you go)
• Minimize the number of image sources
• Use less images
• Take out the color of all images, and just use black & white, or apply a color overlay

Recently I discovered another solution: applying consistent PhotoShop filters throughout your presentation. A slightly brutal way to harmonize images, but the result can be a presentation with a unique look and feel. The image below has been subjected to a “poster edge” filter, creating a pop-art style of presentation if you apply it consistently to every image in your presentation.

Image via iStockPhoto

A client needed to visualize the regulatory uncertainty in his industry after the financial crisis. This traffic light tree in London is a very useful art installation that you can use in many other confusing situations. The high rises of large financial services firms in the back help complete the picture (my client works in that industry).

The Internet is full of images of the sculpture. Try searching Flickr for images with a Creative Commons license.

Sometimes, a live presentation can be a pretty inefficient way to get a message across. For example, TED presentations are usually really good, but they still need around 20 minutes of your time. Have a look at the new fund raising video of the Acumen Fund that was released yesterday. It lasts 1:35.

In this 1:35 the video manages to explain a completely revolutionary concept to charity. It is not about giving food, it is not about giving the tools to grow food, but it is all about investing in profitable businesses that produce goods/services, create wealth and can grow by themselves.

The video does not need long speaker introductions, does not use spectacular motion graphics, does not rely on “look how miserable these people are” images. Just a number of upbeat people talking straight in the camera at you. It is hard to do this in 1:35 on stage with PowerPoint slides.

Sign up for the recently established social network of the Acumen Fund to learn more about the dramatically different approach the organization is using to combat poverty.

I have been thinking hard about how to incorporate negative numbers in stacked column and bar charts. The example below shows that it is possible. However, it might be the exception of the rule that graphs are usually better at presenting data than tables.

• The chart takes a bit of time to figure out. “It’s about cost, so income is negative”. “Ah, the negative offset of the chart is revenues”.
• The chart goes against common practice of accountants and other financial professionals to look at annual financial data in tables.

What do you think?

More and more, I am trying to make each presentation in a unique style that is consistent on each slide. Paintings are a good source of inspiration, but so is cover art of CDs/LPs. Today I used this one from Remastered: The Best of Steely Dan - Then and Now

Steely Dan used an image of “Carhenge”, an art installation by Jim Reinders, somewhere in Nebraska, a modern-day version of Stone Henge in England.

It provides all I need for a presentation with a consistent accent:

• A slightly apocalyptic theme (this presentation was for a client in the asset management industry talking about changes since the economic meltdown of 2008)
• Cars, especially vintage cars, a rich hunting ground for images expressing all kinds of concepts
• The large bold font with a blank fill
• Blues and yellow/oranges as colors.

Disclosure: I earn a small commission if you purchase products on Amazon through links on this site.

Paintings are excellent inspiration for presentation design:

• Color schemes designed to provoke an emotion, often going against the rules of color theory
• Lessons in composition and page layout
• Ideas to give your presentation a distinct style or personality

The Dutch educational system plus graduate degrees in computer science and business administration have not contributed much to my knowledge of art history. I want to catch up quickly, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought:

• There are many web sites devoted to a painter or a museum, I have yet to discover one that cuts across artists, locations, styles and periods in time
• The same issue is true for many art history books: one style, one painter, one museum.
• More-over art history books (surprisingly) have usually more text than images in them. Text full of elaborate interpretations by the author, that is clearly written with student education in mind.

How happy I was to find this book: 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die.

Thousand pages of one painting per page, designed as a guide for museums to visit before your time on the planet is up (but then, there is no clear museum index, and many paintings are taken from private collections).

Leaving this small criticism aside, I found this book truly useful to digest a vast amount of images of paintings in a short time. Color picture, a bit of background on the artist, a bit of background on the painter. It contains both the block busters such as the Mona Lisa as well as lesser known works of art. Great.

I saw this spot light concept in an invitation for an event. It can easily be recreated in PowerPoint, ideal for a chart to make a big announcement. Click on the second image for some more explanation about the shapes to use. And if you like those tiny eyes, you can read more about them in one of my previous posts.

A recent image I used for a cover page of a presentation provided some excellent opportunities to blend PowerPoint text and shapes into the image. Use the strong red light source to create matching shadows and colors. Click on the image with the boxes to get a larger picture.

Look at the data of your stacked bar and column charts. I prefer to put the series that changes the most last, so it becomes very clear what variables are changing, and what variables not.

Color theory provides us with a clear set of rules of colors that go well together. Kuler has them even built in: complementary colors, triad, monochromatic, etc. But hey the world would be boring if everyone would follow the rules.

Look at the world of music for example. Jazz drummers only really start to swing when they go slightly off-beat. Many R&B songs have their drum computers programmed with delayed beats, providing a punch a fraction of a second too late.

If not, the music would sound like a 1980s Casio keyboard.

In my presentation work I recently stopped using these color composition rules. Instead I often look at a beautiful image or a powerful painting to design the color scheme of my presentation. Find a painting that provokes an emotion, load it up in kuler, and use it as the basis for the colors of your next presentation, even if it does not exactly follow the rules of color composition…

Wassily Kandinsky. Church in Murnau. 1910. Oil on cardboard. 64.7 x 50.2 cm. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany