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Many corporate web sites still emphasise 1990s-style content on their home pages: mission statements, contributions to the community, corporate history. I really like this deck with design concepts for 2013, including a suggestion to turn your home page into your story page.
There are big pricing differences between stock image sites, especially for snaps that are different from the over-used smiling call center rep head shots. For example, iStockPhoto uses tiered pricing for images that have a more interesting composition. Shutterstock still uses flat rate pricing. These pie throwing chefs will cost you as much as an image of an orange isolated on a white background. It is worth to give Shutterstock a try. (No, I was not paid to write this).
Zoho is a web app suite targeted at small businesses. One of the apps is Zoho Show, a presentation design suite. Yesterday, I gave it a test ride.
A cutting-edge presentation design tool is not the key selling point of Zoho, it is just one of the components of a broader offering of business software with different benefits: attractive pricing when compared to Microsoft Office, access to your files from any location with an Internet connection, and easy collaboration on documents with colleagues.
You do not notice that the Zoho slide design interface is run in a web browser. Interactions are smooth and fast. The application is designed to resemble Microsoft PowerPoint, menu colors look similar, and menu options are stored in familiar places. Unlike Google Docs, Zoho does allow you to crop images (a very important feature).
The basic PowerPoint user will have no problem working in Zoho Show, with one big exception: the ability to create data charts. In Zoho, you need to create them in the spreadsheet application and port them across using an image. This is an issue for people that live and breath bar and column charts day in, day out. (Google Docs has the same issue, it is probably complicated to include a full spreadsheet chart engine inside a presentation app).
For more advanced presentation designers, there are certain things missing. Template management is poor (same as with Google), and you miss the ability to align objects, snap them together on the screen. Font selections are limited, and as with all web apps it is hard to configure a tool bar for fast access to functions you often need (aligning objects, etc.).
TinEye Labs has developed a cool image search engine. Select multiple colors (unlike Google image search), and the tool will mine 10 million Flickr images with a creative commons license (unlike Google image search).
Image by Mitali Mokerjee
Sometimes, people ask you one question that forces you to focus. Yesterday: “So, what is your most important piece of advice to design better presentations slides?”.
Without thinking, I answered that he should forget about the way PowerPoint slides are supposed to look, and view it as a canvas that he can use in whatever is best to make his story stand out.
Hmm, that is what came out. Maybe still a bit concentrated and hard to act upon for a design novice, but that is actually what it boils down to.
You can use shape cut outs as masks to create unconventional data charts. Here is how I created the pyramid-shaped stacked column chart:
Some startup pitches to venture capitalists are all about trying to explain a completely new revolutionary idea. Big bold images, stunning visuals, clever analogies, all needed to get the investor to understand and feel what you are talking about.
The other day, I designed one that goes completely in the other direction. An eCommerce startup with a very specific niche audience that is totally neglected by online offerings. It takes 2 seconds to explain that.
But the interesting part is to explain the VC how the magic of the numbers work. Seasoned investors in Internet businesses have seen hundreds of startups and can probably benchmark in their heads how your company stacks up in terms of LTV, CAC, conversion rates, basket size, repeat purchases, cohort developments.
To the outsider, the presentation might look a bit boring (pages with numbers), but it is the substance that is required for the discussion. To spice it up a bit, use custom fonts (watch out with compatibility) and a slightly bolder color scheme than you normally would use. Also make sure that you show the link between all those numbers: simply pulling numbers from Excel in random order will not sound and look very coherent.
Screen shots of news articles are useful to give your audience a sense of the sign of the times. To make them look more interesting, I reduce the zoom of the screen to get a nice long, vertical shot of the article with the headline and the newspaper logo still readable. On a page with a non-white background, I title it a bit and cover and distracting ads or facebook and Twitter buttons with a white box.
A reader sent me a question the other day: what font to use in Excel instead of the boring and over-used Calibri/Arial?
I think there is not much to gain from using custom fonts in Excel. Readability is requirement number one, and the standard ones deliver. Moreover, Excel sheets are often emailed around to multiple people, and changing fonts creates compatibility issues.
The biggest opportunity to make Excel sheets look better is in the layout of your worksheets and typography. Subtle use of bold, carefully selecting the language you use, grouping similar items together, subtle grey box fills, etc. With a few little adjustments you can make your Excel sheet look like a nicely formated page out of an annual report.
Three different ways to show off your client list, depending on what you want to emphasize:
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.