SlideMagic Blog

The design of the template should be simple: minimal graphics and logos, maximum screen space (see a previous post here). My favorite is really simple: a nicely designed title page followed by a completely white page for the rest of the deck.

So what does matter? The technical PowerPoint stuff that helps thousands of employees with only a very basic understanding of PowerPoint do the right thing. Before letting the genie out of the bottle and releasing a new template to the whole organization check the following:

• Are the RGB codes of the color scheme coded correctly as standard colors? In 99% of all templates I see, PowerPoint offers the default blue, green, red color options when drawing a shape in a template. Easy to fix.
• Are the drawing guides set up correctly so that people align objects correctly on the page? There should be guides that align with screen graphics, and guides that help users position objects on the screen. (Earlier post here)
• Does the standard blank page pop up correctly when hitting “insert new slide”? Most templates are a bunch of example charts that people can use for inspiration. Nobody uses them, every one clicks “insert new slide” and - if not corrected - gets served the standard Microsoft chart with a big title and a hierarchy of bullets in Calibri font. To fix this, go into view slide master, delete most of the template charts on the left side of the screen and carefully re-design the key blank slide with the correct graphics, colors, and fonts. If you have courage, delete the standard bullet page.
• Are the standard shapes set correctly? Draw a text box, set the font, right click it and set as default shape. Repeat for a shape (rectangle, anything) and focus on the color, the font, the outline, the shadow, etc. Right click and set as standard shape.
• Are custom fonts embedded in the file? (PowerPoint Ninja post)
• Are the page-filling images in title pages and separator pages compressed? If not, a presentation of 2 pages can already take up 5MB in hard disk space. Go into the slide master, select the image, and compress image sizes.
• Are the data charts formats set up correctly? This is a bit more advanced but should really pay off. See an earlier post on fixing issues.

The Internet and the place I live (Israel) have cut me off of those great large book stores where you can browse endlessly for books you did not know you missed.

Presentation blogs (this one included) often talk about the same limited set of books about public speaking and presentation design. Here is a list of design books compiled by graphic designer Jason Santa Maria full of titles that look really interesting.

Found via SwissMiss. Image credit Google LIFE, an excellent source of images for non-commercial use.

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

Colors for computer screens and printers are created by mixing primary colors. (See this background article about RGB (adding primary colors for screens) and CMYK (filtering primary colors for printers).

In theory, it is possible to create any color you want using the right RGB codes (more about the color wheel here). Still, I find it almost impossible to recreate the colors that some of the great painters are using in their paintings. Obviously they did not use tools such as kuler, but rather relied on mixing colors on a palate by hand.

Take this painting as an example: The Arnolfini Portait by Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, painted in 1434. It has unbelievable light effects and color textures. (Huge image here). How to recreate this fabulous green (some think symbolizing the hope of starting a healthy family) in PowerPoint?

Kuler does not do a good job, see the color codes below.

Zooming into the dress gives some clues about the answer. Van Eyck added bits of yellow and paint texture effects to give the dress a warm velvety appearance.

In the early days, PowerPoint had a rich set of patterns to fill objects with grey shadings. Based on this principle, and with increased computing power it should be possible to offer much more complex color textures to the presentation designer as well. Textures that go beyond the “plasticy”, shiny, and glass-like surfaces that are available now.

An interesting article in the NYT the other day: the Portuguese newspaper “i” that’s breaking the rules of newspaper design. An example of a front page that I found on the “What’s next: innovation in newspapers” blog.

Some interesting lessons that could also apply to presentation design:

• Big images draw the attention of the reader
• Interestingly, the newspaper abandoned the typical grouping of newspaper articles around specific categories. Research showed that people just scan for interesting headlines and do not need the structure of a detailed content categorization. Newspaper design does not need to resemble the organization structure of the editorial staff.

With regard to the second point: more and more I start to abandon the use of formal structures in presentation design. Simple use the structure or slide sequence that supports the way you want to tell the story. The brain is capable of dealing with a more creative story structure, as long as it is not bored. Novel writers are the ultimate masters in story line design creativity, but I agree that might be overdoing it a bit when designing your next pitch deck.

The mobile phone screen is becoming a mainstream outlet for content. Services such as SlideShare have become so popular to share presentations (=ideas) to mass audiences that presentation designers have begun to adjust their style to suit this type of viewers. What happens if you add these two trends up?

Swiss Miss pointed me towards a new iPhone app: iStoryTime, enabling kids to flick through narrated children’s stories. (The same target segment as Story Bird). Animoto allows you to create beautiful animated videos on your iPhone, it is just another example of a visual language that is suitable for the small screen.

Squinting to read a blog RSS on your phone, scrolling left/right and up/down to understand the big picture of a web site, maybe there is another future for presentations here: the ideal format to spread an idea on a mobile device through a series of clicks.

The constraints are simple: a small screen, and no presenter is present to explain things. I wish we had these constraints in PC PowerPoint:

• “I better make sure these slides are clutter free and can easily be read from a distance”
• “I better make sure that people really, really understand what I am trying to say here; I won’t be there to explain it”

That would do a lot of good to many presentations that are written as we speak.

The Color + Design blog provides a constant stream of color schemes based on images, posters, fabrics, street art, to name a few. Add it to your RSS reader if you need color inspiration. One color scheme from today’s post:

Your colors scheme is the most important driver of your presentation’s look and feel. Much more important than logos or other graphical elements on the page. Adobe’s kuler is a popular example of an online tool that helps you pick colors (even from an image if you want to) and define a nice matching color scheme.

Recently, ColoRotate has been released. ColoRotate uses a 3 dimensional approach to picking colors wich it claims is closer to the natural way the brain processes colors. It relies less on the sliders that are common in kuler and other tools. Color schemes you create can be shared in an online community, similar to kuler.

I have played around with the tool a little bit and like it, but it requires a bit of studying and practice before you get the hang of playing with the 3D axes and their impact. This tool is likely to appeal most to graphical professionals.

Having said that, the web site contains a good introduction article to the art and science behind picking beautiful color schemes.

This presentation was uploaded to SlideShare yesterday. Simple colors. Beautiful fonts. No stock images. OK, some bullet points, but nicely formated. A great example of a presentation that can stand on its own, without the presenter being present.

Designers & Developers Sitting in a Tree (Web09)

More on picking the right presentation style for the right presentation occasion in a previous post.

Weekend reading (1 day earlier than the rest of the world in Israel). I stumbled on this great ad for Adobe Photoshop CS4.

It shows what graphics and presentation design is all about, a creative process working with shapes and colors and a blank piece of paper. Computers make it easier to work, but in our mind we should go “back to basics” now and then. Go to this Flickr stream for more detailed/hi-res images. Agency Bates141. Via Zurb.