SlideMagic Blog

We all understand that the ultimate slide is a visual composition that has such an emotional impact on us that the moment we walk out of the auditorium, we go and do something we did not plan on doing before.

For most day-to-day presentations, the objectives of a slide will be a bit more down to earth:

1. Can you actually read what is written on the slide from a distance (font sizes, graphs)?
2. Does it look as professional as the company/entity you are representing? Comic sans, clip art, low resolution pictures, distorted aspect ratios, PowerPoint bevels. (Professional and pretty are not the same things).
3. Does the chart just have one message?
4. Is information laid out so it supports the message? A trade requires pros and cons, a trend should come out of a graph, A implies B, there is a clear differentiation
5. Does the slide actually look pretty in terms of design, composition, balance?

Slightly related: here is a Dutch TV commercial from the 1970s with a quality inspector stamping “OK” on peanuts.

Should you put it in?

A joke can break the ice and make a presentation more memorable. But, and there is but, be careful with hardwiring your jokes inside the slides. Sometimes, you start your presentation and you will find that the “vibe” of the room at that moment is just not good to crack a joke. If you know your funny but maybe inappropriate slide is coming up, you need to be a master of the presentation remote control to save the meeting.

Also, when you are sending a deck ahead of the presentation, and you are not in control in what circumstances the recipient will be reading it, it is better not to include that hilarious image.

So, the best is to keep humor verbal, add it in your story if you feel that moment is right.

Art via WikiPedia

A page full of dots, a cloud of text labels, boxes. It is hard to make things look “random”.

I try to replicate the effect of shaking a glass box full of cookies in a different color. Copy paste your presentation objects on the slide. Then start moving them around. Resize to make them more or less the same size. Avoid clusters/clots of similar shapes or similar colors on the page. Take a step (or 3) back from the screen and see how it looks, repeat the above process again.

Randomness is actually a very organized state.

Image via WikiPedia

Logos: VC and PE funds like to put them in their exit slides, startups put their customers, investment banks showcase their M&A deals, CV pages highlight logos of companies people worked for. Logos can create instantly recognizable endorsements by major companies, but it comes at a cost: clutter. Here are some guidelines.

• To declutter your logo page, consider putting them in B&W to reduce the number of colors on your page. Also, adhere to a strict grid when placing them on a page: 5x4, 7x5, etc. (SlideMagic makes it easy to take the color out of an image, and it is not possible to escape the grid)
• Think which logos actually matter: well-known companies. Logos of companies people have never heard from before, just add clutter. Things are even worse when they are written in a language few people can read (Hebrew). On M&A deal pages, consider only putting the logo of the big acquiring company, not the acquired company. On CV/team/bio pages, put only logos of well-known companies and maybe use text for the lesser known ones.
• At some stage there are simply too many logos on a page. For example, the famous industry landscape charts that started off looking decent, but over the years span out of control as more logos got added.

Image by Loren Kerns on Flickr.

A few weeks ago I had a call with one of the staff of my client, who was a user interface designer for mobile apps. Although the investor presentation was not his responsibility he wanted to give some feedback, speaking “designer-to-designer”.

In the discussion I noticed that I am actually violating some design principles that are thought in design school (I never went to such a place). Being an opinionated designer, I still think that my approach is correct, but the debate was interesting. Here are my “sins”:

• Long headlines that run over 2 lines. Yes, the font looks a bit smaller, yes, the slide has less of a punchy/pretty headline, the title is basically a small text block. BUT it allows me to put in a slightly more sophisticated message which is especially useful for decks that are read on a screen, rather than serve as a background for a live presentation.
• While I cut text and clutter to the maximum extend possible, I tend to make the slide content really big, actually: too big according to the designer. The proportion between the headline and the core graphic of the slide is off. Technically correct, BUT I am trying to keep my slides readable on a mobile phone screen.
• Some of my data charts actually of a lot (too much) data in them. BUT I like to create layers in a data chart. The super simple, most important message jumps in your face, but if you ponder a bit longer, you can see additional layers of information and get the full picture of the data.
• I reduce the number of colors as much as possible (SlideMagic allows you to use only one), but I splash healthy doses of that accent color on the the slide. Designers might cringe at all that bright colorfulness. BUT it allows me to really rub in the message of chart, especially for highlighting a contrast, and/or connecting multiple “dots” that belong together.

I have seen it many times in coffee shops. Two people at a laptop. One doing the typing. The other stretching back, looking at the ceiling, and rephrasing that sentence until it is just perfect and encapsulates everything: “With flexible automation, value delivery is now ensured throughout the customer journey”. “No, I think that should be “value creation”. “Yes, you are right, change it”. “Make “automation” bold, italic, underline”, that is the key message here”. “Red color as well?” “Yes, this starts to look perfect”.

• Noisy coffee shops are not the best environments to do design work
• When you really get into the story you are touching on highly confidential issues (weaknesses, strengths, competitive positioning, development pipeline) that you do not want to discuss in public places
• Bullet point phrasing does not equal visual slide design

Image by Gavin St. Ours on Flickr

Clean crisp design work is unlikely to happen in a messy working environment. No, most employees have little influence over the interior design of an office, but your own desk? You can do it. Apple keyboards look horrible after a year of use, but are easy to wipe clean. Buy a nice pen/mechanical pencil, invest in a beautiful notebook (buy it yourself if it is against corporate purchasing policy), peel off the Intel inside sticker from your corporate laptop. Clean up the outdated post it notes on the whiteboard. Wipe the whiteboard. Open the blinds.

Art via WikiPedia

I just returned from a wonderful holiday in Japan. What a great country with such a rich culture. Having been there before in the early 1990s, I was preparing my kids (10 and 12 years old) for a small “culture shock”, but Japan has opened up a lot in the last 25 years and has become very open to visitors from the west.

Anyway, i will pick up my blogging routine soon. Apologies for violating the social media rules and dropping my blog for 2 weeks, but for me holiday = holiday, which means minimizing the opportunities for my mind to start thinking about presentations.

I am taking a short spring break with my family, so posts might appear less frequently over the next weeks. Apologies! Image via WikiPedia

Videos can make presentation files too big for email. Many corporate email server are still set to a maximum of 10MB for attachments. Some thoughts.

• Yes, there are many alternatives for email attachments, Box, Dropbox, WeTransfer, etc., and sending email attachments might look like a thing of the past. But, if you are fundraising or on a sales campaign, you want to take all possible friction out of your funnel. One in 50 recipients might be working in a company that does not support Dropbox for security reasons, another might be a 65 year old angel investor who does not know how to use box. Your document has to fit all possible audiences.
• Think about that video in documents that you sent. When you are there in the room, presenting, you can make take action when people do not connect to it (switch it of, explain, etc.). When someone is watching your video and does not have the patience for that spectacular opening animation scene, you cannot prevent her from abandoning your pitch all together. Some videos are useful or even essential (product demos, real estate project walk through), others might simply try to add some sparkle to the deck. Make the call whether they are essential.
• If you decide to take the video out and it contains essential information, don’t simply paste a YouTube link (again, think of the impatient investor watching the deck on a mobile phone, or the 65 year old angel investor), or even worse, nothing. This will take an essential element out of your story. Instead think of alternatives for a video: add a series of screen shots with explanation bubbles, or pack the message of the video in a more traditional slide.