SlideMagic Blog

They are different

• A description is an exhaustive, dry representation of a concept. It is what education uses. It is better to add too much information, rather than being incomplete. Description have a standard format, structure (inside, outside, etc.). Descriptions are wordy translations of what can be transferred using an image in one second.
• Stories get to the point. Anticipate the audience’s obvious questions, take into account the audience context, build on what the audience already knows, use surprise and tensions, and a flexible structure that is not always the logical, standard one.

Image from WikiPedia

It is hard to put your pitch at the right level. I often see two types of mistakes:

• Far too small: an entrepreneur pitches a device or a product without putting it in an overall context of where humanity is going. (I.e. a device that can help old people without talking about the greying of many Western societies).
• Far too big: millennials, online video, global warming, mobile devices, the gig economy, Moore’s law, everything gets put in the first 20 minutes of the pitch to show what a huge opportunity this product is, being at the centre of all these seismic changes in the world

The best pitch is somewhere in the middle.

Image from WikiPedia

It happens. Some startups can create one slide that shows a line from 0 to 100 million users or $500m revenues in 1 year. Some startups can show a slide with clinical data proving they have the cure for cancer.  If you are not one of them, don’t listen to pitch advice by these startups and have some more backup information.

The bar is rising in presentation design. More and more people know how to design decent slide, more and more people know how to explain a business concept visually.

The challenge that remains is often a very specific point. In most cases, this is the answer to an “elephant in the room” question, a very specific answer to a question an ignorant but intelligent layman might have.

Most people burry these super important points inside a “standard” slide. “Oh, that is the point I make verbally when we present the competition slide.”

I tend to make these points more in your face. Dedicate a specific slide to it. Even sometimes putting things straight in the headline (“No, we are not another Google”).

These slides can be hard to design. The best approach is to listen really carefully when you explain it verbally to someone. “There are 3 groups of products, 1, 2, and 3, but none of them address y”. “Gasoline engines can do x, but with electrical power we can do this.”. “Up until now you could not see at nanometer level, but now it is possible”. Look at the sentences and see what they do. Divide things in groups (boxes), contrasts between two options, “From to”. Your language gives clues about what visual concepts to use. They don’t have to be sophisticated, they just should be clear.

Image via WikiPedia

A quick post written on my iPad while enjoying my vacation here in beautiful Vietnam. I make a lot of Instagram snaps and here is the way I edit photos in the application.

I do not use the pre-installed filters, they are random permutations of image adjustments that distort my photo too much. Instead I go in edit mode.

The most important adjustment to any image is its composition: use zoom in/out, move left right, make sure the horizon is straight with the left most edit function. Then, on to brightness and contrast. Move the sliders and see whether your image improves or not. Next, highlights and shadows. That’s it.

You see the functions I don’t touch: saturation, color overlays, structure, blur, etc. etc.

I have been touring the city of Rome for a few days with my son which was great fun. It is amazing to see how tourists gather around sights that guides and guide book say are famous or beautiful. I snapped the double helix Bramante staircase in the Vatican museum (picture below), my guide was surprised I wanted to see it and he had to look for it. You can see on the picture that not many other people were interested.

Each pitch has a weak spot to overcome. How to deal with it in your presentation?

• You can ignore it, sweep it under the carpet. You will have had a very pleasant meeting, but you are unlikely to land the deal
• You can mention it, and support a very shallow case why it is not an issue. (Vague analyst quote)
• Overcompensating, give 15 different possible analysis that triangulate to the most likely market size number. This just might scare your audience. If 50% of you time/charts are about this issue, this must really be a big deal.

Better: admit the issue is there (you scored some realism points in the process). Give an honest defence, but don’t burry the audience in analysis (yet). Wait with that for the 2nd meeting which might have that issue as its sole agenda point.

If you use colours correctly, there is actually no need to put your corporate logo very prominently on each page to remind the audience what company they are listening to. Colours will give the page the recognisable look & feel instantly.

Make sure you use the correct colours instead of PowerPoint’s default colour scheme. Your marketing department should have the brand guidelines with RGB codes, and if not, you can “steal” them from a logo image using a colour picker. Try saving them as a template in PowerPoint so you don’t have to go through this exercise for every presentation you start.

You actually do not need many colours for a page to look great. (My presentation design app SlideMagic only allows you to use one). It is important to think about the relative importance of colours. Which colours can you use often, or for large surfaces, and which ones are meant as accent colour only.

Throughout the presentation, try to use the same colour for the same concept. Everything to do with competitor A is always green. The results for the drug are blue, the control group is orange.

Colour can be a powerful tool to group things together on a slide. Especially if objects are far away from each other, using colour is a much better tool than trying to draw connecting lines.

Watch out with the colour red in financial results. Even a huge profit will look like a massive loss when set in bright red.

A light colour is a much better way to give a box contrast than drawing a dark line around it. I hardly ever use lines around shapes.

Like every year, I will be spending less time at the computer and more time with my family over the summer. Blog posts will be less frequent. I am publishing all my posts almost instantly and don’t use a large buffer of content (going against good social media practice). I hope all of you are having a good summer break.

Client 1:

• I want you to make it look great, like Steve Job’s slides
• Can I buy 15 slides from you, maybe 20?
• How many hours would 15 slides take you?
• I am actually a pretty good presenter, if I may say so. We just need the final 5% of extra punch.
• Can you already include 3 slides in your project proposal?
• I will put you in touch with Harry from corporate communications, he will be your main contact point throughout the project

Client 2:

Every time I pitch my company gets confused with this other technology. On the surface, they have a point, but we need to dive really deep into science to kill the issue, in 10 minutes. Can you help, I really need it.

Image from WikiPedia