SlideMagic Blog

The other day, a client requested a very specific image: someone handing over a box with envelopes, paper files, a bunch of DVDs and some memory sticks. An image this specific cannot be found in stock image databases. And even if you could, the audience would not recognise these specific items on the photograph.

Your options:

• Take your own picture and get it exactly right
• A generic guy-with-box image blurred out in the background and use text to describe to the audience what’s in it.
• A collage of stock images of the individual items that are required on white backgrounds

Art: [Balthasar van der Arst](http://Fruit still life with shells, 1620), Fruit still life with shells, 1620

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Many corporate presentations include organisation charts, what are the main business units, and who are the people running them, and who reports to whom.

For some presentations, this relevant. If you are trying to sell a company or a business unit, it is important to see the people assets that an acquirer is getting. If you are presenting to a financial analyst it is important that she knows what financial data belongs to what business unit.

If you are trying to explain what your company does however, the organisation chart might not be the best way to do that. Most of the times, there is not a 1-1 match between business units and products. There are far more exciting ways to present what your company does than organisation chart boxes.

To you, the structure of your organisation is really important. The audience is likely to have another view.

Art: “Puppet Show”, a painting by Chinese artist Liu Songnian (1174-1224 AD)

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Case studies or examples are a great way to explain your idea or technology. And by case study I mean something different than the empty, generic, meaningless quotes you find in many technology white papers. We need real stories.

Wherever possible, I try to stick to one big case study throughout the presentation, avoiding many smaller case studies. I can use this one case study to highlight different aspects of the technology.

• It saves time, I do not have to introduce a new story setting all the time
• It saves time, because I can re-use visual concepts. (For example, the red stars are the dangerous computer viruses)
• I can afford to take a really detailed deep dive if needed
• In case of complex science (healthcare technology for example) I can afford to take the time to introduce a few advanced scientific concepts and use them throughout my presentation
• Images and visuals will look consistent throughout the presentation

The key challenge in these type of presentations is not so much the visual design, it is finding that case study that says it all. And once you are thinking about that, you are actually trying to find your story,

Art: The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais, oil on canvas, 1870.

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Technology analyst Ben Evans was pondering the next possible revolution in computing platforms: the PC, the smartphone. This triggered me to give my thoughts about the future of the desktop or laptop computer (I will call them PC). I posted a quick comment, but will elaborate here a bit more.

It is important to separate device from the usage setting. There will always be a need for a creative, focussed work environment to capture your ideas. I do not think that we will ever witness the moment where we can do serious design work on the go on a small device. Creative means, focus, concentration, and an organised clutter free spacious environment.

No, smartphones and tables (current screen sizes) are not going to be the dominant platform for design work (that is why I am launching SlideMagic for bigger screens first).

Having said that, the PC as we know it could totally change. Design work requires some form of big visual interface, and some form of human-machine interaction. What is in between can be completely different from the form factor that we know today.

Technology might advance to such a level that all PC-type processing power, storage requirements, and power supply can easily fit in a smart phone-sized device. And I think that is the future. Everyone carries one piece of hardware with them that contains these functions, but also serves as a wrapper for our security credentials.

Screens could evolve drastically (remember that touch screens were the big driver behind the smartphone revolution). We could see very large tablet style devices for design work. But maybe e-ink technology will enable the creating of super thin, super light, paper-like foldable screens The same is true for keyboards and mouse controllers. Maybe that same screen can spread out in front of you and creates a combined input device and visual screen for your work?

Sometimes, I still put slides in a presentation despite the fact that they are far too busy to be presented. Rather, these slides are there to be shown.

• A busy Gantt chart shows that we are completely on top of things and know exactly what we need to do the next 3 months
• An endless list of filed patents shows that our IP is rock solid
• Positive customer comment after positive customer comment makes that point that we are doing something right in customer service
• A really complex IT architecture that shows how clever the technology is

It is important though to spoon feed the audience what you want them to take away from the chart that is shown to them. You need to write the correct headline, or put the right emphasis with a big circle and/or arrow on what they should be looking at.

Another approach is to design the chart in 2 levels. Level 1 is the level for presenting. Colour coding and grouping elements together gives the big picture message of the slide that can be picked up by a keynote audience. The detail inside the dots (level 2) is interesting for a viewer who reads the presentation on a screen at her desk. Level 1 is the keynote slide, level 2 is the ponder slide.

Art: Paul Signac, The Papal Palace, Avignon, oil on canvas, 1909, Musée d’Orsay

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The chance is high that when you are using a movie in your presentation, it is a fragment of a longer feature film that you cut out using iMovie or another movie editing software. Make sure to create a seamless transition between the movie fragment and the presentation.

The start. Someone who is watching the full length movie has gone through the process of transitioning into the movie story. Usually the director will take you there slowly, step by step. The presentation audience lacks that context. Landing them straight into that massive shootout scene at minute 14:49 will create confusion, and requires 30 seconds or so to grasp what is going on, and during that time they are probably not paying attention to that critical punch line that you want them to hear.

What can you do? Carefully select your cover image of the movie. It does not have to be the first scene, it can be a frame that comes later in the movie, or even a frame that is not part of the scene you selected. Do not set the movie to autoplay, but take a few seconds to tell the audience “where they are going next”.

The end. A cut out movie fragment often has an abrupt ending. Again, dampen the transition by putting another image at the end of the sequence that gives you the opportunity to lead the audience back into the story of your slides.

Art: David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967. Image: Ian Burt.

Yes, visual slides with stunning images are more powerful than boring lists of long bullet points. But that does not mean that designing good presentations is the equivalent of finding a stunning image for every page (sorry).

• A powerful quote can look beautiful on its own, in naked typography. The image of the person might distract the audience, especially if it is a relatively unknown author of an airport book best seller.
• A simple information slide (here are the 3 priorities for next year), but just be best visualised with a simple list of 3 priorities.
• Section breaks can be done in 2 ways: a dramatic visual to show the transition, or an almost blank page that brings the attention of the audience back to you
• It is very hard to find dozens of images that are more or less similar in style or look and feel. As a result, presentations with lots of images look inconsistent.

It does require though that you find a way to make a typography-only slide look good. A nice full colour plain background, and some elegant stealing from the Swiss graphics design masters in the 1960s is a good way to start.

Art: Brice Marden, The Dylan Painting, 1966/1986

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I only now discovered startupstockphotos.com, a site with creative commons images of workplaces with a startup feel to it (aero chairs, lofts, Apple laptops, wooden tables). They look great! I added this source to my list of sources of free stock images.

Art: Degas, The Cotton Exchange, 1873

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Consulting presentations often use a little icon on the top right corner that is a miniaturised version of some framework. As you click through different sections of the presentations, another part of the icons gets highlighted. The “tracker”.

When to use, and when not to use a tracker?

• Your short 20 minute pitch should be such an exciting naturally flowing story, that trackers should not be necessary, at least not on every page. If you feel that you need to remind the audience of where they are in the story, use full-page repeats of the framework, with different sections highlighted
• In very long presentations, and especially presentations that are intended for reading, a tracker can be useful. The tracker has more of a reference function. Keep your finger on page down and stop when the right part of the icon gets highlighted. In these cases, keep the tracker really, really, small to minimise the damage to screen real estate.

Often you might find that early on in the design process you feel a need to use trackers (because you do not understand the story structure very well yourself), and as you progress, your confidence to take the trackers of increases.

Art: Léon Cogniet, oil sketch for details of Scenes of July 1830

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January is the month of sales kick off events in companies (I see it in the Idea Transplant client inquiries). These presentations are usually for a very large audience, and are pretty important because they set the tone what the company will be doing for the next year. The good thing is that the audience is internal to the company, so you can encourage the speakers to take a bit more risk with the content than they would be doing for an external audience.

One challenge is to add a bit of humour and inspiration to all the sales target data. What used to be innovative a couple of years back (I am guilty myself as well) has become outdated and cliche:

• (Random) inspirational quotes from famous people
• (Random) inspirational quotes from business best seller authors
• (Random) inspirational quotes from social media experts
• Low res pictures of slap stick-type scenes that are forcefully linked to one of the concepts in the presentation
• Cheesy stock images of people in suits (usually men) staring into the future, pondering whether to take the left or the right turn, pictures of applause, well, you have all seen them.

What to do differently? It is hard to say, but here are some pointers of what you can do.

I love it when presentations have an overall visual theme to it. It can be a movie, it can be an era (the 1950s), it can be a place, it can be an inside joke, something that happened in your company over the past year, it can be sport you enjoy, it can be a central analogy you are using in your presentation, it can be art (pssst, see my blog).