SlideMagic Blog

I just returned from a wonderful spring holiday in Iceland (this explains the silence on the blog here). Below is a quick subset of the images I took with my phone (the ones without family members).

These are the raw shots, without cropping or any colour/light adjustment. What is my approach to making these landscape shots:

• I actually do not overthink my photographs: just snap to catch the moment
• I hardly ever use the zoom function on my phone. If needed, I can always crop images later to get a zoom effect. Live zooming reduces the image quality and makes the image more sensitive to an unsteady hand / shaking.
• I tend to look for lines (roads, rock formations, etc.) to force some sort of eye movement in the images
• Where possible, I try to catch a small element in the foreground to create a sense of depth. (Often a family member taking the same photo, pictures of family taking pictures is one of my favorite themes)
• Painters already discovered this, often the sky is one of the most interesting visual elements. Try dropping the horizon in one of your shots.
• Most photos are taken at eye height. Create unexpected perspectives by lowering or lifting your camera
• Pay attention to the sides of your image. Adding a tiny bit of a wall or other structure in your shot can make the image feel “closed” or “trapped”, leaving it out gives a much more open feel.

Communication cultures differ widely across countries. I experienced it myself in multiple situations:

• Working as a Dutch national in McKinsey’s London office, people found me somewhat ‘blunt’
• Living as a foreigner in Israel, I would sometimes be surprised that the first thing some says to you is “how old are you?”
• Participating in a large Zoom call with many American participants who pretext a point of criticism or disagreement with a 1-2 minute apology before getting to the point

It is important to be aware of these differences:

• As someone who is presenting
• But also as someone who is in the audience and needs to put the presenter in perspective

Some of these differences might actually not be down to culture or character. Not all languages have words for specific nuances, so things literally get lost in translation: Language 1 has 5 options on a scale, language 2 only 2. If you are the native speaker in the 2-option language it is hard to pick (or even know) which of the 5 options to pick.

Read body language and ask for clarification when in doubt, or use some self deprecation to preempt possible issues.

A quick re-make of a graphic with the Israeli COVID isolation policy, here is the original

Below is my version in SlideMagic. I tilted the diagram, to put more emphasis on the timeline. Search for ‘COVID’ in the SlideMagic template bank and the slide will show up for you to use, either exactly as is, or as the basis for another timeline chart.

Ukrainian president Zelensky is ‘touring the world’ via video calls to parliaments to drum up support for his country in the conflict with Russia. Each speech is tailored specifically to a country. Here are some of the patterns:

• Establish a connection, giving a compliment about the country: “I have been there”, “What a beautiful city”
• Make you feel what it would be if all the agresion happens to you: “What would you do if the port city of Genua would be destroyed?”
• Link the struggle of the Ukrainian people to a historic struggle of you (“You stood up after Pearl Harbour, we are in a similar situation now”)
• Making you part of the event: “This is not about Ukraine, but a struggle of the entire world against evil”, i.e., you are not just an audience
• Rubbing it in that he is doing something, and taking the hits (for you, see previous point), while you ‘sit back and relax’
• Appealing to personal moral standards, this is not about business, country or world politics, this is about innocent people dying
• Addressing individuals directly, i.e., the Prime Minister of the Netherlands was singled out by name in today’s address to the Dutch Parliament.
• Asking for very specific things that a country can do
• Rather than begging for help, he projects strength and determination and is inviting people to join the winning side

All of this is delivered in a short speech, with short sentences that are to the point.

Some presentations involve a big, black and white outcome: who hosts the next Olympics, will the trip go through, etc. etc.

In the world of entertainment, the tension is part of the show, think Oscars or talent shows. In most other cases, postponing and building up to the long awaited verdict does not serve a clear purpose. People might actually be distracted and not really listening to your arguments, as they are frantically trying to figure out where you are heading to.

Better to say the answer straight in the first sentence, and then explain why.

For users who print their decks on physical paper, I patched a bug that was caused by the underlying software platform ‘Electron’. Everything should work now. Windows users might get a message that the developer SlideMagic is ‘unknown’. You can safely ignore that, I am working on getting rid of this warning. At your service.

Below an attempt to show what countries belong to what organisation. (A bit outdated, the UK has left the EU). A good start with the groupings of the countries, and the circular layout of the flags. Also note that flags are displayed in their correct aspect ratios (Switzerland for example is square).

Image found here , probably by Nato

What to do better?

• Not a big fan of the gradients and shadows
• I would put the Council of Europe label also on the right
• It should be possible to get an even more harmonious and distributed layout by moving some flags, labels and circles around

The other approach to make this chart is to use a map and color code countries according to their memberships

My wife and I are pitching the services of (a still very) small startup (with a big idea) to some pretty big corporations. Big corporations are busy and overloaded with requests of small companies to talk to them. It is fine to play hard to get, but if you accept a meeting/call, don’t cancel at the exact minute the meeting is about to start unless there is some medical emergency.

The world is small and memory is surprisingly good. Personally, I had a few cases of poor interactions with people as a presentation designer (not paying agreed invoices for example) with people that re-appeared 5-10 years later with a request for another presentation (‘‘Hey, I am doing my own startup now and got a meeting with these investors next week, can you help?”), or were the subject of a reference call (‘Do you think I can trust this person with my investment?’)

Basic human interaction hygiene.

Most online services have some sort of invite-a-friend functionality that triggers a pre-populated email. Read through that message one more time. It is probably loaded with marketing jargon (“added value”), and uses superlatives to show how excited the user is (“super excited to finally have everything in one place”).

But is that really the words the user would use?

As an exercise imagine what a good friend of you would write to another good friend of you in her own words to talk about your product.

1. It might inspire you to write a better pre-populated email message
2. It might give you some honest product feedback without actually asking these users

I have been posting less on the blog over the past weeks. Given the current events in Ukraine, it would just not look right when the SlideMagic twitter account posts happy titles such as “A new and exciting way to crop your images” amid all the other stuff that is going on.

The current war is also a big communication war. And in times of conflict, it might be wise to count to 10 before saying things after seeing these horrible images coming out of the battlefield. Western leaders have been very aggressive in their language: ‘total economic war’ etc. etc. The problem is with all of this is that you need to keep a ladder for the other side to climb down, rather than throwing oil on the fire. The world already knows that you are (rightfully) upset.

The better strategy:

• Use a more matter of fact tone in communicating sanctions: “we don’t like what you are doing, here is what we do to show that we mean it, we will reverse if you do”
• Show unity and resolve
• Go after economic targets that really hurt, rather than things that are high profile but don’t actually mean very much
• Instead of leaking to the press how many arms you supplied or might supply, brief them on how to calculate the economic impact of the sanctions, now, in 1 week, and one month from now
• Maintain a cold and rational calculation of the financial damage done and communicate it
• Maintain a cold and rational evidence trail of wire crimes committed and communicate it
• Keep on ratcheting up the sanctions, without the polemic rhetoric.