SlideMagic Blog

McKinsey’s social media activity provides an excellent stream of slides to work on. The one below could have come straight out of SlideMagic.

I created a proper SlideMagic version with a few improvements:

• Emphasized the “from to” theme of the chart with arrows, and two contrasting colors, and a bigger distance between the two options
• Lighten the colors a bit, especially the dark top row of the original puts a lot fo weight in the chart
• Actually reduced the font size a bit to give the text more breathing space in the boxes
• Re-shuffling the bars to get a more pleasing overall composition
• I eliminated the left column, the audience can guess the description, to add more balance to the composition and gain some extra space

SlideMagic users can use this chart, simply search for a relevant keyword (operations, consulting), and it will pop up for you to adjust to your own project.

For my next venture, I am actually getting into a lot of “slide” design work: displaying financial data in a web browser with totally unpredictable screen sizes and screen aspect ratios. This problem has been solved for traditional web sites with text and pictures. (That is pictures where you do not really care how they are cropped).

For financial information, this is not the case. Spreadsheet-like tables that look good both on a 27” widescreen monitor and a smartphone screen, for example. All this layout work is not the core of what this venture will be about, but I am learning a ton that can feed back into SlideMagic. And vice versa, the SlideMagic chart engine, could take data from this new system and create presentations pretty much on the fly.

To be continued.

A saw a slide by my former employer coming by:

It has a very sophisticated image effect: look how the background of the bars in the chart are part of one image. Still, there is room for improvement. I quickly replicated the chart in SlideMagic with a few changes.

• I brought back the more traditional, very in-your-face alternate coloring of the bars, blue for 2021, grey for 2020 and a legend, instead of the repetitive text labels with the years.
• I increased the size of the industry sector labels
• By replacing 910b and 582b by 0.9 and 0.6, I could get rid of the “t” and “b” in the bar label.

But the analysis of the slide can be pushed further. The main point of the slide is how markets have bounced back over the past year, which is independent of the ranking of the market capitalizations of the sectors. As an alternative, I constructed the combined table/bar chart below, de-emphasizing the absolute value of the market capitalizations, and using the bar chart to highlight the % increase in market valuation. The inside here is that all sectors grew more or less the same over the last year (except fashion, probably reflecting less dressing up for work.

I have added the slide to the SlideMagic slide library, look for “COVID” and they will show up. Emails subscribers: if the slide images don’t show up in the email, please open the link to the full blog post.

The photo shoot from a few weeks ago delivered almost 900 images. We are still selecting the ones to use. Here is the approach I take to go from 900 to 10…

I uploaded all images in a good photo organizing app (I use Google Photos). This enables me to scroll really fast through lots of images. (Desktops are slow to generate thumbnails). Also, it easy to mark images and share those. Trying to copy file names is a pain. Finally, I uploaded all images in full size, so that the photographer can download them in case touch ups are needed.

The I take different zoom levels: zoomed out, which ones have a great composition that pops out as a small picture, without seeing the fine details. Which images have lots of white space that I could use to overlay text. Zoomed in, which images instantly “speak to me”, where is the camera gaze just right, without paying too much attention to details. In a short period of time, I mark a lot, a lot of images.

Then the selection process switches to the “favorites folder” and it becomes a matter of “deselecting”. Take out the obvious mistakes (closed eyes, etc.). When images are similar, force yourself to pick one. If you really like an image, go back into the big pile to get all the images that were made around that time to get the best one. Step by step, you get closer to your 10 final images…

If possible do all of this on a desktop machine with a very large monitor and mouse with fast scroll wheel.

“Upload a profile picture” is the question you often face when creating a new messaging group for an upcoming event, a school parent group, etc. Most people go for a relevant picture, for example the class group photo of last year’s end of school year party.

But avatars are tiny and often have a circle shape. What jumps out most to the user is the dominant color of the image. So the best solution for avatars for these temporary messaging groups is a big bright colorful square (will be come a circle after uploading) with a big bold letter or number. “52” on green for the birthday party, 2 on purple for the 2nd grade parent group. Easy and effective.

(Pro-tip: use SlideMagic to create your avatar…)

This Apple slide from a recent product launch event looks very non-Apple…

• Busy, lots of information
• Font sizes all over the place
• Big 13x, 11x, 2x, but hard to read what is improved
• Rounded edges are too rounded
• The grid is broken
• Imbalance: some boxes have heavy dark images, bleeding off the edge, others have no images…
• Look at the font styling used for “thermal”

The people and design budget at Apple can do better than this…

My wife and I organised a team photo shoot for the web page of our upcoming business. It had been a while since I did one.

Nice pictures can add greatly to the quality of your web site and/or presentation. Head shots are up to date, all look consistent, and best of all, you have an opportunity to take an image of the entire team together, given you the opportunity to show the energy that you are radiating as a group of people.

We decided to bring the professional photographer into our home rather than venturing out to her studio. Luckily, she was flexible enough to bring the required equipment. A photo shoot at home has the advantage that you feel more comfortable, and that you unlimited access to your wardrobe incase certain outfits/colours do not come across very well.

Ten years ago, many professional photographs were taking in front of the “gradient grey” screen. Fast forward to 2021, with Zoom calls in front of blurred bookcases, these backgrounds look very staged and dated. It makes the photo look like a high school yearbook picture.

They key thing the photographer brings is no longer the camera. It is the ability to engineer a relaxed pose of you, and even more importantly, get the correct light. A was amazed by how a modern “umbrella flasher” can give great image results in pretty much any lighting condition (so no longer the need for the studio).

While a woman can still dress up in a great outfit, I find that for men (me), wearing a full suit looks awkward, you get the “wedding groom” look on your corporate web site. Jacket/no tie, or a turtle neck work great.

I am currently working flat out on a new business that my wife and I are putting together in the field of healthcare. With a bit of luck, we can take the covers of at the JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco next January. (Hopefully after that I can boost the SlideMagic product more, I have a few interesting ideas).

I am becoming better and better at designing web front ends, fusing what I am learning about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with what was already in my head when it comes to slide, spreadsheet, and data dashboard design.

I am surprised of the impact the look & feel of a prototype makes on early users. Investing in design can take a lot of time, and can be wasted when you are taking your product into an entirely new direction.

My approach is similar to presentation design. Focus on easy wins that make your product look professional and organised, and skip the “marketing design” for the moment.

• Minimal effort on the public facing web site

• No investment in “flashy” animations, videos, and other spectacular effects

• Instead get the little details right that make a big impact, and fixing them does not take a lot of time:

  • Layouts of screens
  • Lining things up
  • Colour contrasts
  • Font size and emphasis
  • Rounding of numbers
  • Etc., etc.

Having a prototype that looks good makes it also a lot more fun to work on.

Most business presentations in the world are written in English, most people who write them are not native English speakers. Different type of errors pop up:

1. Typos and grammatical errors that can be caught by a spell checker / other software
2. Typos and grammatical errors that are hard to spot by software
3. Mistakes in word choices, a literal translation from another language into English produces a result with a totally different meaning, or double meaning in slang

Number 1 can be avoided, no excuse here.

Number 2 are also made by native English speaker, they look sloppy but are not a deal breaker. To catch all of them, you might need to help of a professional editor.

Number 3 can be a big problem and really damage the credibility of your presentation. Having your presentation read by anyone who is an English speaker will catch these, also no excuses here.

The quote from the Jerry Maguire movie. Some pitches go well. Maybe because the other side knows you, trusts you, knows the industry/competition well, and is ready to take things to the next step. No point in trying to pick up the pitch at page 15 with that very optimistic revenue forecast, and/or booting up that demo with potential bugs. That can happen in the next meeting.