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A recent image I used for a cover page of a presentation provided some excellent opportunities to blend PowerPoint text and shapes into the image. Use the strong red light source to create matching shadows and colors. Click on the image with the boxes to get a larger picture.
Look at the data of your stacked bar and column charts. I prefer to put the series that changes the most last, so it becomes very clear what variables are changing, and what variables not.
Color theory provides us with a clear set of rules of colors that go well together. Kuler has them even built in: complementary colors, triad, monochromatic, etc. But hey the world would be boring if everyone would follow the rules.
Look at the world of music for example. Jazz drummers only really start to swing when they go slightly off-beat. Many R&B songs have their drum computers programmed with delayed beats, providing a punch a fraction of a second too late.
If not, the music would sound like a 1980s Casio keyboard.
In my presentation work I recently stopped using these color composition rules. Instead I often look at a beautiful image or a powerful painting to design the color scheme of my presentation. Find a painting that provokes an emotion, load it up in kuler, and use it as the basis for the colors of your next presentation, even if it does not exactly follow the rules of color composition…
Wassily Kandinsky. Church in Murnau. 1910. Oil on cardboard. 64.7 x 50.2 cm. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany
The elaborate tornado illustration of this ad is pretty, but it looks like there was not much time left to think of a good place for the punch line and the dates of the event. Eyes and brains do not like reading text over fluctuating backgrounds.
Via Ads of the World.
Colors for computer screens and printers are created by mixing primary colors. (See this background article about RGB (adding primary colors for screens) and CMYK (filtering primary colors for printers).
In theory, it is possible to create any color you want using the right RGB codes (more about the color wheel here). Still, I find it almost impossible to recreate the colors that some of the great painters are using in their paintings. Obviously they did not use tools such as kuler, but rather relied on mixing colors on a palate by hand.
Take this painting as an example: The Arnolfini Portait by Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, painted in 1434. It has unbelievable light effects and color textures. (Huge image here). How to recreate this fabulous green (some think symbolizing the hope of starting a healthy family) in PowerPoint?
Kuler does not do a good job, see the color codes below.
Zooming into the dress gives some clues about the answer. Van Eyck added bits of yellow and paint texture effects to give the dress a warm velvety appearance.
In the early days, PowerPoint had a rich set of patterns to fill objects with grey shadings. Based on this principle, and with increased computing power it should be possible to offer much more complex color textures to the presentation designer as well. Textures that go beyond the “plasticy”, shiny, and glass-like surfaces that are available now.
Google Earth is a wonderful tool to produce maps in your presentation. Select the area you want to cover, do a screen dump and crop your image in PowerPoint. Make sure to make the best use of the power of Google Earth. Tilting the map to a level that the horizon becomes visible adds a nice additional perspective to the chart. Especially when you visualize paths.
This ad uses a visual concept which I discussed in an earlier post. The easiest way to recreate it in PowerPoint is to stick to simple shapes with numbers, similar to the original puzzle with 15 pieces. You can go one level up and use an image (like in the ad). To do this, re-read an earlier post about slicing up PowerPoint shapes.
Via Ads of the World.
It is thought that Vincent van Gogh once admired the Dutch painter Frans Hals (1580-1666) for using 27 shades of black in one painting. If you study the works of the Dutch masters carefully, you can see that they actually do use very little color. (Here is an example from Rembrandt: black, red, yellow) Part of this is due to space limitations on the color palette. Pink skin tones take a lot of space, leaving not much room for other colors.
Painting above: Frans Hals, The regentesses of the Old Men’s Home in Haarlem, 1664, Oil on canvas, 170.5 x 249.5 cm
There is a similarity to designing presentation slides here. You use shades and tints of the same color to create a calm background visual, while directing the eye of the viewer with bright highlight colors to the important information on the slide.
We’ve all been there. You’re stuck. Analysis-paralysis. Writer’s block. Structure-overload. Where to start? How to break the deadlock?
Imagine you’re sitting in front of a really experienced investor (Warren Buffett?). You have 10 minutes.
Press record.
Just tell your story. There is no time for buzz words. There is no time for complicated frameworks to structure your story (first we do a SWOT, then we leverage our core competences to differentiate from our competitors and make sure we reach critical mass before the window of opportunity closes). Just tell from the heart why someone should invest in your business.
Press stop and play back.
What did you say? In what order? When did you feel the need to take out a pen and scribble a simple diagram on a piece of paper? When did you “see” Buffett frowning and felt the urge to explain something again? What metaphors did you use to explain the technology?
Now let’s go back and re-do that PowerPoint presentation completely.
I like the clean Helvetica font in print material. I like the Helvetica font in presentations designed on a Mac. Somehow, the PC version does not appeal. The answer is: it’s not Helvetica. To save on royalties, Microsoft included the look-alike Arial with its Office software suite. The fonts look similar, but there are subtle differences. And they make all the difference.
Image designed by the ragbag, found via Swiss Miss.
I have not solved the problem myself. I think none of my clients have Helvetica installed on their PCs, and despite workarounds, I hesitate to create font issues with my presentations.
