SlideMagic Blog

One of the users requested a template for the Capability Maturity Model Integration framework (more information on the site of ISACA’s CMMI Institute).

I worked of the following original (not created by CMMI):

Next to the general layout, there is also a lot of improvement possible in the text. Overlaps, and jargon can be removed. Here is the template that I added to SlideMagic, search for “CMMI” and it will pop up in the SlideMagic app.

This is my interpretation of the framework, and not endorsed by the Institute. But this reflects how I think you should treat all these diagrams by consulting firms, academics, and business schools: use and adapt them for your own situation. If the jargon does not make sense for you, take it out.

Some perspectives by @clauswilke:

He is right. Legends can be confusing and are prone to errors, when possible, put the data label immediately next to the line.

Most presentations are not IPO roadshows or TED Talks, so it does not make sense to invest a lot of time and money in them (i.e., hiring expensive designers). But that does not mean that they need to look horrible and boring.

If almost all the documents a company’s employees work with are hacked together, poorly structured, boring lists of bullet points, you start eroding the place’s culture. The energy of a meeting is zapped by a quick glance of the PowerPoint slide sorter (“oh no, 90 minutes of this coming up”). Young trainees learn that this is the standard they should aspire to. At the same level of office supplies running out, poor cleaning, crappy laptops, cheap coffee. Everything points to the work environment where it is OK to cut corners, and only give things your best when you leave the place in the evening. Eventually, it will impact presentations and documents for an external audience as well.

The idea behind SlideMagic is that these every-day presentations can still look organised, fresh, and inviting without a big investment.

Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash

Filing and categorisation systems are a pain. It is tedious to put things in the right folder on your hard drive, put the data of a file in year, month, day format to make them sort, and final versions always become final final, final final final, really final v2. Google replaced Yahoo’s internet categorisation with search.

Back in the 1990s there was a Partner in McKinsey’s London office who gave up on filing (mostly paper at that time) and simply shoved everything chronologically in his cupboard, all clients mixed. Finding something was as simple as looking into your calendar and going back to the appropriate time. Usually, you roughly remember. It takes a tiny bit longer to find something, but save a ton of time doing, and nothing falls through the cracks because of a misplacement.

The same strategy might also work for your digital files in 2021. Your calendar becomes the index to dig something up from the “pile”.

Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

I added the slide used in this tweet to the SlideMagic library. In SlideMagic it is super easy to quickly create a grid with lots of boxes. There is a lot of redundant information on the slide, but the repetition on the other hand serves a purpose here.

Search for “pitch” in the SlideMagic app and it will pop up for you to use (alongside some other investor and musical pitch related slides).

Over the past month or so I have been slightly ‘distracted’. My wife (a life science investor) and I are working on an exciting new business that can change the way the pharma industry works (and cure a lot of patients in the process).

It is amazing to see how quickly I can now put things together compared to when I started the work on SlideMagic 2.0. Product development and prototyping is now really fun, as you can try out different things, make 180 degree design changes overnight without the need to re-brief large development teams.

This new confidence, combined with taking a step back from everyday development on SlideMagic is sparking some ideas that could ultimately turn into SlideMagic 3.0. Unlike 2.0, ideas are no longer held back with my ability to implement them, which is an interesting freedom to experience.

The gradual SlideMagic development process might not be a textbook startup case, but I believe this tinkering is the only way to get to a credible alternative presentation design tool. I am convinced that it will get there slowly, and then suddenly.

Photo by Allec Gomes on Unsplash

It is tempting to show a live demo of your product in your pitch presentation: look, we have a real product, this is not just “slideware”.

There are downsides too though. Murphy’s law, if a technical issue could happen, it will happen, especially in important pitch presentations. Demoing a product involves all kind of time consuming steps that are not really adding to your pitch: log-in screens, clicking through various settings pages, loading dummy data. If you have only 20 minutes, each and every minute is very valuable. Fifteen minutes of demo might be too much.

So, what to do?

• Include a series of relevant screen shots in your pitch deck that show the key features of the product. The objective is not proof of technology, just educating the audience what it is that you actually try to build. Choose the screens wisely and put them in the right sequence. Add arrows and markups to make things clear if needed. (App screens are not presentation slides).
• If possible, have a live demo of your product running on your machine, and in that first 20 minute pitch, simply click through a few screens. The objective is not to use it to explain what you are trying to build, but proof that there is actual technology. “Look, here it is!”
• If the audience is interested, schedule a second meeting that is entirely dedicated to demoing your product, leaving sufficient time for solving technical glitches.

Photo by Rhett Noonan on Unsplash

The fifteen puzzle was a popular download on the legacy SlideMagic PowerPoint template store (RIP). It is easy to recreate in SlideMagic 2.0 and I have just added it to the library of slides. Search for something like “fifteen” or “block” in the app and it will show up. This slide can be tricky to make in traditional presentation software as you need to get 16 boxes to line up nicely in a square.

PS: This is probably the only slide in SlideMagic so far where you have to make an adjustment when you switch aspect ratio. A wider slide layout will stretch the square into a rectangle. I added 2 versions of the slide to the library.

Image by Micha L. Rieser

When I started making pitch decks 15 years ago, there were not many people who called themselves “presentation designer”. Now the world is flooded with them. But “designer” is a very broad term used by people with varying skills.

Most “before and after” examples on designer’s web pages are beautiful makeovers of slides. Better fonts, better colours, a nice image. It all looks a lot better. But makeovers are makeovers: the fundamental layout of the slide almost always stays the same, and the text always stays the same.

Maybe this is the question you should ask a potential presentation designer: do you rip up the slide, change the headlines, round up numbers, regroup boxes (these 4 points are actually 3), etc.

The text changer is a very different designer from the makeover artist. And very often the text changer might not be very good at design. (The SlideMagic bespoke design pitch was the unusual combination of skills in one pair of hands).

There are different types of designers, but there are also different type of projects, and different types of clients. I had clients who were not that happy that the first draft of their redesigned pitch deck had almost no resemblance to the original.

The SlideMagic presentation software is designed to reduce the dependence on a makeover designer. The average corporate presentation creator can focus on structuring her story, putting the right messages in, and slides will look pretty decent without the need for a drastic cosmetic overhaul.

But, if you are looking for “presentation designer”: know what type of client you are, know what type of project you have, know what type of designer you need.

Getty Images who is in the business of licensing photographs to professional media is acquiring Unsplash, the open source image library (which is also powering the image search on SlideMagic). I remember how Getty acquired iStock as well back in 2006. With VC investors coming on board in the Unsplash Series B financing an exit would eventually happen.

The press release states that Unsplash will remain an independent unit inside Getty. Only the future will tell how this pans out. It would be a shame to see “suggested” (maybe more cliche) Getty or iStock premium images alongside Unsplash search results. Or open source photographers being lured in some sort of licensing-only revenue model.

Two things make me optimistic:

• The current photographers on Unsplash submitted their images under an understanding about how they are allowed to be used, it is not possible I think to change that across the board retrospectively
• Now in 2021, it is very easy for “another Unsplash” to pop up if the culture and spirit of the current site changes.

But some well-known photographers on Unsplash think differently:

Let’s see what happens.