SlideMagic Blog

Schools are shuttered here in Israel, I took the opportunity to create a morning routine where I teach my kids to code. They like it so far. Coding is actually hard to learn in a 30-person class room setting, and our Waldorf-style school does not even offer it as an option. This school break might actually turn out to be very productive.

I chose Javascript: you can use it both in the browser and on servers, and code experiments in a browser give instant visual feedback of your efforts. I am using this course (the beginner one from the same instructor I used to dust off my 1992 degree). No affiliate link links or kick backs for me here, prices for Udemy courses vary wildly depending on different times you check them out (some sort of A/B testing I think).

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

We are getting used to the photos of hospital entrances, images of empty trains, empty shelves. But they are still a lot better than the photo model wearing a mask with impeccable make-up, no sign of sweat, ready to cure the next patient.

The other day I was eye balling a pitch deck and here I am jotting down my reactions as I go page by page:

• Logo and colour on the front page looks nice, a grammatical error and an over used buzz word in the slogan
• Vision statement instead of describing what the app is all about. Vision statement contains overused buzzwords, and lists actually multiple possible consumer hooks, each could be a business in its own right, some are features, some are business models
• App screen shot looks nice, but highlighted features do not match the vision of the previous page
• Lots of market data, but in this industry, no one will ever doubt that the market is small, the question is how to take on the existing giants and way of doing things
• Product description (matches the screen shot, not the vision). Trying to relate this product to products I know (both traditional ones, and other innovators I am aware of). Maybe this product is new and does not merit a direct comparison, but still I am trying to understand what it actually does before getting into the positioning. Existing product comparison are good for the purpose of educating.
• Very dense internal consulting chart that shows how the team came up with the value proposition
• Competitive analysis is a detailed spreadsheet, competitor columns need re-ordering, feature rows need re-ordering and grouping
• A key strategic partner pops up at the end of the slide deck as a very important part of the brand

I have been working from my home office since 2002, and for me, the experience has been great. Well, it fits my personality (introvert who does not crave water cooler chats), and the sort of work I like to do (create, design things).

The coming weeks will give an opportunity to find out what sort of work can be done from home, and to what type of people it will appeal. There will always be people that need constant supervision and checking to stay “focused”. There will always be managers who just love to have all subordinates around ready to be called in at any time it suits her agenda. There will always be cultures that thrive on corridor chats to coordinate things.

For other situations, this might be an opportunity.

Photo by Breno Assis on Unsplash

This slogan creates a sense of scarcity and it works. People who would otherwise buy 1, or even one, take 3, just to be sure. Google used it to get users to sign up for Google Wave RIP.

The same is happening now with people stocking up with supplies. They see a half empty shelf, better make sure not to be left out, and the shelf empties out completely soon after.

When thinking about how to use scarcity in your presentations, consider the long-term implications to your brand as well. User might feel duped when they find out that you opened the flood gates 3 weeks after that special offer.

In the case of SlideMagic, the early restricted signups were required since things were still buggy. Today I removed the required to sign up for an account before downloading the app as a sign of confidence in the platform.

Photo by Miguel Pinto on Unsplash

In version 2.2.5 I cleared up the default settings in SlideMagic. The way things used to work were aimed at a professional presentation designer: the presentation settings including logo and colour were saved as default as soon as you save the presentation. I have changed that: defaults get saved in the background as soon as you make active changes to the settings yourself, loading and saving a presentation with different settings than yours does not impact your defaults.

I made a big effort to avoid the whole book keeping of colour templates and profiles. I think SlideMagic does the right thing in the background now, and given the few settings options there are, it is easy to adjust something if needed.

You can download the latest version here.

Yes, I have been in this situation as well:

Below is a short video that shows how SlideMagic makes creating logo pages in a presentation really easy. In the first example, I start from scratch with a completely blank page. Notice how logos get plopped in, and how everything lines up instantly in the grid, and how easy it is to add columns, text boxes without having to re-arrange and re-align the entire page. (I have added this slide as a free slide on the template store, you can find it here, stripped of the logos I used because I could not verify copyrights)

The alternative is to start with one of the built-in templates of SlideMagic, search for “logo” in the app and see what slides come up:

Now you can customise the page and swap the logos for the ones you need.

The exact same search available in the online template bank as well (try searching for logo), but users who are downloading the PowerPoint version directly from the web site miss out on the magic of SlideMagic when it comes to manipulating image grids.

My suggested strategy: tweak things in SlideMagic, and export at the very last moment to PowerPoint if you have to share things with your colleagues. You will save a lot of time making those nasty logo grids.

I just released V2.2.3 of SlideMagic, with a big feature update: a new approach to exporting PDF. Until now, I created PDF files by having the program recreate a .magic slide in .pdf, element by element, picture by picture, letter by letter. This got me to 99% accuracy, the 1% being cases where small mistakes would be introduced. For example, a word dropping to the next line because of tiny deviations in font size.

Unlike PowerPoint exports, PDF files are set in stone, you want to send that presentation to an investor, there is no way to fix a quick glitch.

So I changed the approach, the new PDF exporter takes a screen shot of the exact page you created and puts it in a high resolution PDF file. What you see is what you get, 100% of the time, by design. In the process, I could actually delete hundreds and hundreds of lines of code.

The app should upgrade itself in the background for existing users, or you can force the upgrade by downloading a new version from the site.

Other V2.2.3 improvements are mainly under the hood. For the geeks: the app has been upgraded from Electron 6 to 8, with a very recent version of Chrome, and both app and server now share the exact same code to render slides, images, and PowerPoint files, which will save me lot of time as I make improvements. I basically paid my duties for fixing “quick and dirty” copy-paste coding of a few months ago.

Yes, almost all the images on my blog and in the SlideMagic template bank are in black and white. Why?

SlideMagic uses (and encourages you to use) a sober colour scheme: basically different levels of grey with one accent colour that should match the dominant colour in your logo. This is a pragmatic choice. SlideMagic is all about business presentations, not art. More colours require additional design skills to get it right. Too many colours can make a slide busy, can create inconsistencies between slides, make the brand identity of your slide weaker. Yes, a pro designer can get it right, and maybe the amateur as well, but - and that is a very important but - it just adds to the time it takes to create your deck. And SlideMagic is all about speed. One accent colour and greys always looks good.

Full colour images introduce colours to your slide that might not always match your colour scheme. Colour schemes of images can also vary wildly between images, creating inconsistent slides. You often see that professional-grade designs (ads, brochures, web sites) use images that have been selected based on their colour profile. The amateur slide designer does not have time for this. That’s why keeping things black and white solves this issue: images blend in, and images look consistent.

Should all images always be black and white? Absolutely not. Personally, I would go for anonymous images to be black and white, but depictions of real things in full colour; your product, your app screen, your prototype.

Camera technology is finally good enough to solve the video conference background problem: no more bed rooms, bad lighting, plumbers, kids and/or other unpredictable events behind your back. In the settings tab of zoom, go to virtual backgrounds and set it to the mood you want.

Almost perfect, my hair and sweater pattern did get adjusted as well…