Diagonal lines
Non-wordy-self-explanatory slides
Everyone has bought into the idea that presentation slides full of text are poor communicators of ideas. The result is that many presentations are now so minimalist, that hardly anyone can understand them without verbal explanation. This creates a problem, as more and more, slides are used as commercials of ideas that are shared without the presenter being present (yesterday’s post).
One solutions is to add an audio stream to your slides, or going a step further, turning your slide deck in a small video. This requires some technical skills though. Also, busy important people often prefer to sticking to the communication medium that they have grown up with: slides. But, they like to do so at their own pace (meaning fast), impatiently looking for a visual that catches their attention. Boring blah blah blah gets skipped.
So what to do in situations where you do not have time / resources / patience to separate slide decks for a live presentation and a cold email attachment? Some ideas.
A very clear headline. Write your message out in a human sentence, you can even change your presentation template to allow 2 lines of text at the top of your page.
Pick useful images. A big squished orange to support that your are crushing the competition does not add much. A photograph of bored people waiting and lining up to buy paper lottery tickets to argue that there is a market for mobile lottery makes the point perfectly.
Swap verbs for visual concepts. A tension can be 2 boxes of text with a rope in the middle that is about to snap. An implication can be arrows with 2 words in each pointing to another box with 2 words. Best of both worlds can be a Venn diagram. Contrasts can be 2 boxes with opposing colors.
Minimalist data charts for trends. If you want to make the point that you are the biggest, show a ranking of market shares, do not just write the words #1 with a picture of a sprinter winning the race. Only show market shares, not profit, not growth, not customers, just one simple metric that makes the point.
Full data tables for reading. A P&L contains a lot of stuff. After you have summarized the key trends (1-2 statistics in a minimalist data chart), put in the whole data table (nicely formated). If the reader is interested she will pause, if not, she will skip.
Useful clutter. When things are complex, or the competitive field is crowded, show it. A pages full of logos, or a detailed systems diagram will look very busy and complex, impossible to understand. Well hey, that is the exact point you want to make.
Do not [click] break a [click] human sentence [click] in too many [click] pieces. The stunning photographs are great but by the time the Niagara Falls come up, the viewer has forgotten what the sentence was all about.
One solutions is to add an audio stream to your slides, or going a step further, turning your slide deck in a small video. This requires some technical skills though. Also, busy important people often prefer to sticking to the communication medium that they have grown up with: slides. But, they like to do so at their own pace (meaning fast), impatiently looking for a visual that catches their attention. Boring blah blah blah gets skipped.
So what to do in situations where you do not have time / resources / patience to separate slide decks for a live presentation and a cold email attachment? Some ideas.
A very clear headline. Write your message out in a human sentence, you can even change your presentation template to allow 2 lines of text at the top of your page.
Pick useful images. A big squished orange to support that your are crushing the competition does not add much. A photograph of bored people waiting and lining up to buy paper lottery tickets to argue that there is a market for mobile lottery makes the point perfectly.
Swap verbs for visual concepts. A tension can be 2 boxes of text with a rope in the middle that is about to snap. An implication can be arrows with 2 words in each pointing to another box with 2 words. Best of both worlds can be a Venn diagram. Contrasts can be 2 boxes with opposing colors.
Minimalist data charts for trends. If you want to make the point that you are the biggest, show a ranking of market shares, do not just write the words #1 with a picture of a sprinter winning the race. Only show market shares, not profit, not growth, not customers, just one simple metric that makes the point.
Full data tables for reading. A P&L contains a lot of stuff. After you have summarized the key trends (1-2 statistics in a minimalist data chart), put in the whole data table (nicely formated). If the reader is interested she will pause, if not, she will skip.
Useful clutter. When things are complex, or the competitive field is crowded, show it. A pages full of logos, or a detailed systems diagram will look very busy and complex, impossible to understand. Well hey, that is the exact point you want to make.
Do not [click] break a [click] human sentence [click] in too many [click] pieces. The stunning photographs are great but by the time the Niagara Falls come up, the viewer has forgotten what the sentence was all about.
A shift in my design work
A few years ago, the main purpose of my presentation design work was to arm people with a powerful set of slides for a live stand up presentation. Usually, the meeting would be set up after an initial telephone or in-person conversation, and the audience would see the slides for the first time.
More and more, I see my visuals being used to get to that meeting in the first place. The “cold” email attachment. Presentation slides become a short 3 minute commercial for an idea. The distribution is not in print, not on TV, but through an emailed document or URL. The actual presentation is more about figuring out the people behind the idea, not the idea itself.
There is general presentation format, or universal PowerPoint document. PowerPoint can even be used to write text documents. The 3 minute commercial is yet another one to add to the long list.
More and more, I see my visuals being used to get to that meeting in the first place. The “cold” email attachment. Presentation slides become a short 3 minute commercial for an idea. The distribution is not in print, not on TV, but through an emailed document or URL. The actual presentation is more about figuring out the people behind the idea, not the idea itself.
There is general presentation format, or universal PowerPoint document. PowerPoint can even be used to write text documents. The 3 minute commercial is yet another one to add to the long list.
Introversion and creativity
This article in the New York Times argues something that I have discovered for myself over the past years: working on your own boosts creativity. I think that 50% of the reason why I can be more effective at designing presentations than clients who hire me is my work environment that allows me to focus without noise and distractions. I explain this every time when people get frustrated why it is so hard to get me to answer the phone or why I take some time to respond to voice mail messages.
Why? Design is a process that requires you to be able to finish a line of thought without interruption. To sketch things. To go back and forth over things at your own pace. To put your feet up the table. To listen to some music. All things that are hard to do in a conference room.
During my career as a management consultant, I was always surprised that competing firms can make a living as pure process facilitators without getting into the substance. They would get everyone in a room, put up a flip chart, and argued that is enough to get the problem solved.
All of this seems to go against the current trend of collaboration and team work. It does not. Collaboration is not sitting all day in a meeting that goes nowhere. Collaboration is splitting up responsibilities, do the work, discuss, and iterate. Collaboration is not talking, it is doing.
Some more reading material that might help you understand introverted people in a world dominated by extroverts better:
Why? Design is a process that requires you to be able to finish a line of thought without interruption. To sketch things. To go back and forth over things at your own pace. To put your feet up the table. To listen to some music. All things that are hard to do in a conference room.
During my career as a management consultant, I was always surprised that competing firms can make a living as pure process facilitators without getting into the substance. They would get everyone in a room, put up a flip chart, and argued that is enough to get the problem solved.
All of this seems to go against the current trend of collaboration and team work. It does not. Collaboration is not sitting all day in a meeting that goes nowhere. Collaboration is splitting up responsibilities, do the work, discuss, and iterate. Collaboration is not talking, it is doing.
Some more reading material that might help you understand introverted people in a world dominated by extroverts better:
- Caring for your introvert, by Jonathan Rauch (The Atlantic)
- Manager’s schedule, maker’s schedule, by Paul Graham (YCombinator)
Real images
I am more and more fed up with stock images and turning to alternative sources of photographs for my presentations. Here is a great example of a real image with real people. If you want to make the point that the mobile era has arrived, you can do that with mobile penetration statistics (6b out of 7b people now have a cell phone), or you can just this great image by Josh Liba on Flickr, showing people consumed in their mobile world and not really interacting anymore among each other.
Different investors, different pitch
You can be very efficient when pitching to a professional VC and leave the 101 stuff out of your deck. She will have read all the relevant blogs, she is likely to be a power technology user, she sees 1,000s of deals each year, no need to teach her about the market environment anymore.
One, it is a waste of your scarce pitch time, two it shows that you do not have an ability to seize up your audience, which might tell her something about your skills as a manager and sales person.
If you are pitching to a less experienced angel investor, it is a different story, These people require more background and more time. But remember, there are highly seasoned angel investors as well.
One, it is a waste of your scarce pitch time, two it shows that you do not have an ability to seize up your audience, which might tell her something about your skills as a manager and sales person.
If you are pitching to a less experienced angel investor, it is a different story, These people require more background and more time. But remember, there are highly seasoned angel investors as well.
Slide make-over secrets
You do not have to pay a professional presentation designer to do basic chart make-overs. Here are the secrets:
- Take out ugly reflections, bevels, and huge shadows
- Center things properly
- Align and distribute any object on the slide
- Cut words on bullet points
- Group bullet point lists in sub categories
- Take out random colors and replace with those in the logo
- Remove Times Roman and Comic Sans and replace with Arial
- Take out italics and underline
- Round chart numbers and other financial information
- No ticks on chart axes
- Chart gap width to 50%
- Titles all in the same place, on 1 line (chop words if necessary)
- Replace fuzzy logos with hi-res ones
- Fix hanging bullet points (i.e., the next line starts under the bullet, rather than at the indent)
- Reset images to their original aspect ratio
After this, no need for a slide-make-over artist.
Ltd. NV. Inc. AG. SA. Gmbh.
OK, officially these company names include these legal classifications, but on slides they just create extra clutter. Take them out.
The early-stage VC pitch deck
Ryan Spoon of Polaris Ventures wrote this guest post on TechCrunch about designing a VC pitch presentation for early-stage startups. Most of his guidelines are valid. I have a few comments on some. It is interesting to take a step back and read between the lines how a VC is analyzing a presentation. Ryan does not say everything explicitly.
How to Create an Early Stage Pitch Deck
Quickly go through the deck. I will not repeat his advice. My comments:
- The elevator pitch. Ryan says he wants one, but he is not looking for that all encompassing sentence with a beautifully crafted vision statement full of buzz words. He wants to understand in a second what you are about. VCs like to put you in a box so they do not have to guess any longer. So the purpose of the elevator pitch is not to convince the VC to invest in you, it is to explain what you are doing and intrigue to flip the page. Parallels to existing startup successes are always great. “We are Foursquare for 65+ year olds”
- 10-15 slides. Not true. He means 5 minutes to click through
- Sharing. Assume your deck will be forwarded. So it should stand on their own, without verbal explanation. People have become a lot more efficient at absorbing information from slides. Where it used to be the case that you had to stand up and explain present your ideas in 45 minutes for people to understand, most VCs probably get the content of your idea right away in 5 minutes. The 45 minute presentation is for questions, and most importantly, to figure you out as an entrepreneur. So, big picture slides are OK, but make the titles understandable
- The market and opportunity. The questions Ryan is outlining are the right ones, but there is a trap here that they get answered in business school-type language with buzz words. Make these points very specific and real. Make a market sizing that can be understood on the back of an envelope. No fluff here.
Making a fool of yourself
Reading through the book The a-z of visual ideas, I came across this tip: do not hesitate to make a fool of yourself in a creative briefing. So true. I think the largest part of my contribution as a presentation designer is asking the stupid questions, and having the courage to take a fresh perspective on things.
If you design your own presentation, ask a friend or colleague to take the role of asking the stupid questions. If you are working in a big corporation and need to design a presentation for a senior executive, maybe try to get a few minutes of 1-on-1 time to ask the stupid questions, it easier to make a fool of yourself there then in a huge meeting.
If you design your own presentation, ask a friend or colleague to take the role of asking the stupid questions. If you are working in a big corporation and need to design a presentation for a senior executive, maybe try to get a few minutes of 1-on-1 time to ask the stupid questions, it easier to make a fool of yourself there then in a huge meeting.
Re-ordering objects
Despite my 10,000 hours of PowerPoint I never bothered to push the re-order objects button in the arrange menu (Mac). Hey, and out came a nice interface to make things to the front or to the back of the slide.
Teaching teenagers (2)
Last week I did my presentation design workshop to this year’s class of MEET (more details in an earlier post) in Jerusalem. I used grown-up stuff for these 15-16 year olds, a slightly modified version of my deck about investor and sales presentations designed for a senior managers. The results surprised me.
Despite being a 09:30am speaker (teenagers do not get a lot of sleep when they stay away from home in a large group), 95% of eyes were hooked on me (5% were deeply a sleep). In my usual audiences I rarely find someone really sleeping, but there are a lot more people distracted, even if your story is interesting.
Afterwards, I coached the students in the design of the pitch presentation of their ideas. It was interesting to see how these kids were sponges of ideas: the presentations were stitched together over the course of 3 hours and often looked better than finalized version 1s of pitch decks that clients sent me at the start of a project. The new generation has not been programmed by overhead transparencies and Microsoft PowerPoint bullet point templates, but is ready to try a fresh approach to design.
Teaching to present your ideas should be introduced in education much earlier than it is today.
Despite being a 09:30am speaker (teenagers do not get a lot of sleep when they stay away from home in a large group), 95% of eyes were hooked on me (5% were deeply a sleep). In my usual audiences I rarely find someone really sleeping, but there are a lot more people distracted, even if your story is interesting.
Afterwards, I coached the students in the design of the pitch presentation of their ideas. It was interesting to see how these kids were sponges of ideas: the presentations were stitched together over the course of 3 hours and often looked better than finalized version 1s of pitch decks that clients sent me at the start of a project. The new generation has not been programmed by overhead transparencies and Microsoft PowerPoint bullet point templates, but is ready to try a fresh approach to design.
Teaching to present your ideas should be introduced in education much earlier than it is today.
Column chart with totals
Here is a little trick to create automatic totals on top of column charts. This is an alternative to placing text labels manually, and especially useful when the data in the column charts is changing frequently.
Book: The a-z of visual ideas
An A-Z of Visual Ideas: How to Solve Any Creative Brief (affiliate link) by John Ingledew, aims to help you solve visual creative deadlock. Organized in 26 sections following the letters of the alphabet, it introduces a number of concepts that you can use as the basis of your design. Examples: counter-intuition, eyes, juxtaposition, and zeitgeist.
It is written more with advertising or poster design in mind, but still it can help you broaden your creative mind with the concepts provided in the book, or by encouraging to think out of the (visual) box yourself.
It is written more with advertising or poster design in mind, but still it can help you broaden your creative mind with the concepts provided in the book, or by encouraging to think out of the (visual) box yourself.
Timing your elevator pitch
Sometimes there is little time to do your pitch. You meet an investor in the corridor, you got a slot at a pitch competition. Seth Godin said the other day that no one has ever bought anything in an elevator: in other words a very short elevator pitch consisting of 2 sentences with hollow buzz words is not going to excite an investor.
Instead, you need to add more specifics to intrigue the investor to invite you to another occasion where there is more time to discuss your idea.
But sometimes, elevator pitches become less effective when you take too much time. You start adding details, provide facts, that take the energy out of your presentation, that require time to close all all the plot lines. There is a dip between the perfect short pitch, and the full-length 25 minute story. Do not get stopped in the middle, it is better to keep it short.
Instead, you need to add more specifics to intrigue the investor to invite you to another occasion where there is more time to discuss your idea.
But sometimes, elevator pitches become less effective when you take too much time. You start adding details, provide facts, that take the energy out of your presentation, that require time to close all all the plot lines. There is a dip between the perfect short pitch, and the full-length 25 minute story. Do not get stopped in the middle, it is better to keep it short.
Room temperature
A room that is too warm will put your audience to sleep, even when you have the most exciting presentation in the world. Climate control is one more thing to add to the pre-presentation technology check list.
Strategy deck <> pitch deck
The other day a client showed me a pitch deck that a management consulting firm had prepared for them. Having been a consultant myself, I recognized it immediately: structured, organized, logical, dense. Great to solve a problem and/or convince an analytical audience with lots of facts.
Not good enough to make the sale: a good sales presentations needs to touch both the heart and the mind. Consulting presentations touch the latter, not the first.
Instead, put the consulting deck aside and start from scratch. What is the story you would like to tell? Sketch visuals without borrowing / Frankensteining / recycling charts from the consulting presentation.
Not good enough to make the sale: a good sales presentations needs to touch both the heart and the mind. Consulting presentations touch the latter, not the first.
Instead, put the consulting deck aside and start from scratch. What is the story you would like to tell? Sketch visuals without borrowing / Frankensteining / recycling charts from the consulting presentation.
A cinematic presentation opening
Have a look at the way Francesco Paciocco credited this short video about Milan. It is a video, but the shots are very close to still images. We do not see the cliché images of the Duomo and other tourist attractions. Instead, a flow of scenes from daily live.
I like cinematic openings in PowerPoint presentations. A series of images to take the audience to a different place. While it might be a bit too complicated for the average designer to create such a video, you can create a very similar effect in PowerPoint by sequencing a series of Flickr images with a Creative Commons license. If you want, you can go one step further and add a slow-zoom effect to your images.
Via Fubiz.
I like cinematic openings in PowerPoint presentations. A series of images to take the audience to a different place. While it might be a bit too complicated for the average designer to create such a video, you can create a very similar effect in PowerPoint by sequencing a series of Flickr images with a Creative Commons license. If you want, you can go one step further and add a slow-zoom effect to your images.
Via Fubiz.
Tricky, those switch-overs
Switch-overs of technology during a presentations are always tricky. That is why I hardly ever recommend clients to use videos played in different software and live demos in short presentations. The worst case scenario happened last night at the school Hanuka event of my daughter.
After the performances of all the groups had been completed, this series of events unfolded:
After the performances of all the groups had been completed, this series of events unfolded:
- Mic: “After all the songs we already sang, we will just sing one more, really, only one”
- Full lights on in the room, everyone blinking
- Mic: “ There are huge amounts of donuts waiting for you outside the room!”
- People struggling to put up the small PowerPoint projection screen again with lyrics (you can see it behind the band)
- People running around the stage looking confused at papers with lyrics, pianist and guitarist flicking through pages
- Kids are heading for the donuts...
Happy holidays to everyone!
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