From PPT to HTML

Web design involves technical skills that a presentation or print designer does not have. At the same time, (if I may say so), presentation/print designers might have a better feeling for page layout (understatement). Yeah, yeah, I agree, on the interactive technology front the geeks still beat us.

I have blogged many times over the past few years about the similarities between web and presentation design.

Most automated web design tools are aimed at small business owners with zero design or software skills: Wix is an example, or look at Striking.ly. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover Webydo that offers a design environment similar to PowerPoint or InDesign and enables presentation/print designers to create some pretty decent web sites.



The company is still in beta, so there is always the risk that your web site might go down with it in case the company does not get traction (that is why I am giving it some publicity here). Also, the software still has some tiny bugs that I am sure will be ironed out in the near future.

The other side of the table

As I am making slow but steady progress with my presentation app I have had a chance to sit on the other side of the table: being the one who pitches an idea, rather than my usual role as a presentation designer who gets pitched with business plans. Observations:

• Yes, not everybody loves your idea like you do (but all designers do)
• Most people form an opinion about your business without actually understanding/getting to what the truly great thing about it is
• Spending dollars on designers becomes a whole different thing when it is your own money
• When you live and breathe your own story, you actually do a lousy job pitching it to an outsider who has never heard of it. Having a pitch deck at hand (guess what, I do not have one) might actually be handy to slow myself down and take someone to the story that I assume to be common knowledge.
• People point out - rightfully - that it is not only about product, I need a market strategy 

When listening to these people I hear myself speak when discussing client presentations. Funny. In any case, the process is making me a better presentation designer.

Where is the money?

Most business presentations address the financials of an idea at some stage. Resist the temptation of using a cartoonesk clip art image to introduce the topic. Financials are serious stuff and you are not asking for your weekly candy allowance from investors or corporate decision makers.

A good PowerPoint template

I just gave a client some feedback on new PowerPoint template options, I might as well share my thoughts with all of you:

• Flat: no drop shadows behind fints, no gradients, no reflections. These look dirty in a world of razor sharp retina displays
• Out with the subtle waves and watermarks, they 1) make slides hard to read and interfere with the slide design and 2) make your presentation look like 2003
• Lighter fonts: there is no need to scream to get your point across. Keep a lot of white space around the slide title.
• If you have to put a logo on each slide, put it at the bottom right, not top right (or even left), you want to leave the maximum space for the slide title.
• The client spent a lot of time on the cover page, but my suggestion is to worry about it last.
• Design your template around a real presentation rather than empty pages.

One minute pitches

Last night I attended a startup pitch event in New York where contestants had 60 seconds to pitch their idea, followed by 2 minutes of questioning by a panel of judges. Some observations on elevator pitches:

• No slides (everyone got that right)
• Get right to it, no uh oh, my background is, a small joke
• Most important thing in 60 seconds: get people to understand what you actually do. When rehearsing the 60 second pitch (easy to do) test not only whether people like your idea, but more importantly, do they understand what your idea is. I struggled to understand about one third of the ideas, and I am used to deciphering startup pitches, so it must have been worse for other members of the audience. Luckily the panel of experts was helpful and dragging it out of people in the Q and A. Example: an in-restaurant ordering system actually turned out to be a $3,000 table where guest could order food using an integrated touch screen. 
• Avoid going down a feature list, a user can do this, a user can do that, instead stick to the overall concept
• Do end your pitch with something more uplifting than “That’ it!”, even if you feel embarrassed that there are still 25 seconds left on your clock. This is actually a good thing.
• Tell people why the thing you do is so tricky. Example: nobody really got excited about a group video chat app until we learned that they solved a very complex technical issue in establishing a 1-to-many live video connection in 2 seconds 
• Breathe, pause, speak calmly. It is better to skip a few points than speaking to rapidly, nervously.
• In this case, the audience had a say in selecting the winner. They use different criteria than the professional VCs in the panel. For an audience entertainment value, or actually even the ability to remember what you were about after 20 pitches might be more important than the credentials of the founding team of your company. Pick the right battle, at the right time.

Why suffer?

Often when I visit a client and we do some on-site slide edits together, I am surprised to see how people suffer from working in PowerPoint because of things that can easily be prevented:

• Make sure you actually see what you do. Make your work area as big as possible, reduce the size of the slide note box to the minimum. If you have a docking station for your laptop, use it to hook up to the big monitor. Ask IT to help sort out a 2-screen configuration, where you can have presentation inputs (an older version with comments) can be on the small screen while you do your edits on the big screen (I went further and work on two 27" monitors, plus the 3rd  small screen of my laptop, one of the best investments I have ever made).
• Write down actions that you use all the time (aligning objects, [un]grouping items, switch to slide sorter view and back, etc.) and spend 20 minutes Googling how to do them using short cuts. Read this old post about how to create the essential PowerPoint toolbar.
• Use a proper mouse and not the IBM/Lenovo red dot
• If your computer is slow, close down windows, applications, de-clutter your machine until you have only the files open that you actually need
• Ask someone in IT to sort out the default settings in your PowerPoint template so that you do not have to look for fonts, colours, etc.

Flat design: good news for you

Flat design is the big trend in graphic design at the moment, and it is great news for the layman designer. You can stop worrying about what you thought were “sophisticated” graphics: 3D, drop shadows, gradients, reflections.

Take the Microsoft approach for example: blacks and greys, one bright accent color, tiles spaced out in a grid, thin font, sharp edges. Perfect for a presentation look and very easy to replicate. Resist the temptation to make it “sophisticated” again...

If you are interested in the Microsoft design revamp, here is a 45 minute video that provides a look in the kitchen:

Substance in TED

Many people claim that they now design TED-style presentations. They understand that bullet points are bad, and hey, it is actually very easy to put a word in white type on a black background (maybe even add that stunning image).

What many forget though, is that the substance of these TED talks is in the narrative, the story. Just having 10 slides that look like TED does not mean that your performance is TED-worthy. Sorry.

88% of spreadsheets have errors

A bug in an Excel spreadsheet influenced the outcome of an economic study. Flawed numbers can lead to bad decisions and/or take the credibility out of your presentation. “If the number on this page is wrong, I might as well have to check the numbers on every page....”

I have built my fair share of models (mostly discounted cash flow valuation models of big companies) and a small bug can make a few billion dollar difference in valuation.

My main strategy against bugs:

• Simple formulas: plus, minus, times, divided by. 
• If possible only 2 numbers per formula, intermediate results appear as another line
• Round up to a unit that leaves you with one digit behind the dot (millions, thousands, etc.)
• Everything points down, a result always depends on values higher up in the spreadsheet, never the other way around
• And finally: adhere to the rule that if it looks wrong, it is probably wrong. Averages should be within the minimum and the maximum value, gross margins are usually around 50%, etc. etc.

One story throughout

You can simply describe your product/app with a dry feature list. Better: you can use case examples to show how things work in practice. The best approach: use one case example/story throughout your entire presentation:

• You can go into a bit more depth to set the challenge your product tackles
• You do not need to reintroduce the case example all the time, we already know the full background of the main character in your story
• You can show that your product can be used on multiple occasions at different times of the day
• You can also introduce smaller features using the framework of the overall story
• You can instantly create a consistent look and feel across your presentation

PowerPoint as a picture frame

I am working with architects to help them pitch a building concept. The client requirement: no PowerPoint presentation, so we are designing the meeting around an informal discussion of sketches (some of them made on the spot).

PowerPoint will be reduced to a picture database from which we can pull up a building image quickly if (and only if) needed in the meeting.

How to pitch on demo days

I enjoyed talking to Israeli and Palestinian MEET graduates last Thursday about pitching at demo days. Here are some of the things we talked about:

• Objective: get to the next meeting rather than landing the full investment which you will never be able to pull off in five minutes
• 101: bullet points are boring (everyone knows this by now) and buzzwords do not work
• Entertainment: marathon investor pitches wears out the audience. When you are the first up, you need to make sure people still remember you at the end of the day. When you are number twenty seven, you need to make sure everyone is still awake. Make sure your pitch is high on entertainment value, while staying professional at the same time
• Five minutes: you cannot solve the time limitation by cramming in more content (denser slides, speaking faster), so chop those slides that are not important for the purpose of your pitch (getting to the next meeting). Detailed financial forecasts, team bios, technology explanations, can all wait for later
• Carefully plan your app demo. Show what you want to show, do not spend time on boring log in screens. Tell what the audience is seeing, it might be obvious to you that things are beautiful and fast, the audience does not see it. If you can, avoid a live demo in a 5 minute pitch and instead go for fail-proof screen shots
• One story throughout. If possible tie everything (consumer problem, your solution, demo) to one consistent case study throughout the entire five minutes.
• Rehearse until you drop. Five minutes of content can be rehearsed until you know the content in and out. Spontaneous guitar solos sound spontaneous because the guitarist knows her scales  and melody lines so she can improvise them

MEET offers Israeli and Palestinian high school students the opportunity to go through an advanced high-tech training program (coding, business) in cooperation with MIT. People work in joint teams for a couple of years in addition to their normal education. Selection is very tough, only the very brightest, most creative, and most entrepreneurial applicants make it through the admission process.

Join the MEET facebook page to stay up to date on the initiative.