Many Eyes - "Flickr for data visualization"

Weekend reading. The NYT pointed me to Many Eyes, a site for sharing of data visualization. You can upload a data set (or use an existing one), pick a visualization and publish it to the world. Many Eyes is part of one of IBM's fundamental research programs. Some visualizations are the standard charts also available in PowerPoint, others are more unusual, for example tag cloud generators, and maps (countries, world) which are always tricky to create in PowerPoint. A shame though that it is not possible (at least I have not discovered it) to take visualizations off the site and use them offline in your own presentation.

Multi-layered slides: the selection pane

It can become almost impossible to edit complex animated slides that have layers and layers of objects on them. My solution used to be to spread the chart out over multiple pages. Recently, the selection pane tool in PowerPoint 2007 was pointed out to me. You can find it hidden away under the arrange menu. Click on the image for more detail. Life has just become easier. Thank you Glen Turpin.

Google Chrome - technology explained via cartoons

Google is using a cartoon book to explain the benefits of its new Chrome browser. This just opened my eyes. A lot of work I do for Israeli high-tech clients is helping them explain complex technology to potential investors. Until now, I never considered using a cartoon. Maybe it's time to change that. As an example, the attached illustration is a fragment of the explanation of the concept of a multi-threated browser. Still, the cartoon format is more suited to a presentation handout than an on-screen presentation, where you almost cannot avoid investing in an animated cartoon to get a similar effect. Gary Reynolds posted broader thoughts today about using cartoons in professional presentations.

Book review - slide:ology by Nancy Duarte

A copy of slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentationsfinally made its way across the Atlantic. (Disclosure link via Amazon Associates program) Nancy Duarte is managing Duarte Design, a company that has created some high-profile presentations (Al Gore is one of the clients). They (her husband is the company's CFO) started out in the 80s when the Apple Macintosh brought desk top publishing and graphics design to the masses, and have now become one of the big brands in professional presentation design. This is the perfect book for those who have mastered the PowerPoint (or Apple Keynote) technical skills and need to make the final jump to master concepts usually taught in art schools (rather than software manuals):

• Picking pleasing color schemes
• Slide composition
• Typography
• Etc.

The trained eye can extract almost everything there is to know about presentation design. However, this is not the book that will teach you magic that will turn your beginner-level PowerPoint edits into a professional presentation. Many subjects discussed in this books are covered in other material as well (minimal bullet points, cut words, use professional images, etc. etc.) However, there are some very specific things that I picked up in this book that were new to me:

• Thinking about cinematic movement for animations or slide composition
• Creating one big map and using the PowerPoint push transition to navigate it: one presentation - one big slide
• A large library of chart concept sketches, there were many new ones I did not use before
• Stressing to adopt a "designer" mentality to presentations

Things that I found less useful/interesting (personal preference):

• (Many) direct references to the services Duarte Design can offer
• Case examples (many of which are the same as on Duarte's site) are not always useful
• The section on data charts was relatively weak

But overall, a warm recommendation to purchase this book. It is well written, nicely illustrated and brings all the presentation design essentials together in one place, including many references to further reading and almost all the big presentation "brands" in the industry.

Slideshare presentation contest winners

The results of the contest are out. Here are the winners. The winning presentation is this one:

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: crisis design)

These are beautiful presentations, but all of them are written in a similar style (high pace, big image, big words) that is only suited for a specific set of topics/presentation settings. UPDATE. I tend to agree with many of the comments on Guy Kawasaki's blog (he was one of the jury members). These slides are beautiful, they adhere to the maximum graphics / minimal text rule. But, the result is a presentation that is great for high-paced clicking online, but probably not the ideal format for a big live presentation. I particularly liked one observation that these slides are in fact disguised bullet point slides: 0.5 bullet points per page instead of 5 bullets per page.

You can't hurry presentation design

I discovered that the subconscious mind really works, and it changed the way I design presentations. Partly driven by my experience as a strategy consultant at McKinsey where presentations are mostly associated with presenting recommendations at the project deadline, presentation design used to be a focused and exhausting sprint to the finish line. I changed my approach: dropping work on a presentation for a day, doing a few detailed charts, taking a break, sketching high-level stories, sleeping on it, working on the color scheme, working on a different project, finding a great closing image, etc. Maybe you should try it as well.

Avoid jumping slides

"Jumping" is caused by slight differences in the position of similar items on consecutive slides. When you flick through your presentation quickly, it looks like these items "dither" (like in a cartoon). Try to avoid it for a calmer presentation. Jumping often happens in:

• Slide titles
• Vertical (y) axes of data charts
• Animation buildups spread over multiple slides

To avoid it:

• Use the drawing guides
• Control-C an object on 1 page and copy it using control-V on the next to create the exact same position
• In the worst case use size-position to set the exact coordinates of an item

Chart concept - look-through white board

I used this image today in a presentation. Great to put on the side when drawing black shapes, or support informal, hand-writing font text on a white page. Make sure the pen touches the last "shape" or "word" she drew.

Better PowerPoint title pages

Title pages are important, they are the first impression you make on your audience. Some suggestions on how you can make them better.

• Write an interesting title (like a newspaper heading that invites to read), followed by a small subtitle explaining what your presentation actually is (i.e., the 2nd quarter financial results)
• Include information for the people in the audience wondering who this person is on stage adjusting his/her microphone (your name, company, function, presentation occasion, date and place)
• Avoid heavy bold fonts, they use "fat" when used in big font sizes, instead use bigger regular fonts, they look more elegant. If necessary use a darker (or lighter) shading of the text color (preferably not black) to emphasize.
• Use a page-wide image, preferably in colors that are similar to the ones you use in your presentation (you could add a color overlay if you can't find the right image). Make sure the image has enough empty space for text. If not, leave bars either above or under the image (movie on 4:3 screen look), or a rectangle to the left or right. I like images of people looking into the lens, but they are not suitable for all types of presentations.  
• Align text left or right (not centered) somewhere along the "golden proportion" of the slide

Obviously, if you are bound by the prescribed PowerPoint template of your company there is not much room for chance.

Aligning bullet points in PowerPoint

One of the PowerPoint annoyances is that bullet point paragraphs are not aligned properly when overflowing to the next line. It's easy to fix.

Display the ruler (view menu), select the text, and move the little markers, leaving the top one to the left, and the bottom one at the desired indent. (See the image to the right).

That bullet points are NOT the main design concept to make PowerPoint presentations is clear, but a completely separate subject.

Slideboom - more online PowerPoint sharing

Mashable features a brief review of Slideboom. There are now many, many of these services for sharing presentations out there (Mashable listed some here). Criteria to evaluate them are usually:

• Do they actually have enough capacity to work (Slideboom seems to be suffering from the attention last night)
• Do they convert all possible PowerPoint features and effects including animations (Slideboom seems to be doing good here)
• Do they have their own proprietary presentation design interface: Slideboom just takes PowerPoint presentations, which makes sense I think, teaching people a completely new user interface might be too much of a challenge (maybe with the exception of applications that focus on specific features, such as Flypaper and Flash)
• Do they have a big and rich following and sharing community (Slideboom as at a disadvantage from players that are already established)

This looks like a useful service, but the worlds only needs one or two good ones. These good ones should be able to deliver presentation quality that can be put on an overhead beamer and allow for Webex-style meeting/presentation orchestration features. Let's wait and see how the shakeout plays out.

Flawed 12 August PowerPoint update

Microsoft admitted that some versions of the latest PowerPoint security update were wrong. It only seem to affect people who have downloaded patches manually from the Microsoft Download center though, automatic updates were correct. Maybe run Office Update again just to be sure.