Using historical paintings as an inspiration for color schemes

Great painters use colors to set the emotion of a painting. An example is Van Gogh's "Le Cafe de Nuit". He talks about this painting in one of his letters to his brother Theo:

I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.

It is interesting that Van Gogh talks about clashing colors, but the end result is in fact a very harmonious ensemble of colors.

Painters use intuition and a sharp eye for real-life images to create a suitable color scheme. You can "borrow" a bit of their genius by using painting as an input source for tools such as kuler to create your own color combinations. In fact, paintings might be a better source than images for this purpose.

The result is good, but not as perfect as the original. I miss the digital equivalent of the artist color pallete to mix and match colors as you go. I am starting to experiment though with going "off color scheme", injecting here and there colors in slides that do not fit 100% with the defined presentation colors.

How to build a presenter's confidence to depart from "overhead slide" presentations

Every day, I am working hard to convince my clients to switch to a presentation format that no longer resembles the hand-written overhead slides we used in the early 90s: lots, and lots, and lots of slides, pushed forward by remote control, big pictures, big fonts. The slides become the background animation of a speaker's performance. The best way to do it is by using an internal meeting, a low-risk setting to try it out. The annual company gathering, the annual sales rep conference, these are all great occasions. In these presentations I will use humor, images, and concepts that would never make it to an external presentation, but once the presenter has gone through the experience she is usually "sold". The way back to dense boring slides is closed. Subsequent external presentations will be more "serious", but never boring. One more member of the tribe.

Great book "Tasteful Color Combinations" - not even available on Amazon

Found hidden away on a shelf in the book shop of the Tel Aviv Museum: "Tasteful Color Combinations" by Naomi Kuno. It is not even available on Amazon, that's why I have trouble finding a good web link to it.

The book contains 455 color schemes (with detailed RGB  and CMYK codes), organized in 14 chapters each with a different mood. ("Nostalgic and melanchology", "humanistic and natural" to name two). The first edition was published in Japan in 2004, and the English translation is not always perfect, adding to the charm of the book.

Some examples of colors schemes available (exact quotations from the book):

• 241, Formal Kimono: the color of a patterned formal kimono for a married woman
• 255, Homely: the cozy warm color of home where a cheerful laugh is always heard
• 359, Glory and fame: glory and fame never fades away when quality is accompanied. The blue is for glory and the red and gold are for fame.
• 370, Rococo -1: the elegant rococo period colors of Fragonard's paintings and dresses
• 111, Ryugu castle: the color of a town of Ryugu castle in a deep sea, where princess Otohime and beautiful fish are said to inhabit, in a legend story of Japanese fantasy.

The colors of 111 below as an example:

I have used this book a number of times as a source of inspiration for finding color schemes for seed-level technology startups that need help developing their very first fund raising presentation. (Other techinques to find a good color scheme can be found here).

Here are the full details of the book in case you would like to try to order it:

Tasteful Color Combinations by Naome Kuno and FORMS Inc. / Color Intelligence Institute Published by Page One Publishing Private Limited, Singapore ISBN 978-981-245-228-3

Getting rid of image tags in PDF files

PDF is the preferred format for emailing out presentations:

• Small file size
• Clean presentation without the risk of an accidental edit

PDF conversions sometimes transfer the full file path and file name of an image in your presentation into a PDF image tag (see example below). Not very pretty.

To get rid of these image tags: Open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat. [In version 8]: go to view, navigation panels, tags, click options, uncheck "Document is tagged PDF", re-save the file and they're gone.

Less is more: cut, cut, and cut words

Fewer words is more. The Word Wise blog posted a number of phrases that can be reduced to one word without losing meaning. (Copied in full here, but please do visit this interesing blog).

• at all times - always
• at the present time - now
• because of the fact that - because
• due to the fact that - because
• for the purpose of - for
• in order to - to
• in spite of the fact that - though
• prior to, in anticipation of - before
• with regard to - about
• on an annual basis - yearly
• at this point in time - now
• subsequent to - after
• a large majority - most
• be in a position to - can
• in view of the fact that - because
• in the event that - if
• at your earliest convenience - soon
• be in a position to - can
• under the circumstances - because

There is a bigger trend here:

1. Hand writing creates long texts, when we start we are often not quite sure how to get our point across. Mistakes are hard to correct
2. Word processing allowed us to review (cut) text retrospectively
3. (PowerPoint) graphics and images allow us to get rid of more text and replace them with a visual that "says more than a 1,000 words".
4. The next step might be that we are letting go of the rules of grammar (similar to SMS messages, Tweets) in more official settings to deal with increasing information overload.

I have not (yet) reached step 4.

Using Rube Goldberg machines in your presenation

A Peugeot ad finally got me to the source of these brilliant cartoons of incredibly complex machines that perform very simple tasks through a sequence of carefully timed actions. No, they were not pioneered by Road Runner and The Coyote that's chasing him. Cartoonist such as Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson are one of the most famous creators of these systems. Today, there still are many annual Rube Goldberg contests that challenge high school students to invent one of their own.

This Honda commercial from a few years ago is a beautiful example of how you can use Rube Goldberg-type effects in visual communication. How to use it in PowerPoint? Animating one of these machines is a challenge... Two suggestions.

1. Build up audience anticipation. Use a simple cartoon to create a tension about something that is about to happen. The same way that a novelist leaves room for the reader to fill in the blank spaces. See an example on Nancy Duarte's blog: the hanging piano that is about to fall is a more powerful visual than that of a broken piano on the floor.
2. "There must be a better way to do this". This is a concept I often need to get across in fund raising presentations for technology startups. Showing a very complex Rube Goldberg machine does the trick for me. (Another technique making the same point is using vintage images, here an "auto wash bowl" long before the automated car wash was invented).

Moving house - going offline

Hope to see you all back on the other side of the tunnel in a few days.

Full 16 minute MLK "I have a dream" speech

Thank you TED for reminding us of this great speech. It is worth watching again to see someone touching everyone without slide or media support. Even now, decades later on a small YouTube screen, far away from the event itself.

I am anticipating the inauguration speech. Obama's victory speech in November was phenomenal. I remember what I was doing when I watched it. I still remember story lines of it. Evidence that it stuck. Can he raise the bar even more?

Color mismatches in corporate PowerPoint templates ("Skype" example)

Skype has a beautiful and very strong visual identity. Things start OK on the first page of this presentation by its COO at CES 2009. Then the color coordination gets weaker. Off blue. Pink's too bright. No greens (Skype's green "call" button is very strong visual icon returning in the monochrone rainbow).

PowerPoint templates go beyond page 1.

I am sure Skype's template is OK, the default colors are probably not set in such a way that they are easy to use for people without a degree (or passion) in graphics design. Like in almost all corporate PowerPoint templates, too much screen real estate is devoted to the brand/logo. With its strong blue colors Skype could actually afford not having a logo at all on its presentation pages. People will recognize the company regardless.

Skype COO Scott Durchslag at CES 2009

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ces skype)

Forget about that last presentation "summary" slide

I have seen too many of these:

• Introduction slides that give away the entire story of the presentation (and the speaker spends 20 minutes on it)
• Summary slides that repeat the entire story of the presentation (and the speaker spends 10 minutes on it)

Delete them both.

The first slide should just cover what you are about to say, but not say it. The last slide should be an uplifting graphic reminding people about your key messages. Repeating these messages will just bore your audience. 

Humor - your own Obama icon poster

The Obama poster by Shepard Fairey is the icon of 2008.

Here is a tool to make your own. You see, there is still some work to do before I can make it as a presidential candidate.

Jokes aside. Icons can be powerful visual tools to use in presentations. Famous historical moments, famous historical pictures, famous historical posters. 

An earlier post about real historical images from LIFE magazine available on Google.

"Signature" advertising for a hairdresser

Unusual. An well-designed ad for a more or less local hairdresser/spa. Like a good slide:

• You get the point instantly
• Understated, elegant, and lots of white space

I like the small light-source-behind-the-model effect, I will experiment with it in my next presentation using a radial-gradient with very close color shadings.

Still, there is something "criminal" associated with a finger print (as people suggest in the comments of Ads of the World, where I found this image).

Visual communication in schools - when is it too early?

During a meeting today: "You make presentations? Can you believe that my children are actually producing PowerPoint in school at the moment?"

It made me look back at my own time in school. There was virtually zero training in visual communication. And now that I think of it, this is actually not solely because of a lack of technology (I got my first home computer at around 1986).

• Primary school. No visuals were encouraged when you had to do your lecture on let's say "the hamster"
• High school. The teacher would write his course notes in long sentences on the black board and asked us to copy them in our note books
• In economics there was a total absence of describing market forces, company strategy, and results of data analysis in conceptual graphs
• Writing was all about correct senstences and grammar, not convincing structure or logic
• Later in university, professors would put overhead copies of his course material on the projector, requiring you to study the 4 aspects (bullet points) of issue A, B, and C.

I hope things are better now. My kids are a bit too young still for me to get first-hand experience.

Making things more difficult, visual communication would probably involve the combination of a number of subjects. In high school: economics, mathematics/logic, language, arts, etc.

Does the availability of PowerPoint in the highschool class room today actually help to make kids better at communicating? Or is it counter productive?

Scott McCloud (comics, Google Chrome) on TED

An interesting and entertaining way to spend 17 minutes. Comics evangelist (and author of the comic book that explains the technology behind Google Chrome) Scott McCloud on comics and visual presentation in general. More details on the TED talk page, and the TED Scott McCloud profile.

A global presentation design community is emerging

Olivia Mitchell is the person behind the Speaking about Presenting blog. She is one of the true leaders in the global presentation design community and collected and synthesized input from 40 presentation experts, bloggers, and other enthusiasts into one blog post: PowerPoint design in 2009: does design matter?.

Well done Olivia. 

And well done presentation design community. Over the past few months a group of people around the globe really started to work together, comment on each others perspectives, exchange ideas. There are not that many blog subject areas in which this happens. Great. Join in if you want. See my improvised blog roll (I forgot many names there, or go to Alltop Speaking to get a flavor of who is out there).

"Everyone can draw" - clean and simple shapes in PowerPoint

"Everyone can paint" used to be the name of a Dutch toy set when I was a child.

With really basic drawing skills it is possible to make useful "iconic" charts. The umbrella below was used to highlight how a strategy has shielded one of my clients from the full effect of the 2008 economic meltdown.

Look at shapes and see how they are decomposed in very simple elements: a few ellipses and some rectangles. On the right I gave them a different color to make them visible. Make sure that everything is neatly spaced out and symmetrical. The background image was purchased on iStockPhoto.

The key lesson: simple drawings do not have to look simplistic.

Chart concept - the audience as the patient

Some images can literally make the audience feel that they are the patient. Suffering, helpless. Other variations on the theme: a dentist with a buzzing drill, or less medical, someone "zapping" you away to another channel with a television remote control. Image via BigStockPhoto. The good thing about a medical picture is that the most of the faces of the models in the image are covered, hiding that this is not a "real" image.

Update, here a version of the remote control image:

Experiment with typography - slice up those paragraphs

Typography is a major under-utilized tool in PowerPoint. On the right a standard PowerPoint display of a large 100pt text. Wide distances between lines, not very interesting. On the left, I cut it up in 3 pieces and started to re-align characters vertically. I am only starting to learn.

Remote presentation tool: Dimdim - the best one around?

I need to host an international web-based PowerPoint presentation and I searched around to find Dimdim. 

• It's free for meetings up to 20 people. 
• Neither the host, nor the participant needs to install any software on his/her computer. 
• And it's open source.

Sounds great. Does anyone have experience with this tool, or alternatives? In any case I will report back.

Infographic example - poor info / great graphic

Infographics can look great, but can do a poor job in getting data across. This data could have been brought out better with simple bar charts. I am still struggling to get the point (15+ years of chart-decoding-experience as a strategy consultant is not enough in this case). Original on Good Magazine. Click the image for a bigger picture.