PowerPoint lessons from a toilet paper ad

I am learning a lot from print advertising. I am learning a lot from the adgoodness blog.

Especially in fund raising presentations I design for startups that are going to pitch to potential investors, I am spending a lot of time/effort in finding that one image or visual concept that really nails down the idea in one big bang. Almost to the extent that the following slides are not required anymore.

Consumer marketing is all about focus on one single and clear consumer benefit. Here is a(nother) great example. Food for thought when designing your next presentation.

Exception: some conceptual stock images can be useful

I am not a big fan of conceptual stock images. Compositions you can do yourself. There are exceptions. See the example below.

3D smoke 'n mirrors - making things disappear from an image in PowerPoint

Stretching part of a picture cannot only be used to create white space, you can also let things disappear pretty much like David Copperfield does:

I used this concept to show how a new technology solution of one of my clients can save a lot of server costs. The zapped servers live on in the reflection in their opposite neighbours though...

More 3D in PowerPoint - obstacle course!

I am continuing to experiment with 3D effects. Here is an alternative idea to visualize a number of obstacles on the road ahead. The last image (click it for a larger picture) contains some explanations on how I did it. If things are not clear feel free to as in the comments.

Does anyone know how to add a smooth moving animation to this, motion paths and re-sizing of objects do not go together?

(Apologies for the image quality as I converted to JPG instead of PNG to improve load times)

Chart concept - rip those PowerPoint shapes apart

A concept I often use to visualize things that are torn apart by opposing forces in PowerPoint presentations.

• Copy a shape (with text)
• Paste special as PNG (4 times, or even more)
• Start cropping the copies

How to strip web text of its formating

Especially for sources in footers I often want to avoid re-typing a complicated title of a document that I found on the web. Copy-paste of the text also copies some of the text formating. Solution: copy the text, paste it into "Note pad" (the standard text editing utility that comes with Windows), select the text again and paste it into a PPT text box. I would be interested if other people have faster solutions for this.

UPDATE: Remy got the solution in the comments: copy any text, then select Edit and "Paste Special" and select unformatted text. Thank you!

UPDATE 2: Glen Turpin recommends PureText (see the comments).Thank you!

Chart concept - distorting text under a magnifying glass in PowerPoint

For when you want to make the point that it is important to pay attention to the small print, or make sure that you did not skip over important hidden information, you can use this concept.

In PowerPoint 2007:

• Get a picture of a magnifying glass from any stock photography site
• Set the font to a Times Roman-like serif font that looks like a book/newspaper
• Cut the sentence in 3
• Increase the size and apply a "can up" distortion to the text inside the magnifying glass (select the text, go into format, text effects, transform, in "warp", 3rd from the left, 4th from the top.

Creating more white space in a picture

Many stock images lack sufficient white space for text. Stretching an image distorts the proportions.

A trick to get around this problem:

1. Copy the image
2. Crop a small strip at the top of the image
3. Flip the strip
4. Stretch the strip only

Experimenting more with typography

I am creating a presentation for a client today that provides a very simple solution for a very complex problem. While moving around the letters in the words I saw an usual pattern:

• completely different meanings
• very similar words...

I need to find more of these.

Humor in your presentation - Add Letters

Add Letters is a site full with image generators. I noticed that they've added a few new images. My personal favorites are those related to The Simpsons. 

(Snow) white space to the extreme

Don't fill up your slides to the last square inch. Instead: leave white space (or negative space). Have the courage to write nothing, take a visual break. This ad for a ski resort takes it to the extreme, but makes its point brilliantly (large image here). Via Ads of the World.

"Open source funding" - business plan competition

I am a bit late in discovering this blog post by Mark Cuban. To enter the competition, post your business plan (presentation) in the open for everyone to steal, and Mark will select one for funding. It will be interesting to see the candidates and ultimately the winning presentation/idea.

I am starting to understand when to use 3D in PowerPoint

A user of PowerPoint 2007 has an enormous amount of 3D tools at his/her disposal. It is only after a year or so of working with this software that I start to understand how 3D could help get your message across.

Many 3D effects are NOT useful. Three dimensional graphs make it harder to match the data to the value axes. Adding "random" bevels, reflections and shadows to a PowerPoint object does not make it an elegant graphical element. The fact that PowerPoint can do it, does not mean you have to use it.

Why don't we use 3D for what it can do best: show distance? The example below shows a time line that we expect to last forever. 

Adding some 3D effects will make it much more powerful:

Other examples could be a landscape scattered with competitors battling for market share. Or a quadruple layer of defenses that can protect the intellectual property of a startup. 

Notice that you actually do not need any of the PowerPoint 2007 effects to create a 3D effect. It is all about positioning shapes, and reducing the size of objects and fonts as you come closer to the imaginary horizon.

Use 3D when you think two dimensions are not enough to tell your story.

PowerPoint template colors and color blindness

My Vincent van Gogh color set from a few days ago is not very good for people suffering from red-green color blindness. Use Vischeck to test your own templates. To do so, you need to "save as" a PowerPoint page as "PNG".

A side-benefit of this test is that you get sense of what happens if someone prints your presentation on a black & white printer. (But hey, the B&W white test is the easiest of all: print preview)

Somewhat related: an earlier post about designing presentations with people suffering from dyslexia in mind.

Via Richard Garber. A more elaborate post on Vischeck and PowerPoint in this post on the Indezine blog.

Lunarr Elements - "Twitter for beautiful images"

Somehow Stumbleupon has gotten too complicated for just dipping into a series of beautiful images now and then. Lunarr's Elements keeps it pure and simple. You can vote up and down images and follow (get followed by) people with similar visual tastes.

Via VentureBeat

My presentations on SlideShare

Many people ask me for examples of my work. The problem is that most of it is highly confidential. Some of my presentations are in the public domain, and I have embedded them in this post. You should realize though that most of these presentations are designed for a big conference audience: large images, very little text. This is not the only style in which I can create presentations (see an earlier post about this issue). Having said that, here we go:

Introducing Axiom One

View more presentations from Jan Schultink.

Presentation lessons for entrepreneurs

View more presentations from Jan Schultink.

I heart presentation design

View more presentations from Jan Schultink.

Remembering 6 million Holocaust victims

View more presentations from Jan Schultink.

Facebook Is a Dinner Party

View more presentations from Socialbees.

Psion Preliminary Results Presentation

View more presentations from Jan Schultink.

"Color me creative"

People have been talking a lot about how colors influence behavior. A study published in Science Magazine today added one more entry to the list.

• Red: improves performance on detail-oriented tasks
• Blue: stimulates creativy

The article goes on to discuss underlying causes. Stressful colors like red might enhance effectiveness of getting things done. Blue "calm" colors are better for coming up with that brilliant idea.

Regardless of whether these type of studies are right or not: picking a color scheme for your company look and feel (and/or your PowerPoint presentation) is a far more important decision than deciding the graphics of your logo.

Which of the 2 objects will move when you align?

When you align 2 or more objects in PowerPoint, one will stay put while all the others move to line up. It is easy to predict which one will move. See the diagram below. Click on the image for a larger picture.

How to create Photoshop-style Image cut outs in PowerPoint

Photoshop has sophisticated tools for cutting our shapes from images. In PowerPoint you can reach similar effects by filling a shape with an image. 

When selecting a fill for a shape, choose "picture or texture fill" instead of a color:

Alternatively, choose "slide background fill" to creat "holes" in your graphics.

Godin and Becker on planning for the end

Do you save the most important part of the meeting for the end, when everyone is already standing? See Seth's Godin full post here. Bert Decker added additional thoughts here. Things you should NOT do:

1. Step back
2. Look away
3. Move on the last word
4. Raise your hands
5. Rush to collect your papers
6. Blackball yourself