Presentation design blog Idea Transplant / SlideMagic

Meet Mr. Chicken and think about your PowerPoint template

Amazing, there is one person who designed the "logos" and store fronts of almost 90% of all independent fried chicken outlets in the U.K. "Mr. Chicken" is interviewed here, there is even a book available on the phenomenon.

Amusing reading. However, it is not completely justified to pooh pooh these logo designs. Because they all look the same, they are actually pretty effective. If you find yourself in a U.K. high street looking for some fried chicken, you find one of these outlets in 2 seconds.

But, you do not want to be "Mr. Chicken" when it comes to your PowerPoint presentation. Get rid of the generic logo. Free up the screen real estate that is consumed by heavy banners with empty slogans. Instead, let people see the "what you have in store" with great content in your slides, all in a nice and consistent color scheme.

Via Noisy Decent Graphics.

Godin on VC pitches: "imminent success" around the corner

Seth Godin writes in his latest post about the importance of showing your imminent breakthrough:

If it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to break out, that all systems are go, then only an idiot wouldn't jump on board.

It didn't happen yet, but it is about to happen. Useful advice for people writing VC pitches.

Summary chart with 3 completely different data ranges

Sometimes you want to show 3 data sets in one chart with very different data ranges, for example:

1,000s of customers
$ sticker price per unit
Number of products bought per customer

One solution:

Set the column of the first data point of each series to 100
Calculate the 2nd value relative to the 100
Manually paste data labels with the correct factors

The chart below gives an example:

The first chart contains the unadjusted data
The second chart shows the adjusted version
The third charts shows the values I have entered in the PPT columns

Click on the example image below for a larger image.

The joys of ALT ENTER

Pressing ALT ENTER in an Excel cell creates a soft page break, pushing the text down a line without "closing" the cell edit. You can use it to control line breaks in axis lables.

The other solution is to omit automated axis labels all together and put in your own standard PowerPoint text boxes under the bars in the chart.

Do good stuff

I am continuing to post some "lighter" material during this holiday week here in Israel. Gary Vaynerchuk shares my passion for (great) wine. Here is an entertaining 2 minute video encouraging you to go off and do great things. Watch how he builds his point up and pauses before he gives his recommendation how to stand out in the noise of social media. [Spoiler alert]. Writing "do great stuff" on a PowerPoint slide would not have created the same impact as this video.

Is time the new paper?

I am just reading this accurate blog post on Apollo Ideas: break up bullet point slides into multiple pages that focus on one idea each. Many of my clients object to this technique. "That's too many slides! I only have 25 minutes!" They are choosing the wrong metric; number of slides, kilos of printout, presentation file size, it does not matter. Time is the only relevant factor. When you have 25 minutes to present, you bring slide material that will not exceed 25 minutes. That could mean: 50 slides, 750 gram of handouts, 5 paper flip charts, or a 70MB file.

Book review - The Power Presenter

I just finished reading the book "The Power Presenter" by Jerry Weissman, a public speaking coach.

My main interest is in graphical slide design, so it is a bit unusual for me to be reviewing a book that is solely about delivery of speeches and presentations. Initially I found it a bit hard to get into the story of the book, but as I finished more and more chapters the entire plot of the book became clearer and by the time I read the last page I found that I learnt some real valuable lessons that will affect every presentation I will give in the future. The central objective of the book is to get rid of a presenter's adrenaline rush when presenting: the instinctive debate of the body whether to fight or flight a stressful situation. Rather than prescribing a number of dogmatic "presentation rules", Jerry suggests way to create a natural way to becoming a more confident speaker.

Central in his book is a concept called "ERA":

Eye connect: "only speak to eyes". Much more powerful than "don't turn your back to the audience", or "don't muffle your voice". It is a simple rule that everything you say, everything, should be said by looking a member of the audience straight in the eyes, waiting for eye contact, delivering the sentence, and then move on. No exception. Quite a challenge for a presenter, but it makes sense
Reach out with your hands and your body language to simulate the appearance of a hand shake
Animate, adding more drama and passion in the way you deliver your message

Especially the "eye connect" suggestion will change the way I deliver presentations in the future.

ERA is backed up by a lot of analysis of political speakers: Kennedy, Nixon, Gore, Reagon, Bush, and even Obama (however mostly focusing on his 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention). Sound bites are important for political speeches, and Jerry spends some time discussing cadence, rhythm, etc. to improve "slide-less" presentations.

When it comes to slides and graphics, Jerry bases his advice on a very conventional use of PowerPoint. The thing I like is how Jerry talks about "graphics synchronization", making sure that visuals are perfectly aligned with the speaker. Secondly he is an advocate of the "less is more" principle when it comes to slides.

I am less convinced on the slightly mechanical technique of "tell 'm what you're going to tell, tell 'm, tell'm what you just told" that he is suggesting for every slide. A bit mechanical.

Jerry spends some time suggesting ways to deal with the uncertainty of "what slide's next" in a live presentation. Presenter view can solve this issue.

A great innovation is the access to online video clips of the speeches Jerry is discussing in the book (server bandwidth is a bit thin).

All in all a useful book about presentation delivery with many big (i.e, "ERA") and smaller pieces of advice of an experienced speaking coach.

"The Power Presenter" is part of a trilogy, other books are Presenting to Win and In the Line of Fire.

When is enough enough?

Less is more. Resist the temptation to overdo slides. Like putting too much bass and treble in your HiFi system. Like a rich chocolate dessert. Like an oaked Chardonnay. Nice on first "attack", but then it starts to overpower you.

It is a holiday here in Israel, people are relaxing on a beautiful spring day. A bit of humor: artists commenting on when they consider their art work finished.

Via Wooster Collective, a street art blog that is worth following. Things (language, images) sometimes get a little bit more rough over there than you will find here, but hey, it's art and there are some interesting visuals being discussed. (See a previous street art post on this blog)

A different approach to data visualization

It is hard to get the magnitude of a huge number across on a slide. A $700bn bailout,how much is that? Photographer Chris Jordan takes a different approach. Repetitive patterns of miniaturized objects that form a bigger picture. Images have a political message, many of them try to put current "consumerism" into perspective.

The image below is inspired by Seurat's "un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte", and constructed from 106,000 softdrink cans.