Think of the 3rd dimension in stock images

99% of PowerPoint slides and 99% of stock images are 2 dimensional: showing an object or a shape on a flat background. When looking for your next stock image, try picking out those that add 3 dimensional depth.

The image of the flower field above (bought on iStockPhoto) is a good example. The whole point of the picture is the depth, not the objects in the photograph.

• Taken very close to the ground
• Focus close to the lens
• Lines that come together to disappear at the horizon

A good image to support something that goes on and on and on, or a new and untapped source of information that all of a sudden becomes available.

Logo repeats - bullet points in disguise

I often use a "logo repeat" technique to hammer home a set of interesting assets a company has, or a number of favorable forces that are helping a company. I must admit that these slides are bullet points in disguise, but the repetitive use of logos and other graphical elements make them powerful somehow.

The cobbler walks barefoot

You would expect Adobe, the publisher of many design software packages, to be pretty good at designing print advertising. Not always. Have a look at this image that was featured on Photoshop Disasters.

Especially Adobe should have spent more effort to get the reflections right (see the right box), make the box shots look more realistic, and use better typography. This image looks like a poor "Photoshop", not the best way to promote the Photoshop software.

Leaving the technicalities of the ad aside for the moment, there is a broader lesson here. This ad looks exactly like PowerPoint slides that many technology companies use to promote their product. They can do better.

• A lot of headlines competing for attention
• Box shots (software is not a breakfast cereal)
• "White paper language": spelling out the product benefits explicitly using very generic statements that do not get internalized by the audiece: "superior", "dynamic", "competitiveness", "scalable"

Use regular polygons to place objects on a slide

You can use geometrical concepts to get the perfect spacing of objects on your slide. Use the corners of regular polygons (all angles are the same, all sides have the same length) such as regular triangels (3), squares (4), regular pentagons (5) to position your objects with the aide of a few guides that you can remove later.

Note that you can draw regular polygons in PowerPoint by holding down the shift key to lock the aspect ratio of any shape you are drawing.

Online tilt-shifting image manipulation tool

Tilt-shifting is a photographic technique that creates images with very narrow depth of field. It can be used to take real images and make them look like photographs of miniatures. The site tiltshiftmaker.com creates the effect for you. It works best with images with lots of detail on the foreground: houses, cars, people. An example from the tiltshiftmaker site, a town on the Amalfi coast in Italy.

Via GeenStijl

Typography basics: readability, legibility, and impact

I am reading an article in Layers Magazine with a good summary about the basics of typography:

• Readability: how easy is it to read a long block of text
• Legibility: how easy is it to recognize short bursts of text instantly
• Impact: what emotional reaction does a type face provoke

I often use all caps in PowerPoint. It was interesting to read that all caps forces the brain to read the word letter by letter before it can be recognized, while with regular type a word gets identified instantly.

Chart concept - bouncing ball

The best graphics design work is often the most simple one. Noisy Decent Graphics pointed to these beautiful Olympic posters designed by student Alan Clarke. (They were not adopted by the organizers of the Olympics though).

The bouncing ball in the tennis poster gave me inspiration for a concept that I can use in PowerPoint charts. Semi-transparent circles (with different levels of transparency) flying over the screen are great to show movement. Be sure to remember the law of reflection though,  :-).

Chart concept - look, they reinforce each other!

Sometimes two things go together hand in hand, they make each other stronger. Big interlocking wheels are a great way to show this in PowerPoint. Add some nice circular text and here you go. Resist the tempation to make them turn using an animation though...

Chart concept: slowing down

This cover of a PwC report is an example of an excellent use of images.

• You get the point instantly, even from a far distance, the concept is right
• Both the report cover and the image have lots of "white space"
• The image is a completely natural and real one, no artificial models, compositions
• There is a great sense of depth and perspective in the image, search "sheep + road" in a stock photography site and you get a whole bunch of very unexciting pictures
• The picture is cropped nicely, see the road running on the golden proportion
• The image colors blend in with those used in the report (blue highlights)

ColoRotate - new color design tool

Your colors scheme is the most important driver of your presentation's look and feel. Much more important than logos or other graphical elements on the page. Adobe's kuler is a popular example of an online tool that helps you pick colors (even from an image if you want to) and define a nice matching color scheme.

Recently, ColoRotate has been released. ColoRotate uses a 3 dimensional approach to picking colors wich it claims is closer to the natural way the brain processes colors. It relies less on the sliders that are common in kuler and other tools. Color schemes you create can be shared in an online community, similar to kuler.

I have played around with the tool a little bit and like it, but it requires a bit of studying and practice before you get the hang of playing with the 3D axes and their impact. This tool is likely to appeal most to graphical professionals.

Having said that, the web site contains a good introduction article to the art and science behind picking beautiful color schemes.

Make-over artist tip: don't underline words

Underlining words just doesn't look good. Especially not in headlines. Use a bold font instead, or italics inside body text to emphasize.

George and Martha and leveraging audience anticipation

Weekend reading. I was reading some stories of George and Martha this weekend to my children, and was reminded of a great blog post by Nancy Duarte about leveraging your audience's anticipation in your presentation. Let them do a bit of the work as well, rather than just sitting down while being spoon-fed with content.

The "slide" with the grinning George is a more powerful one than Martha walking away to get a towel while the information conveyed is the same.

The images are scans from this book. Recommended for any parent.