Richer color textures for presentation design?

Colors for computer screens and printers are created by mixing primary colors. (See this background article about RGB (adding primary colors for screens) and CMYK (filtering primary colors for printers).

In theory, it is possible to create any color you want using the right RGB codes (more about the color wheel here). Still, I find it almost impossible to recreate the colors that some of the great painters are using in their paintings. Obviously they did not use tools such as kuler, but rather relied on mixing colors on a palate by hand.

Take this painting as an example: The Arnolfini Portait by Dutch painter Jan van Eyck, painted in 1434. It has unbelievable light effects and color textures. (Huge image here). How to recreate this fabulous green (some think symbolizing the hope of starting a healthy family) in PowerPoint?

Kuler does not do a good job, see the color codes below.

Zooming into the dress gives some clues about the answer. Van Eyck added bits of yellow and paint texture effects to give the dress a warm velvety appearance.

In the early days, PowerPoint had a rich set of patterns to fill objects with grey shadings. Based on this principle, and with increased computing power it should be possible to offer much more complex color textures to the presentation designer as well. Textures that go beyond the "plasticy", shiny, and glass-like surfaces that are available now.

Tilt those Google maps

Google Earth is a wonderful tool to produce maps in your presentation. Select the area you want to cover, do a screen dump and crop your image in PowerPoint. Make sure to make the best use of the power of Google Earth. Tilting the map to a level that the horizon becomes visible adds a nice additional perspective to the chart. Especially when you visualize paths.

Chart concept - "Stuck!" (redux)

This ad uses a visual concept which I discussed in an earlier post. The easiest way to recreate it in PowerPoint is to stick to simple shapes with numbers, similar to the original puzzle with 15 pieces. You can go one level up and use an image (like in the ad). To do this, re-read an earlier post about slicing up PowerPoint shapes.

Via Ads of the World.

Frans Hals: 27 shades of black

It is thought that Vincent van Gogh once admired the Dutch painter Frans Hals (1580-1666) for using 27 shades of black in one painting. If you study the works of the Dutch masters carefully, you can see that they actually do use very little color. (Here is an example from Rembrandt: black, red, yellow) Part of this is due to space limitations on the color palette. Pink skin tones take a lot of space, leaving not much room for other colors.

Painting above: Frans Hals, The regentesses of the Old Men's Home in Haarlem, 1664, Oil on canvas, 170.5 x 249.5 cm

There is a similarity to designing presentation slides here. You use shades and tints of the same color to create a calm background visual, while directing the eye of the viewer with bright highlight colors to the important information on the slide.

Just listen to yourself

We've all been there. You're stuck. Analysis-paralysis. Writer's block. Structure-overload. Where to start? How to break the deadlock?

Imagine you're sitting in front of a really experienced investor (Warren Buffett?). You have 10 minutes.

Press record.

Just tell your story. There is no time for buzz words. There is no time for complicated frameworks to structure your story (first we do a SWOT, then we leverage our core competences to differentiate from our competitors and make sure we reach critical mass before the window of opportunity closes). Just tell from the heart why someone should invest in your business.

Press stop and play back.

What did you say? In what order? When did you feel the need to take out a pen and scribble a simple diagram on a piece of paper? When did you "see" Buffett frowning and felt the urge to explain something again? What metaphors did you use to explain the technology?

Now let's go back and re-do that PowerPoint presentation completely.

Why does Helvetica look so great on a Mac and so poor on a PC?

I like the clean Helvetica font in print material. I like the Helvetica font in presentations designed on a Mac. Somehow, the PC version does not appeal.

The answer is: it's not Helvetica. To save on royalties, Microsoft included the look-alike Arial with its Office software suite. The fonts look similar, but there are subtle differences. And they make all the difference.

Image designed by the ragbag, found via Swiss Miss.

I have not solved the problem myself. I think none of my clients have Helvetica installed on their PCs, and despite workarounds, I hesitate to create font issues with my presentations.

Motion graphics done right

Two days ago I posted about a motion graphics video that was designed beautifully but relied too much on text bullet points to compare quantitative data, the brain had to do too much work in too little time (before the next piece of information shows up):

1. Read sentence
2. "Visualize" numbers internally
3. Interpret them

This is a better example of the use of motion graphics. Zooming is used to visualize the enormity of the number 1 trillion. It comes at a price though: this video is almost a full-blown animation. A bit of PowerPoint/PhotoShop skills and After Effects are not enough to produce it (unfortunately).

Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

Video by Maya Research, found via Core77

Portuguese innovation in newspaper design

An interesting article in the NYT the other day: the Portuguese newspaper "i" that's breaking the rules of newspaper design. An example of a front page that I found on the "What's next: innovation in newspapers" blog.

Some interesting lessons that could also apply to presentation design:

• Big images draw the attention of the reader
• Interestingly, the newspaper abandoned the typical grouping of newspaper articles around specific categories. Research showed that people just scan for interesting headlines and do not need the structure of a detailed content categorization. Newspaper design does not need to resemble the organization structure of the editorial staff.

With regard to the second point: more and more I start to abandon the use of formal structures in presentation design. Simple use the structure or slide sequence that supports the way you want to tell the story. The brain is capable of dealing with a more creative story structure, as long as it is not bored. Novel writers are the ultimate masters in story line design creativity, but I agree that might be overdoing it a bit when designing your next pitch deck.

Motion graphics overload

Xplane continues to develop beautifully animated presentations using motion graphics. After Did you know 4.0, there is now another video developed in cooperation with the Economist: The carbon economy.

I really like the effects, textures, typography and animation of this presentation, but I think we still have to learn how to use all this technology effectively. The video is relying heavily on text to explain and compare quantitative data (similar to what bullet points do). The pace is so fast, that I have difficulty processing it all (and I had my 10,000 hours of data processing training).

My early thoughts on how to make the most of motion graphics:

• Be careful with background music
• Use text animation only to highlight quotes with non-quantitative information
• For quantitative data go back to the good old simple data charts, but feel free to leverage those beautiful textures and typography
• Beef up the animated character animation: things morphing into another shape, things growing/shrinking (the rising water levels in this video is a good example), the blend of animated film design and presentation design is great
• Think about pacing of animations like you think about pacing of words. Have the courage to pause, accelerate, talk loud, talk softly, pause again. The entire video does not have to be an information roller coaster.

I am curious to hear your thoughts.

Zooming in down to cell-level

I really like zooming presentation formats such as Prezi, but I am still struggling to find useful application areas. Steve Johnson pointed me to one: to put proportions in perspective. Have a look at this amazing visualization of the relative size of biological cells.

Dusting off the McKinsey business system

McKinsey has been posting a number of classic consulting frameworks under the title "enduring ideas" on the McKinsey Quarterly site. I discussed before: consulting frameworks are great for solving problems, but often less good at communicating solutions.

Recently, the business system was discussed. At McKinsey we used it to analyse the value chain of an industry (manufacturing, sales, distribution, etc.). The basic graphic concept of it (simple arrows) can also be used in another context: communicating a project schedule. See the example below.

Related reading:

• An earlier post on the McKinsey GE 9x9 matrix
• One on the McKinsey cost curve
• One on 2x2's

Try to resist the tempation to over-do PowerPoint effects

I see them more and more. A bullet point presentation with now and then a spectacularly formated PowerPoint object inserted. Bevels, textures, drop shadows, 3D rotations, lighting angles, they have it all.

Try to resist it. Like with data charts, the fact that you have the ability to use sophisticated effects does not mean that you have to use them.

Oh, one more thing. If you hired a professional presentation designer, and the only thing she does is apply 3D and lighting effects to your diagrams, it is time to find another one.

The "what have I done in the past year" slide

This slide always comes in somewhere in the annual management review. Here are all the activities of me (or my department) over the past year. The bullets are coming out:

• Organized the annual consumer event
• Biz dev trip to Poland
• Created a new planning tool
• Put a trade symposium together

These slides do not justice to your efforts. Break each bullet point up into a separate slide and go through them really quickly, but add something interesting to each slide:

• Slide: an overview picture of the 80,000 visitors of your consumer event (a rock concert)
• Slide: an image of you having a flat tire in the middle of Poland on the site of a major new potential customer
• Slide: head shots + name of the very well-known people from the trade that were present on your symposium
• Slide: sceen shots of the new sales budget planning tool

Stories make the achievement look much more impressive and people will remember them better ("hey, was that you who did this?").

A second implication: always have camera (or a photographer) at hand during important events, maybe even a better one than the one built in to your phone. Think ahead about next year's annual review presentation.

This same technique is also really useful when making presentations that need to present your company and its activities to a major (international) customer or business partner. The only pictures of the company that usually makes it in these type of presentations are the one of the lonely receptionist waiting for a call to come in.

Chart concept - lost in translation

A client in the pharmaceutical industry had this problem: a competitor managed to turn a relatively weak clinical fact and turn it upside down into a forceful message that took over the market. The good old tins cans are great to visualize this. See the example below (sanitized to maintain client confidentiality)

Related reading: an earlier post about classic miscommunication in a project.

Israel, startup-nation, and how it turned me into a presentation designer

A slightly off-topic post today.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about how people are the product of the hours they put into something, plus the privileges of experiences they have been given. I am Dutch, not Jewish, do not really speak Hebrew, but ended up living in Israel somehow.

The Israeli startup environment was the main driver behind me becoming a presentation designer. Countless entrepreneurs pitching me their dreams and asking me to "put it in PowerPoint" gave me a rare opportunity to expand my presentation design skills from structured McKinsey-style Board documents to presentations that need to touch someone's heart (often the heart/wallet of an investor).

A short video about a new book "Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle" in case you are not familiar with Israel as a hightech center.

Disclosure: I earn a small commission if you purchase items through Amazon links on this site.

Social Bees - client work that is not confidential

Most of the presentations I help design for clients are confidential, with some exceptions. Hazel Grace runs a company called Social Bees that helps small businesses establish their presence on Facebook using fan pages. We developed a presentation together to present her company in a session at the BizTechDay conference. It was designed over the course of 2 days (pretty last minute), at different ends of the globe, and I wanted to make sure to adjust it as much as possible to the presentation style of Hazel. SlideShare created some glitches in fonts and graphics, but the presentation below is still pretty close to the final result that was shown in San Francisco.

Facebook Is a Dinner Party

View more presentations from Socialbees.

FedEx shows: no need for an elaborate PowerPoint template

An ad from FedEx found on Ad Goodness:

Proof for one of my 101s of PowerPoint design: ditch the elaborate PowerPoint template (with colorful horizontal bars, big logos, and other graphics repeated on each page). From a mile's distance, anyone can see that this is an ad by FedEx. Achieved by consistent use of colors on a completely white background. They can almost do without the small logo in the bottom right.

Related reading: the 2nd post on this blog from July 2008

Photo subtitles (redux)

I talked about slide subtitles before as an idea to add detailed content to a "Zen-style" presentation with big images and few words, content that can be read when the document is viewed without a presenter being present.

I start using photo subtitles more and more as I increasingly move away from staged/fake stock images and use real images in my presentations. When using a creative common image from Flickr, it is important to give credit to the photographer, that is one thing to in the footer.

But the photo footer can also include a little bit more background information on what we see in the image, information that does not always have to contribute to the slide. The full details of the painter, the painting title and the place where the painting is currently displayed. The fact that the Paris cafe you see on the image is actually Cafe de Flore, in an image from 2006.

The Big Picture section of boston.com should feature in the RSS reader of every presentation designer. It is an almost daily stream of beautiful images (often more than 1MB a piece). The image below (related to the Diwali celebrations) was taken from it. You see a good way to format an image subtitle (with - in this case a lot of - information) as white text in black at the bottom of the photo.

Adoption curves - how long does it take?

Adoption curves are a great way to compare the speed at which ideas spread, technologies were adopted or great companies were born. They are basic line graphs with the starting year set to zero. An alternative visualization would be a simple bar charts with "number of years before x reached y". While simpler, this approach loses a lot of information: the absolute size, the rate of adoption, and changes in the rate of adoption over time. The classic use is to show that new technologies are getting adopted faster and faster. A good example can be found in Mary Meeker's 2009 Internet presentation:

Mike Pulsifer found a chart that does not make all starting years zero, here is what happened:

Finally, interactive data visualization tools can add another dimension to adoption curves. See this example of a chart that shows how many years it takes to transform a startup into a large company (thank you Michael Eisenberg). The opening chart is far too busy to show in a PowerPoint presentation, but that's not the objective here. These charts are designed for pondering over: select and de-select lines, mouse-over data, etc. If you had to translate this chart into PowerPoint, you would have to use a number of slides to highlight the messages you want to stand out.

Book review - "Blink"

I finally managed to get to reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcom Gladwell makes an engaging case for why snap judgement often turn out to be right, providing a constant flow of interesting case examples:

• Firefighters deciding to leave a building seconds before it collapses
• Art critiques "knowing" that a sculpture is a fake
• Police agents making the wrong judgement call in a shooting
• Autistic people unable to follow a pointing finger

The brain is very powerful, it can "thin slice" all memories of let's say all the people we met in our entire life and stack these up against a new individual in front of us. These powers work best when we are well-rested and not under stress. The human brain is built that in case of stress (i.e., we are trying to shake off a tiger that is chasing us), all non-essential brain functions are shutting down to focus on the immediate task at hand.

This book is not directly related to the subject of presentations, but it is relevant for some issues:

• The first-second audience judgement that every speaker has to deal with
• "Thin slicing" of bullet point decks. "Uh oh, the guys starts reading his bullets"/[scan the slide]/[open email on the mobile phone]
• Count to 10, when a heckler manages to get you upset, wait a bit before answering. In "upset mode" your brain is less effective.

Disclosure: the links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links, I earn a small commission when you purchase items through them.