Presentation design blog Idea Transplant / SlideMagic

Combining stacked and clustered columns

In PowerPoint, there is no standard option to create a combined stacked and clustered column chart. Here is a work around, taking the stacked column chart as the basis.

Set the gap width to zero (in the format data series menu) to create the white breaks in between the columns
Adjust the data points manually. The first stacked column goes in regularly. The second stacked column (that should have a different color scheme) gets added on top of the first one. But for data points of the second column, you zero out the values of the first one. Sounds a bit complicated, but the visual example below should make it clear.

Chart concept - mixing console

Mixing consoles used in recording studios are a good visual metaphor for situations where you carefully need to balance, fine tune, juggle a set of drivers. Image via iStockPhoto.

The art of writing a good slideument

The term "slideument" was coined by Garr Reynolds (his post from 2006 here): a PowerPoint file that looks more like a densely written text document than a minimalist, visually powerful sequence of slides for a presentation.

Documents and slides serve a different purpose and should be designed differently. But here is what I have been observing: the document is on its way out, and the slideument will have a bright future. Not as a presentation tool, but meant for on-screen reading, mostly for an internal audience that is very close to a subject matter. Background materials for a strategy discussion for an important board meeting would be an example. Nobody has time to plough through a dense text document anymore.

Some suggestions for creating good slideuments:

Create good data charts, using the exact same rules as you would for an on-screen presentation. Focus on the trend you want to show, ignore everything else. Round numbers up.
Use overview maps, strategic landscapes, with trends/competitors plotted against 2 axes, or lists of options with qualitative evaluation bubbles or traffic lights. One page that has the entire logic in it. Far too dense to present to a big audience, but really useful to discuss options. See the map to get a vague idea about the logic, digest the subsequent information in the deck, come back to the map to understand the full nuances.
Bullet points are an essential part of a slideument, but make them useful. Make sure they are short, and say something tangible/specific. Don't just rattle down a list of 15 points on a page, but group the bullet points into meaningful categories. Put bullet points inside boxes, and use arrows to highlight the relationships between groups of bullet points.
Write a clear page upfront with what you want from the group you are submitting the document to.

Most of the times, you will not have time to convert the slideument into a proper presentation, and you probably do not have to. To discuss it in a group, I would select a few key slideument slides put them up the projector, but instead of discussing the content in detail, highlight the important points. You could do this by creating circles, or hand-drawn-style lines. Another approach is to project the slides on a whiteboard and circle/mark things with a pen as you go along.

Leave some room for imagination

Great novels, movies, and painting leave room for the audience to fill in the blank spots. This photo found outside my own is the exact opposite. Ugly graphics worked out in the greatest detail, even providing the dog with a pair of mean red eyes that would fit the hound of the baskervilles. It is possible to say/show less and still convey the message...

Earlier post with a similar observation.

A slightly morbid post: gravestone design

The past few weeks have been rough for me as I am dealing with the loss of my brother in law, Ethan Naschitz. After tweets like this one, I got some heart warming comments/questions to see whether I was OK. I can tell you I am (given the circumstances), and the Tweet is actually less morbid than it sounds. Part of daily life in Israel.

Building on this, I had to go through the interesting experience of actually designing a gravestone for Ethan. It is surprising to see that a whole industry is built around the loss of people, including graphics designers that specialize in this type of design. Some guide lines that I hope you will never have to use:

Less is more. A stone filled with white space looks much more beautiful. Cut as many details as you can, focusing all the attention to the name and maybe just years of birth and death. It is always tempting to put quotes, descriptions, details, but would your relative have liked them? Would you still like them in 10 years? Would visitors appreciate them in 2,000 years? Cut your font size. If you really would like to put in details, consider adding a "foot note" in small font at the bottom. From a distance the text will blur, when standing close, it can be read.
Get rid of symmetry. 99% of stones are centered, why? Why not left centered, bottom aligned?
Very important: pick a good font, the standard fonts available are usually poor. "Can you do Helvetica Neue?" gave a blank stare.
Extra features available at a premium (filling letters with black, covering things in plastic) do not necessarily improve the look.

"Would you buy?"-type data from market research

Both of these charts contain the exact same data. The second is a lot easier to read, the spectrum of customer choices is neatly laid out, and the colors are picked in sequential order.

Watch out with charged images

Our collective memory has some very powerful images. Photo editing software enables us to manipulate them and use them to communicate a message. "Learn to anticipate" says the ad below with a set of shortened WTC towers and planes happily flying over it. Maybe the ad was meant to be funny. Maybe its intention was to shock people and trigger a discussion of a controversial subject (What Benetton tried to do in the 1990s). A "fail" on both accounts. Be careful with charged visual concepts.

Via Ads of the World.

Making the audience feel small

You probably have noticed as well that it is impossible to capture a wide panorama with a camera. "Look at this sunset over the sea! Where is my camera?!". The resulting image is often boring and lacks depth, the exact reason why so many stock images of panoramas fail to excite.

The human brain is not restricted by a small 2D screen. It senses distance/3D by blending the slightly different images from both eyes in to one. Eyes never sit still, they constantly move. We are standing at the inside of a gigantic sphere. Eyes compare the size of objects, to assess dimensions.

Handing out 3D goggles to your audience is not an option (at least not today), so the presentation designer has to resort to tricks to create 3D effects.

Pay attention to camera position (earlier post)
Put a known object in the image so people can relate the size of the whole to the familiar dimensions of the object (earlier post).
Or use effects like the one used in the image below. Stitching together multiple photographs to create on large, distorted image that gives the illusion of standing inside a sphere. Your eyes are really running up and down the image, just as you would do when you would stand inside the cathedral for yourself. Huge image by balondrotor here. (Earlier post on a similar but less spectacular version taken in the Notre Dame)

For those interested, the cathedral in question is the one in Coutances, Normandy, 20 km from this year's holiday home. This majestic old building stands in the middle of the city center that was largely rebuild after the July 1944 battles. It was almost unscathed.

I am not usually into Gothic architecture but this cathedral was an exception although is not usually included in the must-see lists. There is something to the proportions, the rhythm of the vertical lines and blending of light through the windows that creates an effect that I failed to capture on my own holiday photographs. This image gets close though.

Found via TwistedSifter, follow the link for images composition images.

All caps and sentence caps are harder to read

A very interesting analysis of why it is harder to read all caps text on UXMovement. All caps reduces the number of differentiators between words, and hence should only be used in short bites such as titles, logos or lables. I have been ranting about title caps as well before.

OK, sometimes I contradict myself, but all caps worked in this presentation with very few, short sentences.

Chart concept - umbrella

The umbrella protecting you against falling misfortune is powerful visual concept, albeit maybe even a bit cliche (earlier post in defense of cliches). This Red Cross ad uses it very well. Bigger image here. (Via Frederik Samuel's blog)

Steal this presentation

The presentation below is packed with useful and specific suggestions to make you a better presentation designer. By Jesse Desjardins.

STEAL THIS PRESENTATION!

View more presentations from @JESSEDEE.

Present to touch someone's heart

Today is a difficult day as we are about to bring my brother in law to his final resting place. Life is a short period of time in which we are granted the opportunity to make this world a better place. Ethan Naschitz has used his 48 years to the maximum. We will miss him.

A major event like this makes you think about what contributions you can make every day you have on this planet. In its purest form, a presentation is a tool to touch someone's heart, to make them excited about an idea, to bring positive change, to break with the beaten path.Think about that objective when opening PowerPoint and start designing the slides for your next presentation.

What really matters in PowerPoint template design

The design of the template should be simple: minimal graphics and logos, maximum screen space (see a previous post here). My favorite is really simple: a nicely designed title page followed by a completely white page for the rest of the deck.

So what does matter? The technical PowerPoint stuff that helps thousands of employees with only a very basic understanding of PowerPoint do the right thing. Before letting the genie out of the bottle and releasing a new template to the whole organization check the following:

Are the RGB codes of the color scheme coded correctly as standard colors? In 99% of all templates I see, PowerPoint offers the default blue, green, red color options when drawing a shape in a template. Easy to fix.
Are the drawing guides set up correctly so that people align objects correctly on the page? There should be guides that align with screen graphics, and guides that help users position objects on the screen. (Earlier post here)
Does the standard blank page pop up correctly when hitting "insert new slide"? Most templates are a bunch of example charts that people can use for inspiration. Nobody uses them, every one clicks "insert new slide" and - if not corrected - gets served the standard Microsoft chart with a big title and a hierarchy of bullets in Calibri font. To fix this, go into view slide master, delete most of the template charts on the left side of the screen and carefully re-design the key blank slide with the correct graphics, colors, and fonts. If you have courage, delete the standard bullet page.
Are the standard shapes set correctly? Draw a text box, set the font, right click it and set as default shape. Repeat for a shape (rectangle, anything) and focus on the color, the font, the outline, the shadow, etc. Right click and set as standard shape.
Are custom fonts embedded in the file? (PowerPoint Ninja post)
Are the page-filling images in title pages and separator pages compressed? If not, a presentation of 2 pages can already take up 5MB in hard disk space. Go into the slide master, select the image, and compress image sizes.
Are the data charts formats set up correctly? This is a bit more advanced but should really pay off. See an earlier post on fixing issues.

The best way to test all this is to distribute the template to handful of people and test before releasing it to the entire company.

Comic sans strikes back / has its say

I have joined the legion of designers in criticizing the comic sans font (earlier post here). In this rant (strong language warning), comic sans strikes back at us, elitist Helvetica fans. Written by Mike Lacher, thank you Ellen Daehnick for suggesting it.

Sartre, Beauvoir, and Miles Davis talking presentations

I just returned from a wonderful holiday in France and hope to pick up my posting habits soon. While in France, I read this interesting book: Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
by Graham Robb (affiliate link). Robb uses a variety of styles and settings to describe famous characters living in Paris through the centuries. One chapter is a film-type script set in Cafe de Flore in Paris around 1948, a small fragment:

Beauvoir: He [Sartre] was invited to give a conference at the UNESCO. It was the first meeting of UNESCO, two or three years ago, in 1946. At the Sorbonne. The evening before, we went to the Scheherazade, with Koestler and Camus. And Sartre - you remember? - danced with Mme Camus, which was like watching a man lugging a sack of coal. He was very drunk, and he had to give his talk in the morning, but he had not written a line.
Miles Davis, pointing at Sartre: The teacher hadn't done his homework!
Beauvoir: Yes, and Camus, who was also drunk said, said, "You will have to do it without my help," and Sartre said, "I wish I could do it without my help."
Sartre, stubby fingers spread on the the table giggles.
Beauvoir: An then - he does not remember this - we had breakfast Chez Victor at Les Halles, soupe a l'oignon, huitres, vin blanc - and then it was dawn, and we stood on a bridge over the Seine, Sartre and me, and we were so sad about la tragedie de la conditione humaine - eh oui! - that we should throw ourselves into the river. But instead of that, I went home to my bed, and Sartre, he went to the Sorbonne to talk about la responsibilite de l'ecrivain...
Miles Davis: That's cool Jean-Paul. They knew you were talking straight because you hadn't prepared...
Beauvoir, shaking her head: No Sartre, he had everything already in his head.