Getting the best creative commons images via Flickr

Stock images are often staged, not natural, lacking spontaneity. Images with a creative commons license on Flickr are an excellent alternative, with one drawback: it is a bit harder to find the right image.

Here is what I do. Now and then I take a Flickr "deep dive" and just randomly browse/search images not using a functional key word such as "chair", "pilot", or "apple". Rather use characteristics that a photographer would use to describe an image. As an example, see what a range of beautiful images comes up when searching for "focus".

Browse through the images and bookmark them or save them to a tool such as Evernote for later use. An example, a very detailed image of the Manhattan Bridge by See-ming Lee.

Simple diagrams creates well, simple diagrams

Simple diagrams (link) is a nice little tool to create simple sketches in the spirit of Dan Roam's book "The back of the napkin" (review). You can either use it as a sketch tool to develop ideas, or as slides in your presentation. The extreme scenario would be to create an entire presentation out of these types of diagrams.

The program uses aggressive pop up messages to get you to use the full version. There are more subtle ways that will get to the same effect.

$10m - 3 companies - 5 slides

An interesting post on TechCrunch today: Socialcast founder Tim Young explains how he raised $10m for 3 companies using a 5-slide PowerPoint presentation. Some of the points that stood out (please read the full post for the complete picture):

• In 1-on-1 meetings you can try to avoid the confrontational both sides of the table setting by sitting next to each other and sharing a laptop screen
• Remember what the objective of your 1st VC meeting is: get to the 2nd one, it is - not yet - about trying to tell the potential investor everything you know about your business in the hope that he will sign the check after 30 minutes. Getting to the 2nd meeting is all about avoiding "rat holes".
• Focus your slides (in come the 5 slides he used), but have the 45-slide backup in your back pocket in case you need to lift out a slide.
• Use (real) images of faces wherever you can to introduce people that are involved with the business (instead of names). When he says faces, faces, faces, he obviously is not referring to anonymous models that are too often found in stock images.

I agree with this approach, I just would like to give a word of caution/some comments. Each startup has a different set of 5 slides. Don't just copy the ones Tim used. Rather look through the slides and see what Tim is doing.

His 5 slides have no story in themselves, they are pact with facts. Tim is telling the story himself, without slides. Only when he needs facts he reverts to slides. "Look at the credible team and investors we have" [Very dense slide packed with names, photos, and logos]. "See that there at the bottom? 75,000 i.s.o. 5,000 users per server, let me explain" "We're on a roll" [Very dense slide with performance metrics], etc. The exception is slide 3, an abstract graphic that you can almost draw on a napkin to explain the key idea behind the business. 

Part of why he got his $10m is probably because of the 5 slides. But the majority of the convincing is done by his own presence in the room. Maybe he could have pulled it off without any slides?

The approach in summary: 

1. Think of the objective: 30 minutes 1-on-1 to get to meeting #2
2. Design the story
3. See where you cannot convey the information verbally, and plug the hole(s) with a few slides

Chart concept - 2000 iMac versus 2010 iPhone 4

A chart concept I used yesterday in a client's presentation to demonstrate the progress of personal computing technology over the past decade (technical details taken from this post by AdamH).

There is no point to construct complicated bar charts to compare the values of the technical specifications, they are similar (the point of the chart). Rather what is important, is to shrink the image of the iPhone so that it's more or less to scale with the much bigger iMac.

Review: Art Authority for iPad

I often use paintings as an inspiration for slide design. Sometimes you can actually use the actual painting itself, but more often, I use a painting to borrow a color scheme (earlier post).

There is  a big problem with art books: it is hard to browse vast quantities of images quickly, slice and dice art works by artist, time, genre. A good painting requires time to appreciate, once you found it. However, the finding is the difficult bit.

The iPad is a wonderful device to navigate huge image data bases (earlier post). I am a bit late to discover Art Authority for iPad, an application that make this a reality for art. Over 1,000 (Western) artists, with each painting properly documented plus links to Wikipedia for more information.



Most art books show the same "greatest hits" paintings, not spending paper on less well-known works by artists, paper publications cut off the long tail. Not with Art Authority that shows works beyond the beaten path.

$10 well-spent.

Portraits that do not really look you in the eye

Stock images libraries are full of pictures of models that look towards the lens, but are not really look at you. The man in these ads does better than the woman (maybe the squinting, or his age), but it is hard to beat a painter's ability to get those penetrating eyes.

The ads were taken from Ads of the World. The painting is "Girl resting on her arms" by Eugene Vidal (1847-1907), Oil on canvas, 47 x 59 cm.

Feedback from a seasoned graphics designer

A meeting of 2 generations yesterday, when I sat down with a retired graphics designer who spent his professional live designing logos and visual corporate identities (some of which are highly visible icons in the Israeli high street). He has not used a computer ever to support his design work, and is now focussing on art.

I opened my lap top and showed him some of my work. Some of the points he made:

• "Each of your slides looks good and makes the point. The visual connection between them is weak though." He suggested to put logos and/or other corporate graphics on each page. I do not agree with him, but he had a point that using images of paintings, "real photos" and stock images created a mixing of styles
• "Each point does not need a slide." I agree with him for live presentations, and I am actually retreating more and more from the avalanche of slides approach for these types of presentations. For an online presentation though, one slide per point is the way to go though

He showed me his own slide deck that an assistant prepared for him, mainly filled with copies of his own work (logos, paintings, building exteriors). What struck me is the breathing space around each slide. I also use a lot of white space in my slides, but keep the margin around the slide very small. Maybe time to change that.

An interesting meeting.

The Wolf

My role in some presentation projects reminds me of the character "The Wolf" in Pulp Fiction. The clock is ticking, (many) people are running around, but the presentation is not progressing towards a final end product...



You can call in The Wolf if you really have to, but these situations are best avoided. And, the talents of a professional presentation designer are most useful in stress-free situations. Energy spent on cranking out the deck comes at the expense of creativity.

I hope Miramax does not mind me borrowing these videos and images, it might just remind people to buy a copy of this classic movie to watch it again this weekend (Affiliate link to Amazon).

Visualizing the curse of knowledge

I often have to explain the concept of "the curse of knowledge": it is actually harder for an expert to explain something than a reasonably intelligent outsider (here is why presentation designers should be reasonably intelligent :-) ).

Dan and Chip Heath use a musical metaphor in their book "Made to Stick":

1. The presenter thinks of a musical piece and imagines the full symphony orchestra giving all it can
2. He taps the tune with his fingers on the desk, it all makes perfect sense
3. The audience sees/hears someone tapping...

For executives who are keen to load their slides with data for an external audience, I use the cockpit analogy. A pilot can interpret all the signals of all the instruments in a split second and understands the situation the plane is in. The novice needs a bit more time to digest the information...

Thank you Brett Morrison for this beautiful picture of a Space Shuttle cockpit.

Setting default fonts for PowerPoint data charts

When you insert a data chart in PowerPoint, chances are that the font in which they pop up is the default Calibri. Why? Because you did not bother to change the fonts in "design" "fonts" "custom fonts". Set the heading and body fonts to whatever you want it to be, and you save yourself a lot of time re-formating data charts.

Oh no, you left some features out of the deck!

This ad by Webroot Internet Security reminded my of many discussions with clients in the technology sector. The VP Product is meticulously scanning the slides to make sure ALL the product features have made it in the deck.The result: a bored audience that will not understand the value your product brings.

Still, there is a way to include them though, but with a different headline: cram them all in page using a neat table in 7pt font with a title: "Powerful specifications". The audience will believe you without reading all the text.

Via Ads of the World.

Getting the latest logos

Corporate logos get used a lot in presentations: our customers, our partners, our competitors. You find them via Google image search. When you do, make sure you get one in a good quality (earlier post), but more importantly go to the home page of the company you are looking for to check whether you got the latest logo, and/or the logo in the right colors. Don't just rely on Google image search.

Help, my CEO can't present!

I heard this complaint a few times. "My CEO can't present. She goes off on a tangent. Ignores the slides. Stutters. I create these beautiful slides for her, but somehow it is a waste of time."

Usually, CEOs are good story tellers (that's how she got the top job). How can you make sure that she gets the best out of the slides that you prepare for her?

1. (Really) listen to the story the CEO wants to tell, and adjust the slides to that. What sequence, what anecdotes, what examples
2. Have the courage to cut slides, CEOs have the confidence to stand up with a black screen and just talk.
3. Finish the preparation of your slides early and force her to PRACTICE. It is easy to "sell" to a CEO to invest an hour to practice a presentation: "we'll just try for 10 minutes, and if that goes well, we'll skip the rest of the rehearsal." A first practice run never goes well, not even for Steve Jobs who practices a few full days to get his major product launch pitches right.

Most CEOs are good presenters.

What's in my toolbar

Unlike PowerPoint 2007, it is possible to customize the tool ribbon in PowerPoint 2010 (review). I still use my 2007 workaround in the 2010 version of PowerPoint though. The screen dump below shows those very important buttons that any PowerPoint designer should have always on hand (click for larger image).

• Save
• Left, bottom, middle, right, top align
• Horizontal, vertical distribution
• Send to back
• Crop
• Flip horizontal, vertical
• Rotate

"nonlineair" presentation iPad app

Seth Godin made a wishlist of iPad app and readers of his blog created them. One them is nonlineair: "it lets you import a PDF or PPT file and then jump around. It's not for building slides, it's for navigating them, and even includes a way to drive an external monitor in a clever way." It is available or $10 in the app store, $2 of which will go to the Acumen Fund. I still need to find time to review it.

One more post about the closing slide

OK, the comments on my post from 2 days ago showed that I should think a bit more before writing about the last slide in a presentation. Here we go:

1. A good story does not need a slide that says "that was it, please applaud", the story flow in itself should let the audience feel that you have come to the conclusion of your talk. (And what if the audience does not applaud when you ask them to? Awkward.

2. It is good to recap what you discussed though. But recapping does not mean telling the entire story again. Rather think of it what you want people still to remember 4 hours after the presentation. Leave out the buzzwords and the fluff.:

• "Every teenager sends 3,339 text messages per month.
• No teenager would want to miss out on our new service"
• [re-display of stunning key graphic]
• "Please invest in our 3rd startup that we will bring from PowerPoint to IPO".

Much better than:

• "The market is big,
• there is no competition,
• we have a solid business model,
• there are interesting exit opportunities in this ever-changing mobile communications landscape that will transform the way young people communicate with each other".

3. It is good to put the "killer graphic" back on the projector, since the brain can anchor an entire discussion/story to an image. People will remember. If you get a lot of questions, this slide will stay on the screen for a long time.

4. Don't say: "I have time for 5 questions". Awkward if there are none, and no questions does not mean a bad presentation.

Paul Graham on trends in startup fund raising

Many of the readers of this blog are - like me - designing investor pitch presentations. This 30 minute talk by Paul Graham of Y Combinator gives some interesting perspectives on how the competition between "super angels" and regular VCs has an impact on startup valuations and the startup fund raising market in general. If you are here just to learn about slide design, skip the video.


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Benoit Mandelbrot 1924 - 2010

Benoit Mandelbrot passed away. He coined the term "fractal", an endless shape that can be characterized with a relatively simple numerical pattern, leading to some very beautiful visualizations. It always fascinates me how shapes in nature can be defined with a strikingly simple code.

Image credit Wikipedia.

As an example, an artificially created leaf (Wikipedia source):

The last slide in your presentation

I came across this closing screen of an ancient King Kong movie (via FFFound).

1. Vintage closing screens actually make a nice final slide of a presentation, you Google lots of them
2. Always close your presentation with a sentence that makes it clear that the presentation comes to an end. "End that is how....". Don't say explicitly "well, this is the end". Let questions come up spontaneously, and don't say: "OK, I have time for 5 questions", there just might be chance that no questions will come up (a bit awkward). I have seen many great presentations without questions.

Parking lot information overload

A brand new shiny underground parking lot has recently opened in central Tel Aviv under the refurbished Habima theater. It uses small lights to indicate whether a spot is available or not. A great idea. The image below (thank you Eric Nakamura) shows the effect (not the specific lot I am talking about).

But how can you make it even better? Get rid of the red lights. It's information you do not need. Green lights only to mark the free spots, and the parking lot will look a lot calmer.