TED presentations take a bit less than 20 minutes. If you have watched a few of these presentations, you will have noticed that this time is more than enough to get a complex idea across in your presentation.
Apparently, 20 minutes is also the average time a grown up can really focus his attention (source).
Add these two observations up and you realize that you need to design your presentation in such a way that the full pitch comes across in roughly this time. Anything more can be added as additional case studies examples, other plot variations. Possibly again in blocks of 10-20 minutes.
A few people with a lot more knowledge than I have about attention span and the brain are reading this blog, feel free to add your perspective.
It takes time to learn how to design well
Ira Glass, an American radio personality, makes an excellent point in this video: (aspiring) designers have great taste, but it will take a long time to get to a quality of work that matches it.
This resonates with me personally, as I find it hard to believe that it was me who designed some of these presentations sitting on my hard drive a few years ago. And I know that I will have the same reaction when I look back at today's work in a few years from now.
Ira says that most people do not make it past the dip, they quit. His message: hang in there and you will get there and good things will happen.
It is worth it to watch the entire 5 minute movie. Ira gives a case example where he shows how a rambling radio report he created 8 years ago (he was not even a beginner then) and how it can be replaced by one sentence that is natural, specific, and to the point. I am not a frequent radio listener, but I find that newspapers often apply this technique of an elaborate, dramatic article opening, taking forever to explain an issue in normal, human language.
Via Jason Kottke.
This resonates with me personally, as I find it hard to believe that it was me who designed some of these presentations sitting on my hard drive a few years ago. And I know that I will have the same reaction when I look back at today's work in a few years from now.
Ira says that most people do not make it past the dip, they quit. His message: hang in there and you will get there and good things will happen.
It is worth it to watch the entire 5 minute movie. Ira gives a case example where he shows how a rambling radio report he created 8 years ago (he was not even a beginner then) and how it can be replaced by one sentence that is natural, specific, and to the point. I am not a frequent radio listener, but I find that newspapers often apply this technique of an elaborate, dramatic article opening, taking forever to explain an issue in normal, human language.
Via Jason Kottke.
VMware acquires SlideRocket
VMware acquired in-the-cloud PowerPoint alternative SlideRocket. Up until now, VMware focused on virtualization infrastructure, it's software can be used to create multiple virtual computers on one hardware platform. Many of you might be running a Windows PC inside a Mac using this technology (VMware Fusion).
It is not completely clear what the strategic intent of VMware is. Will it try to go up one level from basic infrastructure and start offering cloud applications competing directly with Microsoft? Or does it want to use it for something else?
The big issue with alternatives to PowerPoint is the installed base of corporate users that over the years has learned how to work with it. But maybe the extra financial power of VMware enables SlideRocket to get a shot at doing to PowerPoint what Microsoft Word did to WordPerfect?
It is not completely clear what the strategic intent of VMware is. Will it try to go up one level from basic infrastructure and start offering cloud applications competing directly with Microsoft? Or does it want to use it for something else?
The big issue with alternatives to PowerPoint is the installed base of corporate users that over the years has learned how to work with it. But maybe the extra financial power of VMware enables SlideRocket to get a shot at doing to PowerPoint what Microsoft Word did to WordPerfect?
I don't know
When pitching VCs it is better to say "I don't know" if you do not know the answer to a question than making something up that turns out to be wrong later. Management integrity is a more important investment criterion than having all facts readily accessible in your head.
Click-click
When I have not prepared a presentation well enough, and/or made last minute changes to the deck, I find myself skipping a slide during a live presentation. Click-click, when you see a difficult slide coming up in presenter view (more about PowerPoint presenter view here).
Where do you need to practice most?
The opening of the presentation, and not only because here you are likely to be a bit nervous at this stage of your talk. It is here, where you usually talk about yourself as an introduction. You know the content of this section very well (hey, it is about you) and you do not bother rehearsing. So you are on stage, you go blah, blah, blah, and a feeling starts creeping in. This section takes a long time. Is all this detail about me really interesting to the audience. How should I have told the story about myself in such a way that it sets up the rest of the presentation correctly? It is hard to talk about yourself, better practice it...
Visual mental placeholders. These are slides that are great to talk around in a one-on-one meeting. You probably have used them a lot. You know them inside out, and hence do not bother to practice them. But when you are on stage, you realize that you do not have a good sequential story in your mind to talk a larger audience through this slide.
Bad slides. You will discover them when you practice. DELETE.
Where do you need to practice most?
The opening of the presentation, and not only because here you are likely to be a bit nervous at this stage of your talk. It is here, where you usually talk about yourself as an introduction. You know the content of this section very well (hey, it is about you) and you do not bother rehearsing. So you are on stage, you go blah, blah, blah, and a feeling starts creeping in. This section takes a long time. Is all this detail about me really interesting to the audience. How should I have told the story about myself in such a way that it sets up the rest of the presentation correctly? It is hard to talk about yourself, better practice it...
Visual mental placeholders. These are slides that are great to talk around in a one-on-one meeting. You probably have used them a lot. You know them inside out, and hence do not bother to practice them. But when you are on stage, you realize that you do not have a good sequential story in your mind to talk a larger audience through this slide.
Bad slides. You will discover them when you practice. DELETE.
We need to cut slides!
Think about how a movie director cuts down a movie.
- She does not just chop a few scenes randomly
- She does not double the speed at which the movie runs.
- She does not use picture-in-picture to cram two scenes in one screen shot in parallel.
- She thinks in terms of time, not number of scenes. What can I do in 90 minutes?
- She thinks about plot lines, not scenes. Can we lose that flashback without impacting the story?
- She thinks about the overall story. Now that we cut a few plot lines, do we need to overhaul the whole story line?
Emailing presentations without verbal explanation
A presentation designed for a large audience with big images and few words cannot stand on its own without verbal explanation. Ideally, you would design two separate decks; one for the big audience, and one for emailing. But, constantly updating two presentations in parallel is time consuming and prone to errors. Here is a work-around.
Design your presentation for a 16:9 screen and add a text column on the left side. Put the full narrative of the slide in a tiny font. The email reader gets the full explanation of the chart. The big audience will see a blurry bar on the left of the slide, clearly distinct from the larger visual. You could go further and quickly delete the text bars a few seconds before you go on stage.
Not perfect, but good enough.
Design your presentation for a 16:9 screen and add a text column on the left side. Put the full narrative of the slide in a tiny font. The email reader gets the full explanation of the chart. The big audience will see a blurry bar on the left of the slide, clearly distinct from the larger visual. You could go further and quickly delete the text bars a few seconds before you go on stage.
Not perfect, but good enough.
The real market is for sales presentations
I have been designing an enormous amount of startup venture capital pitches over the years. The stakes are high, the story is often not clear, the founders are open to new forms of communication and so they are willing to invest in a good pitch deck. I enjoy these projects immensely, there is nothing more fun than taking an idea from 0 to a beautiful visualization.
It is a relatively small presentation design market though. The big change will be in the 1,000s of boring sales presentations that are used every day. Corporates burn millions of dollars on advertising, billboards, fluffy white papers, and conference booths, while sending the salesforce on the road with a low budget PowerPoint deck that is embarrassing to use. It is time to re-allocate some of that marketing budget and stop killing these great stories with bullet points.
It is a relatively small presentation design market though. The big change will be in the 1,000s of boring sales presentations that are used every day. Corporates burn millions of dollars on advertising, billboards, fluffy white papers, and conference booths, while sending the salesforce on the road with a low budget PowerPoint deck that is embarrassing to use. It is time to re-allocate some of that marketing budget and stop killing these great stories with bullet points.
Get your hands dirty
The other day I was doing the first sales presentation design interview with a startup that soon will start selling storage systems for large data centers that will eclipse the performance of the big names in the industry. Two presentation options
- Flaky chart: 2 columns, our performance, their performance.
- Substance chart: a series of charts that explains how a totally new type of storage architecture can deliver these performance figures
The first approach does not stick, the second one does, even in the absence of a large number of customer examples.
The check list goes in last
How do you make up your mind? Think of this, consider that, go back, look at this. A slightly random process in which you jump from one aspect to the other. Once we are done with this process, we go through a more orderly check list to see we've covered everything.
Here are the implications for many of my presentations:
Here are the implications for many of my presentations:
- Upfront, tease the audience something great is coming, but do not try to summarize or explain the whole pitch in a structured (=boring) way
- Tell the story using the structure a movie director would take, not the author of a business school text book
- Come back with an organized summary, the check list, to show the audience that we have covered all.
Microsoft Office 2011 Service Pack 1 (version 14.1)
Microsoft posted its first Office 2011 for Mac update yesterday, and as I can see now, it took care of the instability issues in PowerPoint 2011 that I have been complaining about (fingers crossed). Still, there is a long feature wish list for SP2 to bring it at par with the Windows version, of which custom font embedding sits at #1. See my earlier review of PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
My NYU presentations on SlideShare
Last week, I spoke at a SalesSchool event at NYU in New York. Here are the slides I used during the 2 evenings. Both presentations start off the same, but then diverge as they focus on VC pitches and sales meetings. SalesCrunch will post video fragments of the evenings later on their site.
At the end of the presentation, I touch briefly on the challenges of presenting without eye contact. For more suggestions about presenting remotely and in webinars, see this post by Olivia Mitchell.
At the end of the presentation, I touch briefly on the challenges of presenting without eye contact. For more suggestions about presenting remotely and in webinars, see this post by Olivia Mitchell.
Reduce the leading of large font sizes
Leading is the horizontal spacing between lines of text. For regular font sizes, PowerPoint adjusts the leading fine. When you start getting to huge font sizes though, things tend to go wrong, the distance between lines of text is too large.
To reduce the leading in PowerPoint, select the text, right-click, select paragraph, set spacing inside the spacing group to exactly, and lower the number that pops up.
To reduce the leading in PowerPoint, select the text, right-click, select paragraph, set spacing inside the spacing group to exactly, and lower the number that pops up.
Reading decks on the go
This guest post by Jakob Jochmann on Jon Thomas' blog triggered this observation: more and more, I start to email out intermediate versions of my presentations in PDF format because people can read them on mobile devices. This format is good enough for high-level comments on early drafts. The final round of edits needs a bigger screen.
What happened in Fukuchima in PowerPoint
This presentation is a good example of building up a complex systems diagram in multiple stages. Keep 99% of the diagram the same, and provide a text explanation of the 1% that changed.
Via Elan Dekel.
Via Elan Dekel.
Back from New York
No major insights regarding presentation design today as I am getting myself organized after returning from a fantastic week in New York. I really enjoyed the 2 speaking events at NYU, and want to thank Sean Black from SalesCrunch for inviting me. Sean will publish the content of the 2 evenings in chunks on his site.
I also would like to thank venture capitalist Mark Suster (author of Both Sides of the Table and one of the "3 musketeers" of VC bloggers together with Fred Wilson and Brad Feld) for spontaneously agreeing to introduce the first event (on VC pitching) in person.
I enjoyed my week tremendously, met great people, and am really impressed by the buzzing startup scene around Union Square in New York. If you were in the audience and would like to connect and/or have additional questions, do not hesitate to contact me.
I also would like to thank venture capitalist Mark Suster (author of Both Sides of the Table and one of the "3 musketeers" of VC bloggers together with Fred Wilson and Brad Feld) for spontaneously agreeing to introduce the first event (on VC pitching) in person.
I enjoyed my week tremendously, met great people, and am really impressed by the buzzing startup scene around Union Square in New York. If you were in the audience and would like to connect and/or have additional questions, do not hesitate to contact me.
No red in financial data
Red is a great accent color to make text stand out from other elements on the slide. Do not use it for financial data though, people are associating red with negative performance and losses.
A new ergonomic chair
One of the easiest ways to become better at presentation design is to have a calm and relaxing work environment and an ergonomic chair and computer setup. I have not found the idea chair solution yet. Simple kneeling chairs put too much pressure on your knees after long use, complicated ergonomic chairs are so huge that they seem to come straight out of a science fiction movie. Maybe this simple elegant solution, the Tip Ton by Vitra might be a good solution to put next to my regular office chair (nice commercial by the way), it will be launched later this month.
"Clients don't understand their success is reliant on standing out, not fitting in"
I came across this quote by the fictional character Don Draper (Mad Men) on the Advertising is good for you blog. It does apply to some of my presentation design projects, especially when there is some resistance to let go of the common bullet point approach.
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
How to present your team to investors
The founding team is a one of the most important inputs in a venture capitalist's mind when she decides to invest in your startup or not. For a large part, an investor will size you up during the pitch by judging how you present and how you answer questions, information that is not written down anywhere on a slide.
Still, the team slide is a crucial part of any VC presentation. It is difficult to put CV information in a slide. There is lots of information, and CV entries require lots of text (long university, company, and position names). So I usually end up designing 2 versions: one to go in the front and one with full details to go in the appendix (the latter is meant for reading, not presenting).
You should adopt the design of your high level team slide, depending on what you want to say:
Still, the team slide is a crucial part of any VC presentation. It is difficult to put CV information in a slide. There is lots of information, and CV entries require lots of text (long university, company, and position names). So I usually end up designing 2 versions: one to go in the front and one with full details to go in the appendix (the latter is meant for reading, not presenting).
You should adopt the design of your high level team slide, depending on what you want to say:
- We have many of years of experience, a very long time line
- We have worked together before, multiple time lines circling the overlap in your careers
- We worked for big name companies: company logos
- We have complementary skills, some sort of (slightly cliche) puzzle that shows what skill set the individual team members bring to the table.
And if you can:
- Put in high-quality head shots of the team members
- Or even better: an energetic group picture.
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