Problems accessing this blog? Let me know.
Maybe not such a smart question to ask, if you can read this, then there is clearly not a problem. Still, 2 readers have complained that they had difficulty accessing the site. Anyone else had trouble? If so, I am actually not sure what to do about it, I am in the hands of Google. There is always the good old stickyslides.com, but in the end all URLs forward to stickyslides.blogspot.com, the Blogger name that I registered back in 2008.
Parallels: presentation design and web site design
Most web sites are designed around functional content rather than story: find our address, learn about our environmental policies, see how we value compliance, here is a list of all the products we sell. But is that what should get all the attention? Maybe a first-time visitor of a company web site is more interested in the story behind the company? That story should be eye catching. The functional information should be accessible, but does not have to jump at you when you enter.
Similar to PowerPoint templates, web site templates waste too much space on screen clutter. Multiple menu structures, lots of links, buttons. It is all too busy and confusing. The language on corporate web sites is full of clichés. The text sort of all say the same thing. Images are often the cheesy stock photos that good presentation designers try to avoid.
Corporates probably copy each other. They brief a design agency with "I want something like that". As a result, the same concept gets repeated and repeated. Web design is probably mostly lead by technology developers, not story tellers. The structure, the layering, the architecture come first.
Maybe corporate web design is also ready for a revolution, and maybe story designers can play a big role in it?
Telephone interruption - creativity killer
Here in Israel, people always answer their phone and then say: “I will call you later, OK?”. That interruption just broke your line of thought, your concentration, you probably going to check that Tweeted link, catch up on some email. So much for creativity.
Email is much better for small admin-type message exchanges. And I am going even further, slowly phasing out the use of voice mail. Voice mail is very inefficient to access, and it does not enable you to use your inbox as a todo list. In the end, voice conversations will be to talk to close family members or remote meetings.
Until everyone moves into this direction I will get “Did you get my message?” a lot.
UPDATE: After a reader email, I will clarify and assure you that I do communicate with people, just at set time intervals.
Email is much better for small admin-type message exchanges. And I am going even further, slowly phasing out the use of voice mail. Voice mail is very inefficient to access, and it does not enable you to use your inbox as a todo list. In the end, voice conversations will be to talk to close family members or remote meetings.
Until everyone moves into this direction I will get “Did you get my message?” a lot.
UPDATE: After a reader email, I will clarify and assure you that I do communicate with people, just at set time intervals.
Editing for clarity does not always add clarity
You emailed the presentation to your boss, and it comes back the next day with the comment: “I edited it for clarity”. What this means is that she edited the text in the first few slides, but probably ran out of steam after page 14.
Bosses have this urge to take out the fountain pen and start scribbling (could you print that slide deck please?), especially on first pages. They do not take the time to digest the entire slide deck (20 minute story), but rather want to make sure the summary page is right. Make sure the vision is in. Make sure that we mention that benefit. Make sure to emphasize the long history of the company.
Editing text is useful for books or legal contracts, text on a presentation slide can only absorbed 50%. The audience will not remember how you put that sentence exactly.
So, spending a lot of time on carefully crafting sentences is not the best use of your time. Given that, why not focus on writing short, punchy headlines and add the nuances in your verbal explanation.
Bosses have this urge to take out the fountain pen and start scribbling (could you print that slide deck please?), especially on first pages. They do not take the time to digest the entire slide deck (20 minute story), but rather want to make sure the summary page is right. Make sure the vision is in. Make sure that we mention that benefit. Make sure to emphasize the long history of the company.
Editing text is useful for books or legal contracts, text on a presentation slide can only absorbed 50%. The audience will not remember how you put that sentence exactly.
So, spending a lot of time on carefully crafting sentences is not the best use of your time. Given that, why not focus on writing short, punchy headlines and add the nuances in your verbal explanation.
Make sure the numbers add up
Whenever you present a piece of analysis (a table, a chart), round up the numbers so you are left with a digestible amount of numbers; so $1.3m instead of $1,354,673. And when you add up numbers, make sure the calculations are correct. And I do not mean just calculation mistakes, it is obvious that you lose credibility if you get the basic math wrong.
Adding rounded numbers can slightly alter the total of your sum. I usually make sure that the total is exactly what it should be, and make a short adjustment to the largest number in the addition.
For example: 3.49 + 2.55 + 1.25 = 7.27. But when you round up you get: 3.5 + 2.6 + 1.3 = 7.4. So I adjusted the 3.5 and will put in my chart 3.4 + 2.6 1.3 = 7.3.
Why? If you have to explain why numbers do not add up, it will cost you credibility. Secondly, most people actually will not ask, they will just go and check every number in your document. And an audience that is running mathematical calculations does not have time to listen to your story.
Watch out the quarterly results presentations to investors though. If you bump into rounding issues, you might have to add in those extra digits to make sure you are not misrepresenting the financial situation of your company,
Adding rounded numbers can slightly alter the total of your sum. I usually make sure that the total is exactly what it should be, and make a short adjustment to the largest number in the addition.
For example: 3.49 + 2.55 + 1.25 = 7.27. But when you round up you get: 3.5 + 2.6 + 1.3 = 7.4. So I adjusted the 3.5 and will put in my chart 3.4 + 2.6 1.3 = 7.3.
Why? If you have to explain why numbers do not add up, it will cost you credibility. Secondly, most people actually will not ask, they will just go and check every number in your document. And an audience that is running mathematical calculations does not have time to listen to your story.
Watch out the quarterly results presentations to investors though. If you bump into rounding issues, you might have to add in those extra digits to make sure you are not misrepresenting the financial situation of your company,
Movie posters
The site of the IMP Awards has an excellent database of movie posters, searchable by year, title, actor. Useful inspiration.
Adobe Acrobat needs to get presenter view
Last week in New York, I used both Keynote and Adobe Acrobat for the first time on stage in a live presentation. Keynote worked great (it is designed to do just that). Presenting in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) was interesting.
I presented at a large conference (this one) where it is hard to switch hardware (I needed a Mac for Keynote) in the middle of the conference program without disrupting the experience of the audience (engineers walking back and forth, screens going on and off). Hence, I went for a PDF version of the deck. (An earlier post on why I think we are going to use PDF for presentations more and more)
With CMD-L you can put Adobe Acrobat in full screen mode, and it responds perfectly fine to the Logitech remote control I am using. The only adjustment you have to make is to make sure that any animated slide builds are spread out over multiple pages.
The one thing I am missing though is the ability to have presenter view in Adobe Acrobat: having a pre-view of the next slide displayed on the monitor that only the presenter can see. Adobe, are you listening? (An old post about PowerPoint presenter view)
To take this a bit further. The one thing that Apple can do to increase the penetration of Keynote is to develop a Windows application that can run Keynote presentations with animations. Editing is not necessary.
I presented at a large conference (this one) where it is hard to switch hardware (I needed a Mac for Keynote) in the middle of the conference program without disrupting the experience of the audience (engineers walking back and forth, screens going on and off). Hence, I went for a PDF version of the deck. (An earlier post on why I think we are going to use PDF for presentations more and more)
With CMD-L you can put Adobe Acrobat in full screen mode, and it responds perfectly fine to the Logitech remote control I am using. The only adjustment you have to make is to make sure that any animated slide builds are spread out over multiple pages.
The one thing I am missing though is the ability to have presenter view in Adobe Acrobat: having a pre-view of the next slide displayed on the monitor that only the presenter can see. Adobe, are you listening? (An old post about PowerPoint presenter view)
To take this a bit further. The one thing that Apple can do to increase the penetration of Keynote is to develop a Windows application that can run Keynote presentations with animations. Editing is not necessary.
But: Board presentations are different don't you agree?
This was the question I got after my high-paced presentations full of impressionist paintings last week. Here is what is different about a Board presentation:
- Often you need to go through and approve detailed financials, so some slides will be dense
- Board members will have gotten used to certain type of slides, because many of them get repeated in every quarterly review. The slides might be bad, but everyone knows exactly where to look for a specific number.
- The corporate culture might not completely be open to impressionist paintings and other unusual images in a Board presentation
Having said that, Board presentations are actually very similar to other presentations:
- A well-functioning Board will have read the homework before entering the meeting room, so the detailed number slides can be left for the appendix
- If you need to convince the Board of a major strategic decision, it is a presentation like any other. Boring, dense bullet points is not going to help you win the hearts and minds of these people.
- Using visual slides with large images does not mean that you have to pick impressionist paintings. Highly conservative slides can still be highly visual.
So maybe Board meetings are not that different after all...
The presentation design market
Last week I attended a Creative Mornings presentation by John Maeda in New York. He is the head of the Rhode Island School of Design and a well-known designer, artist, and author (more information about him here).
He made an interesting point about the graphics design industry. What caused the creation of the graphics design industry as we know it today? The fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, it became customary for publicly traded companies to have well-designed annual reports for their shareholders.
I think we are seeing something similar in presentation design. The bar is rising constantly. Presentations, and videos of presentations are being shared online and are getting wider and wider audiences. Corporations start seeing the value of good slide design. Enterprises will start allocating budget to it.
I do not think this investment will solely go to the design of PowerPoint slides. The corporate story needs to be brought out consistently in presentation slides, documents that can be shared online, videos, and the web site. A new discipline in graphics design, and a new design market is emerging.
He made an interesting point about the graphics design industry. What caused the creation of the graphics design industry as we know it today? The fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, it became customary for publicly traded companies to have well-designed annual reports for their shareholders.
I think we are seeing something similar in presentation design. The bar is rising constantly. Presentations, and videos of presentations are being shared online and are getting wider and wider audiences. Corporations start seeing the value of good slide design. Enterprises will start allocating budget to it.
I do not think this investment will solely go to the design of PowerPoint slides. The corporate story needs to be brought out consistently in presentation slides, documents that can be shared online, videos, and the web site. A new discipline in graphics design, and a new design market is emerging.
Great, I do not get a lot of time!
Recently someone asked me: "How much time do you need for your presentation, 30 minutes, 45 minutes?". While I can fill 2 hours with just talking about presentation design I chose to go for the 30 minutes. It focuses you to be to the point and interesting.
TEDTalks can discuss very complex subject matters in just 20 minutes. I have designed 6 minute presentations for startups participating in pitch competitions that managed to convey the entire company's story. Often I find that a time constraint results in a better presentation.
TEDTalks can discuss very complex subject matters in just 20 minutes. I have designed 6 minute presentations for startups participating in pitch competitions that managed to convey the entire company's story. Often I find that a time constraint results in a better presentation.
80% there
The idea of visual presentations is spreading and I see more and more decks that I would call "80% there": very limited use of bullets points, big images, one message per slide. For those experienced amateurs among you, here is how to get it to 100%:
- Use only high res images, instead of low res ones borrowed from Google Image search
- Scale up your images either to full page size, or stick to the same white frame on each page.
- Think of image aesthetics: people in toilets, eating gross food, a close up of an ugly animal might be funny, but they are in a college humor kind of way. Deep down, humans do not like to look at things that are not pretty. Not every image has to be funny. Funny images can also be beautiful.
- Resist the temptation of the image barrage. An onscreen presentation is not a SlideShare presentation that requires a click to go to the next word in a sentence. Not all points need to be supported by an image. It is scary, scary face image. We are confused - confused face image. It is difficult - child doing math image. Use images or graphs to show why you are scared, what is confusing you, and how come it is so hard to solve. Much better than pictures of scared and confused people.
Photoshop for presentation designers
Photoshop is growing on me, after having confused me for many years. Photoshop is catering to multiple audiences. Professional photographers need the sophisticated tools for correcting camera images. Advertising designers need the engine for creating complex layer compositions.
What is useful for presentation designers? (search help in Photoshop for exact instructions how to find them):
What features have I missed?
What is useful for presentation designers? (search help in Photoshop for exact instructions how to find them):
- The magic wand to remove image backgrounds (the Microsoft PowerPoint option is really poor)
- Image size and canvas adjustments to get to the exact right size of an image at 300DPI
- Content-aware fill to extent backgrounds
- Content-aware extend to extend backgrounds
- The spot healing tool to fix extended backgrounds
- The color-replace function to change colors that are slightly off (i.e., make orange red)
- And (a bit advanced) the vanishing point filter to put text on 3D objects
Whenever a new version of Photoshop is released, I am not so much looking forward to more features, but better implementation of existing ones.
What features have I missed?
In defense of the maligned PowerPoint
Tim Harford is defending PowerPoint in the light of the recently formed Anti PowerPoint Party. I agree. He argues that PowerPoint is a tool used poorly. The link to the article.
Presentations on tablets
I am increasingly interested in designing documents for tablets. They could work great in one-on-one meetings (or even stand alone). I have not found the right platform to develop them yet though.
PDFs do not always work (especially when converted using the Microsoft Office plug in) and show up within the frame of the iPad PDF reader (menu bars, chart thumbnails).
HTML5 looks promising. Onswipe aims to be an HTML5 publishing platform for magazines that also could be useful for presentations. If you visit the Marie Claire web site on an iPad for example you see what it can do (it looks like an app, but it is a regular HTML page). But you also see the limitations. A browser-based environment makes page switching slow, and again, you still have the navigation frameworks of the browser application.
Custom apps. Over the past weeks, I taught myself Adobe InDesign, and loaded up software that can turn Adobe InDesign files into custom iPad apps. My computer science background is trying to convince me actually download the entire IOS 4.3 SDK to have a look inside to see what it takes to program an iPad app from scratch. It is a heavy-handed approach though.
Do you have experience with this? Let us know in the comments.
PDFs do not always work (especially when converted using the Microsoft Office plug in) and show up within the frame of the iPad PDF reader (menu bars, chart thumbnails).
HTML5 looks promising. Onswipe aims to be an HTML5 publishing platform for magazines that also could be useful for presentations. If you visit the Marie Claire web site on an iPad for example you see what it can do (it looks like an app, but it is a regular HTML page). But you also see the limitations. A browser-based environment makes page switching slow, and again, you still have the navigation frameworks of the browser application.
Custom apps. Over the past weeks, I taught myself Adobe InDesign, and loaded up software that can turn Adobe InDesign files into custom iPad apps. My computer science background is trying to convince me actually download the entire IOS 4.3 SDK to have a look inside to see what it takes to program an iPad app from scratch. It is a heavy-handed approach though.
Do you have experience with this? Let us know in the comments.
Posters in Amsterdam
The summer is here: time to slow down a bit and look around for design inspiration. The site Posters in Amsterdam by Jarr Geerlings enables you to walk around the city without physically going there.
Presenting the slide
A decade ago when I just started my career at McKinsey, I always was very excited when I was asked to “present the slide” to the CEO of a client. Presenting the slide: the slide was primary, the presenter was secondary. There is nothing wrong with that. When designing your slide deck, just realize that this is the audience setting you are designing for.
Boring structure = boring presentation
Going systematically through the branches of your organization diagram is not the best way to get visitors from abroad excited about your company.
When you make a biographical movie, it is recommended to spend a bit more time on the period in the life of the artist where she delivered those stunning pieces of sculpture.
Following the sections of that business plan template you found online literally will not encourage investors to write you the check you want.
When you make a biographical movie, it is recommended to spend a bit more time on the period in the life of the artist where she delivered those stunning pieces of sculpture.
Following the sections of that business plan template you found online literally will not encourage investors to write you the check you want.
Making good diagrams in PowerPoint
This presentation contains some useful guidelines for making diagrams. Thank you Alessandra for pointing it out to me.
Too many benefits = no benefits
Marketing managers always want to make sure that every single benefit and feature makes it on to “the benefits slide”. ROI. Low cost. Flexible. Scalable. Effective. Efficient. Affordable. Listing more benefits means spending less slide real estate on each individual one (words, visuals). Your remarkable story gets diluted into a generic cloud of buzz words that people find on just about every other benefits slide that they have seen.
You conformed. Marketing managers expect this benefits slide. Customers recognize it as: “hey, here comes the benefits slide”. Everyone follows the script. Presenter presents. Audience does a quick email check. The usual stuff.
Benefits are all about standing out from the competition. Let your benefits slide stand out as well and focus it on what is really different about your company and your product.
You conformed. Marketing managers expect this benefits slide. Customers recognize it as: “hey, here comes the benefits slide”. Everyone follows the script. Presenter presents. Audience does a quick email check. The usual stuff.
Benefits are all about standing out from the competition. Let your benefits slide stand out as well and focus it on what is really different about your company and your product.
Surprise? Hardly anyone reads annual reports
An interesting post by investor relations consultant Dominic Jones: very few bother to read a company's annual reports.
It is easy to understand why. Annual accounts consist of 2 parts. One, the financial data. This is read by those who need them (analysts). Two, an attempt by the company to sell its strategy to investors. Here is why this section does not work:
It is easy to understand why. Annual accounts consist of 2 parts. One, the financial data. This is read by those who need them (analysts). Two, an attempt by the company to sell its strategy to investors. Here is why this section does not work:
- The pages are written in a verbose PR style, full of buzzwords and cliches.
- The pages contain verbal description of financial data that is much better displayed in graph or table form. "Europe grew by 5%, Asia grew by 10%"
- Long-hand text does not work very well to communicate business strategy, and the annual report is no exception
- The slick, polished, permanent look of the annual report instantly reduces its credibility. The audience likes real, genuine, authentic stories.
A lot of money is invested in the layout, design, and printing of these annual report. Is this money not better spend by improving the quality of that earnings announcement presentation PDF that everyone IS reading?
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