Slide design and web design are converging.
Kickstarter presentation
This Kickstarter presentation is a beautiful example of simple visualisations that go beyond PowerPoint slides. It is a series of web pages, with simple typography, well-chosen images that are made uniform in style through a color overlay.
Slide design and web design are converging.
Slide design and web design are converging.
Open clip art
I am not a fan of 1990s-looking presentations full of childish Microsoft clipart, but this site Open Clip Art can still be useful resource for presentation designers. Firstly, clip art designers are moving into full illustration designs. Secondly, the site is a good place to find icons for your presentation. All material is free to use. As with all user generated content sites, there is no professional reviews before designs get posted, you need to select the poor from the great yourself.
An infographic that works
Usually, I find infographics too forced, trying to be cute at the expense of being understood. This visualisation of a big organisation over time is an exception. It must have taken some time to construct though...
Via Fast Company Design.
Via Fast Company Design.
It does not look scientific!
In some professions people have gotten used to a certain way of communicating. Lawyers use complicated language, medical diagrams look incomprehensible (people want them to look realistic).
Recently, I changed a medical diagram to make it look less realistic, but a lot clearer to explain. I am still convincing the client that it is the right thing to do.
Recently, I changed a medical diagram to make it look less realistic, but a lot clearer to explain. I am still convincing the client that it is the right thing to do.
Origin of the elevator pitch?
Tom Tunguz claims that this is the origin of the elevator pitch:
The term elevator pitch originates from the very first demonstration of an elevator with a safety brake. At the time, elevators were hazardous, routinely plummeting down shafts when their hoisting ropes fell, destroying their payloads. In 1852, Elisha Otis invented a locking system that would catch and secure plunging elevator. Unable to drive much interest in his innovation, Otis organized a demonstration in New York City. He stood in the elevator as an assistant severed the hoisting ropes and the safety brake engaged. Otis' innovation paved the way for humans to ride in elevators. Today, the Otis company’s products transport 7B people every three days.If true, this is a more interesting tale than the story that I thought was the source: finding yourself next to your client CEO going up in the elevator and having 1 minute to sell your idea.
Market sizing
Forecasting the size of a market that does not exist is tricky and nobody will have the right answer. Googling will result in endless research agencies or investment banks or consulting firms throwing in yet another inconsistent number.
With new markets, it is often as important to convince/teach an investor how to think about the market sizing than getting her to accept the answer, the point estimate. So merely quoting a random number without having a clue how it was derived is not going to help you very much.
So here is an alternative approach: make your own and keep the analysis very transparent. Build a spreadsheet that start with hard facts (populations etc., and slowly, slowly, adds more uncertain numbers. Use different colours for numbers with different confidence levels (green for rock solid all the way down to red for I-made-this-up). Put the resulting market size in your presentation, and add the detailed calculation to the appendix of your presentation.
Now you are on top of your numbers and understand where they are coming from. It shows you know what you are talking about, and you can teach your potential investor how to make her own market estimate.
With new markets, it is often as important to convince/teach an investor how to think about the market sizing than getting her to accept the answer, the point estimate. So merely quoting a random number without having a clue how it was derived is not going to help you very much.
So here is an alternative approach: make your own and keep the analysis very transparent. Build a spreadsheet that start with hard facts (populations etc., and slowly, slowly, adds more uncertain numbers. Use different colours for numbers with different confidence levels (green for rock solid all the way down to red for I-made-this-up). Put the resulting market size in your presentation, and add the detailed calculation to the appendix of your presentation.
Now you are on top of your numbers and understand where they are coming from. It shows you know what you are talking about, and you can teach your potential investor how to make her own market estimate.
And this, and this, and this
Rattling through 25 points about why your idea is great on page 1 of your deck is not convincing.
- You do not give the audience the ability to warm up, and first of all understand what it is you do
- You dilute the power of the arguments by spending too little time on each: big need, no competition, great team, we all heard them before
- You remind us of weak pitches where the lack of quality of the story is made up for by quantity: products with 25 benefits usually have no benefits
Instead, resist the temptation for detail and explain roughly what you do on page 1, plus the most important differentiator. Then follow with a presentation that is short enough for the audience to focus on your key points.
Popular posts in 2012
Here are some posts that people have been reading a lot on my blog in 2012:
- Aligning bullet points in PowerPoint
- How to create a McKinsey-style waterfall chart
- Putting PowerPoint text in a circle
- Semi-transparent text fills
- Building a logo page in PowerPoint
- How to make a 3D translucent ball
- Presentations on tablets
- About logic in presentations
- Keynote versus PowerPoint
- Combining stacked and clustered column charts
For me it is interesting to see that almost none of these posts were written in 2012, and that pretty much all of them are about technical PowerPoint software skills (there is a correlation here, as my posts have evolved a bit over the years). Presumably this is the result of people Googling when they are stuck in PowerPoint.
Anyway, hopefully these posts are useful if you missed them the first time around.
Letting go of your favorite slides
When a company grows, a slide deck has to be used by more than one person. It is often hard for the pioneer presenter to let go of the old slides that she has been using for years. “What is wrong with this slide? When I put it up I tell this, this this, and this, these are really important points.”
Most of the above points do not appear on the slide though. The new presenters do not make them, the email recipients of the deck do not read them. The slide is merely a mental placeholder for the expert presenter to tell her story.
Time to let go.
Most of the above points do not appear on the slide though. The new presenters do not make them, the email recipients of the deck do not read them. The slide is merely a mental placeholder for the expert presenter to tell her story.
Time to let go.
6.1m and 6.1m
If important numbers in your presentation are exactly the same (sales are $6.1m, cash flow is $6.1m and we will have 6.1m users in year 3), it is almost worth tweaking the assumptions in your Excel model a bit so that they are just slightly different. Usually, there is no material difference in the accuracy of your forecast, but it will be a lot easier to understand.
Videolean
If you are a startup, you should consider getting yourself on the beta list of Videolean, a tool that promises to help you create promotion animation videos for $100 or less.
It is amazing to see what you can pack in just 60 seconds of video. Take Videolean’s on video for example: they pitch the problem, the solution, and present how the tool works.
A tool like this can replace a large number of slides in an investor presentation.
(P.S. all these videos seem to be using the voice over of the same guy, who probably costs more than $100, I wonder who he is).
It is amazing to see what you can pack in just 60 seconds of video. Take Videolean’s on video for example: they pitch the problem, the solution, and present how the tool works.
A tool like this can replace a large number of slides in an investor presentation.
(P.S. all these videos seem to be using the voice over of the same guy, who probably costs more than $100, I wonder who he is).
Redundant table column headings
I try to get rid of them, most of the time it is obvious that a column contains a company name, a date, or a comment. Sales, profits or acquisition value are a bit more tricky.
Hockey sticks do not convince
Every startup pitch has a hockey stick chart that shows its financial path to glory. As a result, investors will not believe it by simply looking at it. You need to explain what she has to believe in order for the end point to be true. What are the 7 numbers you need to multiply in order to reach that $50m in year 5? If she believes in 4 of the 7, and she buys into your methodology to calculate the potential, then you she might connect the year five dot with the 0 today.
The great gig in the sky
Pink Floyd asked backing vocalist Clare Torry to “just go insane” and improvise on the music track of The Great Gig in The Sky. The result was not insane, not laughable, not unprofessional, but an incredible song. (Richard Wright describes the briefing 25:30 minutes into the video of the documentary below)
There is a parallel in presentation design. My best presentations have been for clients who told me to go crazy and all the way. The resulting presentations were never crazy or unprofessional, they are my best pieces of work today. You will not get laughed at when you let your creativity go.
Happy holidays everyone!
There is a parallel in presentation design. My best presentations have been for clients who told me to go crazy and all the way. The resulting presentations were never crazy or unprofessional, they are my best pieces of work today. You will not get laughed at when you let your creativity go.
Happy holidays everyone!
Known issues
I am working on the release of version 1.1 of my book about presentation design, iBooks does not process submissions over the holidays, but hopefully in January a new version will get pushed to your iPads.
So far I discovered/received feedback that some internal bookmarks do not work, and that there are still a few lorem ipsums hidden deep down in the book. I will fix this.
The book is now available in 50 countries, but readers have pointed out that the book cannot be bought in the Israeli app store. This is due to Apple’s strategy of not allowing the sale of paid iBooks in Israel, free iBooks are available. I do not understand this, but so be it.
I will keep you posted.
So far I discovered/received feedback that some internal bookmarks do not work, and that there are still a few lorem ipsums hidden deep down in the book. I will fix this.
The book is now available in 50 countries, but readers have pointed out that the book cannot be bought in the Israeli app store. This is due to Apple’s strategy of not allowing the sale of paid iBooks in Israel, free iBooks are available. I do not understand this, but so be it.
I will keep you posted.
No executive summary
I do not like the term “executive summary”. It suggests that if you are senior and executive enough, you are somehow rising above the masses who are swimming and drowning in detail. Most executive summaries are over-summarised with buzzwords and hollow phrases.
Clients often ask me to write an executive summary of a presentation, and I usually say they do not need one. A careful selection of the key slides of a presentation is much better suited for the purpose. Nobody likes to read 2 dense pages of prose, flicking through a number of visual slides is much more interesting. As a result, the message gets across better and faster.
Clients often ask me to write an executive summary of a presentation, and I usually say they do not need one. A careful selection of the key slides of a presentation is much better suited for the purpose. Nobody likes to read 2 dense pages of prose, flicking through a number of visual slides is much more interesting. As a result, the message gets across better and faster.
How to download from YouTube
Videos in your presentation can be powerful, but embedding them using a YouTube link that needs a working Internet connection is a risky strategy in a live presentation, technology always fails when you need it most.
The website keepvid allows you to download YouTube videos to your computer and embed the video file in your presentation. The program comes with a few health warnings though:
The website keepvid allows you to download YouTube videos to your computer and embed the video file in your presentation. The program comes with a few health warnings though:
- Watch out for copyright. Keepvid is legal as long as you use it legally for material for which you have permission to use it
- Keepvid is covered with ads and buttons that say “Download”, these usually link to a sponsor site and do not download your actual video. Watch carefully on what link you click.
- Technical issues. It takes some time before the Java applet downloads, be patient. There is something funny going on with Java and Google Chrome, so when I use Keepvid I switch to Safari which works fine.
Saving time
Maybe stupid, but until recently I hardly ever used a slide template for a visual. My template used to be the white or black page, and everything on it was created from scratch. Data chart, insert followed by 15 actions to kill the standard PowerPoint formatting. Same for tables. Same for text boxes.
So, I am a late discoverer of the slide template. It requires some time though to set things up in a clever way. Maybe I gave you an idea as well.
Another big time saver: a custom toolbar, here is a very old post on the 19 buttons you need in a PowerPoint tool bar.
So, I am a late discoverer of the slide template. It requires some time though to set things up in a clever way. Maybe I gave you an idea as well.
Another big time saver: a custom toolbar, here is a very old post on the 19 buttons you need in a PowerPoint tool bar.
Making the emotional case
President Obama’s key influencing strategy for convincing the audience of the need for tougher gun control laws in the US was appealing to shared values, the values of parents in the audience and in front of television and YouTube screens.
And it is interesting to see how he did it; taking time to let the point sink in, emotionally. The President elaborated about the process of raising a child, letting it separate from you with pain in your heart. In the end he came back to that emotion by mentioning the first name of each child that was killed. If he had just put in the elevator pitch “we need to protect our children”, it would not have been convincing. We have heard it too many times from too many politicians.
The same is true in business presentations: just giving the sound bite is often not enough to let the audience feel the point you want to make.
And it is interesting to see how he did it; taking time to let the point sink in, emotionally. The President elaborated about the process of raising a child, letting it separate from you with pain in your heart. In the end he came back to that emotion by mentioning the first name of each child that was killed. If he had just put in the elevator pitch “we need to protect our children”, it would not have been convincing. We have heard it too many times from too many politicians.
The same is true in business presentations: just giving the sound bite is often not enough to let the audience feel the point you want to make.
Touching your nose
Scientist do not yet agree whether lying makes people touch their nose, but the popular belief is so strong that you better avoid getting rid of that annoying twitch at critical moments in your presentation: “.. and this is how I will save the company! ” [scratch] [scratch]
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