Crop to fill
It is never too late to learn something. After my post about fixing aspect ratios of image fills in PowerPoint, Geetesh Bajaj pointed out that there is a much smarter way to do this. Here are his posts for Mac and for Windows.
Showing off your clients
Three different ways to show off your client list, depending on what you want to emphasize:
- Page of logos to show that they include the biggest names in the industry (here is how to design one)
- Map with dots to show that they are scattered around the globe
- Bar chart with sales number ranking to show how much you sold them (if you can share this information)
Mixing them up might not give the best picture: logos of completely unknown companies, a world map with lots of dots in New York City.
Anticipation
Most of the time, it is more powerful to show events that are about to happen rather than the event itself. It is very well done in the ad below for an automatic braking system that anticipates the movement of objects on the road. It brings great tension to the visual, almost making the still image move.
Commenters on Ads of the World were less enthusiastic though. Maybe the plusses and minuses should have been made a bit bigger. And well, if there is something wrong with the chart, it is in its 3D composition. The dog is too close and actually not running towards the cat. But I am probably the only one who bothers about that...
Commenters on Ads of the World were less enthusiastic though. Maybe the plusses and minuses should have been made a bit bigger. And well, if there is something wrong with the chart, it is in its 3D composition. The dog is too close and actually not running towards the cat. But I am probably the only one who bothers about that...
Excel to recover from a PPT crash
PowerPoint 2011 for Mac does not work well with Apple’s Time Machine backup system. You cannot change the backup timing, so my machine always tries to backup during Israeli office hours (night time US), and guess what, one of the few files that needs a backup is the presentation file I have open right now in PowerPoint. While I am sure there is some sort of file conflict mechanism in place, it is not very effective and I had PowerPoint crashing on me numerous times.
What to do about it? This is a relatively friendly crash, your program is not stuck, it just refuses to save your work (with a frequent autosave setting, that should be about 10 minutes of work). Now here is a nice trick to rescue that chart: select all objects on the page, hit copy, and paste them in an empty Excel sheet. Force quit PowerPoint, re-open, copy the objects in Excel and paste them back in. You just saved yourself from having to redo that 15 layer animation.
What to do about it? This is a relatively friendly crash, your program is not stuck, it just refuses to save your work (with a frequent autosave setting, that should be about 10 minutes of work). Now here is a nice trick to rescue that chart: select all objects on the page, hit copy, and paste them in an empty Excel sheet. Force quit PowerPoint, re-open, copy the objects in Excel and paste them back in. You just saved yourself from having to redo that 15 layer animation.
Political communications
Yesterday was election day in Israel, and I was shocked how hard it is for a voter to find out what a party actually stands for. In the end, decisions are not based on information provided by the parties themselves, but election guides provided by the news media.
The cause of this is probably rooted in the way political parties work. Policy documents are hammered out after long internal debates, where people fight over nuances and single sentences. Translating that watered down policy document in a clear message to voters is very hard. As a result, fresh new parties do a better job at communicating what they stand for with a small group of people enjoying the benefits of a white sheet of paper.
Put everything away, take a pause, and sketch out what you really want to say.
The cause of this is probably rooted in the way political parties work. Policy documents are hammered out after long internal debates, where people fight over nuances and single sentences. Translating that watered down policy document in a clear message to voters is very hard. As a result, fresh new parties do a better job at communicating what they stand for with a small group of people enjoying the benefits of a white sheet of paper.
Put everything away, take a pause, and sketch out what you really want to say.
Centring objects
Images with objects isolated on an empty background are not always cropped perfectly. Centring the image will not center the object. Draw a some quick guide lines and you can align things properly.
Investment banking presentations
A question that came in yesterday:
Now, in finance presentations you need a few pages that are dense (financial statements for example). But there is no reason why the general lessons for presentation design do not apply in finance. In the end, investors are people, and it is harder to convince people to do something (invest) with a boring presentation.
And I have seen it work myself. After the initial resistance, people were actually very impressed with a different style fund raising presentation (and proved it by wiring money).
So what to do? My advice would be to take both approaches. A fund raising roadshow is a big deal and usually people have enough time/resources allocated to it to prepare both a visual, and a dense deck. Present the visual presentation, and selectively jump to appendix charts if you have to. Let the audience read the appendix in their own time.
Armed with a presentation like this, there is often no reason to write an extensive PPM (private placement memorandum) at all (the lawyers might have to add some legal stuff to the back of your appendix though in that case).
Be careful to maintain a serious look and feel to the presentation: big pink fonts and funny pictures do not work in the wood panelled board room. But there is no reason why a highly visual presentation cannot look serious.
Hopefully, in a few years we can avoid the dense appendix all together, but until then make 2 presentations.
Jan, I have a question about presentations to investment bankers/analysts. One of my clients getting ready to go on a road show says their investment banking consultants have told them to present what I would call (ala Garth Reynolds) a "slideument" that will also serve as a leave-behind. The consultants claim this is the way it's always done and if they don't do it this way, their audience will disregard them. Your thoughts?Yes, in financial services people are used to very text-heavy slideuments for fund raising and IPO roadshows. And in most cases, people will print out the full 200 page deck for each participant in the meeting room.
Now, in finance presentations you need a few pages that are dense (financial statements for example). But there is no reason why the general lessons for presentation design do not apply in finance. In the end, investors are people, and it is harder to convince people to do something (invest) with a boring presentation.
And I have seen it work myself. After the initial resistance, people were actually very impressed with a different style fund raising presentation (and proved it by wiring money).
So what to do? My advice would be to take both approaches. A fund raising roadshow is a big deal and usually people have enough time/resources allocated to it to prepare both a visual, and a dense deck. Present the visual presentation, and selectively jump to appendix charts if you have to. Let the audience read the appendix in their own time.
Armed with a presentation like this, there is often no reason to write an extensive PPM (private placement memorandum) at all (the lawyers might have to add some legal stuff to the back of your appendix though in that case).
Be careful to maintain a serious look and feel to the presentation: big pink fonts and funny pictures do not work in the wood panelled board room. But there is no reason why a highly visual presentation cannot look serious.
Hopefully, in a few years we can avoid the dense appendix all together, but until then make 2 presentations.
10 points that say it all
One of my clients is one of the finalists in a long RFP process full of long presentations, documents, meetings. After all this information, the client thought it was appropriate to send one last piece of PowerPoint: a simple recap of why they are the best choice in 10 slides.
It was probably one of the most convincing presentations of the entire process. It took very little time to write. It contained much more emotional arguments (we are fun to work with etc.) than all the previous material that was used.
The visual concept I used was designed for on screen reading. I doubled the width of the page to an aspect ratio much wider than 16:9. Reserved the entire left side of the chart for a sentence in huge fonts, and supported that sentence with a very simple picture on the right side. Just 10 pages.
PDF it, email it, and hope for the best.
It was probably one of the most convincing presentations of the entire process. It took very little time to write. It contained much more emotional arguments (we are fun to work with etc.) than all the previous material that was used.
The visual concept I used was designed for on screen reading. I doubled the width of the page to an aspect ratio much wider than 16:9. Reserved the entire left side of the chart for a sentence in huge fonts, and supported that sentence with a very simple picture on the right side. Just 10 pages.
PDF it, email it, and hope for the best.
Mailchimp online annual report
A few days ago there was Kickstarter, and now Mailchimp has put its annual overview online. I like these blends of web design and presentation design.
From a form perspective, the presentation is clever. Widen and narrow the screen and see what happens, as you make the window narrower, first the infographics move closer to each other, then the design switches from a 2 column to a 1 column layout.
From a content perspective, there is some work to be done. Data is not rounded up and makes it hard to read, and some of the information presentation is not terribly relevant to the viewer (pizzas served). Then, the objective of the site is to show that a lot of stuff is going on at Mailchimp, and with that in mind, they succeeded conveying the message.
P.S.: another cool annual report: Warby Parker (h/t Duarte)
From a form perspective, the presentation is clever. Widen and narrow the screen and see what happens, as you make the window narrower, first the infographics move closer to each other, then the design switches from a 2 column to a 1 column layout.
From a content perspective, there is some work to be done. Data is not rounded up and makes it hard to read, and some of the information presentation is not terribly relevant to the viewer (pizzas served). Then, the objective of the site is to show that a lot of stuff is going on at Mailchimp, and with that in mind, they succeeded conveying the message.
P.S.: another cool annual report: Warby Parker (h/t Duarte)
Aspect ratios and image fills
PowerPoint distorts the aspect ratio of images when you use them to fill a shape. To work around the issue, you need to crop the picture in the aspect ratio of your target shape. In the example of the circle below, that is a square.
I use PhotoShop to crop my pictures. You can also use the PowerPoint crop function itself and right-click, save as image.
I use PhotoShop to crop my pictures. You can also use the PowerPoint crop function itself and right-click, save as image.
Crappy VGA projectors
Screens on computers and mobile devices are getting better in 12 month cycles. I design presentations on 2 giant 27" displays that show a lot of detail and reveal the most subtle color shade differences.
Then you put your presentation on a conference room overhead projector that has been sitting there since 2002... The screen resolution is so small that it takes you 5 minutes to find your application windows, and when you finally get to show the slides in presentation mode you will notice that white and light grey is the same color, and that almost black grey is actually bright grey, and that orange means pink.
Test run your designs for the crappy conference room projector.
Then you put your presentation on a conference room overhead projector that has been sitting there since 2002... The screen resolution is so small that it takes you 5 minutes to find your application windows, and when you finally get to show the slides in presentation mode you will notice that white and light grey is the same color, and that almost black grey is actually bright grey, and that orange means pink.
Test run your designs for the crappy conference room projector.
Flat design
I never liked gradient fills, reflections, and bevels. But recently I am increasingly letting go of drop shadows as well, only using them for objects that really need to pop out. I guess I am influenced by the current trend of flat design in web/UI design.
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