Every story has a few key messages. And a message is not something like “We are a highly flexible, customer-satisfying, and scalable platform, that delivers return on marketing investment.” Things need to be more specific.
For example, you have a company pitch that makes your startup sound like - yet another - social network to the ignorant outsider, and you are not. Rather than making this important point verbally, explaining around the slides, it is better to take the issue head-on: write “We are not a social network” at the top of the slide and design the most powerful visual you can think of to visualize it.
Maybe use 2 charts. One can be incredibly simple: 2 circles, one says ”Social network”, the other “Us”. Then in the next slide (using the same headline) provide factual evidence/explanation why you are not. And factual evidence is not the same as writing a long bullet point: “We are not a social network” (duplicating the headline). You need to list some sort of feature comparison between social networks and your application.
Templates -> boredom
In big corporates, preparations for an important presentation often start with one person preparing the template for the presentation, emailing it around to all relevant business units to be filled out. The final presentation design is simply a matter of slapping the filled in templates together into one big, boring, 30MB, 200 page, 10-hour slide deck.
I am repeating my hobby horse here, this presentation is the problem solving deck that contains all the relevant data. The challenge now is to distill from all that information a compelling story. And that story might well have a different structure/flow for each business unit.
So, my suggested process:
I am repeating my hobby horse here, this presentation is the problem solving deck that contains all the relevant data. The challenge now is to distill from all that information a compelling story. And that story might well have a different structure/flow for each business unit.
So, my suggested process:
- Yes, create that template, send it out
- Create the monster file, clean it up
- Have a conference call with each of the business units about the data
- Then, give them freedom to express their story in their own way, with their own slides, within a strict time constraint
- Share the monster document as backup/bed time reading
The word template can have 2 meanings. One is the standard background layout of a slide (many use banners, logos, and other graphics, I mostly use a white page), and the second one is a series of tables and data charts without numbers and/or words in them. In this post I refer to the latter.
One pen
Problem solving in a team can be really powerful. You split up the work to save time by working in parallel. You can discuss data, findings, and ideas with your team tapping into a collective brain that is bigger than yours.
I find that designing presentations though is best done by one person who has the pen. One style, one approach, one story flow, everything gets said once, everything that should be said gets included. Multiple captains on a ship create an inconsistent story.
That is also the reason that I am not a big believer in realtime office document collaboration, a feature that many software publishers try to implement. The fact that the Internet makes it possible does not mean that it is a good thing.
Team input is important, but only one person should have the pen to incorporate them into the story.
I find that designing presentations though is best done by one person who has the pen. One style, one approach, one story flow, everything gets said once, everything that should be said gets included. Multiple captains on a ship create an inconsistent story.
That is also the reason that I am not a big believer in realtime office document collaboration, a feature that many software publishers try to implement. The fact that the Internet makes it possible does not mean that it is a good thing.
Team input is important, but only one person should have the pen to incorporate them into the story.
First complicate than simplify
In many presentation design projects, I start by building some sort of overview slide that is highly dense, complex, but has the whole story/solution on it. This enables me to shuffle things around, split things up, merge things, until I feel confident that I can move the other way: simplify. The designer has to go to the bottom of complexity in order to save the audience from having to do the same thing.
Mixing and matching
Before starting a presentation design project, I need some basic guidance from my clients: dark or light background, custom fonts or not, Mac or Windows. Useful information.
A few times, I made the mistake of asking design (not content) input on specific slide elements: this way of putting pictures or that way, this type of titles or that, black & white or colour. It somehow did not work. As a designer you need to select the entire design approach in a consistent way.
I sometimes see something similar in interior designs of houses: individual elements look OK, but the whole composition together does not make sense.
Mixing and matching gives mediocre results.
A few times, I made the mistake of asking design (not content) input on specific slide elements: this way of putting pictures or that way, this type of titles or that, black & white or colour. It somehow did not work. As a designer you need to select the entire design approach in a consistent way.
I sometimes see something similar in interior designs of houses: individual elements look OK, but the whole composition together does not make sense.
Mixing and matching gives mediocre results.
Slow down impatient clickers
Here is another argument against dense bullet points.
Most business presentations today are read on a screen (increasingly a tablet), rather than watched live. You might think that bullet points are actually good for reading on a screen. They are, BUT. People have become so impatient, and overloaded with presentations that they just “page down” a document quickly, reading the headline and thinking “OK, I get it, next...” [click] [click] [click]
The only way to slow that reader down is to break up that bullet point chart in multiple slides and write the important messages clear and in her face, supported by the right visual.
Most business presentations today are read on a screen (increasingly a tablet), rather than watched live. You might think that bullet points are actually good for reading on a screen. They are, BUT. People have become so impatient, and overloaded with presentations that they just “page down” a document quickly, reading the headline and thinking “OK, I get it, next...” [click] [click] [click]
The only way to slow that reader down is to break up that bullet point chart in multiple slides and write the important messages clear and in her face, supported by the right visual.
Bogged down
Often, detail can be good. Big-picture pitches are vague and generic, and sometimes even insulting to an intelligent audience. Diving in deep in selected aspects of your story shows that you know what you are talking about, and often, the big innovation might be coming from something very specific.
This is detail to adds to, builds on, one story line.
Details that distract from the main story confuse. Going off on a tangent, getting bogged down, are not going to help to convince an audience that comes in cold and which has barely had the time to get used to your funny sounding English accent.
Leave the side tracks for later (if at all), wait for the key idea to sink in.
This is detail to adds to, builds on, one story line.
Details that distract from the main story confuse. Going off on a tangent, getting bogged down, are not going to help to convince an audience that comes in cold and which has barely had the time to get used to your funny sounding English accent.
Leave the side tracks for later (if at all), wait for the key idea to sink in.
App update
Regular readers will know that I am busy developing a “PowerPoint killer” web app in my spare time (and financed with my personal savings). Many of you have signed up to be part of an early testing group. Here is where I am at, at the moment.
The key innovation of the app will be the approach to designing slides, and that engine is now more or less up and running. I am very pleased with the result, it runs exactly as I have imagined it in my head and jotted it down in PowerPoint (my web design environment, believe it or not).
My clients do not know it, but I am slowly changing my approach to (PowerPoint) slide design in such as way that it will fit the design approach of the new app, and I am testing to see where the philosophy breaks down.
The slide design engine, cannot be tested on its down, hence development work is now focussing on getting the more trivial parts of the application working (presenting on a screen, managing files, etc.).
When this is finished, I will release the app to a very very limited testing crowd that will not be intimidated by unexpected bugs. The objective is to test whether the methodology appeals to more people than just myself. After the green light and a more robust design, I will open the app to more people.
Please be patient as I am trying to juggle time and financing carefully. Watch this space.
The key innovation of the app will be the approach to designing slides, and that engine is now more or less up and running. I am very pleased with the result, it runs exactly as I have imagined it in my head and jotted it down in PowerPoint (my web design environment, believe it or not).
My clients do not know it, but I am slowly changing my approach to (PowerPoint) slide design in such as way that it will fit the design approach of the new app, and I am testing to see where the philosophy breaks down.
The slide design engine, cannot be tested on its down, hence development work is now focussing on getting the more trivial parts of the application working (presenting on a screen, managing files, etc.).
When this is finished, I will release the app to a very very limited testing crowd that will not be intimidated by unexpected bugs. The objective is to test whether the methodology appeals to more people than just myself. After the green light and a more robust design, I will open the app to more people.
Please be patient as I am trying to juggle time and financing carefully. Watch this space.
The look and feel
The look and feel of your presentation is important. It contributes to 2 important communication objectives:
- Helping to make sure that your audience actually understands what you want (believe or not, many presentations fail to reach this threshold).
- Helping to make the audience do something (buy your product, invite you to the next meeting in the fund raising process, etc.)
- Remember your story
For all three of the above you could go for a “wow”-style presentation with no money, animations, slick graphics, and other visual effects spared to blow your audience out of the room
But the look and feel signals other things about you as well:
- Are you professional?
- Are you prudent with the investments people put in you?
- Are you trustworthy?
- Etc.
Picfair
A new stock image site Picfair joins the crowded market. It is a market place where photographers set their own price for their work. You can search by theme and keywords.
The good: The site has not been invaded (yet?) by the producers of plastic, cheesy, generic stock images. Photographs are interesting, spontaneous, and original.
The bad: Because of the lack of stock libraries, the range is (still) limited, and this is not the site to find banal but practical images (a bucket on a white background).
Hopefully one of the many small sites that try to provide an alternative to the stock photo giants will rise to become a player that is big enough to serve as a one-stop-shop for quality images.
(Image in this screen shot by Adam Batterbee)
The good: The site has not been invaded (yet?) by the producers of plastic, cheesy, generic stock images. Photographs are interesting, spontaneous, and original.
The bad: Because of the lack of stock libraries, the range is (still) limited, and this is not the site to find banal but practical images (a bucket on a white background).
Hopefully one of the many small sites that try to provide an alternative to the stock photo giants will rise to become a player that is big enough to serve as a one-stop-shop for quality images.
(Image in this screen shot by Adam Batterbee)
Cover letters
The cover letter of a fund raising letter for an academic institution I just received in the physical mail has the same mistakes as cover emails for fund raising presentations.
- The first two paragraphs start with “I”
- The letter is dated 4 weeks ago
- These same paragraphs are full of generic marketing speak that all academic institutions are using, top-tier institution, remarkable faculty, break-through research, teaching excellence, prestigious awards.
- Then comes the ask for funding
- Then an appeal to share the values of the founders of the institution
- The rest of the envelop contains reports and statistics (mostly text) on expensive, heavy paper
Here is what I would do different:
- Send the whole thing as a PDF document by email, heaving, expensive paper is not a good indicator that my money is spent wisely
- Write a very short first page: here is the annual fund raising mailing, we need your money to maintain our brand (and that means you, alumni, your own reputation). Obviously not as bluntly stated as here
- Add a very visual presentation: Images of the campus that remind my of my own time there, and see how it developed since then. Images of some students and/or faculty and the great things they are doing (the visual backup of the vague statements made in the letter). A visual presentation of the great things the institution is going to do with my money. Many tiny pictures/stories of students that have donated to build peer pressure to do the same.
Winging it
Fred Wilson can wing a presentation, scribble down 10 points, 10 minutes before going on stage, and delivering a great 10 minute presentation (see his blog post).
But is he really winging it? My guess is not. He has spoken about these issues dozens of time before, everything is completely prepared in his head. He just needs to decide what to talk about, and what not.
Fred cannot wing a presentation, neither can you.
But is he really winging it? My guess is not. He has spoken about these issues dozens of time before, everything is completely prepared in his head. He just needs to decide what to talk about, and what not.
Fred cannot wing a presentation, neither can you.
Storytelling in business
Today, everyone is talking about “story telling” in presentations. That is great: stories are much more memorable than dry descriptive bullet points. But business presentations are not action-packed thriller movies, and when you force story telling on a business presentation, you will know, and the audience will know as well.
I take a pragmatic approach to story telling in business presentations. Rather than forcing myself to come up with a story, I take a step back and think about what makes a good story, and what makes a good story teller, and applies those elements to my business presentation.
I take a pragmatic approach to story telling in business presentations. Rather than forcing myself to come up with a story, I take a step back and think about what makes a good story, and what makes a good story teller, and applies those elements to my business presentation.
- Use human language, and cut all marketing speak and buzzwords
- Establish some sort of connection to the audience before you dive into the content. Tell something personal that explains why you are passionate about the subject you are talking about.
- At the starting point, set a setting, or a stage that is familiar to the audience. In a sales pitch, this is often the confirmation of a specific problem that a customer is facing.
- From this starting point, build up to the surprise, the unexpected, the contrast. This tension makes a story stick. If possible you would go through multiple waves of the familiar setting, and the contrasting surprise. As a result you might well have to give up on your business school style logical presentation structure.
Redesigning the Meeker deck
The Business Week magazine asked presentation designer Emiland de Cubber to redesign the information-loaded slides of Mary Meeker’s annual State of the Internet deck. Here is the original:
You can see the result of the make-over here.
The Meeker presentation is a dense deck full of facts that can never be (and should never be) converted into a TED-style slide deck with a few words and some pretty pictures. And Emiland did a great job of making that information more visually powerful. Muted colours calm down the slides. The use of colours in the graphical language of KPCB eliminate the need to be reminded of KPCB by a huge logo on each page.
Here are some of my additional comments, the key point is that you can even be more radical in improving this presentation. These are all constructive ideas, Emiland did a great job!
I invite you to open the Business Week alongside this text, I am not sure whether I can copy all the slides into this post for copyright reasons.
The dark colour scheme does work better for large rooms and big projector screens. A huge wall of white light overpowers the stage presence of the presenter. However, I suspect the majority of the audience of this presentation will be sitting at a desk when watching the information, in that case sticking to the light background might keeps things more readable.
I disagree on the use of icons to simplify categories in slides. Icons simplify too much in these technical presentations. Instead, I would opt for dramatic text simplifications. Emiland did both, I would have taken the icons out, and put more emphasis on the shortened text. (The second make over example slide).
To contradict myself: there is room for icons, when you repeatedly need to speak about the same thing in a presentation. After using the icons depicting the same subject in a few slides, you can use it as shorthand in subsequent slides.
But things can be simplified more, that second slide makes two points that are very similar. If you want to say that we are still far below the 2000 bubble levels, you can as well take out one chart all together and stay with one series of columns. If you want to make a point of comparing number of companies, and financing volume, you can make an explicit chart showing the size / deal.
The next slide again mixes 2 things. To make the message of the imbalance of ad spent and time spent, I would have created two horizontal stacked bars, the trend will pop out much better. The second part of the chart is the analysis that shows the $30b opportunity. The way that this is calculated gets lost in the Emiland make-over. I would chop the chart in 2 slides, one to show the imbalance, one to explain the calculation.
The critical mass chart. What the original Meeker chart is missing is a visualisation that all of these 3 elements are required in sufficient quantity to make something happen. If 2 are big, but the 3rd is not, the thing will not take off. I do not have a visualisation ready in my head, a tricky one.
The education realities chart: even in a dense slide deck like this, I would break this up into 10 slides that hammer each of the facts home.
The last 3 slide make-overs are very well done. The messy images, yes get rid of them, I would have eliminated some of the stats as well, they do not mean much. The messaging one, these 2-axes charts always take a few seconds to interpret, it is better to avoid them. And finally, yes, good idea to introduce that 100% pie, two stacked columns would have been effective as well.
In short, nice work!
You can see the result of the make-over here.
The Meeker presentation is a dense deck full of facts that can never be (and should never be) converted into a TED-style slide deck with a few words and some pretty pictures. And Emiland did a great job of making that information more visually powerful. Muted colours calm down the slides. The use of colours in the graphical language of KPCB eliminate the need to be reminded of KPCB by a huge logo on each page.
Here are some of my additional comments, the key point is that you can even be more radical in improving this presentation. These are all constructive ideas, Emiland did a great job!
I invite you to open the Business Week alongside this text, I am not sure whether I can copy all the slides into this post for copyright reasons.
The dark colour scheme does work better for large rooms and big projector screens. A huge wall of white light overpowers the stage presence of the presenter. However, I suspect the majority of the audience of this presentation will be sitting at a desk when watching the information, in that case sticking to the light background might keeps things more readable.
I disagree on the use of icons to simplify categories in slides. Icons simplify too much in these technical presentations. Instead, I would opt for dramatic text simplifications. Emiland did both, I would have taken the icons out, and put more emphasis on the shortened text. (The second make over example slide).
To contradict myself: there is room for icons, when you repeatedly need to speak about the same thing in a presentation. After using the icons depicting the same subject in a few slides, you can use it as shorthand in subsequent slides.
But things can be simplified more, that second slide makes two points that are very similar. If you want to say that we are still far below the 2000 bubble levels, you can as well take out one chart all together and stay with one series of columns. If you want to make a point of comparing number of companies, and financing volume, you can make an explicit chart showing the size / deal.
The next slide again mixes 2 things. To make the message of the imbalance of ad spent and time spent, I would have created two horizontal stacked bars, the trend will pop out much better. The second part of the chart is the analysis that shows the $30b opportunity. The way that this is calculated gets lost in the Emiland make-over. I would chop the chart in 2 slides, one to show the imbalance, one to explain the calculation.
The critical mass chart. What the original Meeker chart is missing is a visualisation that all of these 3 elements are required in sufficient quantity to make something happen. If 2 are big, but the 3rd is not, the thing will not take off. I do not have a visualisation ready in my head, a tricky one.
The education realities chart: even in a dense slide deck like this, I would break this up into 10 slides that hammer each of the facts home.
The last 3 slide make-overs are very well done. The messy images, yes get rid of them, I would have eliminated some of the stats as well, they do not mean much. The messaging one, these 2-axes charts always take a few seconds to interpret, it is better to avoid them. And finally, yes, good idea to introduce that 100% pie, two stacked columns would have been effective as well.
In short, nice work!
"We will do that verbally"
Entrepreneurs are often so deep into their own story that they leave the supporting visuals for some of the most fundamental points of their business idea out of the presentation. “Oh, why Amazon would not do this? Well, I have a great story to tell that I usually do verbally when displaying the agenda page.”
Stories are great, verbal explanations without visuals are great, BUT. My two arguments why it might be a good idea to back up your story with visuals (in particular relevant for an investor presentation):
Stories are great, verbal explanations without visuals are great, BUT. My two arguments why it might be a good idea to back up your story with visuals (in particular relevant for an investor presentation):
- You want people to remember your story, and a big bold visual might help anchor the idea in the mind of your audience. The visual does not necessarily have to explain the idea, it should just trigger the memory when you bring up that story of the banana peel back up 3 weeks later.
- The argument for going further than a visual anchor point is that you often lose control of what happens to your file with slides after you have emailed it to an investor. It gets forwarded to partners in the firm, industry experts, etc. Just in case, it is a good idea that someone who did not sit in the room still can understand the idea behind your business.
Content before structure
The other day I had a potential client on the phone who was under time pressure. She asked me whether I could work on the structure/framework of the presentation (and the template) while in parallel they would start filling things in.
When you start a project and need to cut up work among multiple team members, a skeleton or presentation framework can be really helpful: someone works on the market, someone works on the competition, while someone else takes on the financials.
When you get to the stage where you have to present your conclusions to others (i.e., the analytical work is done), putting structure before content is wrong. As a presentation designer you need to know the content first, translate that into a story, and in the process you come up with a structure which is engaging and convincing, a structure that often will deviate from business school presentation templates, consulting pyramid structures and other logical frameworks.
Problem solving: structure first, then content.
Convincing: content first, then structure.
When you start a project and need to cut up work among multiple team members, a skeleton or presentation framework can be really helpful: someone works on the market, someone works on the competition, while someone else takes on the financials.
When you get to the stage where you have to present your conclusions to others (i.e., the analytical work is done), putting structure before content is wrong. As a presentation designer you need to know the content first, translate that into a story, and in the process you come up with a structure which is engaging and convincing, a structure that often will deviate from business school presentation templates, consulting pyramid structures and other logical frameworks.
Problem solving: structure first, then content.
Convincing: content first, then structure.
"Get it down to 8 slides"
People want to be helpful in giving feedback on your presentation, and often when you send a draft to an experienced executive she will say to cut it down to 8 slides. She sat in far too many boring meetings where eager young managers try to pitch ideas with endless and endless pages of bullet point slides. She probably has not read the content of your slides, and just looked at the page count.
We have discussed many times that a 50 page visual presentation can be presented in the same time as an 8 page bullet point deck, but there is something else here.
A bullet point deck can easily be compressed: reduce font size and combine 2 slides into 1. With carefully designed visual slides, this approach will not work. The moment you start cutting and combining, you are back in bullet point land.
Instead of agreeing page count, agree the time you have to present the story.
We have discussed many times that a 50 page visual presentation can be presented in the same time as an 8 page bullet point deck, but there is something else here.
A bullet point deck can easily be compressed: reduce font size and combine 2 slides into 1. With carefully designed visual slides, this approach will not work. The moment you start cutting and combining, you are back in bullet point land.
Instead of agreeing page count, agree the time you have to present the story.
Clear versus stunning
In presentations, clear and stunning are not the same thing. I have seen many stunning infographics that are not clear at all. And more importantly, it is perfectly possible to make a clear and convincing business presentations without stunning visual effects.
Especially in business presentations, people often want to go for stunning first, and commission expensive graphics design or video creation work. It is wiser to hold of with this until you have a simple presentation that 1) makes it clear what you want (touch the head) (believe me, I have seen many presentations that do not even pass this hurdle) and 2) convinces people to do something (touches the heart).
Especially in business presentations, people often want to go for stunning first, and commission expensive graphics design or video creation work. It is wiser to hold of with this until you have a simple presentation that 1) makes it clear what you want (touch the head) (believe me, I have seen many presentations that do not even pass this hurdle) and 2) convinces people to do something (touches the heart).
"We need to animate that!"
The audience does not see the difference between 4 consecutive slides with different images, or 1 slides with 4 consecutive image build up, so there is no point in trying to cut slides by consolidating 4 images into one. Four slides are easier to edit, and four separate slides are easier to email as PDF.
NY Met puts collection online
The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has put 400,000 super high resolution images of their collection online, free to use. Great for use in presentations.
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