Category — Presentation Design

In a recent webinar Holly asked,

“You are offering great ideas, but I am not a professional media person. How can an average person use graphics like you do?”

Holly, the secret is no secret at all.  In fact, one of the more popular private sessions I do, “Design for Non-Designers” goes into, in much more depth, how the average person can tackle visuals.

We’re all visual creatures (barring a disability of some sort), with the majority of our brains committed to visual processing, so we’re used to ‘seeing’ things that represent ideas.

A few things to jumpstart your journey:

Foundational elements
Visual “language” has three parts:  words, images, and images.  It’s important to remember that “thinking visually” doesn’t have to mean a “picture.”  Even words/text/numbers can be shown in a visual (rather than textual) manner.

Characteristics of a good visual
When contemplating how to represent an idea visually, ask yourself three questions:

1.  Does the visual help the viewer more quickly grasp the idea? A good visual is one that assists with communication.  A poor one make the viewer work harder.

2.  Does the visual assist with memory? An idea that isn’t remembered is likely a missed opportunity.

3.  Does the visual provide context or meaning? Humans relate to story.  The greatest teachers in history were storytellers.  Facts are only useful in context, and a visual helps the viewer answer “What does this mean to me?”

Getting started
The key is to start practicing our own recognition skills, making conscious what you’ve already been doing unconsciously.  Then start thinking about how to apply those ideas.  In terms of creating better PowerPoint presentations, nothing will take the place of just doing it and improving over time.  It’s important to note, though, with an internet full of stock images that you can use for cheap or free, the primary barrier to success is effort, not access.  Too, it’s amazing what you can do with simple shapes and lines in PowerPoint, but whether images or shapes, the beginning question is always, “What am I trying to communicate?”

Reality check
Creating visual presentations takes time.  It’s one of the reasons I use istockphoto.com almost exclusively.  They’re mid-priced in terms of cost, but as a professional communicator I find that I more than make up for the money I spend in time saved, both in terms of finding new images with a decent search engine and by building lightboxes over time that I save stuff to (I often bump into images that I think would be useful but don’t apply to the presentation I’m working on).  If you have time, there are plenty of places to find free images.

The payoff
There are two big payoffs, both of which are hard to measure.  One, your message will be delivered/received more effectively.  Science proves it, even if you can’t tell your boss that you did an A/B test and what the ROI was.  Two, you’ll stand above the crowd.  Bad use of PowerPoint is so pervasive that even small improvements will set you apart.  And the good news is that you don’t need a Ph.D. in Photoshop to get there.

Trading a couple messages with someone who found me in an online forum, I thought the Q&A might be useful for some…

“Just looked at istockphoto and wondered what the best size for best quality photos you would recommend? Small, medium or large? They are quite a bit more expensive than bigstockphoto.com which I usually use. Thanks for your help on this.” -Colin

Colin,

I always buy large images because for me I’ve had too many times when I wanted to go back and make a medium-sized image bigger, only to find the resolution inadequate.  So I ended up spending more money to solve the problem.

I know there are plenty of cheaper sources (more expensive ones, too!), and plenty that have free stuff.

One thing that intrigues me is using images under Creative Commons licensing (see Flickr.com), but I still find MY problem is time. Free and cheap costs me too much time (which is money) relative to

1) using the same source and being familiar with it and

2) that source (istockphoto.com) having a good search engine.

Finally, I’m a professional speaker/trainer. It’s what I do full time. So I figure that paying for images is just part of the cost of doing biz, but I realize that’s not where everyone’s at.

Best!

-R

In my webinar handouts I include additional links that you might find useful, and apparently in my latest handout the link was corrupt.  So rather than making you dig through my blog for where I posted that in the past, here it is again…  http://bit.ly/CfG69

And one thing to consider…why would you want to pay for images?

I happily use istockphoto and a few others in lieu of searching for free images simply because of time.

One, 100 sites is a lot of sites.

Two, many have restrictions such as the ‘free’ image only being low resolution or a small one (and they may not look good when you expand them to fit an entire slide).

Three, the search engines for paid sites tend to be better, and this is the biggest reason for me.  The reality is that finding just the right image can be time consuming, even with a good search engine.  As a professional speaker and trainer, I figure it’s worth it to me to pay for quality images that I can find much more quickly because of both the search engine and familiarity with the site (it’s like knowing your favorite grocery store…you know where to go for what you want).  But that’s just me…I count it a cost of doing business.

Enjoy!

In my recent Design for Non-Designers: How to Design Dynamic Webinar Presentations, Donald posed a less frequently-asked-question:

“What do you think about template formats…each of your slides have been quite different…do you think templates limit audience engagement?”

AWESOME question, Donald!

I do think templates limit audience engagement, but maybe not for the reason you’d think:

Templates limit designers.

A few thoughts, in no particular order:

Templates aren’t necessary for a presentation to be visually cohesive.

Cohesiveness does include being consistent thematically or stylistically, but you don’t need a template to do that.

You can (and should) use a template to speed production of your presentation for common elements.  Using the same font when you create a text box, or quickly creating a shape or shapes that use colors defined by the theme/template are good examples.

Templates do nothing to help make each step of your story as powerful as possible.

Part of the opportunity that a webinar brings over and above a conference call is the visual impact you can create with a slide.  A presentation is a series of points that you make to get your audience from Point A to Point B, and arguably you want to do that as powerfully as you can at each step along the way.  There are no unimportant points (or they shouldn’t be there).  They each need to be as powerful as possible.

One quick note for trainers, engineers, and others who often aren’t thinking they ‘tell a story:’  you should start.  It’s not just about the data – it’s the context of that data that creates meaning and application, right?  This doesn’t mean you abandon the data, it means that you’re presenting it in a more useful and memorable way.

Templates tempt slide creators to work within a box, not view a slide as a canvas.

In the webinar I used a (verbal) illustration of the Spanish painter who created illusory space with the ship’s mast and sail flowing off the edge of the canvas to meet at an obvious-but-unseen point.

Thinking about a slide as a painter’s canvas, the question we should ask is “how can I illustrate the point that I’m making at this point in the story as powerfully as possible?”

Starting with anything other than a blank white background puts you at a disadvantage.

I don’t need to see your logo on every slide.

This is really a parallel thought to the previous point.

I know who you are when I make the effort to attend your event.  A logo on every slide is a waste of space at best, a distraction at worst.

The Bottom Line

Leverage templates to speed creating presentation by repeating common elements such as font or shape color.  Individual slides, however, rarely are repeating ideas, so designs should rarely be repeated.

Optimize your audience engagement by optimizing your storytelling.  Don’t use templated designs.

The great news is that Effective Virtual Meetings:  Seven Ways to Boost Your Virtual Meeting IQ is that it was interactive and there were a ton of questions.  The bad news is that when there’s 500 people in the audience, you can’t get to them all.

Following is one that came in that I didn’t get to during the presentation:

Victoria D. asked, “I have heard people say that animations in PPT presentations are not ‘professional’ but I have always used them to great success.  I notice you use animations.  Can you comment?”

Fair question, Victoria.  First, I believe that any tool, used in moderation, can be useful.  For that reason, I mostly avoid blanket statements like “don’t use animations.”  They’re like bullet points – I minimize their usage, but that doesn’t mean avoid them altogether.

The key is to use something with a specific purpose.  The bad news is that many use animations to create cheesy effects.  I don’t swirl in, fly in, or make little things bounce.

If you review the recording, here’s where you’ll see animations:

Slide transitions.  In a few spots I like fading between slides instead of a crisp transition.  But it’s not on every slide.

The “take action” slides.  Because these were specific instructions (e.g., step one, step two…), I built them out one by one using a simple “appear” build.

And in two cases I use a grow effect on a screenshot to draw attention to something (in this case, a subset of the overall screenshot).  Again, it doesn’t do any backflips on the way in .  I do this selectively for the same reason the Apple OS (and now Windows Vista and 7) show motion when you open or close some things – it gives the viewer a fraction of a second to see what’s going on.

Note that in most cases, however, I use multiple slides rather than builds/animations.  Building out the ‘mapping behaviors to features’ matrix, for example, was five separate slides.

Use animations when they’re communicating something specific to the message (like motion or directionality) or assist the viewer with understanding the portion of the slide you’re speaking to (an alternative to an annotation, perhaps).  But generally, I’d wholly avoid anything that just adds an effect.

Communicate, don’t try to dazzle.

If you’re not bound to a corporate brand and you want to spice things up…

http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/25-high-quality-free-fonts-for-professional-designs/

Would you kindly take a moment to contribute to a survey about best practices when presenting online?

One lucky winner will get an iPod touch, and everybody wins when they learn from each other… the whitepaper will be available next quarter.

The survey can be found here.

Thanks!

-The Virtual Presenter

I was on the phone with Jim today, and he gets it.  He’s the chief sales training wizard at a company with 1500 sales people, and he described to me showing up to a presentation with lots of slides and not a lot of time.  Consider this:

I moderated a web seminar years ago for Jeffrey Gitomer, and he showed up to the gig with 109 slides.  For a 60 minute webinar presentation.  And he made it through with time to spare for questions.

Two BIG lessons:

One, Jeffrey knows sales people are ADHD.  Keep it moving.

Two, take the amount of time of time you spend on a slide and cut it in half.  Cut in half again, and then push the “next slide” button ahead of time.

Get my drift?

One more thing:  that was quite a number of years ago.

Today you must also engage.  MAYBE if you’re Seth Godin you can get by with not engaging the virtual audience , and even he is getting better over the last few webinars I’ve *seen* him in (with recent kudos to Duct Tape Marketing Listen here.).  To be totally fair, Godin and Jantsch get marketing, so you should read them and buy all their books.

But live presentations of any type are about audiences who paid a VERY high price to be there…their time.  Engage them, or apologize to them for making them put something on the calendar they could otherwise have listened to at a more convenient moment than 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.  (Direct responsers, take a Xanax – I know the value of a deadline, and to which I say, “webinar attendees are going to find YOU boring if you don’t make a live event live.)

Virtual + live = move ‘em or lose ‘em.  Be like Jim.

When I share what I call ‘design for non-designers,’ it’s basic stuff that anybody can do to improve the experience for the audience.  Simple.  2D.  And visual instead of textual where it can be.

But I really love the work that *real* designers do.  And this blog post listing a pile of resources for designers looked like it’d be worth noting…

Online, there is a good chance your audience will be looking at a view of your slides that is fairly small.  Some tools give audience members an option for a “full-screen view,” and a few give presenters the chance to proactively move audience members into a full-screen view.

But don’t count on it.

Here’s a quick tip for testing how your slides will appear

1. Select the slide by clicking on it.  Note that the viewer size indicator is relative to what part of PowerPoint you are working in (e.g., if you have selected the ‘presenter notes’ section, that is what the viewer size indicator will be sizing according to your selection).
2. Set to 50%.

Get clear about how your slides will appear… test at a reduced viewing size.