After more than 25 years of designing presentations, here is an important insight: most of your slides are tables. Not only the spreadsheet-type straight table with columns full of numbers, but a more generic 2 dimensional layout of any idea.
Writing text on paper, in a word processor or telling a story verbally, is one dimensional. You make a point one after the other. A good slide adds a second dimension to organise your thoughts.
Time to show a sequence of data
Steps in a process or a supply chain
Pros and cons
Sales, costs, capital
Dependent on this second dimension, different slide types come out: 2x2 matrices, categorised lists, column charts.
The algorithm picks up some real tables as well…
Many of the classical management consulting frameworks were the result of someone trying to fit an idea across 2 axes. When it worked, you got a nice layout to discuss an issue, and often, you spotted missing scenarios that you did not consider before (“hey, what happens in the low-low box?”)
This also shows why bullet points are poor slides: they are 1-dimensional, you are missing that powerful second dimension to organise your idea.
Now you see why in SlideMagic the table is central to everything. It encourages you to think in 2 dimensions for every slide you try to design. Organising and lining up boxes is difficult in most presentation software. And when you got it to work finally, someone asks you to add another row and take out column 2. Piece of cake in SlideMagic.
Not everyone can become a master designer, but if everyone would create 90% of their slides in some sort of 2-dimensional grid, presentations would be lot more clear. SlideMagic is here to help.