Yesterday’s slide about the UK’s vaccine priorities is a good example of the SlideMagic philosophy to creating presentations: making something that looks decent, very quickly, so you can get on with more important things than making slide decks. SlideMagic is for every-day-presentations.

What is done right:

• You get the message instantly

• The design is preserved in whatever screen or aspect ratio you choose

• It is super easy to add/remove columns from the design without creating mayhem in your layout

• Fonts and colors are sorted and fit instantly with the corporate branding

What the pro designer would have done differently for a big keynote address:

• No duplication of shape labels

• Line up the shape labels 1-2-4-6-X in a straight diagonal line

• Nice L-shaped boxes by either creating a custom shape, using different padding margins across the slide, or using a clever stacked overlay of rectangles

• Label the columns between the breakpoints, rather than “>70” labels

Adding each of these finishing touches would have added a lot of time, and make it a lot harder to apply changes to the slide (“oops, we have a 45+ category now as well, please fix it, I am on in 5 minutes”).

Maybe I find ways to solve some of the compromises above in the future in a different way, but in the mean don’t be embarrassed by this result and get on with the work that is really important. Spending slides is no longer an excuse for procrastination.

I have added this vaccin priority slide to the SlideMagic template database. You can access this slide for free by simply searching for “vaccine” from within the SlideMagic desktop app.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash