Spoon feeding detail

Different types of audiences, different types of questions, and/or different phases in your interaction with the audience require different types of slides.

1. In the first meeting, you introduce an idea with a big, bold, minimalist data chart

2. In a follow-up meeting, you are answered a question about assumptions behind the numbers, or, in a Zoom meeting, your audience sits very close to her screen and has time / visual ability to dig deeper into the visuals than she would be able to when sitting in a big room.

For these occasions, you can make slide variations of the same slide. Seen an example below:

Clicking back and forth between the slides will give the illusion of some sort of animated popup, while in effect the audience is looking at two different visuals. In practice, I would design the busy slide first, then cut things out to create your minimalist slide.

<advertising> Note how easy it is in SlideMagic to toss things around and add (remove) complications to your slide without breaking its visual grid </advertising>

The point of masks

Social media is full of people arguing about masks. Part of the reason I think is that it is such a statement: “Look, I proudly wear one”, “Look, I proudly do not wear one”. I think masks deserve the benefits of the doubt, without becoming overly obsessed with it.

Leaving the debate to the side, and turning to graphics. My Twitter feed is full of diagrams such as this one below (found it here):

The masks and the faces look cute, but it is actually hard to understand the chart instantly. Using the SlideMagic approach to slide design (quick, to the point, good enough design), I came up with the following 2x2 that tries to make the same point:

Now the question is, did I put myself in the shoes of the audience? Maybe not every non-mask-wearing person is a former management consultant who prefers 2x2s… This slide is now available on the SlideMagic template bank, and you can access it free if you search for something like “mask” inside the app (v2.4.29 is the latest version).

See below how the desktop app adds dynamically generated slides to the search query. I am not running that on the server at the moment, since 1) it will take a lot of processing capacity that is now being done on individual user machines, 2) I do not consider the web store to be the optimal user experience: downloading slides, and then opening them in the app, but maybe I will change my mind at some stage in the future.

Image cropping with a focal point

SlideMagic can switch back and forth between multiple layouts, and needs to handle rapid changes in the grid of a slide. As a result, aspect ratios of images get changed all the time, tripping up your carefully selected image composition. At the moment, the app is storing different crop and zoom levels for different aspect ratios, but that solution is not ideal. (You see how Squarespace gets it wrong with the banner image of this blog post).

I want to get to the point where a SlideMagic user can click a focal point of an image, after which the app will do the hard work of re-adjusting the crop automatically. Doing research, I see a lot of “AI” applications that can figure out what the focal point of an image should be, there seems to be nothing that deals with focal point-based cropping itself. The solutions I see, are ones where you can store multiple crops of the same image, after which the most appropriate one gets selected.

I started scribbling a manual algorithm to come up with reasonable compositions. Here are the first (manual but automateable) results applied to some cows on a beach in Africa, the first image is the original.

It works pretty well, on the the extremely horizontal one gets cropped too low, I would have shown a bit more sky on that one. Let’s see if we can get this to work, both in terms of the algorithm, and the user interface.

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

New arrows are now live

The latest version of SlideMagic has the new arrow feature available, finally enabling me to discontinue the dreaded connectors. Arrows are big and bold to show cause-effect relationships or other forces. I made an algorithm to let them do the right thing in terms of layout in various box sizes, and in various aspect ratios, both for horizontal and vertical shapes. In PowerPoint and Keynote it is fiddly to get arrows to look exactly the same once you start changing the angles of the pointer by hand.

When converting to PowerPoint (a pro feature), your arrows will show up as editable PowerPoint arrow shapes.

I can now call SlideMagic 99% feature complete (hmm, line charts?) and will focus on hardening the application to make it absolutely stable.

The legacy connector feature will stay in the background. If you load an old slide that uses it, the legacy arrows will be rendered and you can edit them. If you have to add more legacy connectors, simply shift-click on the connector icon, and you will be given the option to use the old feature.

The new arrows also give me more design freedom to start expanding the template library with new slide layouts that features these ‘fat’ arrows.

Fat arrows are great for showing cause-effect relationships

Arrows follow the color scheme of the cell, black on accent, will give you this result

You can place background images behind arrow elements

SlideMagic arrows are converted to fully editable PowerPoint arrow shapes when converting (pro feature)

Thinner arrows can be created with the line new line drawing feature

The perfect arrow...

I am replacing the connectors in SlideMagic with 2 features. The relatively thin lines that connect boxes in a diagram went live yesterday. Currently I am working on the 2nd feature: fat arrows to show cause-effect relationships or other forces.

As I already discussed back in 2017, it is tricky to get arrows to look right in presentation software. The aspect ratio of the containing box, the angles of the arrow, some come out great, others won’t.

And even if you got one right on your slide by moving the various sliders in the shape, how do you make sure that the 3 below it look exactly the same? Oh, and then you need to insert a fifth one and squeeze everything a bit…

I think I am on to a possible solution. I scribbled an algorithm on a piece of paper, now let’s see how to bring it to life in SlideMagic, and then convert them to PowerPoint. The latter might have to be via an image rather than a dynamic shape. Below is a screenshot of my development machine. Work in progress.

Using heat maps in your presentation

This is a neat visualisation of the COVID outbreak in Florida:

Why does it work?

1. It uses colour intensity to introduce another dimension of data in a column diagram: time, number of cases, and age range.

2. The colours are nicely chosen so the chart gives the impression of some sort of fire being lit (which is unfortunately the case).

These charts cannot easily be created in PowerPoint, this one is generated by some code. But you could give it a go in PowerPoint.

• Take a standard column chart in PowerPoint

• Make all the data series have the same value, the age brackets you want to use

• Set the gap between the columns to zero

• And now comes the hard part: manually add different colours to each data point. To select a data point click it twice in quick succession (one click will give you the entire data series wiping out your detailed painting effort in one go)

Here is a quick search for heat maps in SlideMagic, I added one design that sort of resembles the COVID chart. You can see how the new slide layout with the side title I introduced a few days ago comes in handy to create more vertical space for data.

My preferred 16:9 layout for presentations

I just pushed a big update to SlideMagic (2.4) to the server and it contains a brand new 16:9 slide layout, the slide title. Most monitors today are widescreen, but unlike movies, I think 4:3 slides look much better. Text lines that run across the entire slide are hard to read, and wide screen slides always force you to make very “stretched” slide layouts.

The side title is the best of both worlds. The title of the slide is moved to the left, and the slide contain area is scaled up now that it has more space at the top. It stays in a 4:3 ratio though. The footer and logo is also moved to the left, creating even more space. The entire design shows up without black bars on a wide screen monitor. Below is an example.

It follows an approach I already blogged about in 2016

SlideMagic has now 4 screen modes, and you can switch instantly between them:

1. Traditional 4:3 narrow

2. 16:9 wide screen

3. A 4:3 slide with an explanation panel to the side to leave notes for when you are not there in person to present the slide

4. The new and shiny 16:9 side title

Soon, I will rerun the PowerPoint conversion algorithms on the server to increase the size of the SlideMagic PoiwerPoint template database with 25%, each slide will now be available in the new format as well,.

(Hmm, the side panel needs some more padding, I will fix that [Fixed in 2.4.1]). There are a number of other new features introduced in version 2.4.

It is now also easier to select the “frame” element of the slide, I added 2 thin selection bars next to the regular grid selectors.

Also the right-to-left mode is completely rewritten (SlideMagic is based in Tel Aviv :-)) so that the side panel and side title show up in the right place.

Version 2.4 is a major update, please report any glitches you might experience.

"Operating system updates" for presentations

Every year Apple releases operating system upgrades for computers, tablets, and phones. Your apps and documents have the same content, but look slightly different. I am trying to push this concept to the world of presentations.

It has already happened (sort of). The slide-out panel to right changes the look and feel of your presentation without changing the content. Over time, I have made subtle changes to font sizes and layout proportions, which means that every SlideMagic presentation in the world will have a slightly different look. Switching to a dark slide background turn the colours of your presentation upside down (in a good way), far beyond just making the background black.

I will try to push this further, by adding more layout options , your slides will look entirely different, including the ones you made 6 months ago, but you can always switch back to another layout format.

Photo by Michael Held on Unsplash

Working on improved image cropping

Working with images is turning out to be one of the most powerful uses of SlideMagic. The built-in image search gives access to an endless flow of great images, and the grid makes it really easy to layout these photos in a beautiful and consistent way on a slide.

Aligning images has always been difficult in presentation software (it is only worse in word processors), and that bit is solved by the SlideMagic grid. Next up is image cropping. Most design tools use some sort of overlay that allows you to mask/reveal an image. Even as a professional designer, I still struggle with this.

In SlideMagic, you simply drag an image around in a box to decide what part of the photo you want to reveal. I am working on 2 improvements:

• Showing the entire image in semi-opaque when you are editing/dragging it around to give you. a better orientation of what you are doing

• Creating a way to keep the image focused on the most relevant part regardless of changes to aspect ratios or zoom levels of the photo. At the moment, I store to image positioning versions (one for 16x9 and one for 4x3), but in future releases I want to automate this

The challenge here is to offer something that works without turning SlideMagic into a complicated photo editor. Work in progress.

Real estate (fund) pitch presentation template

SlideMagic is very suited to make decks that promote real estate projects or funds. It is easy to manage pictures of properties and add boxes with information about square feet and returns. I have added a template for a real estate fund pitch to get you started.

Note that when searching for slide templates, you do not need to resort to keywords such as “real estate” (it will give some results now though), any layout that shows lists, or grids, or portfolios, or screenshots will do. Real estate presentations use very generic layouts.

Make any presentation look better

I took a recent draft presentation that came across my desk (in PowerPoint) and took out all the specific / confidential information and images, replacing them with dummy text and boxes.

This was by no means a final deck, but it highlights something that most people get wrong when creating a slide deck: tidying up your layout.

Some slides have a white frame, others having images bleeding off the page. Icons are different sizes. Things are not properly aligned. Get all these things right, and your deck will instantly look good, even without fancy fonts, graphics, colours.

This is easier said than done. In PowerPoint, you have the freedom to place anything, anywhere you want. You realise in the last minute that that particular text needs to go in, well it will always fit.

SlideMagic will not let you get away with this. Grids are strictly reinforced. Many users complain about that lack of freedom. I need that 5th box, and now the whole slide layout cannot handle it. And this, exactly, precisely, the process a professional designer has to go through. Unlike you, she does it instinctively and switches the slide layout. With SlideMagic, you will be reminded (kindly) as well.

Here is a quick layout of what a deck like this in SlideMagic should look like. This is not “super design”, SlideMagic helps you make a decent looking deck in the minimum amount possible. “Super design” requires a lot of investment (time and money), which gets you a great looking deck, but one that is sort of set in stone, it is very hard hard to make changes to it. Great for your IPO road show, less so for an every day presentation.

SlideMagic converts instantly to PowerPoint, here is the same deck ready to share with colleagues who are not using SlideMagic yet.

You can download the latest version of SlideMagic here and check it out yourself. (Notice the little SlideMagic logo that is sitting in my PowerPoint toolbar, it is the beta version of the SlideMagic PowerPoint plug in)

All the way back to 2008

Now and then I dive back into the 12 year archive of my blog and see some or the early slide layouts I made. This Google image search pops up many of them.

While many of these layouts are now still available as templates in SlideMagic, some of them, especially the early ones are a bit different:

• “Slides that stick” orange and brown

• Lots of hand written fonts

• Unusual visual analogies

• Most of them are definitely not for the layman designer…

Yes, I made have been a bit more “daring” back then (and remember, most of these designs actually were taken from actual client work), but I still think that I am on the right track with my current sober, simple, easy-to-make layouts. Less artistic, but far less time wasted by smart people that can use their energy to do more useful things that creating presentation slides.

Quora answer to "How to design a good presentation slide for business?"

Someone requested me to answer: “How do I design a good presentation slide for business?” Here is what I suggested:

Read Jan Schultink's answer to How do I design a good presentation slide for business? on Quora

This is a very generic question that is hard to answer without the specifics of the point you want to get across. Having said that:

There are many web sites, blogs, and books out there that advocate the principles of good slide design: minimal use of bullet points, use images, no clip art, use graphs, use white space, etc. etc. Everyone can spot a poor slide vs a good slide. The tricky bit is how - as an “amateur designer” - to make a (reasonably) good looking slide that still captures everything I want to say.

Some guidelines:

Find a basic look that seems to work, you can “borrow” from Apple, or other presentation styles that you think look decent and stick to fonts and generic slide layout rules. Personally, I like the style that Swiss graphics designers used in the 1960s a lot: Helvetica font, with a few simple colours. Very easy to copy to today’s presentation software.

Write the headline of what it is that you want to get across. Important: it can only be one message, not 2, not 3, just one key point that the audience should remember. If your whole slide fails, you (and your audience) still have that title to hang on to

Now, think about what you actually need to show to make that point. Here is where people lose it. They addd info, details, data, graphs, that do not contribute or support the headline at all. In that whole spreadsheet, there could be 2 numbers that you need. Be religious about this: you want to make a point, what visual do you need to support it. If you want to make other points, put them in other slides.

Consider more ways to express an idea than words. Use very simple graphics to simplify text. If there is a choice: put 2 boxes with the options with a double sided arrow in the middle. If there is a consequence, but 2 boxes with a single sided arrow. If there is an overlap of interests, use 2 overlapping circles. I would call this “visual verbs”: very simple shapes that instantly communicate what you want to say.

(Product plug: I am developing a software tool that supports some of this, you can check out SlideMagic, which has a free option, to find slide layout to get you started).

Good luck!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

How to make a CV slide

I am starting to work on a standard slide deck to present your CV, with me as the test subject. The first page is done. I like these type of time lines, because they communicate a lot of the basics about a person (years, employment, locations, education, etc.) in one slide, without making it too crowded. The rest of the presentation will cover more background.

They way to set the slide up is to start with a fine grid, create the major divisions based on your professional work history, then start refining. Notice how I left the consulting-style table labels (‘Employer’, ‘Role’, ‘Location’, etc.) out because it is very obvious from the chart what the rows mean, and these labels would take valuable space/destroy the balance of the layout.

In general, I think 4x3 slides look better than 16x9 ones. 16x9 is made for movies, 4x3 has a more pleasing balance for graphic design. These type of timelines are an exception though, the amount of left-to-right information makes the 16x9 format very useful. SlideMagic switches back and forth at the press of a button.

You can find the slide here in the template store, or simply search for “CV” in the desktop app.

You see how the search algorithm recommends other slides for highlighting career backgrounds and teams.

There is more work coming up on the CV slide deck, stay tuned.

New slide templates

A busy day today: i completed a 2nd submission for the PowerPoint plug in, hopefully ticking all the boxes (well, except one that is actually an issue with the Microsoft Javascript API). Let’s hope for the best.

So no long-read, deep blog post today, still I found a few minutes to upload some new slides into the database. Soon, I want to get 1,000 layouts in the database, and we are making good progress towards to that goal.

Here are today’s additions. Remember that you can bring the colour of the images back once you download them into the desktop app.

Image by 272447 from Pixabay 

Warren Buffett's investor presentation slides

This tweet flew by about Warren Buffett’s slides during his annual investor meeting.

VCs: “please make sure you get someone to design your slides or nobody will take you seriously.”

Warren Buffet: pic.twitter.com/viu7wG17GK

— Yuri Sagalov (@yuris) May 2, 2020

A sans serif font and centering the text would have made it look better, but overall, this slide is actually not that bad. One big message without distractions. (If Warren had used SlideMagic with this template, his slide would have looked like this)

Other slides are less crisp though, as seen in the example below:

But, Warren does not read out the bullet points, he tells a story starting with background about his father. People will read the slide for 2 seconds, wonder about the quote, and then focus all attention back on him.

OK, I could not resist, SlideMagic would have produced the following slide (a quick search for “1930” in the built-in Pixabay image search delivers good results)

I would put the quote on a completely separate slide, if at all.

Coming back to the first tweet. If you are Warren Buffett, then you get away with pretty much any slide design. On the contrary, making it all too fancy is a direct contradiction to his modest life style. If you are not Warren Buffett, putting in 2 seconds worth of effort with SlideMagic will definitely make a difference.

I tagged these 2 slide examples with “buffet” in SlideMagic, you can use them in your own designs and find them in the presentation app, or download them here.

"SlideMagic style"

Even presentations not made in SlideMagic can look like one. Have a look at “Standing on the shoulders of giants” by analyst Ben Evans:

The design approach:

• One strong accent colour

• Lots of variations of grey

• Calm slide layouts

• Clear grid structure

SlideMagic does not like these circles (yet) though and makes you fit into that boxy look :-).

For your next presentation, put the slides in slide sorter view, and take a step back. Do things look consistent in terms of layout, colour, and the balance between white space vs used space? If you struggle to stick to the discipline, SlideMagic is here to help.

One image, different compositions

I am uploading lots of slides now to SlideMagic everyday. Where possible, I create multiple layouts of slides, often depending on the underlying image I use. For example, see the juggler below.

There are lots of degrees of freedom:

• Image in a frame, or bleeding of the the page

• Line up text with the balls, or not

• Different colour options

As a SlideMagic user, you can pick one of these basic layouts and add or subtract boxes easily without messing up the overall of the slide.

Try it out for yourself, the search for juggler slides is here. For the moment, I have made access to the entire slide database from within the desktop app free, so you can experiment with presentations in .magic format. PowerPoint conversion and/or downloads require a pro subscription.

Startup Board update deck

You can now access entire slide decks (“stories”) from the home page of SlideMagic. A few days ago I added a slide deck template for a startup Board update. As I upload the new slide decks, individual slides will get added with the right tags to the slide database as well so they will pop up when you search for relevant layouts.

More slide decks to follow. Let me know if you have any special requests.

How to create a logo page in a presentation

Yes, I have been in this situation as well:

Tweet of the century. This was my life for 10 years. https://t.co/eayvuTK2MG

— Jon Thomas (@Its_JonT) March 4, 2020

Below is a short video that shows how SlideMagic makes creating logo pages in a presentation really easy. In the first example, I start from scratch with a completely blank page. Notice how logos get plopped in, and how everything lines up instantly in the grid, and how easy it is to add columns, text boxes without having to re-arrange and re-align the entire page. (I have added this slide as a free slide on the template store, you can find it here, stripped of the logos I used because I could not verify copyrights)

The alternative is to start with one of the built-in templates of SlideMagic, search for “logo” in the app and see what slides come up:

Now you can customise the page and swap the logos for the ones you need.

The exact same search available in the online template bank as well (try searching for logo), but users who are downloading the PowerPoint version directly from the web site miss out on the magic of SlideMagic when it comes to manipulating image grids.

My suggested strategy: tweak things in SlideMagic, and export at the very last moment to PowerPoint if you have to share things with your colleagues. You will save a lot of time making those nasty logo grids.