Fixed slide titles

PowerPoint slide templates originate from the 1980s. “Slides” would mainly be data charts: graphs and tables to show information. At the top of these pages would be a descriptive title (Economic output in the EU), and the subtitle would give the unit of measurement ($ billion).

Slide templates evolved. Business school professors and management consultants invented frameworks, more conceptual slide layouts, and people started using presentation software to layout their entire story on the big screen, often in bullet points. Descriptive titles became messages.

In most cases the title stayed. Every slide always has a title at the top. But this layout does not always work. People started adding a big arrow, with another big message next to it to make sure that the audience gets the point (it is spelled out 2x on the slide).

Titles take up valuable screen real estate, especially on widescreen 16x9 layouts. They make the chart body space even longer, more stretched. A loooong sentence in small font across a 16x9 slide can be hard to read.

I have become more flexible when it comes to titles. Data charts still have them. But other slide layouts might have none, instead, just an image, or a big text box somewhere else on the page. Or a message that is actually a few paragraphs long, on the side of the slide.

In SlideMagic, you can instantly change the layout of slides, and switch the fixed title on or off. It is time to let go of the obligatory title. See the the examples below. (If you are reading this as an email blog update, you might have to click through to the original post to see).

No title at all

Big box of text

SlideMagic’s side title view

Traditional title and subtitle

The message in a SlideMagic explanation box

I have added this slide to the SlideMagic slide library, so you can use it in your own presentation. Simply search for “dead end” in the app and it will show up. Pro users can convert this slide to PowerPoint or PDF.

Graphical language

Make sure you maintain a consistent graphical language throughout your slides. Here is a thumbnail view of a section of a deck I used in recent meetings.

Here are the guidelines I used:

• Dark background, white text, purple accent

• Page-filling, black and white images

• No capitals

• Selectively bolding a word in a sentence

• No slide titles in a fixed position

Every slide blends right in without, complicated graphics, and SlideMagic makes it really easy to apply this style.

Side panels in separator slides

The slide panel is a way to add the story of the slide in a few paragraphs, so people can understand things if you are not there to present. It is important to keep the text in this box as text, resist the temptation to create bullet points, or short messages which will compete with the slide design.

On a separator, the box might look odd at first sight. But it is a consistent look. In side panel mode, the separator is the 'illustration' of the text on the right. Include explanation text on separator slides to introduce the next section of your presentation, exactly as you would in a live situation.

See the example below:

If you switch to another view mode, the side panel will disappear, but the app keeps the text, so you can switch them back on at a later stage.

SlideMagic 2.6.41

A new version of SlideMagic is deployed, and should automatically install. This version includes security patches, and a slightly less strong background color difference between the main slide and the explanation box view.

The explanation box is one of 4 views of SlideMagic:

1. Narrow 4 x 3 aspect ratio

2. Wide 16 x9 aspect ratio

3. Title on the side

4. Explanation box view, which creates space for an extra text box where you can enter a few paragraphs to explain a slide in case you send the deck without being present yourself.

The text in the side panel stays saved in the file even if you go to another view, so you can decide when you want to show it, and when to hide (for example in a live presentation).

Streamlined signup for the free student plan

Students can get free access to SlideMagic Pro. The signup and validation process is no longer cumbersome, you can get started straight from the pricing page:

Automated student verification

Students are eligible for a completely free SlideMagic Pro subscription, and I have now automated the validation process for a number of markets:

• Austria

• Denmark

• France

• Italy

• Germany

• Spain

• Sweden

• The Netherlands

• Turkey

After you have registered a free account with SlideMagic, you can visit this link to start the validation process. If your account is based in one of the above countries you get instant approval. Clicking the “I am a student” button will take you to the login page of the university or school you are currently studying at. After a successful login, your SlideMagic Pro subscription will automatically be switched on.

For other countries, we are still using a partly manual approval process.

All this was made possible through a partnership with InAcademia. If you run a web site that needs student validation it is worth checking them out.

Free SlideMagic Pro for students

SlideMagic Pro (including PowerPoint and PDF conversions) will be available free for students! I have just updated the web site and its pricing page. To apply, create a free account, verify your email, and visit www.slidemagic.com/web/student. At the moment, application processing is partly manual, but in a week from now, the automated system will go live, where students from certain countries can directly log in to the web site of their academic institutions, after which SlideMagic Pro gets turned on instantly. Watch this space.

Windows app close issue fixed

V37 of SlideMagic had an issue on Windows: closing the last window with the top right ‘X’ did not completely close the app process and as a result, SlideMagic would not reopen again. This issue has been patched in V39 which should automatically install.

You can force an installation in 2 ways

1. Reboot your machine to close V37. Run SlideMagic V37, wait for 5 seconds until the ‘update available’ notification appears. Close SlideMagic V37 via the ‘Exit’ command in the file dropdown manu. Restart SlideMagic which should now start as V39.

2. Or download and install the latest version from slidemagic.com

This issue does not apply to Mac users.

Free student plan for SlideMagic

SlideMagic will be offered for free to students. I am working to set up a partnership with a student validation service to create a streamlined automated signup process. In the meantime readers of the blog can already apply for a free SlideMagic membership:

• Create a regular free SlideMagic account with your school/university email address

• Verify that email

• Visit this link to apply for a free subscription

This process is still partly manual, so response will not be instant. Student memberships will run until Aug 31, after which you need to apply for a new one.

Print bug fixed

For users who print their decks on physical paper, I patched a bug that was caused by the underlying software platform ‘Electron’. Everything should work now. Windows users might get a message that the developer SlideMagic is ‘unknown’. You can safely ignore that, I am working on getting rid of this warning. At your service.

SlideMagic 2.6.34

I pushed a new update of SlideMagic yesterday with security patches. The app should update itself automatically on your machines. Let me know if you encounter any issues.

Scaling of data charts in SlideMagic

In SlideMagic, you do not have to worry about picking the right scale for your data chart. The entire chart adjusts itself to the numbers you type in. See the example below:

To make sure that a consistent scale is used for your entire chart, you need to place all your data points in one shape, instead of using multiple shapes for example for each month.

P.S. I have added this monthly sales comparison chart to the SlideMagic slide library so you can easily use it in your own presentations as well. Search in the app for ‘sales’ and it will pop up.

Server move

I will be getting back to writing blog posts as we are slowly moving towards autumn.

Over the past weeks, I have been preparing a switch of cloud infrastructure provider for SlideMagic to Amazon AWS. The second (stealth) project I am working on requires a very high level of security that could not be delivered by the existing platform. It is amazing what infrastructures you can put together in 2021 at the click of a button.

I have just switched the SlideMagic backend over to the new servers (sweaty palms…) and everything seems to be working OK. I know that there many pioneer users among the readers of this blog, if you spot anything unusual happening, please reach out to me at jan at slidemagic dot com.

Leaving the math to your audience

It is raining COVID statistics in Israel as we are the first country in the world to deal with a post-vaccination outbreak. Below is one table that was released by the Ministry of Health (I found it here).

I have translated it in a quick SlideMagic chart (it always puts a big smile on my face to see how quickly this can be done).

But this data is horrendous to understand. Percent of what? What is 100%? The audience is left to do the math themselves. Compare the categories to the breakdown of the population, look at differences between 3 and 7 days ago, look at the ratio between mild to severe, etc. etc.

Using bars instead of numbers (another smile) makes things a bit clearer.

But in this case, it would have been clearer to release the data in absolute numbers and let people construct their own charts.

I have added the charts above to the SlideMagic library, search for COVID in the app and the slides will show up (see the search here).

Different levels in presentation templates

A “presentation template” is usually a PowerPoint file that new employees receive on their first they of work. There is more to a presentation template I think.

1. Your corporate visual communication style/culture

   • Consulting firms: lots of complicated diagrams and frameworks, meant for solving a problem rather than presenting

   • Investment banks: dense text and tables with graphs, meant for reading rather than presenting

   • Consumer goods company: product packaging shots and bullets

   • University: list of bullets

   • Etc. etc.

2. The actual software file that holds the basis layouts, logo, and colours (this is the one you get on the first day of your employment)

3. Running versions of important presentation documents that get constantly updated and tweaked

   • Sales presentations, each for a different lead or a different customer segment

   • Quarterly results presentations with - well - different quarterly results

   • Strategic planning presentations, each one for a different product group

   • Etc. etc.

Most of the day-to-day presentation work in companies is in step 3, the tweaking of existing documents to update it for the latest sales meeting or board meeting. These presentations are in fact the “templates”, not the empty file.

In most presentation design software the tweaking of an existing slide is tricky and over time a slide degrades after many iterations where users insert the wrong fonts, colours, and trip up a decent slide layout that worked for 5 boxes, but not for 6. (“Template rot”).

The above is true for both existing corporate presentations and shiny new templates purchased online. The latter look amazing fresh off the press, but it shows when a non-designer tried to fit it to her needs.

With SlideMagic we are trying to fix this. Make it easy to create decent looking presentations from scratch, but even more importantly, make it super easy to tweak this presentations, keeping everything aligned on an brand.

By fixing step 2 and 3, we hope to fix step 1 as well…

Your presentation "secret weapon"

We are doing some SlideMagic user interviews and the term “secret weapon” came up. One user, somewhere in a big office tower, is a lone user of SlideMagic and uses the build-in PowerPoint conversion to share slides with colleagues. People start to notice the difference in the slide the person produces.

Here are some situations where you can use SlideMagic as a secret weapon, a starting point for setting up the beginning of your presentation. Most of these slides are very time consuming to set up in PowerPoint or Keynote:

• A perfectly lined up, massive grid of logos (you finished the 10 x 4 grid, and now you need to move to 7 x 6 because you got 2 more logos)

• Data tables with bar charts that need to line up (oops, 12 rows instead of 10)

• 2x2, 3x3 matrices, other consulting style matrices

• A diagram with boxes that are connected with arrows

• A team chart where all the headshots need to have more or less the same size, with the “eye line” at the same height

Nobody needs to know / find out that you use SlideMagic, but we would not mind if you spread the secret…

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Explained: vaccine 90% effective, vaccinated still expected to be 50% of infected

There is a lot of confusion here in vaccinated Tel Aviv, now that around 50% of people infected with COVID appear to be full vaccinated. Newspapers are heavily quoting the “64% i.s.o 90% for the Delta variant” which does not seem to be based on the correct calculation of vaccine effectiveness.

I used an explanation by Dvir Aran to make a slide that explains how it is expected that 50% of infected people are fully vaccinated, even with a 90% vaccine effectiveness.

The logic is as follows:

• Take 100 people who are seriously exposed to the virus

• Assume a 90% vaccination rate (the case for the at-risk population in Israel at the moment):

  • A small group is exposed: 10 people

  • A big group is protected 90 people

• Assume a 90% vaccine effectiveness:

  • 10 out of 10 unvaccinated people will get infected

  • 8 out of the 90 vaccinated people will get infected

• Of the total of 18 infected people, 8 will be fully vaccinated, so around 50/50

Of those 18, the majority of cases with symptoms and serious complications will be unvaccinated of course.

I have added this slide to the SlideMagic library, search for “COVID” and it will pop up, or download it here. Pro subscribers can convert this chart to PowerPoint, if you have to. (Students, you can claim a free membership!).

SlideMagic student program

We are working on new pricing plans, one of which is a free plan for students. Ahead of any formal announcements and websites, blog readers can already take advantage of this options. Email support at slidemagic dot com from your school/university email address (after you created a regular free account), and we will switch you on the new program for one academic year.

Photo by Good Free Photos on Unsplash

"Life by SlideMagic"

My amazing wife Anat Naschitz has always supported me in developing SlideMagic behind the scenes. Going forward, she will become more visible to the outside word. Recently, she created a deck to demo SlideMagic to a potential client. We have added these slides and the entire deck to the SlideMagic template database, so they all should be available in the SlideMagic app for you to use in your own presentation, simply search for “anat” and the slides will pop up.

New email updates should work now

Yesterday I moved over all email addresses that opted in to a new email update platform. You should have received your regular email updates, just with a slightly different look (the design still needs work). If not, you can re-subscribe here, or reach out to me directly.

Photo by Carol Jeng on Unsplash