Fast. Easy. Beautiful.
The Shopify platform is cumbersome for digital downloads, having to put slides through a shopping cart all the time. I am working on a better solution: integrating the “old” template store into the SlideMagic 2.0 platform.
In the mean time, I now have converted the file with 200+ templates from 4:3 into 16:9 format as well, you can find it here. Subscribers can download it for free.
Being “good with computers” had different implications when it comes to presentation design over the years. From my experience as a management consultant:
Pre 1995: professional graphics designers produced your slides, you could simply sketch ideas on a piece of paper. As a junior analyst you marvelled at how senior partners seem to be shaking new frameworks out of their pencil with zero effort
2000: if you demonstrated that you understood PowerPoint, you were instantly designated the entire team’s graphics designer, but only during out of office hours (18:00 to 09:00, and weekends)
2005: Everyone starts to produce their own charts, and being proficient in PowerPoint could actually give you an edge. Including images, even videos, complex data charts.
Today: technical proficiency is no longer required, as more and more people understand that the best slides are really simple slides.
Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash
As technology progresses, visual “stuff” is usually the first that gets added, because, well, we can
Huge wings on cars in the 1950s
Drop shadows and gradients in Windows XP
Realistic textures on iPhone screens
LED displays and indicators on consumer electronics
Animations and effects in PowerPoint
Highly sophisticated frameworks dreamed up by management consultants
Massive BI management dashboards
But after a while, we start to understand how technology really can make things clearer and more useful, and the initial “because we can” features get eliminated.
The way people communicate in companies is going through a similar transition. Long, formal memos, are replaced by email, informal slack messages with a “Dear Sirs” greeting.
Presentations need to go through a similar transformation. I am working on it.
It is slow, it does not have many templates yet, it does not look that pretty, it is optimised for Chrome only at the moment, but it is a major personal achievement: I can create slide templates in the SlideMagic desktop app super fast, bulk upload them, manage their search tags, convert the .magic file to thumb images, store everything in a database, allow people to search, download .magic files, .pptx conversions, and manage pro (beta) and non-pro subscribers.
The objective of this web-based template server is to give potential SlideMagic users a taste of what is possible with the app, and serve people who are not willing to use a non-PowerPont user interface to manipulate charts (their loss :-)).
This effort was not a strategic grand plan: I needed a good search engine for myself to optimize tags of slides in the database quickly, and saw that it was very easy to expose that functionality to all SlideMagic users.
Check it out: https://cloud.slidemagic.com, and let me know of any bugs, or major glitches. I am keeping the number of beta testers ver low, since there are obvious bugs that I still need to iron out.
In the near future, I hope to roll the current template store that is hosted on Shopify into my own platform, bug that requires completing the payment platform and upping things to production-grade technology that is expected by paying customers.
The next technology challenge will be go back into the world of databases (which I left behind in 1992), and see how we can make searching of templates smarter (and faster).
To be continued.
UPDATE: If you experience downtime, it could be because I am updating the way slides are saved to speed up search time. The database did not enjoy huge image files, storing them separately on Amazon AWS now.
This chart that was published in the WSJ shows a good way to highlight financial data when you only have the first half of the current year available. You create a stack chart that only appears for this, and last year. For this year, you only show H1 data in the matching color.
I have add a template to the SlideMagic 2.0 database with a setup for this type of chart. It is extremely easy to add more years to the data history.
Some of my bespoke design clients were very eager to push things further, why not add an extrapolation for the H2 data, assuming similar growth? Well you can, but you should realize that your chart just became a totally different one: it no longer reports what happened, instead you are putting your name on the line for delivering the H2 numbers.
Being an introvert, I do not particularly like or benefit from visiting industry conferences. A few months ago, I made an exception and visited one about software (the new industry I am joining). One of the insights was in sales and marketing: young enterprise software companies benefit hugely from focusing on just one industry sector in the beginning. Not because their software is specific to their industry, but:
Focusing on 1 industry allows you to get to know that sector really well from a sales perspective, you speak their language, understand their needs. Big companies with big sales departments can afford to do this for every industry sector, a tiny company, with a tiny sales department (probably just you) can do it as well (maybe better) for just one sector.
Referrals is the strongest lead generator, and, if you are working in a specific industry, people are likely to recommend you. Referrals go between similar companies (biscuit manufacturer to soft drinks bottler), or up and down the chain (advertising agencies, food retailers).
Design styles, the technical side of presentation design work, is likely to be similar as well in a specific industry sector. TED Talk big picture slides won’t get you very far in a private placement memorandum pitch to institutional asset managers for example. If your background is in art & design, the first one is you, if you are an engineer-turned management consultant, the second one will feel more comfortable.
For freelance presentation designers something similar works. Startup pitches are similar, and very different from let’s say a big corporate sales pitch, or a quarterly investor presentation. Within startup pitches, there are similarities between segments (for example biotech companies).
So, to avoid being caught in the race to the bottom (I see lots and lots of new freelance presentation designers setting up shop), maybe specialise in a sector? Geographical proximity to your client is no longer required, so the world is begin enough to carve out your niche.
What sector to pick? It might be coincidence. That recent project that you aced for a client, could be an indication that she is operating in a sector that suits you. Good luck in 2020!
Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash
I have kept the beta tester group of SlideMagic 2.0 very small exactly for this reason: I am moving things around on the template server that will break access of older beta versions that are around. Sorry for this, a new version will become available soon.
The changes are needed to maintain a good search performance as the size of the template database grows and involves a lot more image-heavy slides. Also, I am working on the marketing site that will allow searching of templates for non-subscribers without the ability to download them, to get a preview of what is cooking in the kitchen.
A side-effect of this is that I will offer subscribers a web-based download option, useful for those who are not interested in using the new SlideMagic edit app (even if they should), but want the layout straight in PowerPoint format. The server is now able to turn .magic files directly into PowerPoint slides.
A happy 2020 to all of you!
Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash
Thinking of 2020, I am working hard to make it the year that I get SlideMagic right. I think presentation software is one of the hardest user interfaces to innovate, given the big existing installed base (user interface, file format), and software offered by players with deep pockets that is from a technical point of view very good and pretty much offered for free.
My objective for 2020 is not the number of users, profits, revenues. I think this is where many VC-funded presentation startups have gone wrong, not taking enough time to get the product right and pushing for growth.
Instead, I want a handful of users that start using the product to keep using it. The early signs are very encouraging, but these are friendly people that tolerate the incidental bug, which obviously will not fly with a broader market. Ironing out bugs is one challenge, but the big lever I have is the template database, including the type of slides it offers, but more importantly, how it helps you search. Now that I got the slide editor pretty much done, I can devote most of my attention to this in the next year.
I am wishing all readers a fantastic holiday and the best 2020 possible.
Photo by Chris Moore on Unsplash
For the first time in months, I am spending more time designing slides than writing code as I am building up the template database. It is a great feeling to see all that hard work paying of now as I add one slide after another to the database at a very high speed.
This also puts me in a position to start thinking really what SlideMagic (maybe 3.0?) could do, now that I have a basic platform in place that can store/search templates, all listening to a uniform design layout. What if there are eventually thousands, and thousands of slides, keywords, concepts? Things can get interesting!
Yes, there is still the challenge of turning 2.0 into a proper company…
To be continued.
I just released version 2.1.25 of SlideMagic with more bug fixes and performance improvements:
Better integration of copy-paste and other clipboard function with Mac OSX and Windows, enabling you to copy paste things between SlideMagic and other applications
Fixed the mystery bug that stopped slide rendering when you flip an image
Fixed an issue where crop rectangles would be reset after compressing an image
Fixed an issue that could corrupt .magic files upon exiting the application (thank you, one of my frequent blog readers)
On the server, the browser now tells you that your password reset link has expired, rather than producing a generic message that something is not quite right.
I am starting to feel happy with the application as I am using it now myself really intensively to build the template database, but I am keeping the number of beta users small at the moment, just to make sure. One important decision that I need to make before expanding the user base, is the freezing of the file format, I am still pondering making potentially breaking changes here.
The update should install automatically in the background if you leave your existing SlideMagic app open in the background. Beta version from a few months ago have now expired as we move into 2020, please contact me if you have an issue re-starting the app.
Photo by Jeff Cooper on Unsplash
Today was another day of template building, I am reaching the point where the SlideMagic app starts to contain more slides than the SlideMagic template store that I host with Shopify.
I did some work on finding good portrait shots today. Although now there are many free photo sites around with abundant amount of images of people, it is still tricky to find the right photos to use in your presentation. Here are some of the filters I apply subconsciously as I go through hundreds and hundreds of images at high speed:
Too much stock photo: you know what I mean
Clothing mismatch: too fancy dress, very light outfit in a cold environment
Trying too hard to pose
Artistic shots of people who look unhappy, depressed, beautiful, but not for a business presentation
Shots of people who look unnaturally happy
A background that is too recognisable
A screen with a message that is too recognisable, grabs too much attention
Too pretty, cutesy
Weird posing
Trying too hard
Background mismatch (a church, the Sahara) while checking your phone
An outdated phone (this image was taken 15 years ago)
Background too busy to add text, other visual elements
The list goes on
Hopefully SlideMagic will save you the time I spent to find the right images.
P.S. For those who are interested in the cause of yesterday’s mystery bug that made items disappear in the small thumbnails on the left of the screen. Well, flipping an image (which I did on that particular slide) is a time consuming CPU operation, the computer starts it, but then goes on doing other things in parallel, one of which is scrolling the selected slide thumbnail in the visible part of the window (you see it sitting just at the bottom). The scroll stops the other slide rendering operations. And unlike pretty much anything in Javascript, there is no event to catch and manage this. A small 0.1s delay when needed solved the issue for now. That was 1 hour of yesterday’s day :-)
Photo by Baylee Gramling and Photo by Lindbergh Paimalan on Unsplash on Unsplash
I am working hard on improving the template database at the moment. A re-write of the code on my server dramatically increased the speed at which I can add slides. It is fun to see it working: get a slide idea, quickly (hey, it is SlideMagic) create it, save, button, and boom: the slide shows up in search queries.
I am adding a lot of image slides at the moment, some of which are a bit cliche, but they should be part of any template database. The other effort goes into strategy consulting frameworks. Here I need to simplify many of them to make them fit into the SlideMagic philosophy. Some might say that they look too simplistic and less sophisticated. I would say that they are a lot easier to read, and a lot, lot, lot quicker to make.
Careful readers can observe the small glitches :-) Why is on that one slide, is that billboard not rendering in story mode, but it does in edit mode, and the same billboard renders in story mode perfectly fine on another slide...
Any slide that has a prime number of boxes on it higher than 5 creates a layout challenge. One, three, or even five boxes can still work, but more, it becomes cluttered.
Yes, can lay out boxes according to mathematical shapes. A heptagon distributes everything evenly. But it is a pain to figure the exact spacing out, but the more important drawback is the amount of slide space you lose. Beautifully arranged shapes that nobody can read. That is the reason why in SlideMagic, I did not even bother to put these types of shapes in.
So what to do? A few suggestions.
Do you really need a slide with 7, 11, or 13 boxes? The best solution is to cut the thing up in 7 , 11, or 13 stand-alone slides that just make one point.
In some cases there might be no avoiding (for example when you negotiate a contract or some other deal that has 7 key agreement points).
The obvious solution is to keep things simple and straight: just list the bullets
You can do what this YouTube instructor did: add an 8th box to make the slide symmetrical. It could work in most cases, I would not give the design decision away though, but find a meaningful extra point
You can use the bullet points as some sort of tracker, speak very briefly about it, then click through to the next slide that discusses the point in detail
Maybe one point is more important than all the others, so you can give it more space
Or, you can use another format such as an irregular collage, to remind the audience at the end of all the things you spoke about
My preferred option is probably the last one: 7 individual slides for each trend, then an overview to recap everything quickly.
The above slides were quickly put together in SlideMagic 2.0, I put them in a .magic file here (watch that extension), beta users can load and edit them in the app.
Earlier beta versions had a 2020 expiration date, I uploaded V22 to the server that should install automatically. This version also includes lots of performance improvements and bug fixes, including how the app responds to going back and forth in full screen mode, and right click context menus.
Photo by Jeremy Lapak on Unsplash
Some more learning from last week’s music performance. When you think you have something memorised, you actually still have a long way to go.
Here is the process I went through with a pretty simple song, still it took time:
Hit the right chords when reading the chord letters on a piece of paper
Hit the right chords when starting the song from scratch, without paper
Consistently getting the chords inversions and finger positioning right (rather than making them up each time you remember to place a chord)
Being able to do the above with random interruptions, without starting from the start: a mistake (by you or a band member), a quick start-stop to rehearse a certain piece
Not thinking at all about chords anymore, just hitting the right thing based on the lyrics, music you hear around you.
When you wing a story on the fly, prompted by a slide that you see on the projector, you are at stage 1 when it comes to presentation preparation, and have 4 more steps to go.
This weekend and family and me joined a professional group of musicians to give a performance on stage. It was interesting to watch how the band leader made sure all of us delivered the best of our abilities, all which apply to the world of delivering presentations as well:
The confidence boost to the singer who wakes up with a sore throat the day of the performance: reminding her (based on decades of experience) that when the body has to perform, it will (and it did.
Spotting and eliminating small logistics hick ups that do not matter in a rehearsal but can kill the flow of a live performance. Have water available to clear dry throats, making sure nobody trips over cables, and pulls out cables of instruments, where do people stand and move, where do people go when they are not part of a song, how do transitions between songs happen.
And finally, a small rerun of the set lists in a quiet room. Just focusing on the list of songs (which you already know) for a second is like rerunning a 30 minute rehearsal in your head, the mind gets the right focus.
Image credit: @yulesh
SlideMagic 2.0 has almost reached the point where I am happy with the features for a first release (icon and image search went in last week). Now it is time to focus attention again to what will make SlideMagic stand out: templates for presentations.
I have started to add slides with images to the template database, inspired by the slides that are for sale in the PowerPoint template store. This is also a good stress test to see how the app with big files full of images.
Work in progress, this will take a bit of time to get right.
Over the next coming days there will be another update to SlideMagic 2.0: CPU-intensive tasks such as converting a presentation to images, PDF or PowerPoint format, or preparing a file for the printer will no longer block the main process. I am getting the hang of managing dozens of different processes in parallel.
In version 1.0 in SlideMagic, we were dreading doing these intensive computations on our server, it would take a lot of processing power if the app were to scale (hence the imperfect solution of emailing back PowerPoint conversion a few hours later, far too late for the meeting you actually needed the slides in).
In version 2.0, this is no longer an issue, since SlideMagic uses the enduser machine to do the hard work. This fundamental architecture will enable me to scale up with less investment, but more importantly, a smooth user experience as everything happens instantly on your machine.
Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash
I am working to integrate images and icons into SlideMagic 2.0. The workflow for both in current presentation design tools is seriously broken:
Search for an image
Save it on your hard drive
Find it on your hard drive
(If relevant : waiting to upload it again to your online tool)
Crop and change colour (especially challenging for SVG icons), can be very slow and cumbersome in online image editors
Get the image/icon to line up with the rest of your slides
Finding the link to the photographer you need to give credit to (if required)
All of this can soon happen directly in SlideMagic 2.0, which in turn can churn out a perfect conversion to PowerPoint if needed.
It was a painful process with lots of trial and error and wasted trees, but SlideMagic 2.0 beta users can print their presentations as of v2.19 without using the PDF conversion bypass. I am still working on improving the resolution without maxing out on memory, and fixing small formatting issues (exact centering of the slides), but the basics are there.
For those who are interested. In the beginning of my coding project I was cursing this parallel processing of lines of codes, no I actually start using it to my advantage by speeding things up. PowerPoint and PDF conversion will soon move to a background process.
Photo by James Pond on Unsplash
