Snapseed image editing

Back in the early days, you had to use aperture, shutter time, and chemicals to create special effects in images. Then came Photoshop, and now we see a stream of apps written for touch-based mobile devices. The success of Instagram has taught the amateur how to apply simple filters with…

The best iPad stylus

I now have almost completely eliminated paper from my workflow after I switched to hand writing on the iPad. My meeting notes are better organized and searchable, and I can now make design doodles in multiple colors on which it is much easier to erase part of your sketch. I have tested 3…

Common pitfalls in IPO presentations

I was asked to mention common pitfalls in IPO presentations the other day. Here are some of my thoughts in random order

• Using an internal strategy deck as the basis for your presentation, rather than starting from scratch. Internal…

Most of your slides are a grid

In some presentation slides, the grid is obvious: a data table is an example. But also without the explicit lines of a table structure, you can recognize a grid in almost any composition you make. A diagram, the positioning of boxes on a slide, even a big picture with a few…

Demo presentations on iPad

I just returned from London and it was my first international business trip without a lap top in my bag. I used an iPad to demo my slide decks to potential clients.



In a (still) imperfect world, here is what I did:

Ugly colors

When your company has an ugly corporate color scheme it can be hard to make good looking charts. Here is one solution: go mainly for shades and grey and use one or two of the corporate colors as an accent color to highlight things. In 99% of cases this will look very elegant and nobody can accuse you of deviating from the prescribed colors.