Tone down the ambition

Below is a professional print ad for Audi, trying to convince us that its heritage of cars is still present in today’s models.

Humorous conference presentations

When people get invited to speak at a conference about their specific expertise and/or profession, they usually have no problem creating an industry story. It is easy to understand why: they are their home turf, feel very confident, have lots of interesting things to…

A different slide layout for 16:9

Wide 16:9 aspect ratios are great for movies as we can follow the car chase across the full width of the screen. For slide design however, they cause problem.

• Looooong titles across the screen are hard to read as the eye needs to move over a…

Different types of clients

Client 1:

• I want you to make it look great, like Steve Job’s slides
• Can I buy 15 slides from you, maybe 20?
• How many hours would 15 slides take you?
• I am actually a pretty good…

Grasping data charts

Here is what a first time viewer needs to go through when looking at a data chart:

• What’s the unit on the y-axis
• What’s on the x-axis
• What do the legend colours stand for

Words and number consistency

It is impossible to make a correct 5 year business forecast in an investor pitch. But your financial projection is not really a forecast, a prediction of the future, it is a picture made out of numbers. “If our company will be successful, this is what it could look like”.

The annual school performance

It is that time of the year. Here are some things kids do, and you will recognise them in grown-up presentations as well:

• “Press play”, rattle down the lines to show that you can memorise things. You speak slower, softer when your memory needs to work…

Scientific diagrams

I found myself designing presentations in the beautiful world of protein synthesis recently. This is a very complex field of science and diagrams that researchers use reflect that.

While it takes decades of study and research to discover and develop them, the…

Being too defensive

On stage, you do not present slides that layout your weaknesses in the best possible visual way. On the other hand, when preparing for your presentation, (or briefing your presentation designer), it does not make sense to brush every weakness away.