15 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
For the past six months, I’ve been writing articles for the Full Sail University blog and student/instructor platform: Connect. ”Why You Need A Visual Resume: Part One” ran last week, and I’d love to share the follow up with you today:
15 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
A strong visual presentation displays unity through the repetition of multiple elements such as text, images, shapes. A color palette is also important to the unity of a Keynote or PowerPoint because the color palette shows a cohesive relationship between slides. Sometimes, slide designers feel creatively challenged when it comes to color. How can I create an effective color palette? What colors go well together? Do these colors go well with my content? A few important websites can help us answer these questions.
Design Seeds is my favorite color palette website. An image is the starting point, and from that image, a palette of colors is created. A slide designer can use a palette from Design Seeds in his or her Keynote presentations.
I’ve created an example of something you might see on Design Seeds:
Two additional websites for color palettes are Kuler and Colour Lovers. Which of these color palette websites is your favorite? How do you create color palettes for your slideshows?
14 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
On Tuesday and Thursday of this week, my students are learning how to design more effective slideshows. I love this brand new deck by Slide Comet, and many of these lessons are essential for my students:
What I liked most about the deck was the clear, thorough explanation of the five different approaches: the Takahashi method; the Kawasaki method; the Lessig method; the Godin method; and the Jobs method. I am dying to redesign my “visual design” lessons to include more types of visual design with my students so that they can select the slideshow they need to create based upon their audience; their purpose; and their content. In August when Fall classes begin, I plan to incorporate the Slide Comet deck into my lectures so that students have a more clear sense of their options.
Which slide design method do you use most often? Do you change your approach depending upon your audience, or do you stick to one method no matter what type of speech you are delivering?
08 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
For the past six months, I’ve been writing articles for the Full Sail University blog and student/instructor platform: Connect. ”Why You Need A Visual Resume: Part One” debuted today, and I’d love to share it with you:
Please click here to read my article on the Full Sail University blog.
06 Monday May 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
Chiara Ojeda’s “Simple Design” series debuted on Slideshare earlier this year, and she is breaking down each piece on her blog. Read the introduction and first post of the simple design series here.
The “I” in simple is all about simplicity and displaying one idea per slide. To read Chiara’s second blog post in the Simple Design series, please click here.
Have you made the decision to join the presentation revolution? How do you work to design simple slides?
25 Thursday Apr 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
Have you seen Brad Frost’s “Death To Bullshit” yet?! It’s incredibly interesting but also beautifully designed. Check out the startling statistics on slides 8, 22, and 38-39.
What did you find the most interesting about Frost’s Slideshare presentation?
04 Thursday Apr 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
Following up with our conversation on Monday about design plagiarism, Chiara Ojeda posted “Appropriation in Design: How Thin Is The Line?”
Check out Chiara’s take on design thievery here.
Also, be sure to read Eugene Cheng’s post “Does Originality Exist?” from his blog It’s Eugene.
Weigh in on the design plagiarism debate in the comments section!
01 Monday Apr 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
Tags
design, design plagiarism, plagiarism, Slide Comet, Slides That Rock, slideshare, The Presentation Designer, visual presentation
This morning, a beautiful new deck debuted on Slideshare. Scroll through “How To Create Presentations That Are Out Of This World” by Slide Comet:
What fascinated me more than the gorgeous design was the conversation taking place in the “Comment” section below the deck. This comment (since removed) from The Presentation Designer reveals the debate currently taking place about design plagiarism:
“Whilst, I can appreciate that this is a nice deck. What I don’t appreciate is you guys stealing the exact ideas in terms of colour scheme, layout and fonts from my ‘much’ earlier presentation – http://www.slideshare.net/thepresentationdesigner/10-wise-lessons-ive-learnt-from-freelancing.
Sure, it’s great to take inspiration from each other but I purposely go out of my way not to use similar fonts or ideas that another person has already published in their deck on Slideshare.
How is your slide 23 NOT extremely similar to my slide 3. You’ve even used the exact same font combinations and colour combination.
I know you can’t copyright a font combo or colour scheme and I wouldn’t normally make a fuss about something like this but think taking my ideas and re-purposing them ever so slightly is wrong. You don’t even credit me in the deck for some of the design / font inspiration” (Source).
Slides That Rock followed up with a comment:
“Let us share our experience and view. When we created the original ‘Slides That Rock’ deck, we used the fonts ‘Lobster Two’ and ‘Bebas Neue’. That combination has become very popular and you will find a number presentations on SlideShare using those fonts and even images that look like the ones we used. Most of those decks do not give us any credits and we are OK. We take it as an honor when people are influenced by us. We know and they know where the influence came from and as long as more people in the world create slides that rock, we are on the right track!” (Source).
Would you consider using similar colors design plagiarism? Would you consider using the came combination of fonts design thievery?
Check out Eugene Cheng’s take on the situation in “Does Originality Still Exist?”
Chiara Ojeda is currently working on a blog post about the thin line between design inspiration and design thievery. Follow her work at Tweak Your Slides, and watch out for her upcoming post.
Do you see any design thievery happening in the Slide Comet presentation? Do you see plagiarism happening on Slideshare? What do you think about the “You Stole My Design!” debate?
30 Saturday Mar 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
Tags
picture superiority effect, presentation design, protesting presentation design, visual presentation
During an English Department meeting earlier this week, I overheard a colleague say, “I’m a visual learner. That’s why I need to use bullets in my slides.”
Rather than halt the meeting, I decided it was time for yet another “Protesting Presentation Design” post. Back in November of 2012, I wrote a post on the 5 most common arguments that I hear protesting presentation design, but I completely forgot about this argument:
To be honest, I think I actually try to push this argument from my mind because it makes the least amount of sense. Also, the people who say this to me often think I have no idea what I’m talking about… For that reason, we’ll defer to the experts.
“7 Lessons from the World’s Most Captivating Presenters” is a Slideshare presentation and also a really great article. The third lesson we must learn is that a picture is worth a thousand words. The article reads:
“There’s a reason why expressions like, ‘Seeing is believing’ and, ‘A picture is worth 1000 words’ are so universally recognized – and that reason is based in science.
It’s called the Picture Superiority Effect, and it refers to a large body of research, which shows that humans more easily learn and recall information that is presented as pictures than when the same information is presented in words” (Source). If you’ve never heard of the picture superiority effect, please check out the 30 second explanation video below:
The article goes on to explain how the picture superiority works in an additional test: “In one experiment, for instance, subjects who were presented with information orally could remember about 10% of the content 72 hours later. Those who were presented with information in picture format were able to recall 65% of the content” (Source).
So consider this:
Visual people do remember words, yes, but they remember pictures much more vividly and for a longer period of time. ”Not only do we remember visual input better, but we also process visual information 60,000x faster in the brain than we do text” (Source). So if you are, in fact, a visual learner, your slides should include images to simplify your message and to increase retention.
How many times have you seen that standard death-by-PowerPoint slideshow filled with bullets and text? What did you actually remember? Chances are, you can’t recall that information today, and if you do, I can guarantee you that the presentation was boring. No one waits to speak to a death-by-PowerPoint presenter after the speech to rave about the bullet points. People remember an impacting image, a high-quality chart or graph, or a powerful video. ”Sure, it takes more time to find and select awesome images to replace text, but master communicators know that it’s worth the extra effort to achieve maximum impact and maximum audience retention” (Source).
Consider pairing image and text in your next PowerPoint presentation to ensure you are actually developing a visual presentation that meets the needs of your visual learners. Be sure to check out “7 Lessons From the World’s Most Captivating Presenters” here.
What other arguments do you hear protesting effective presentation design? How can we work to get through to these people?
06 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted in Design, Visual Presentation
Today, “Simple Design” made its Slideshare debut. Check out the gorgeous deck along with six core design concepts to help your next visual presentation:
It’s important to remember that no matter who you’re presenting for or what you’re presenting, these design concepts do apply to your presentation design. Simplicity takes a lot of work, but it is essential in the noisy, cluttered world of slide design.
Learn more about Chiara Ojeda’s work on her blog, Tweak Your Slides.
