Sometimes your ability to explain to your clients why a design is good is almost as important as the design itself.

(via PaperLeaf Blog)

Really good presentation style. Lots of animations, but very tastefully done. Love the color scheme.

via DaveRamsey.com

When I speak to people about what I do and tell them I can help them with design I often get a little resistance. My guess is they hear the word “design” and think I’m gonna make their slides look frou-frou. In reality, though nothing could be farther from the truth. Unless that’s what they want.

When you hear the word design, what comes to your mind? Making things pretty? Matching colors? Sconces? Toile curtains?

People often confuse design with decoration or unnecessary ornamentation.

Despite popular understanding, design is actually very different from decoration. Design does not necessarily imply beauty. Design involves giving careful consideration to every aspect of something to make sure it does what it’s intended to do. It implies that there is an intention or plan behind the thing you’re designing and that same plan influences every decision you make about how that object should look and function. We commonly think of design when it comes to things like furnishing our homes, but in reality every manmade object you encounter, from plungers to iPods, have been designed by someone.

I’ve always been a thinker and perhaps that’s why design appeals to me so much. I like my iPod because careful consideration has been given to every aspect of it’s creation. It’s designers valued things like beauty and simplicity and these values went into every decision that was made about it. How will it look? How will it feel? How do you get songs onto it? How do you play a song? Switch songs? Adjust the volume? The designers thought about all of that ahead of time.

Graphic design is a specific type of design in which this kind of attention to every detail is applied to the creation of visuals such as magazine ads and web pages. Decisions on things like color, size, alignment, proximity, balance, contrast, and texture are made to ensure that every part of a poster, or book cover, or business card achieves its desired effect. Visuals can be designed to inspire, to excite, to calm, to sell or to disgust. A good designer knows what feelings or ideas are conveyed by different fonts or textures or colors and will make choices accordingly.

While graphic design is certainly a part of presentation design, it is far from being all there is to it. Presentation design gives careful consideration to every part of a presentation. This includes slides, of course, but it also involves careful planning of the message that is being delivered. It involves an understanding of the audience that will be hearing the message. It involves deciding how best to display supporting evidence (charts? pictures? tables?), and in what order. It involves working with the speaker to make sure the visuals match his or her personal style. Ultimately it involves deciding what you want your audience’s experience to be and figuring out how best to make it happen. That may mean doing something very traditionally beautiful for some clients, but it may involve something relatively unattractive for the next. Whatever best communicates the message the client will be trying to convey is what will get done.

Presentation design basically means thinking about everything that goes into your presentations.

It’s easy to tell when a presentation has not been designed well. It usually obvious that the speaker did not think about her audience as much as she should have. When I point out things that could be done better to clients, they often say, “I didn’t even think about that.” That’s the main reason I would encourage you to hire a designer, or better yet read books (or blogs) that will teach you to start thinking like a designer yourself.

Just beginning to think about many of the decisions you’re making will help you greatly improve the quality of your presentations.

How many time have you heard this at the beginning of a presentation? “Sorry about my slides. I know they’re not great but…”

Aside from the fact that this is a weak opening line, statements like this really get my goat. It’s one thing if the person doesn’t speak publicly very often, but I frequently hear this from preachers, teachers, and others for whom speaking in front of people is a regular part of their professional lives. Here are some of the most common excuses.

I just haven’t found the time to learn PowerPoint yet.

In the years shortly following the transition from old-school overhead transparencies to new-fangled digital slideware thingummies, statements of this kind would be understandable. But it’s 2010 now and every business person in the world has had PowerPoint or its equivalent installed on their computer for well over a decade. If you haven’t learned it by now…

The truth is, you know how to use PowerPoint. You use it every time you give a speech. What you don’t know is how to use it properly. Which leads to the next excuse…

No one ever showed me how to make good slides.

I would understand if there was a lack of resources that would properly instruct eager students in the ways of presentation design excellence, but in the past few years several books, blogs, and websites have emerged to help people cultivate an understanding of not only how to use PowerPoint, but how to think about slide design in general. It’s not up to them to come to you and force you to take their advice. It’s up to you as a presenter to care enough about your slides to seek them out.

I’m not artistic.

This excuse could work for some people…if presentation design required that you have some natural artistic ability. The reality, however, is that most of the concepts of good slide design can be learned by anyone, and learned very easily. Not to mention that there are numerous online tools that will help you make excellent choices when it comes to pictures, typography, or color schemes.

So, what’s your excuse? Especially if you’re a regular public speaker (but even if you’re not), it seems to me that when you offer excuses like the ones above, what you’re really saying to your audience is, “I don’t care enough about my craft to become excellent at all aspects of it.” It doesn’t matter if your message is well-reasoned, your delivery pristine, and your hair is perfect. Poor slides these days simply detract heavily from your credibility and you’d be better off not using them.

There’s just no longer a good excuse for bad PowerPoint.

Today, I received a PPT question from a friend I met back in college. Her question was a good one and since I don’t have an email address for her and since some of you might be wondering the same thing I decided to share my answer with you here. Her note is below.

“I am working on powerpoint slides for work using MS Office 2007. It is rather difficult to design templates with boxes of color, etc. Do you have any tips for creating your own templates solely using powerpoint? I know there’s a way to design a template and then imprint it into the back of the slide, but I can never seem to figure it out.

“Hope that makes sense, and hope you can help.”

The answer involves simply taking advantage of two capabilities of PowerPoint: 1) Saving slides as an image, and then 2) Adding a custom background image. My reply is below.

“It sounds to me like what you are trying to do is to customize your background by uploading an image, but you want to create that image in PPT. I hope that defines your problem accurately.

“If so, I think you’re in luck. What you’ll need to do is start by creating the slide normally by adding whatever lines, boxes, etc. you want. Once you have the background looking just the way you want, click “Save As…” and choose JPEG for your file format. This will save every slide in your presentation (hopefully only one in your case)as a JPEG (picture) file. Save the picture wherever you like, but don’t forget where you saved it.

“Next, you just need to upload that image you just created as the background of the slides in your presentation. You can do this just as you would with any image. Open a new presentation and follow the steps at the following link to help you make that image the background of all of your slides.”

Add a background to your presentation

“Also, if you’d like some pointers on how best to design your background or template, you might pick up Nancy Duarte’s book, Slide:logy. If you don’t want to buy it you can probably find it at the library or almost certainly just sit with it in Barnes and Noble for a few minutes. Chapter ten is all about templates and should give you lots of pointers.”

Hopefully that helped her, and if you’re in a similar situation, will help you, too.