Icons

Photographs, text and data charts are not the only tools you can use to communicate information on screen. Iconography, used correctly, can often massively distill concepts so your audience's brain immediately "gets it." Most often, I use iconography for repetitive concepts that can be introduced and explained once, then reinforced each time simply by displaying the icon. 
Here are a few slides from a pitch deck that presented 4 research-driven stategies to a client. The bulk of this presentation revolved around these strategies, each slide falling under one of them. Originally, these 4 strategies were not even introduced all together on one slide, and once introduced on a single divider slide, were not referenced again within their section. It was very difficult to keep track of and remember the essence of this pitch. And so I asked my friend Tim (who designed much of this presentation) to create simple icons that were not only introduced at the top of the pitch and on section dividers, but provided running navigation at the bottom left of each slide to indicate which strategy we were on at any moment.

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Book Review: The Non-Designers Presentation Book

I wish I had an equally high recommendation for Robin Williams' The Non-Designers Presentation Book as I do for PresentationZen Design. While Robin has some useful things to add to the discussion, her latest book just serves as a reminder that talented designers are not necessarily good presentation designers. I've often seen great graphic designers suddenly lose all their design training when they open PowerPoint. Often, when art directing traditional print designers on presentation, I'll just say "Imagine you're designing a billboard..." (And sometimes it even works.)

Robin is an excellent design writer (I particularly like her Robin Williams Design Workshop), but though she gives presentations often herself apparently, I found the book to be a scattered and cursory collection of thoughts and principles, oversimplified and lacking in a true understanding of the power of communication through on screen presentation.

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Book Review: PresentationZen Design

Two new books all about presentation design for non-designers have just hit the scene. The first is Garr Reynold's follow-up to his essential 2008 Presentation Zen,called PresentationZen Design. If you missed it, you can read my discussion of his first book here. 

Garr's new one is a highly thought-out and impeccably researched guide to designing effective, clear and powerful on-screen presentations that look professionally designed (and written), but that can be created by the non-designer without fancy tools.

The themes here, obviously, are simplicity, directness and beauty. The book, like so much in this world should be, is divided into thirds:

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Where to Find Logos

Updated on Monday, May 14, 2012 at 01:32PM by Nolan Haims

Recently I discussed solutions for finding imagery. Now let's talk logos.

One of my personal pet peeves is seeing things like this...

There are at least 5 major things wrong with the above logo. Can you spot them?

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Book Review: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

I just finished a cool new book by Carmine Gallo called The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Though Jobs and his style are often discussed with regard to effective presentation practices, this is the first time anyone has done a true analysis and devoted so many pages to explaining exactly why Jobs is considered one of corporate America's best speakers.

Echoing Jobs' pervasive use of a series of 3, Gallo divides his book in thirds:

1. Create the Story
2. Deliver the Experience
3. Refine & Rehearse

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