Had a lot of fun designing this short case study presentation for Edelman's Trojan Vibrations giveaway campaign as part of today's OpenCo event.

Nothing like opening your talk in front of a six-foot vibrator.

And if you think that a creative agency's slides are an indication of the agency itself, well...here were some highlights...

The Good, The Bad and the Cocky

Jordan Zimmerman is loud, cocky and owns one of the most successful advertising agencies in the world. That's him below, and that was one of his slides in which he explained how his competitors' indifference to client bottom lines has allowed him to make millions of dollars and buy expensive homes. You can watch his talk here.

And then there was one of the hot young agencies of the last decade, Droga5. Represented by Chief Creative Office Ted Royer and New Business Director Chris Wollen, Droga5 presented...well, I don't really remember a thing they talked about. Some case studies and something about solving business problems, but this was one of their slides below. If one wants to equate art and copy with slide design and content, then...I think both Peggy Olsen and Sal ordered one too many martinis at lunch today. And not to pile on, but at one point they actually used the phrase, "This slide is meant to say..."   

But then there was Global Creative Officer Nick Law from powerhouse R/GA. He gave an engaging talk centered on the evolution of advertising to today's participatory landscape. He warned of falling into the "It's all about storytelling" meme and reinserted technical systems back into the equation. His slides were incredibly simple, used only shades of red (for some reason, people feel they need to avoid red in presentations) and at the end of the day required next to no design skills to create—just perhaps a design mindset. Below is my favorite which was the centerpiece of his talk.

Each of the above speakers showed their agency's work in fancy video case studies and commercials. But it was the slides that seemed to tell me the most about the culture and approach of each agency. If I was looking to hire an advertising agency, whose business card would I have collected at the conference based solely on their slides? If I was a CFO, I'd run after Zimmerman. If I was a thoughtful and design-centered CMO, I'd want to talk to R/GA. And Droga5? Um...have they put the coffee and cookies out yet?

I have little to add to The Washington Post's coverage of Rep. Mark Pocan's hand-drawn chart scribble about income inequality, but I will point out Pocan's priceless Twittered explanation:

The presentation folks over at Brightcarbon are recent converts to Shutterstock as the best stock photography solution for presentations. I've long been a fan and couldn't agree more with them. Read about their conversion here.

I happened upon an Apple Store talk with Ricky Jay yesterday evening and was pleasantly surprised to see how the organizers had set up the speakers on stage, and the restraint they used in placing Jay's name on the large screen (actually maybe a little too small...). Even though the setup placed the speakers very far from the left side of the audience, it was a small auditorium, and I appreciated the dynamic spatial setup.

It's okay not to center absolutely everything...

As a sidenote, I've known of Ricky Jay since I was a kid doing magic. In fact, three of his books are on my office desk right now. (My prized copy of Cards As Weapons is at home.) And I'm really looking forward to seeing the new documentary about him for which he is currently doing press.

Garry Reynolds has a repost of a really nice analysis of some of Orson Welles's visual storytelling techniques in Citizen Kane.

Check it out.

And if you want a fantastic read on Welles's early life and his storytelling in the theatre and on radio, pick up Simon Callow's Orson Welles: Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu. My favorite story from the book involves Welles's WPA production of Macbeth. In order to achieve deep perspective on stage for a battle sequence, he hired very short actors to stand far upstage with spears. 

I've seen a number of Mark Bittman's presentations which are always very good always very light on text, but I had somehow missed this one in which nearly every slide is a just an image. 

Watch the video—would it have been any more memorable or effective with more text?

I want me some...