When was the first emoticon created? 1881, apparently, in Puck Magazine.
H/T to Brain Pickings and to 100 Diagrams That Changed the World, that is on its way to me from Amazon right now.
Emoticons Were Invented in 1881
Category Archives: Design
W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Data Visualizations of African-American Life
Holy cow, look at these incredible hand-drawn data visualizations by W.E.B. Du Bois from 1900.
I admit that I knew and know very little about Du Bois and certainly had no idea that he created such visually unique and careful visualizations. The critic in me wants to say that some of these do not hold to modern best data viz practices, but damn, sometimes you want to get lost in a careful study of data and spend some time with beautiful meaningful graphic design. And that’s what you certainly do with these visualizations.
Check out all of them at Public Domain Review and as so often is the case, major h/t to Kottke.
The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen
Typography and Typesetting in PowerPoint: The Presentation Podcast Episode #23
Episode #23, Typography and Typesetting is live.
This week we’re talking not just fonts, but how to make your typography look professional in PowerPoint through spacing, justification, sizing and placement for various types of presentations. No, PowerPoint doesn’t have the powerful type tools of InDesign, but you can still do a lot more than you think you can to produce a professional looking result.
Don’t forget to give us a rating on iTunes if you like the Podcast and want to help spread the word!
Subscribe on iTunes and check out the show notes for more info.
Setting Up a Presentation Grid System from Duarte
Our friends over at Duarte Design have a nice video up on how to set up and use a grid system in presentation. Grids aren’t just for print, kids!
h/t to Indezine.
Categories: Design, PowerPoint.
Simple and Effective Graphic from NY Times
While I can’t say I’m happy about the data behind this chart from the NY Times (increasing murder rates across the country), I do love the simplicity of design.
15 Startup Pitch Decks
Attach.io has posted 15 startup pitch decks from companies big and small, but all the resulted in raising significant capital.
There’s some good here (Airbnb) and some horrendous (YouTube), but design aside—and I usually never say that—what is to be learned from these is the simplicity of messaging and limited content.
As Guy Kawasaki has said, if you can’t explain your business in ten slides, you don’t understand your business and I don’t want to invest in it.
Check out all the decks here.
Categories: Design, Simplicity.
Wonderful Documentary on 60s Volkswagen Ads
Using Stock Imagery Like the Pros via Presentation Xpert
Before the internet and e-commerce sites, the world of stock photography was an intimidating and wallet-draining world of printed catalogs and rights-managed images with few suppliers— Getty Images and Corbis being the two biggest. Royalty-free imagery that could be bought outright and used in most any situation was a significant advance, although initially, it was still quite costly.
These days, there are hundreds of sources for stock photography at all price levels—even for free—so, you have few excuses for using low resolution, cheesy or outright stolen imagery.
Click here to read my whole article on Presentation Xpert…
Stock Imagery is Killing Your Presentation via Presentation-Guru
I recently wrote an article on metaphoric vs literal imagery in presentation for Presentation-Guru. Check it out here!
