Comic sans strikes back / has its say
I have joined the legion of designers in criticizing the comic sans font (earlier post here). In this rant (strong language warning), comic sans strikes back at us, elitist Helvetica fans. Written by Mike Lacher, thank you Ellen Daehnick for suggesting it.
Sartre, Beauvoir, and Miles Davis talking presentations
I just returned from a wonderful holiday in France and hope to pick up my posting habits soon. While in France, I read this interesting book: Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
by Graham Robb (affiliate link). Robb uses a variety of styles and settings to describe famous characters living in Paris through the centuries. One chapter is a film-type script set in Cafe de Flore in Paris around 1948, a small fragment:
Beauvoir: He [Sartre] was invited to give a conference at the UNESCO. It was the first meeting of UNESCO, two or three years ago, in 1946. At the Sorbonne. The evening before, we went to the Scheherazade, with Koestler and Camus. And Sartre - you remember? - danced with Mme Camus, which was like watching a man lugging a sack of coal. He was very drunk, and he had to give his talk in the morning, but he had not written a line.
Miles Davis, pointing at Sartre: The teacher hadn't done his homework!
Beauvoir: Yes, and Camus, who was also drunk said, said, "You will have to do it without my help," and Sartre said, "I wish I could do it without my help."
Sartre, stubby fingers spread on the the table giggles.
Beauvoir: An then - he does not remember this - we had breakfast Chez Victor at Les Halles, soupe a l'oignon, huitres, vin blanc - and then it was dawn, and we stood on a bridge over the Seine, Sartre and me, and we were so sad about la tragedie de la conditione humaine - eh oui! - that we should throw ourselves into the river. But instead of that, I went home to my bed, and Sartre, he went to the Sorbonne to talk about la responsibilite de l'ecrivain...
Miles Davis: That's cool Jean-Paul. They knew you were talking straight because you hadn't prepared...
Beauvoir, shaking her head: No Sartre, he had everything already in his head.
by Graham Robb (affiliate link). Robb uses a variety of styles and settings to describe famous characters living in Paris through the centuries. One chapter is a film-type script set in Cafe de Flore in Paris around 1948, a small fragment:
Beauvoir: He [Sartre] was invited to give a conference at the UNESCO. It was the first meeting of UNESCO, two or three years ago, in 1946. At the Sorbonne. The evening before, we went to the Scheherazade, with Koestler and Camus. And Sartre - you remember? - danced with Mme Camus, which was like watching a man lugging a sack of coal. He was very drunk, and he had to give his talk in the morning, but he had not written a line.
Miles Davis, pointing at Sartre: The teacher hadn't done his homework!
Beauvoir: Yes, and Camus, who was also drunk said, said, "You will have to do it without my help," and Sartre said, "I wish I could do it without my help."
Sartre, stubby fingers spread on the the table giggles.
Beauvoir: An then - he does not remember this - we had breakfast Chez Victor at Les Halles, soupe a l'oignon, huitres, vin blanc - and then it was dawn, and we stood on a bridge over the Seine, Sartre and me, and we were so sad about la tragedie de la conditione humaine - eh oui! - that we should throw ourselves into the river. But instead of that, I went home to my bed, and Sartre, he went to the Sorbonne to talk about la responsibilite de l'ecrivain...
Miles Davis: That's cool Jean-Paul. They knew you were talking straight because you hadn't prepared...
Beauvoir, shaking her head: No Sartre, he had everything already in his head.
Re-post: cutting up shapes
Cutting and pasting your object as a PNG image allows you to cut up regular PowerPoint shapes in random components. See an example here.
Re-post: creating a realistic blackboard in PowerPoint
With color and light effects you can create a black board in PowerPoint, an earlier post here.
Re-post: cutting words and still say the same
An excellent list of words you can lose on a slide here.
Re-post: keeping titles readable over busy images
A semi-transparent background shading greatly improves the readability of chart titles. See how to do it here.
Re-post: aligning bullets in PowerPoint
If you are not running PowerPoint 2010 (review), then the 2nd line of a bullet point will always come out wrong. Here is how to fix it.
Re-post: creating McKinsey-style water fall charts in PowerPoint
Waterfall charts can X-ray a complicated story. Here is an explanation about the technicalities of creating one in PowerPoint, here is an example of an application.
Re-post: merging presentations without mixing up formats
When Frankensteining a deck (i.e., stitching a new presentation together from old slides), there is nothing more annoying then slide formats that go crazy when pasting in slides. Here is a trick to avoid this.
Re-post: editing overlapping objects with the selection pane
One of the best-kept secrets of PowerPoint is the selection pane, that allows you to remove overlapping objects from a slide temporarily to make it easier to edit layers. Details here in a previous post.
Re-post: PowerPoint text in a circle
PowerPoint makes it possible to morph text in a circle, read the details here in this earlier post.
Holiday posting schedule
Over the next few weeks I will be spending more time with my family, and less online (similar to what I guess many of my readers will do). Posting frequency will drop, and I will be re-posting some earlier post that I think could be useful for readers that have only joined this community recently.
IPO presentation in the public domain
Insuline Medical is a medical device company that recently IPO-ed on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. Below is the company presentation I designed for potential investors. The challenge was that the audience of this presentation did not consist of venture capitalists with a deep specialization in medical technology, rather the content had to be adjusted to an institutional investor targeting the broader stock market.
My presentation design was translated into Hebrew by Eran Eisen.
My presentation design was translated into Hebrew by Eran Eisen.
The word "management"
These little annoyances in presentation design, the word "management" is one of them. You need it very often, it is relatively long, and it does not look good/readable when hyphenated. How many slides got a 2nd best design because of this word...
Every slide starts with a sketch
Painters first make a sketch before starting the final painting. Presentation designers should do the same. I have a big pile of old print outs that is my unlimited source of scrap paper. An important slide can take 5-10 page-filling rough sketches before turning to the PowerPoint editing screen.
I always carry one of these beautiful notebooks
(affiliate link) with me to capture an idea that pops up in my head. Yes, a notebook and not an application such as Evernote on my iPhone because the idea is most of the time a sketch or a scribble. Hard to do in digital format.
The end of my most productive/creative days are always marked with a full paper trash can next to my desk.
The painting is Gauguin's night cafe, info about him and Van Gogh painting at this location here and here.
I always carry one of these beautiful notebooks
(affiliate link) with me to capture an idea that pops up in my head. Yes, a notebook and not an application such as Evernote on my iPhone because the idea is most of the time a sketch or a scribble. Hard to do in digital format.The end of my most productive/creative days are always marked with a full paper trash can next to my desk.
The painting is Gauguin's night cafe, info about him and Van Gogh painting at this location here and here.
The lone column
A column chart with just one lone column is not a column chart. Column chart need to compare things, show a trend over time.
Quotes to dramatize a number
The site number quotes is a tool with a healthy dose of humor: it helps you "dramatize" a number, simply enter it and the site returns a long list of quotes. Maybe the exact quote is not what you can use in a "serious" presentation, but it might just open up a part of your creative brain that you did not yet access. Thank you Steven Duncan.
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