The always amazing Presentation Summit was held a couple of weeks ago in San Diego, and this year I had the honor of giving the opening keynote.

The topic was one of my favorites: Simplicity.

Looking at everything from songs by the Beatles to the Vietnam Memorial to the menu at Chipotle, I like to think I made an argument for simplicity standing out, being memorable and actually making money where complexity does not. 

Bad presentations have many root causes, but over complicated messages and design are high on the list, and so I felt that a discussion of simplicity was an appropriate kickoff to 3 days dedicated to all things presentation. And indeed, it seemed to set the theme for the conference. (That and Star Wars references.)

Geetesh Bajaj from indezine.com has a nice play by play review of the talk, and here are a few slides...

 

 

I had a blast from beginning to end at the Summit, reconnecting with so many friends from around the world (even met a new one from Iceland this year!) who just happen to be the top people in the business. I also managed to get a number of new faces to attend this year—always trying to get more design blood at the Summit—including the kick ass women from SlideRabbit who put together a nice set of learnings from the conference. Also check out Presentitude's ABC Guide to the Presentation for a nice recap.

Thanks and kudos to Rick Altman who has run the conference since day one, puts on an incredible show each year, and is a great friend.

For those still on the fence over attending, next year will be in New Orleans. Now you really have no excuse...

Lastly, here are some visual notes taken by the awesome Stephy Lewis on my keynote and my breakout session, "Confessions of a Presentation Designer."

  

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If anyone is looking for a keynote speaker for their conference and would like to know how simplicity can help their business and endeavors, drop me a line!

Olive Garden deck reimagined by Empowered Presentations.

You know, the easy thing to do with this data would have been to make a bunch of bar charts, pie charts, bullet graphs, sized shapes, or something...

But there's something about forcing the reader to spend more time examining these numbers that I like...

h/t to ThinkProgress.

This certainly does not explain ALL that is involved with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I love the simplicity and visual storytelling that Le Monde put together, keeping the entire narrative geographically-centered.

H/T Gizmodo.

The situation in Gaza explained with a map by lemondefr

I hate the facts of the data behind this chart, but love the way the designer calls extra attention to comparitive norm. From prisonpolicy.org.

A lot of people (including clients of mine) took note of presentation designer Emiland De Cubber's slide makeover of Mary Meeker's deck profiled in Business Week.

It's good. Take a look.

And a hat tip to IdeaTransplant's great post on the makeover.

I'm simply in love with the simple brilliance of this book cover design by Tom Lenartowicz

H/T to Kottke.

The Presentation Lab makes very clear upfront that readers will not learn how to create more visually appealing or better designed slides. And while this is one of the more illustrated business books I’ve read in a while, it just isn’t about the visual side of effective presentations, but rather what needs to go into a presentation’s intent, structure and story creation.

After busting some presentation myths (such as the 10/20/30 rule), the book launches into a discussion of storytelling for the sake of your audience and stresses the fact that a presentation must be about the audience first, foremost and always. Okay, audience-focused presentation is nothing new, but what The Presentation Lab brings to the table is what I think is the most solid of nuggets in the book: The Audience Heat Map. Morton identifies three essential audience types (which are not mutually exclusive) and then shows how to craft a presentation specific to a unique audience. Examples and case studies are used to show how to appeal to audiences that may be factual, visionary and/or emotional. Even if you put the book down at this point and began incorporating this thinking, you’ll find yourself creating better presentations.

The book then moves onto story flow, although I do wish there continued to be more examples and case studies of this topic as there were with audience identification. There is a valuable discussion of simplicity and some wonderful simple arguments for the same: is you message simple enough to be shared with others?

The book reads quickly, and is witty (“rumor has it Churchill was rubbish at PowerPoint”), but being more of a system (though thankfully a well-thought out and simplified one), it’s harder to skim or to jump around. What Morton makes clear throughout, however—and really brings home with some appropriate client stories and case studies from his firm Eyeful Presentations—is that this disciplined approach is not for the careless or extremely time-crunched presenter. A deliberate approach to creating a successful presentation doesn’t have to mean endless hours of storyboarding, sticky notes and outlining, but it does require attention to one’s audience and one’s goals. If you’re willing to meet the Presentation Lab halfway there, I think this is an excellent book that has the potential to dramatically improve the effectiveness of one’s presentations. If you are like many of Eyeful’s clients, and are genuinely serious improving your presentation and not just making pretty pictures, give it a careful read. If you just want pretty slides, look elsewhere.

What do I think is missing? I would have loved to have seen more examples of what Morton considers successful slides. For example, in declaring the Presentation Zen style a busted myth, it would have been great to have seen some actual visual counter-examples. And while certain one-off topics do seem on-topic, the very brief discussions of data, infographics and stock imagery still struck me as not quite part of the organic whole. But that’s just me quibbling.

I had been looking forward to the book for quite some time, and I was not disappointed. I think it’s a valuable addition to the bookshelf of any serious presenter and presentation creator.

Buy it here!

Gizmodo's post makes clear that "even Bill Gates hates PowerPoint." Well, let's not forget that PowerPoint's profits are in part helping Bill give out such amazingly ridiculous amounts of money now. But what I love about this quick video is its absolute simplicity and, because there's no PowerPoint in sight, the way it can so easily grab our attention by being just a little bit different.

And is it just me, or is Bill starting to look a lot like Woody Allen?

What is visual storytelling in a corporate environment?

Product photos on a consumer brand Facebook page? An annual report rendered as an infographic? The holy grail viral marketing video shot by the summer intern (or very expensive hipster digital agency)?

Lululemon, the recently embattled yoga wear brand, just hired Laurent Potdevin as their new CEO. The company has struggled recently under some bad press for corporate practices, embarassing statements by leadership and even product recalls. 

Lululemon is hoping that Potdevin, a former leader at Luis Vuitton, Burton snowboards and Toms shoes will turn the corporate fortunes and reputation around. And to introduce him to customers and shareholders, they released a simple, but well-produced video that is pure visual storytelling.

I love it.

Visual storytelling was much of what I helped Edelman raise the bar on during my years at the company. Many of you know that I recently left the PR firm to start my own consultancy. If you would like to learn how I am now working with other organizations to improve their visual communications, drop me a line. 

How much do I love this...spotted by Cory Doctorow via Boing Boing.

I caught this brilliant minimalist 2 page ad for the new film The Book Thief today in The New York Times today.

The best way to grab attention is to break a pattern. And for a reader of The Times, there is no more extreme a way to do this than to remove essentially all ink from the page.

Love this!

Everyone hopefully knows Antoine de Saint-Exupery's famous words:

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

And so I loved Jacques Pépin's comments in a similar vein from his autobiography which I just finished:

What do business pitching and sex have in common? Well with certain exceptions, not a whole lot of people get to see you engage in either of them. Really, how do you stack up against the competition in the boardroom? (Or bedroom for that matter.)

You might have seen Facebook's original ad sales deck from 2004 which is a fascinating archeological find.

But Business Insider seems able to get their hands on VC pitch decks fairly often, and I'm always interested to see how big and not so big names actually pitch and design their slides.

Here's a recent one from Buffer, a social media startup. What it lacks in design and visual storytelling, it makes up for in simplicity and clarity.

 

And this 18 slide deck from Dwolla netted the founders $16.5 million in startup funds.

 

And finally, take a look at AirBnB's investor pitch deck. Not bad...except for the incorrectly sized data bubbles...

 

Designers have created minimalist movie posters before, but Michal Krasnopolski hit it out of the park with his take by limiting everything to this simple square/circle grid:

Great limitations can lead to great design...check out all the posters here.

So, I attended the Mirren New Business conference last week. It's an industry event for creative agencies, and it attracts the top players both as speakers and attendees. There was a lot of talent, a lot of big personalities and a lot of slides. 

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?

...My favorite from Tobias Berg's "12 Paradoxes of Graphic Design" Series.

Loved this Thai restaurant's menu use of images in type.

I ordered my dishes "three elephants" style.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new iPad app called Haiku Deck.

At the time, they had graciously created a quick deck for me based on my Twinkie theory of presentation. 

Now, they did one better, creating a Haiku Deck based on my 2 is the new 3 post.

If you haven't checked out Haiku Deck, swing by their site and download the app. It's a cool way of very quickly creating a simple text-lite presentation. It might even be a cool tool to use when training people to create more visual, less text-dependant presentations.