Simple Design: Ideally, One Idea Per Slide

The SIMPLE design series covers my six principles for effective visual design. The first piece in this series covered the concept of simplicity in design, with a focus on a very basic truth–simple isn’t easy; it takes work. In this installment, I’ll cover the next letter in this acronym, “I,” which stands for…

Ideally, One Idea Per Slide

Years of slideument conditioning has led all of us (including me as you’ll soon see) to see our slides as a document, something that is only really complete when filled with content (text, image, clip art, chart, random animated gif). This habit means that we’ve managed to keep our slides low in number, but high in noise (and conversely, low in signal).  According to Garr Reynolds, “[p]rojected slides should be as visual as possible and support our point quickly, efficiently (good signal-to-noise ratio), and powerfully. The verbal content, the verbal proof, evidence, and appeal/emotion comes mostly from our spoken word” (Source). So, in a live situation, it’s the presenter and not the slides who must carry the weight of the signal or content. Creating a content-heavy slide places the focus on the visual aid (in the worst way possible), can cause cognitive dissonance and confusion, and can damage a speaker’s credibility. As an educator, I felt the need to fill slides with as much content as possible, especially in courses I felt less than solid in or that required more lecture focus than composition and writing, particularly Latin American Humanities:

What’s wrong with this slide? Well, even when I presented information by only showing one bullet at a time, my students first had no tangible concept to attach to ideas like “universal constructivism”, and second, as John Medina discusses in his must-read Brain Rules, the mind cannot multi-task, which is exactly what we ask audiences to do when we create slideuments. Our audience must read our slides AND listen to us, which they just cannot do. According to Medina, “[r]esearch shows your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things” (Source) when the myth of multi-tasking is in play. Further, as Nancy Duarte asserts in Slide:ology, slides, like billboards are “glance media”, which means that your audience should be able to process your visual story quickly and then return to listening to your awesome content.

The situation becomes even more complex when we are asked as presenters to provide our slides for publication or when we use our slides as study guides for our students. How do we keep our slides cinematic AND also communicate dense amounts of content? Reynolds has a few suggestions, including the most obvious and useful one–create a set of display slides and create a separate document with complete notes (Source). I find that doing this gives students the opportunity to use their critical thinking skills and decide what is really important or note worthy.  I want to share one of my most important design epiphanies that helped me find a good balance between content and design. Keeping this idea in mind has helped me move towards truly SIMPLE Design: An Extra Slide Costs Nothing!

So, instead of placing every bit of information about Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Universal Constructivism on one slide, I can break the information up over many slides.

 

Have you faced the challenge of creating cinematic slides that are also content-rich? What are your great ideas for moving away from the slideument? 

Corporate vs. Conference: Jesse Dee’s You Suck at PowerPoint

Jesse Dee’s “You Suck at PowerPoint” is one of the most viewed presentations on Slideshare with over 1 million views.

In his presentation, Jesse lays down the five biggest mistakes PowerPoint users make and provides some fixes for these problems. Jesse Dee’s 5 mistakes are:

1. Too much information, or what Garr Reynolds refers to as a slideument.
2. Not enough visuals, or text-driven visuals decrease retention, not increase it.
3. Horrible quality, or in a age of abundance and design, audiences no longer respond to clip art and comic sans.
4. Visual vomit, or once you have visuals, you must design them for maximum effectiveness.
5. Lack of prep, or the number one reason why users rely on bullets and templates is because of a lack of content development and rehearsal time.

Because of its popularity and in your face honesty about the misuse of PowerPoint by individuals and corporations alike, the presentation often faces a bit of resistance and backlash. Today, a response to Jesse Dee’s presentation was posted on Slideshare:

The presentation, by design firm Stinson Design, calls attention to several of Dee’s suggestions that Stinson Design believes just won’t work for corporate presenters. The deck makes a distinction between corporate and conference presenters based on the level of control one type of presenter has than another does not. Conference presenters, according to the deck ”have control on their content and can decide to present minimal amounts of data” (Source). In contrast, corporate presenters are limited because they must present dense amounts of information and data. The distinction is unclear to me because as a conference attendee, I’ve seen conference presenters display dense amounts of information and data (unfortunately, mostly using bullet points and poorly designed data display), and as a presenter, I was restricted by time, audience type, and subject matter. As someone who has watched four years of “corporate” business pitches, I’ve also seen dense data and complex financial information be presented in a cinematic way that still shows the investor that the presenter is knowledgeable and able to communicate the complex using simplicity.

In the deck, several challenges corporate presenters face in using the cinematic method of presentation design are brought to light. However, instead of looking at these challenges as reasons to abandon the universal principles of design used by 21st century presenters, let’s look at some of these challenges as opportunities. In every instance, presenting well is a challenge; it’s all about being up to the challenge!

Challenge #1: Cutting content is not always possible because corporate presenters have A LOT  of information to communicate

Jesse Dee provides a reasonable solution for this. Use one slide for each piece of content, data, and information. Stinson believes that the amount of information that needs to be presented makes this solution impossible. However, as instructional designers and teachers have learned, the working memory is a finite container (Source). It’s working memory that we are addressing when presenting information to others, and that part of our minds can only retain so much information before information begins to flow over the top of that container and out of our minds. As Julie Dirksen points out, “You can keep handing material to your learners, but you can’t make them carry it around” (Source). So, we must focus as presenters on what’s really necessary; we must be ruthless editors and only include what’s necessary on a set of slides. Similarly, we must understand that slides are not always necessary. A few days ago, I shared this tongue in cheek example of a PowerPoint version of The Gettysburg Address. The idea Lincoln was communicating was complex, controversial, and challenging. He uses ingenuity, the brevity of words, and pathos to communicate this complex idea to his audience in a way that has resonated for hundreds of years.

But, this doesn’t mean that we are sacrificing information for design, not at all. Your audiences can easily (actually much more easily than on a slide) read through dense amounts of information on a document (and that document can be designed for maximum readability, flow, and retention) that you hand out as an accompaniment to your slides, which are not meant to be containers of your information, but an enhancement of your content. This is not a “luxury” as the deck claims. It is simply good old-fashioned troubleshooting. It also helps keep the presentation of content relevant to the audience. Despite what we tell ourselves, our audiences don’t want all of the information on a slide (even if they are conditioned to this). Subconsciously, the mind wants to be able to easily and clearly make sense of information. This is best accomplished by breaking up dense information into smaller chunks.

Challenge #2: It’s easier for a conference presenter to find imagery than a corporate presenter because corporate presenters need niche-specific images

I want to address this challenge very simply. It is not easy to find strong imagery–for anyone. The process of finding and choosing strong images requires time, ingenuity, and at times metaphorical thinking. I sometimes spend hours looking for one image, only to have to revise my approach because I am restricted to commercially-available images only (which is the same challenge corporate presenters face). On this blog, I’ve shared several ways to search through compfight.com, which is one of the best resources for free images available to corporate folks. Another option is the use of commercially-available iconography, such as those found on The Noun Project.

Challenge #3: Custom fonts are great but they are not so great for sharing a presentation with others. Similarly, standard fonts are not really that bad as long as the material is clear/readable

I have to agree with the creators of the deck that a standard font is not really THAT bad when it comes to design, and if one has to use a font like Arial, that’s at least better than using comic sans or herculenum. However, what makes a standard font problematic is that just like standard stock imagery, your audience is desensitized to it. This is not to say that I believe one must use a custom font (many of which are free), but using a typeface that connects to your audience, message, and theme can help set your message apart from others in your audience’s mind. Presentation designer Christin Upshaw puts the choice of font quite well:

“[U]sing just a basic font that EVERYONE has (Arial, Tahoma, etc.) is absolutely the right course of action. That doesn’t mean your presentation has to have bad design, it just means the font can’t be something you purchased. You can still make it look great.”

So, what do you do if your client does not have a font installed on his or her computer? If the license allows distribution, give them the font. Even better, export your work as a pdf (which is how many Slideshare users, including Stinson Design, upload their work) and distribute a static, unchanging, and well-designed file to your attendees.

Challenge #4: PowerPoint is still most often used, so it’s the best way to create your work and distribute it to others

Yes, PowerPoint is still the standard, but what’s awesome about tools like Slide Rocket, Google Docs, and Keynote is that files can be converted to PowerPoint (Keynote actually opens PowerPoint files..something I doubt Microsoft will ever add to PowerPoint) and shared with your audience. Neat, right?

So, what’s your take on the corporate vs. conference style of presenting? Are these really unsurmountable challenges?

Simple Design: Why Simple Isn’t Easy

The Simple Design series will cover the basics of strong presentation design. The first part in the series is an introduction to the concept of simplicity in design and what that truly means when it comes to creating strong visual aids.

Often, when I consult with students, teachers, and professionals on presentation design, the subject of simplicity comes up. The idea that something complex should at the same time be simple can be a road block for novice presentation designers, particularly because we are so conditioned through misuse of presentation software to fill up every available inch of presentation “real estate” with bullets, clip art, non-sensical diagrams, doo dads, fire animations, wingdings, company logos, word art, and any other number of PowerPoint distractions. Imagine if Abraham Lincoln had used PowerPoint? What would we actually remember about The Gettysburg Address.

Simplicity is a powerful element to creating strong visual aids. Further, simplicity is something we crave, something we are now primed to seek out as we are driven to seek out meaning. Simplicity is the key to meaning; it allows your audience to move past noise directly to signal. But, simplicity isn’t simple or easy. John Madea, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, understands the power of simplicity first hand; in fact, he wrote the book on it. In his 2007 TED talk, “Designing for Simplicity”, Madea dissects the intersection of simplicity and complexity; simplicity is complexity, but it’s complexity at its most elegant and meaningful.

For Madea, simplicity is a part of the human experience; it’s about living life with more joy and less pain. But, simplicity isn’t simple, which is where design comes in. Design is the intersection of art and technology, the simple presentation of the infinitely complex human experience. At its best, design is about simplicity because design is about focusing on the meaningful. In a world of death-by-PowerPoint, this idea of simple design is even more important in the creation of visual aids and slideshows. Why? Because at the core, slides are a form of information design, the use of design elements to communicate, persuade, or inform.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petervanlancker/6017183490/sizes/l/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdsdigital/4475725767/sizes/l/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/normanbleventhalmapcenter/2674855383/sizes/l/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/x1brett/2088959372/sizes/o/in/photostream/

However, when we choose a template and create a seemingly endless repetition of title, bullets, clip art, incongruous transition/animation, we make content more important than the visual presentation or design of that content. So, what’s the solution? Well, you guessed it–it’s time to make presentation design SIMPLE. The six simple design elements are:

The first lesson in the Simple Design series is “simplicity takes work.” Before jumping right into designing slides, we must first prepare ourselves for the design mindset, and that means defining what we mean by work.

When it comes to slide design, one of the first and very honest things I tell students and teachers alike is that paring your work down, resisting the urge to jump right into a template, and being ingenious with the tools presentation software provides you with takes much more work than the opposite. To work towards simplicity, begin by considering three areas.

Firstly, it’s important to analyze the context of the presentation and whether or not slides are truly necessary to communicating your message (yes, they are expected, but are they necessary?). A set of slides, if it’s only decoration, can quickly become a distraction for your audience and can cause them to focus less on what you have to communicate and more on what is happening behind or next to you.

Secondly, if you’ve determined that slides are necessary, you should then create a framework for the presentation by developing a storyboard of your content and organization. One of the most consistent pieces of advice given by professionals like Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, and Steve Cherches is go analog! Get away from that computer (believe me, you’ll spend plenty of time on the computer), use your visual thinking skills, and draw your ideas out. Drawing out your presentation can help free you from the restriction that can come from only relying the imagery you search for (whether it is stock photography or creative commons images/iconography). Drawing and storyboarding also helps you see connection you might miss via the linear layout of a slideshow.

Finally, it’s important to set your slides up for design.

This means beginning with a blank slate, so that you can resist the urge to conform your ideas to a template, as opposed to building a “look for your ideas”; turning on grids and rulers (would you build a house without a way to measure your dimensions?), so you can make precise placement a priority; and familiarizing yourself with your presentation software’s advanced tools such as cropping and image editing, font or typography, shapes, objects, and visual effects, so you can polish your individual elements and overall design.

Whether you use Keynote, PowerPoint, Prezi, GoogleDocs, or Slide Rocket, it’s important to begin with a blank canvas. The biggest detriment to original simplicity is the pre-made template.

Any good presentation software includes features that assist you in designing. Designers make deliberate decisions and consider alignment and hierarchy above all. Using grids, rulers, and getting a “bird’s eye view” of your slides will help you move towards simple design.

Finally, explore your software’s advanced features. Keynote and PowerPoint both allow users to edit and enhance images, for instance, which can help you mold an existing image to fit your original theme.

Once you’ve set your slides up for design, it’s time to move on to the I in SIMPLE Design. Stay tuned for the next installment in this series, in which I’ll cover the glance media rule and its connection to slide design.

Appropriation in Design: How thin is the line?

Being a designer is being a pirate–you sail the proverbial seas of creativity, see some sweet design booty, plunder it, and make it your own. But, while the “be a pirate” philosophy encourages us to be influenced and inspired by the approaches of others (what better way to prove a design works than to see iterations of it and variations on its approach in other places/mediums), appropriation can very quickly lead to plagiarism. I want to clarify that I am not accusing anyone of plagiarism in this post, merely citing examples of appropriation that are useful in discussing the real difference and line between being inspired by a design and iterating your own, and mimicking or copying someone’s design without attention to the design’s intent or purpose. So, what is the difference between appropriation and plagiarism? Is there a way to clearly define what is acceptable inspiration and what is design piracy?

Botero is one of art’s most famous appropriators. This is his “Monalisa”, featuring his unique perspective on an existing motif.

Paisley ( Some rights reserved by BrianJamesPhotography)

Botero Monalisa ( Some rights reserved by Micah & Erin)

Picture Frame ( Some rights reserved by eriwst)

…

According to William Denttrel in his 2005 article for the Design Observer Group, “In the world of design… there seems to be an implicit understanding that any original work can and will evolve into the work of others, eventually working its way into our broader visual culture” (Source). But,  when the derivation is essentially the same as the original, Denttrel’s ultimate point is that this is both “[sad] and wrong”.  Essence here is defined as the core of the composed design. Denttrel is comparing two images of the motif “bird in hand”. One is a stock image used by magazine STEP. The other is one in a series of photographs by artist Victor Schrager. Schrager’s well-known work has been exhibited in museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, and it’s been published both in magazine and book form. Yes, you may copy type, color, tonality, but composition and intent are different. As curators of art and creators of art (yes, I afford presentation design the same status as other forms of design), shouldn’t we respect the rights of originators? Shouldn’t we look for opportunities to praise appropriation as opposed to mimicry?

Jason Carne defines the difference as follows:

“An artist’s style is not something that is instantly achieved, it’s something that takes years upon years of practice and experimentation to settle into….Hijacking someones personal motifs far exceeds that of simple idea theft, because you’re not just taking a design – you’re taking years of hard work away from someone for your own personal short-term gains.” (Source)

I believe we’ve reached a similar (though entirely different…arghh!) impasse in presentation design.  What makes appropriation more problematic in this field is the fact that as presentation designers, we are supposed to iterate from what we observe others doing. There’s only so many ways to convey a concept using Keynote or PowerPoint right? It is as important in presentation design to clearly define the line and also respect the creative efforts of others, especially in a medium that we’ve been conditioned to use in a peculiar way–choose your pre-made template and fill it in with your information. The problem with doing this with a set of slides is that mimicking type, color, and layout choices coupled with mimicking organization, tone, approach, and content (in the case I am featuring below, the only real change was to phrasing/wording) can cross the appropriation line and move straight into plagiarism.

Recently, on Slideshare, this debate has come to the surface due to some perceived similarities between the work of one designer, SlideComet and another Illiya, aka The Presentation Designer. Both Alex Rister  and slide superstar Eugene discussed the similarities between the decks, and I do believe in this case, that Illiya’s concerns were warranted and his response legitimate. He also provides a useful solution. As he put it:

“[W]hat I will continue to do is work on improving my own unique style, take inspiration certainly but I will always strive to keep things fresh and original. This is what I would urge others to do. There will always be the similar fonts, and colour schemes but what you can’t follow is personality and style.” (Source)

However, reader, I do want to point out that there are more problematic examples of appropriation found on Slideshare and that it’s high time that presentation designers have a dialogue about this subject. When a work copies the essence of a designer’s original, we’ve moved beyond using similar tools in different ways. Check out the following example I found while perusing Slideshare. You can see the original first and then the derivative. The derivative changes only a few of the words used and employs the same type, color choices, and layout decisions. To me, this definitely dilutes the message of the derivative. The fact that the derivative was featured as a top presentation of the day further complicates the situation. I actually would never have seen the deck or recognized it had Slideshare not featured it.

“10 Ways to Be a Marketing Genius Like Lady Gaga” vs. “10 Ways Librarians Can Be a Marketing Genius Like Lady Gaga”

This is the original deck by Jesse Dee.

This is the derivative by Gwyneth Jones.

What do you think? Does this cross the line between appropriation and plagiarism?

Visual Thinking, an undeniable reality

After much deliberation and anxiety about overloading Slideshare.net with yet another presentation about presentation design, I’ve debuted by deck for March, Simple Design:

My decision to share this deck with others was difficult. I yearn for new conversations in the field of presentation design and visual communication and I want to be a part of these new conversations. However, I want to share something that is a stronger example of design with users than my previous deck on design, Tweak Your Slides.

The subject of visual thinking and cinematic visual aids is inevitable as we move further and further towards a society that yearns to connect with experience/brand/individual beyond the textual. In class, we devote a significant amount of time to designing a visual story, but more than this, we consider how inherent visuals have become in the conveying of our ideas and brands. Outside of class, I spend my time defending the post-clip art, post-1987 PowerPoint approach to presentation design against what I can only classify as a lizard brain-driven anxiety that comes with doing something different or non-traditional. Many of my colleagues accept how I approach teaching and see that it works, but cannot believe it could work outside of the vacuum of “fluffy” subjects like public speaking (this is of course not true in any respect). Alex Rister discussed this resistance on her blog, and lists this as one reason why this approach “won’t work” we often hear. But, then there are times when the visual thinking bug takes hold. One of our colleagues created a dynamic and immersive GoTo training complete with zombies and sound effects, and this month, super student Chris Martignago completed his month’s work of homework using visual thinking:

Assigning reading homework is the bane of my existence–Resonate is an awesome book, but forcing students to read it means some of its impact is lost in the miasma of routine and compulsory action. Chris’s solution, which was to make the outline something immersive and kinesthetic, is brilliant!

In the past few weeks, several new decks focused on the topic of visual thinking have debuted on Slideshare. The first I’ll share with you today is Duarte Design’s #IllustraTED, which is a project developed by Duarte Design that gathers amazing illustrators and artists together to visualize and draw out some of this year’s talks:

(My favorite of course is Andrew McAfee’s talk on scifi and jobs.)

I also want to share with you two decks on visual storytelling and marketing that really give us a glimpse into where visual communication can take us in the future.  The first, created by Column Five Media, “Visual Content Marketing: Capture and Engage your Audience,” is an impeccably organized presentation that blends the essential ingredients–text, color, shape, layout, line, texture, and image–to communicate a core idea–we consume, communicate through, and are engaged by visuals, but succeeding with this in mind is not just about slapping a picture on a site and calling it a day.

The second deck, “Instabrand: The Rise of Visual Storytelling in a Content Marketing World,” an e-book by Christian Adams, isolates the same six communication media as the previous deck (photos, infographics, memes, videos, comics, visual note-taking), but focuses less on the how and more on the why this has happened and what the future will hold. This deck works less as a stand alone than Column Five’s, but I found the exposure to future forms of visual marketing/visual communication to be very enlightening.

What do you think? Do we still have room to grow this conversation? Have we said all there is to say about visual communication? If so, why is there still so much resistance?

Tweaks of the week: pushing design beyond images and embracing the acronym

Last week was incredibly productive although exhausting. Some of this exhaustion is self-induced: I’ve hit an incredible creative streak and I want to let this tweak take me to places previously unexplored. I finally feel like I am designing, as opposed to just scratching the surface of presentation design. I happy to report that I’ve made significant strides with several major projects:

1. Revamped part one of the Storytelling as a Presentation Tool deck (still working on a new title)

One way I’ve begun pushing my design is to rely less on images and text as the primary means of conveying ideas.

• Added a diagram of Freytag’s pyramid and Syd Field’s paradigm.
• A diagram of the hero’s cycle is next

2. Completely overhauled the delivery lesson. It’s new title (an agonizing process, choosing this name) is REAL Delivery. Many of my mentors and sources of inspiration use the acronym as a way to help audiences remember key ideas. So, after some painstaking work with Alex Rister, I landed on REAL delivery in a flash of tweak inspiration. REAL delivery is:

Readiness

Engagement

Authenticity

Lasting Impression

Real Delivery is the deck that will likely take the longest as I look for ways to combine Garr Reynolds’ Naked Presenter with Nancy Duarte, Malcolm Gladwell, and Nick Morgan

3. Finally, and most exhaustively, I revised my entire visual design lesson and reduced the material from nine tips to 6 basic principles I coin SIMPLE Design:

Simplicity takes work

Ideally, one idea per slide

Make unity a priority

Pictures are superior

Lose the signal, lose the audience

Eliminate fluff

In Simple Design, I’ll cover the basics of presentation design as well as revealing some important lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Incidentally, this deck saw the death of the Venn diagram as a permitted diagram in my decks. I really need to find a new visualization….

These decks are still a few weeks away from show ready, and I’d like to spend a bit of time blogging about aspects of each that warrant further expansion beyond the visual medium. 2013 is the year of the tweak!

Slideshare of the Year….I mean the Day

 

If you read this blog, you know of my undying admiration and affection for my superteacher best friend, the very talented Alex Rister. This month, Alex debuted her brand new visual design lesson for her class and also featured shots from this deck on her blog. Well, today, her latest Slideshare offering went live. Check out an “Introduction to Slide Design.” This deck has also become an integral part of our latest faculty development endeavor, The Presentation Revolution.

The Rhetoric of Presentation Design, Revisited

Monday marks the first on campus class of the year for me. As it’s been two months since I taught in a classroom (aside from faculty development workshops), I have been devoting the past week to preparing my class by revising assignments, creating a new 2-page max layout for all instruction sheets, and revamping my 15 decks for the month. In preparing for the rhetoric and persuasion portion of the class, I have begun revisiting my writing/research on persuasion. In 2011, I wrote a series of articles discussing how we as presenters can use our visual aids to develop the three rhetorical appeals necessary to persuading an audience–ethos, pathos, and logos. I have been working to integrate this aspect of rhetoric a bit more explicitly since then, primarily because we devote so much time to slide design in class and because as presenters, we must continue to work to ensure slides are accompaniment, enhancement, proof of concept, and motivators towards action–not crutches or teleprompters.  Several months ago, super student Travis Ockerman created the video below as an extra credit activity in the online iteration of Professional Communication and Presentation.

Rhetoric & Persuasion Summary from Travis Ockerman on Vimeo.

In the video, Travis summarizes not only the course’s basic lessons on persuasion, in particular ethos, pathos, and logos, but he also beautifully integrates what he’s learned about visual design by creating a well-designed presentation and discussing how presenters can use visuals to help strengthen the three appeals. I added this video as a required viewing in my online classes, and now that my on campus course is web enhanced, I’ll be adding this to the list of assets available to students beyond their require text, Resonate. It’s back to grading and preparing for next month. Happy Friday!

 

Slideshare of the Day: Ten Wise Lessons I’ve Learnt from Freelancing

Today’s deck is for all of us aspiring frelancers out there. I recently chatted with budding presentation designer and maverick Eugene Cheng about his struggle with death-by-powerpoint and my struggle with getting a handle on how to start this freelance designing thing I’ve had in the back of my mind for years. Currently work keeps me pretty busy, but I also need to stretch and grow my tweak muscles by taking on non-educational projects.

For those of you who are like me and don’t have a clue where to start and what to watch out for, take a moment to check out today’s Slideshare presentation by Illiya Vjestica, better known as The Presentation Designer on Slideshare.net.  The deck is lovely–wonderful unity through type, color, and layout. I appreciate Illiya’s use of shape and type to convey the lessons, and the peppering in of relevant quotes and sticky images to go along with them. The lesson I found most immediately applicable was “Give Three Days Grace” for actionable tasks. Giving oneself a realistic three day window will help one not bite off more than one can chew in taking on a project, and can keep one from breaking a promise to a client (which I’d imagine is not too good for the client/designer relationship).

Presentations like today’s deck are another reason Slideshare has become one of the most powerful tools for presenters and companies today. Happy Freelancing, Happy Slidesharing, and Happy Tweaking!

Data Display of the Day: Two views on Online Privacy

All infographics by GDS Infographics

After seeing this beautiful video by Michael Rigley’s Network via an Ethos 3 Motion Design analysis, I was both fascinated and terrified.

Network from Michael Rigley on Vimeo.

Rigley’s approach to explaining data networks, a topic that most of us (including me) would find much too abstract and puzzling if presented in report-form, is beautifully illustrated and animated–it’s also understandable and impacting. Rigley doesn’t just lay out a series of facts, he interweaves them with a visual representation. It’s the approach to presenting this information that makes it that much more impacting. The information comes to life in a way the audience can understand; one cannot ignore the ramifications of our networked world. I found myself surprised and shocked at what I didn’t know about my digital footprint, and of course wanted to know more.

I ran across this infographic created by Abine, an online privacy company,  from Daily Infographic, and it only confirms what Rigley explains in Network.

Through our activities, our private information and habits, from shopping and liking someone’s status to making travel plans, are being mined and sold to advertising and tracking companies. This may seem innocuous when a site raises a price because an individual looks up a certain item, but when it can cost a person his or her job of affects his or her credit, the need to stand up for privacy becomes greater. Today’s examples amplify their important messages through design, so what design lessons can we draw from today’s examples?

Lessons from Today’s Examples

1. Use simple shapes and icons to convey complex ideas.
2. Organize information so it sequentially builds towards a solution.
3. Infographics in print do not necessarily follow the glance media rule; they are meant to be absorbed over time.
4. Video motion display should have a cohesive theme that helps further clarify the complex concept being animated.

Consider these four lessons, and remember, there is always room to…