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.

Tweak Your Lessons: March Updates

The reboot of PCPO is two weeks in, and already the team has seen several areas where “tweaking” will be needed in order to help students successfully complete their major project in the course, the Ignite presentation. Current challenges we face with this week by week process-based model are:

• Students don’t sufficiently study welcome materials and don’t understand the course is based on the major project. There seems to be a disconnect between our communication of the process and their conditioning, which is to complete one task at a time without considering how each task connects with another.
  • Possible fix–schedule GoTo earlier in the week. Require attendance?
• Students are choosing overused or unsuitable topics for the format and approach.
  • Do what we do in class–students must submit ten topics, workshop each one with their instructor, determine which three will work best for the project, then analyze each one using the model Andrew Dlugan proposes in his article “The Secret of Choosing Successful Speech Topics”.

In addition to testing the reboot of the class, I’ve also been working on several of the decks from last month I didn’t have a chance to tweak because of REAL Delivery and SIMPLE Design. I’ll be debuting Tweak Your Resume online next month, and I just used the Brainstorming and Structuring deck in today’s group workshop/planning/design session for the upcoming worst case scenario presentation.

The second version of Tweak Your Resume uses a more cohesive color scheme. I am also experimenting with smaller text and more unified visuals.

This deck will need serious revision before it’s show ready. The content is specific to an in-class project the students are working on, though I’d like for it to become a general purpose tutorial on choosing a topic for and organizing a demonstration speech. In this presentation, I’ve tried to detach from the image-only approach to include vector icons from thenounproject.com

What presentation projects have you been working on lately? What decks are you excited to share with others?

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!

 

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…

Infographic Candy: David McCandless’s Rhetological Fallacies

Logical fallacies are an element of Professional Communication and Presentation that have fallen a bit by the wayside–with only one month of class and a semester’s worth of material to cover, it’s difficult to talk about everything without just lecturing at students for 4-8 hour periods. Any true superteacher knows this doesn’t work. That’s why I am glad for beautiful visualizations by the master, David McCandless of Information is Beautiful. Check out his infographic on all things logical fallacies, “Rhetological Fallacies” below and at his site, Information Is Beautiful.

Infographic of the Day: Picture Superiority Effect

Why is it that we retain more information when we see something rather than when we simply hear it? The phenomenon is known as the picture superiority effect. Pairing images with text brings retention up from 10% to 65%. Check out this short infographic for a simple, yet thorough visual explanation of how this phenomenon works:

Slide slam: the 10-minute tweak challenge

In today’s Professional Communication and Presentation class, we discussed some visual design basics. We focused a bit of time on why we create bullet-driven visuals that make use of overused, cliche templates. The discussion today included discussing alternatives to the “slideument” approach as well as whether or not the visually-driven approach can work in more “heady” subjects like math. My answer is always a resounding yes. A visual aid is only one portion of a presentation, only one way to engage, convey, connect, and educate. If a visual aid is really a teleprompter, then it becomes a superfluous, unnecessary element at best and a detraction at worst.  To close out our discussion, Alex challenged us to take a slide similar to the one below and display the information contained in a visual way.

Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat

She gave the class 10 minutes. I went right to work using Duarte’s Reduce, Record, Repeat method. I honed in on the main idea of each slide, and paired each one with a strong image. So is born the slide slam.

Try a slide slam 10-minute tweak challenge with your visual aid. While a strong deck takes much longer than 10 minutes, this exercise can help reinforce the importance of making vision king!

Call for decks: Don’t believe this can work for your business/discipline? Send your slides my way for a quick slide slam!

Deck of the Day: Toastmasters International, Visual Storytelling

I’ve been working on a new series of decks related to writing and the application of the concepts I’ve learned to the art of composition, and I’ve also been working on grades for my online students all in the lovely Pacific Northwest. This is by far my favorite part of the country, and I love being here and gaining inspiration from the world around me. As I graded, I ran across this excellent deck by Gleb Maitsev of Toastmasters International. I’ve flirted with the idea of Toastmasters; I’ve never attended a meeting and I think this is partly because of my own misconceptions about the place, which are driven by my fears about public speaking. Maitsev has definitely intrigued me with this deck:

A Deck to Admire as I Climb Mount Grade

March has been one of my busiest teaching months. 70 students all submitting major projects for which I record video feedback and thousands of words in discussion posts have definitely kept my focus away from the blog, I am sure to my own detriment. But, I can already see the summit of Mount Grade, and with only 40 students this month, I will be able to devote much more time to further explorations into design and public speaking. I am working on a new deck on visual resumes to debut at our annual spring break faculty development week, and I am stoked to share it very soon. In the meantime, as I graded discussions whose focus is to analyze a slide deck on slideshare that illustrates Nancy Duarte’s principles of design and her new slide ideology, I ran into this gem by Forsythe Technology.

Mobile Devices in the Workplace: 5 Key Security Risks is not only chock full of practical information, illustrating Duarte’s thesis #2: Spread Ideas and Move People, but it also Practices Design and not Decoration; it provides clean and easily identifiable visuals, clearly following the Help them See What You are Saying rule. Finally it’s use of storytelling appeals to a universal audience, and focuses on audience needs–Treating the Audience as King and Cultivating a Healthy Relationship.

YouTube Gem: The Teaching & Learning Network

I’m working on revamping my work samples and online video lectures in preparation for the copyright hammer that is soon to fall on me and my for-profit educational institution peeps. I noticed a video from the Teaching & Learning Network pop up on the related videos sidebar. Anything that says picture superiority effect grabs my attention right away:

This video led me to the TLC’s video page. Treasure trove people! Treasure trove!

Introduction to Use PowerPoint for Good & Not Evil