What Happens If I Put These Through a Copier?

In the professional world, sometimes slide handouts are a fact of life. I’m not a fan of them, but they happen. Even Nancy Duarte feels they have a place in the universe. I generally try to avoid this practice by creating fairly comprehensive handouts to go with my presentations, but, occasionally, slides are a more desired format. They may even be required in some venues.

One common problem I’ve seen time and again, however, is what happens when you put those slides through a black & white copier. I saw one such example as I was clearing through some papers in my desk at work a few days ago. Last year, we underwent some equity training, and one of the slides looked something like this. (This is a recreation, I don’t have the original file.)

Now there are a few things I could critique on this slide, but I won’t right now. Instead, here’s roughly what the handout looks like:

Again, this the closest recreation I could make by manipulating the color settings on the slide. The real thing is actually harder to read than this – which brings up a necessary question. What good is running a printout through the copier if the result is nearly illegible? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of printing the slides to begin with?

I’m not advocating that we prepare all slides as if they are going to go through a copier, but, if you know ahead of time they definitely will, that should inform the choices you make – especially in using color on your slides. Which of these slides, for example, survive their transition best?

Things that may be perfectly clear in color can lose meaning or readability in black & white. I think the top two examples fare the best because of their high-contrast nature. The latter two examples, however, don’t transition as well. The Declaration of Independence slide becomes much harder to read, and the pie chart loses all meaning without color. In fact, looking at the grayscale image, my brain reverses the colors of the two larger segments.

All of this can be avoided if you start by creating two separate documents: your slides and a handout. However, sometimes you don’t have a choice. A panel, conference, committee, or other group may specifically want your slides. In those cases, take care with the slide composition and your use of color. Perhaps even take a moment to run a grayscale copy of your slides to see how well they survive. In the end, you want your audience to walk away with something meaningful and legible in their hands.

Who Understands Your Message?

If you’ve been watching TV lately (the offline kind), you’ve probably seen Verizon’s new ads hyping the impending release of the Droid smartphone later this month. If you haven’t seen the ad, you can visit it here.

one of the commercials catchphrases

My immediate reaction to the ad was positive, and I still generally like it (up until the end). It does a nice job positioning itself as an iPhone competitor, and Verizon takes the battle to Apple rather than to AT&T, which is where many ads already go. Even the “iDon’t” sentences are catchy in the same way the old “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” campaign of the 90s was.

Daring Fireball writer John Gruber, however, makes an astute observation about the ads:

I think the main problem with the ad is that it doesn’t make any sense to non-nerds.

He’s completely right too. Of the eight “iDon’t” claims in Verizon’s ad, perhaps four speak to general consumers. The rest are pretty meaningless without a technology background of some sort. The message is a mixed one – the Droid is positioned against a phone highly popular with consumers while being differentiated in ways only a geek could love.

A good presentation, but…

The application to our presentations is a simple one. Who did you prepare your talk for? Now who is your audience? If you are a specialist delivering a talk before laypeople, you’re going to have to present your ideas differently than before peers. Jargon, buzzwords, acronyms, abbreviations – these should either be substituted or explained as the presentation progresses.

Too much of this stuff, and your audience will have another three-letter acronym floating in their heads.

While not talking down to an audience, we should be striving to make things as easy to understand for them as possible. Help guide them to your conclusions and/or results in a way that avoids confusion and frustration. Don’t let anyone walk away from your presentation saying, “The main problem is that it doesn’t make sense to non-[specialists].”

Links 11/01/09

Sheesh, where does the time go? I feel like I just started this school year, and here’s November already. I’ll be tearfully saying goodbye to this batch of fifth graders before I knew what hit me. Anyway, here are a couple things to check out while I keep staring at the draft of a post I’m not quite happy with yet!

Three from Presentation Zen

If I don’t watch myself, I could easily turn this site into Garr Reynold’s RSS feed, so I’ll use some restraint. Here are three recent posts I him I think you should take a look at.

Using Kuler to Create Color Themes

Kuler is easily one of my favorite sites for creating and discovering color schemes. Mr. Reynolds takes a good look at how to get the most out of this site.

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Tokonoma and the Art of the Focal Point

In this post, Mr. Reynolds looks at Japanese architectural aesthetic and examines how we can apply this same type of focus to creating presentation slides.

…The rooms had a feeling of spaciousness. This is because there was virtually nothing else in the room to distract your attention. It is the emptiness or exclusion of nonessential decoration or other items that allows even the smallest rooms to feel more spacious and guide the eye to the focal point of the room.

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Sumi-e, color, and the Art of Less

Sumi-e is another example of an art that embodies the very essence of simplicity and yet is in practice complex and takes a lifetime to master. This aspect of the art of Sumi-e too is a metaphor for life: One never truly masters the art of life or achieves perfection. The pursuit of perfection is the journey, and the journey is what it’s all about.

And a New Resource

Speaking About Presenting

I’m adding this blog by Olivia Mitchell to the resources in the sidebar. She really seems to put some serious thought into her posts, and she’s not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. The site is about a year-and-a-half old, and has a great deal of content. Be sure to check it out.

Delightful Stairs

From Garr Reynold’s Posterous:

I think this illustrates my previous post perfectly.

Unexpected Delight

I picked up this strange product at the grocery store last week called Marble Pop. It’s a product of Japan and seems to be a variation on a drink called Ramune but packaged for an American audience.

What makes Marble Pop unique is in how you open it. Instead of twisting off a lid or prying off a cap, you press a small plastic plunger into the top which dislodges a glass marble sealing the bottle. The marble then rests in the neck and rolls around while you enjoy the drink. There’s an amusing instructional video on the official site.

Marble Pop takes a rather mundane task – opening a beverage bottle – and turns it into a delightful experience. The next time we were at that grocery store, I wanted to get another bottle just so I could open it again.

In a similar vein, I love a blog called Swiss Miss. It bills itself as a design blog – and rightfully so – but I’m always coming back to it for the sheer delight I find in most of the discoveries and observations Ms. Eisenberg makes. One such post is about conversation starters at a design event she attended. Instead of the standard “Hello, my name is…” badges, attendees wore tags that said, “If I would make a documentary, it would be about…”

Image from Swiss Miss. Check out the site for more.

There are times when we simply have to insert mundane information into our presentations. Maybe the conference requires an About Me segment. Perhaps you need to show some Venn diagrams or other graphs. The point is not so much in the information itself so much as what we do with it. Mundane tasks and information do not have to be presented in a mundane way.

The two slides below are very common. One is a title slide, and the other marks the conclusion of a talk, but both bring smiles to audience faces. I made the first, but I can’t take credit for the second. That one’s by Delicious Monster founder Wil Shipley (who also happens to make some pretty delightful software).

As for charts and graphs, you have to look no further than the sites Indexed and Graph Jam for inspiration on bringing joy to your informational graphics.

Image from Indexed

I’m curious to hear from my readers as well. What do you do to delight your audiences? How do you bring joy into material that might otherwise be considered boring? If we take joy in what we do, we should want to share that joy with our audience. Even if we don’t take joy, per se, but we feel passionate about it, we should be connecting those emotions with those listening to us. If Marble Pop can make something as ordinary opening a soda bottle delightful, think about what we can do with all the unique stories and insights we have to share.