Communicate, Don’t Design

Everything begins by understanding the key messages and desired takeaways. By taking a step back and figuring out the point of the communication, we can determine what’s the best way of getting to that goal. That goes for a presentation as much as it does an email – why are we sending this, how do we make sure our words are being paid attention to, and are we wasting the recipients time?

In many cases a first pass at a presentation has already been made. That’s great, it sets an outline that we can subsequently follow and build from.

The Information Dump

Your job is to know your business inside and out. Our job is to help you talk about it. So we’ll sit together and learn everything you know. Having spent the past 20 years learning about myriad industries and how to best convey their benefits in 30 seconds makes it less intimidating than it may seem.

Realistically, it’s a benefit to not know your business. It’s easier to understand what’s important to share and what isn’t by how confusing it is to a layperson. What needs to be said to have someone else repeat back your key messages and takeaways and nothing more.

We’ll build an outline and ask you to fill it in with all the information necessary, as imperfectly as humanly possible. Then we can get started working.

Design to Communicate

Our driving force behind all design is one word: “Why?”

Why is this blue? Why is this icon here? And if it belongs here, why is it this icon? Can we design something better and more relevant? Why is this animated?

All graphics and animations must be subservient to the message. How we animate can be classy or overbearing, making people motion-sick. How much we put on a slide can take away from what we put on it.

Do It Again

We make two presentations, one for you and a leave-behind for your audience.

When you give a presentation, the information on screen should be complementary to the words you’re saying. If your audience is reading ahead, they’re not paying attention. The last thing you want is someone in a meeting taking pictures of your slides on their phone and then re-presenting them to their bosses without all of your information.

So we make them their own deck including all the information they need to represent your ideas when you’ve left the room. Confidential information gets edited out, extra explanation you may have been sharing audibly gets brought in. The leave-behind can take any form – PDF to Powerpoint, printed, emailed or handed out on thumb drives.

And by letting your audience know they’ll be receiving a copy after the meeting, they spend less time trying to transcribe what you’re saying and more time listening.