Philosophy
Any presentation is a complement to the speaker, who should get most of the audience’s attention. The presentation reinforces the message and delivers information the speaker cannot express, but it should never contradict the speaker or distract the audience.
I design away from distraction, favoring a clean and minimalist aesthetic, with smooth animation when needed, rather than producing busy slides with jarring transitions.
My aim, always and above all, is to fight chaos.
Projects go more smoothly when I can get involved early and contribute a comprehensive and consistent design template with brand attributes built-in and featuring layout options to meet anticipated content needs. When necessary and when time allows, I conduct walk-throughs and seminars to instruct contributors in the proper use of the new template. A good template in the hands of a user who is familiar with it brings order and clarity to a project.
Audiences must be thought of as comprising visual and auditory learners, people who read text before studying images, and graphic-oriented people who need images to entice them to read and comprehend. For these reasons, I encourage clients to rehearse before any presentation so their speech adequately augments the visual content, and it is up to me to ensure graphic and text elements are in balance so we hold the attention of both readers and seers and get our message across effectively.
Use of photography can be vitally important in a slideshow. The intent of any presentation is to show the audience what you cannot tell them — using pictures, in one form or another, is the way to do that. With photography, I prefer black and white or a monochrome treatment. Color photos tend to be distracting and more difficult to interpret, while black and white or sepia-tone photos invite study and require less concentration on the part of the viewer to determine what it is about them that is interesting.