I am a bit shocked the way the “after” designs are using a condensed sans-serif font; in fact, it’s not much more readable than the serif font in the “before” designs. It’s also quite small relative to the screen size. Were there reasons for this?

Long live Helvetica! Using it now. PPT people: it’s way better than Arial, look for a good version.

I came across something the other day that I think you guys will love: It’s from a startup company in Hungary. I wrote about it on Clarity Rules – here’s an excerpt. (And no, I don’t have anything to do with the company.)

Prezi: Coolest presentation tool of 2009

“Focus too much on the details and your audience might not get the big picture. But focus too much on the big picture and they might miss those devilish details.”

I’ve seen the future.

After reading this, you will have too.

The future is Prezi.
Prezi describes itself as “A Zooming Editor for Stunning Presentations.”
I watched a couple of presentations in their showcase, and they’re right.

Do you know what? Just stop reading this and click through. Hit the logo and watch the video on the opening screen. That tells you why. Then scroll down and click on the one called “About Perspective”. It tells you how.

Here it is again: Prezi

It will explain itself. If you aren’t jumping out of your skin with interest, then in a year or two when this becomes more mainstream, you’ll say to yourself

“Oh yeah. I remember reading about that on Clarity Rules. I see what he was on about now…”

Don’t be that person. You’ll feel foolish. Check it out.

We’ve come a long way in the last couple years. Vivid images and big type are supplanting bullet points. Succinct well thought out key messages are supplanting gratuitous ‘thud factor’.

But big-picture, big-text, clean design style (a la Presentation Zen) and the 10-20-30 rule style (though still among my very favourite things) are great for pitches, they’re great for keynotes, but you have to pick the medium to match the message, and as presentation techniques, they can sometimes fall short when it comes to presenting detailed information. Indeed, Nancy Duarte’s top guess in her ‘Five Predictions for Presentations in 2009″ was that tools for complex presentations would have to evolve this year.

It’s true. New techniques have to be added to the presenter’s arsenal. Zooming interfaces like Prezi just might be one of those techniques.

It is just in Beta, and to my knowledge not yet commercially available, but it appears that Prezi allows you to design an entire presentation on a page, then using movement, magnification, orientation and position, lets you zoom in, out and around your presentation to tell a story. Indeed the ‘zi’ in Prezi stands for “Zoom Interface”. They were originally going to call the product “Zui” for Zoom User Interface, but people found it too hard to pronounce. Prezi it is.

Sometimes I think PowerPoint should bill you for each animation you use. A fast dissolve costs a nickel, and the so-called “exciting” animations, like Pinwheel or Light Speed cost ten bucks per use.

It might help with “animation abuse”, especially considering the current economy. Who could afford to use Boomerang?