We are so grateful to have had our friend and author of Presentation Zen, Presentation Zen Design, (and coming soon The Naked Presenter!) Garr Reynolds visit us last week. Garr gave us a sneak peek at some of what he’ll cover in his new book, and shared nine lessons from the Japanese bath. (Yes, nine!) Take a note from the onsen and be more comfortable naked with your next presentation!

Thanks to everyone who attended. We hope you enjoyed yourselves; we enjoyed having you!

Don’t forget to pre-order Garr’s new book, and save the date (Thursday, October 7) to attend Duarte’s next event, the Resonate Book Launch!

If you weren’t able to attend last week’s event, here’s what you missed.

Garr Reynolds at Duarte Aug ‘10 from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

In our workshops we often show what great stories might look like had they been presented as PowerPoint presentations—usually to demonstrate how the typical business presentation can suck the life out of a powerful story.

We wondered what the PowerPoint version of the recent Double Rainbow web video would look like.  Here is what we thought it might be like, if it were taken and presented in the standard, bullet-style presentation:

Compare that to the original story.

Can you see that there is just something missing from the PowerPoint version?  Where is the passion?  Where is the memorable moment?  Where is the “whoa?”

So, the lesson is to be careful when following the default layouts in PowerPoint.  Ask yourself, “What would be the best way to convey this information?”  Perhaps a bulleted list isn’t the answer.  Maybe just telling a story from the heart will give your amazing story the impact it deserves.

Whoa…

Listen in as Nancy chats with Alex Osterwalder about his latest book, Business Model Generation. Alex offers insight on how to create and manage successful business models, and explains how his visual approach allows him to illustrate complex concepts clearly and beautifully.

Several days ago, one of my co-workers sent out a link to a video entitled “Embrace Life”, a commercial promoting seat belt use. Apparently The Sussex Safer Roads Partnership decided that it was time for a seat belt awareness campaign that didn’t use the shock and awe approach. Sussex must be a lot like where I grew up, because the only seat belt awareness messages I’ve seen involve threat of punishment… and punishment by way of fine, personal injury, or death.

The video immediately arrested my attention,  a feat nearly impossible when I am two cups deep into a pot of coffee, and juggling multiple tasks. But by the time the father’s expression changed to concern, I was reacting emotionally to this thing… in my cubicle, of all places. How embarrassing.

I thought to myself, “Don’t blink. Just finish the video, collect yourself, and get back to life as usual. And in the event of a total emo-meltdown, there is Kleenex nearby.”

But I could not go back to life as usual. For some reason I found myself thinking about it the following morning while brushing my teeth. I couldn’t stop thinking about how quickly that video got inside my head. Why did it have such power over me? Was it luck, or was there a formula to charging something that fully with emotion? And how could I bring that same level of emotion to my own creations?

As it turns out, it was no accident. On the production company’s website there is a “Making Of” page, where I learned the method behind this masterpiece.

“I wanted to create a visual metaphor addressing how a single decision in a person’s day can greatly influence both their own and their loved ones’ lives. Choosing to film the story inside the family living room represents the feelings many people equate with their own car, in that it represents a level of safety and protection from the ‘outer’ world.”

This was true for me. Instantly I was thinking about my own family and friends… the people I owe my personal safety to the most.

“So to create the emotion of this dramatic moment, I wanted to tell the story using slow motion to allow the audience the time to be drawn into the film’s world and to let them connect with and project their own feelings onto the scenario playing out before them. I wanted to give the audience the time to breathe, to absorb our message and using slow motion was the right technique to allow this to happen.”

Ahhh so that’s how I got so absorbed. It takes a lot to yank us out of the hypnosis of our routines, but I was completely halted in the first 15 seconds.

“I wanted to keep the audience in the moment and so we kept the film’s look to be subtle and natural, complimenting Luke’s onset lighting.”

Although I didn’t notice it at the time, that may have contributed to my initial impression… that the piece seemed to have no wasted energy. No wasted pixels or motions. Every component has purpose.

“Embrace Life’s music … started with Daniel giving examples of the music he felt best optimised the emotion and tone of Embrace Life and from these guide tracks Sid worked his magic until the right blend was achieved.”

There is a moment of tension when the piano changes key at the 50-second mark… and then there is the impact… and the glitter in the bowl showers down around them like pieces of safety-glass or the fragments of one’s fragile life.

The moral of this story is obviously “fasten your seat belt”… but for us creative types, a secondary message exists: Slow down… eliminate clutter… take the high road to emotional impact and really ENGAGE your viewer. Respect your audience. Don’t threaten them… create imagery that they will WANT to remember and maybe even share… and if you can make them want to call their families after your presentation, well then everybody wins.

Read the full “Making of” page: http://www.alexandercommercials.co.uk/Makingof.html

Alexander Commercials: http://www.alexandercommercials.co.uk/index.html

The Sussex Safer Roads Partnership http://www.sussexsaferroads.gov.uk

Language and power are inextricably linked. The spoken word pushes ideas out of someone’s head and into the open so humankind can contend with adopting or rejecting its validity. Moving an idea from its inception to adoption is hard but it’s a battle that can be won simply by wielding a great presentation.

Presenting those ideas can either evoke puzzled stares or frenzied enthusiasm. The outcome is determined by how well the message is delivered and how well it resonates with the audience. After a successful presentation, you might hear people say, “Wow, what she said really resonated with me.”

But what does it mean to truly resonate with someone? While doing research for Resonate, I learned about lovely  phenomenon in physics. If you know an object’s natural rate of vibration, you can make it vibrate without touching it. Resonance occurs when an object’s natural vibration frequency responds to an external stimulus of the same frequency.

Below is a beautiful visualization of resonance. My son poured salt onto a metal plate, then hooked up to an amplifier so that the sound waves traveled through the plate. As the frequency was raised, the sound waves tightened and the grains of salt jiggled, popped, and then moved to a new place, organizing themselves into beautiful patterns as though they knew where they “belonged.”

How many times have you wished that students, employees, investors, or customers would snap, crackle, and pop to exactly where they need to be to create a new future? It would be great if audiences were as compliant and unified in thought and purpose as these grains of salt.

And they can be. If you adjust to the frequency of your audience so that the message resonates deeply, they, too, will display self-organizing behavior. Your listeners will see the place where they are to move to create something collectively beautiful. A groundswell.

The audience does not need to tune themselves to you—you need to tune your message to them. Skilled presenting requires you to understand their hearts and minds and create a message to resonate with what’s already there. Your audience will be significantly moved if you send a message that is tuned to their needs and desires. They might even quiver with enthusiasm and act in concert to create beautiful results.

End Note: Visualizing sound is called cymatics. Evan Grant did a lovely TED talk implying at the end that maybe even the earth was formed from a sound.

Nancy gives us a tour of her office and an update on the progress of her second book, resonate. Resonate comes out in September 2010, and look at the status! Pretty amazing how it’s all coming together. Watch till the end for a little shout out to me for Administrative Professionals Day, which is today!

Simplicity does not necessarily mean skimping out on the meat of your presentation. When handled correctly, complex scenarios and data can still be included while being transformed into something that is easily comprehensible to the average audience member.

No, this does not mean packing seemingly endless charts, tables, and graphs onto every slide. What it does mean is that with the right finessing, even incredibly complex data can be picked apart and rearranged in a simple and engaging way.

“The Power Gap” (a new animated infographic by Airside) is a great example of making a complex story look effortless…

“Demos came to us with an intensely detailed statistical study, which rated every single constituency in Britain according to a number of different social and economic aspects. Each of these aspects has an effect on the power held by the individuals in each area, and by the constituencies as a whole. For Demos, this survey explained theoretical concepts about power as well as showing its practical implementation in 21st century Britain. For us, it was a lot of multi-layered information to squeeze into a short animation.

Over the course of several meetings with Demos, Airside wrote a script that communicated the main concepts behind Demos’ survey, as well as showing the practical significance of the survey results. We set the problem in a historical context in order to create a narrative that would help ordinary members of the public understand these concepts.”

–Airside

This “epic spreadsheet of numbers” is the data that Airside received. Ouch!

Airside’s Nat Hunter speaking at Design Event 09 in Newcastle

Check out the project’s process at Airslides’s Blog: http://www.airside.co.uk/blog/?p=420

But wait! There’s more! If you have not seen Jonathan Jarvis’s “The Crisis of Credit Visualized”, you really are missing out! Seriously– is there anything more complicated to explain than the credit crisis?

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

“The Crisis of Credit Visualized distills the economic crisis into a short and simple story by giving it form. It is also argues that designers have the ability to see a complex situation, then turn around and communicate it to others. By giving graphic form to the credit crisis, it becomes comprehensible. Not only do economic activities take shape, but new relationships can emerge between these shapes.”

–Jonathan Jarvis

Everything great starts with a sketch!

Jarvis’s storyboards–look like something?

Print spreads made from the same assets as the video

Check out the project’s process at Jarvis’s site: http://jonathanjarvis.com/crisis-of-credit

How would you explain your story to a friend who knows nothing about it? How would you get your grandmother to understand and be moved by your message? Before jumping into your next presentation, take a deep breath and remember that for an audience to comprehend your message, you’d have better luck by making it comprehensible.

When if comes to software, bells and whistles are great! If you don’t know how to use them. Working in PowerPoint every day, we’ve learned a few tricks. So when Microsoft asked us to use latest version of PowerPoint to create a cinematic presentation, we couldn’t wait to show off our skills.

(Our excitement, Exhibit A: http://blog.duarte.com/2009/11/the-microsoft-office-2010-public-beta-is-available-and-we%E2%80%99re-in-it/)

We used PowerPoint 2010–and only PowerPoint 2010–to create a short trailer sharing “5 Rules for Creating Great Presentations.” (See below.) It includes everything from Photoshop-looking graphics to Flash-like animations, all done within PowerPoint.

Nancy recently took a turn as a guest writer on The PowerPoint Team Blog, to expand on the process, and outline the top “5 tips for Getting PowerPoint to Sing!” Check it out here.

How important is the launch of a new product? Important enough to plan, rehearse, and script something comprehensible?

On CNBC, the newscasters compare today’s Google Nexus One launch with the iPhone launch Steve Jobs hosted just two short years ago. Here’s the clip, scroll forward to 3:44.

Steve Jobs definitely plans and rehearses more than this guy did. This old article in the Guardian states that Steve Jobs spends weeks planning a presentation and almost two full days rehearsing it.

The newscaster comments the slides were so bad he thought they were done on an old overhead projector, which isn’t true. It was the delivery that was bad.

In defense of well designed slides, I thought the launch presentation was lovely. We didn’t create these slides but I sure wish we had. They’re beautiful. And the Boy Genius Report did a great job capturing images of the slides that were projected. Lovely.

So I can go on long rants about how spending time on attractive slides is a waste of time if you don’t have anything to good to say. The newscasters came across like the entire presentation was a disaster. Now, there are times when presenters try to camouflage their lack of content by creating attractive slides. They are trying to disguise their lack of preparation and inferior insights with making things look attractive. At times the audience is so thrilled to be given visual breathing room it lures them into thinking that the content was actually okay when it was either poor or non-existent.

However, I don’t think that is the case with this launch presentation. I think the poor guy just didn’t practice. It was a big day, with big stakes and well… he shoulda known better. The press picked up on his foible and I hope he catches a break.

My advice to the guy? Practice, practice, practice.

Duarte had the distinct pleasure of working with bestselling author Michael Pollan to turn his ideas about sustainability and food systems into a visual presentation for the PopTech conference last month. Plan to eat your lunch in front of the computer today so you can enjoy his presentation:

It’s rare that we’ll work with such a gifted natural storyteller. You can see Michael speak sans visuals here and here. So, to take advantage of Michael’s comfortable, engaging speaking style, we built into the presentation some key moments, opportunities for Michael to really connect with the audience.

Here’s two of them:

Just tell them a story

Michael’s a bestselling author and journalist, so we knew his story would be top-notch. But we wanted a good way to invite the audience into the story. During our early conversations, Michael told us about an experience he once had, driving along I-5, encountering a feedlot for the first time. It was a compelling story, evoking instant recall for anyone who’s had the experience, so we used that setting as a starting point for the rest of the presentation.

In the video, as he describes his experience, notice how Michael also outlines the three main issues that he’ll be talking about in the rest of the presentation. This is a nice way of avoiding the traditional “overview” slide while still letting the audience know what’s coming.

(cc) Pop!Tech 2009 pictures courtesy Social media team at www.networksolutions.com and growsmartbusiness.com.

Make it real for them

One of the challenges with Michael’s research is that the audience can easily get lost in the details. Climate change, health statistics, and energy use are pretty abstract concepts. We wanted the audience to walk out with something concrete, an experience that they would carry with them. What a perfect opportunity for a S.T.A.R. moment!

Michael had already told us that he wanted to help people understand the amount of oil used to create the fast food so many of us eat every day. So how much oil is in a fast food meal? Or in a single cheeseburger? Michael set out to do the research, and we started thinking about the best way to make a statistic “stick” with the audience.

We decided to let the audience see the cheeseburger right next to the oil it took to produce it. Not only that, but we added the element of suspense. How much oil would it take? Eight ounces? Sixteen? (26.2 ounces, in fact.)

As you can see, Michael pulled off the S.T.A.R. moment beautifully, even eliciting a laugh from the crowd when he tasted the oil at the end. If you were watching the Twitter feed during the presentation, you would have seen the oil statistic repeated over and over again. The statistic stuck.

The Last 10 Yards

In the end, our visuals can only carry a speaker so far. The rest is up to them and their ability to create an experience for the audience.

Michael recognized the importance and potential impact of his presentation on this audience, and he committed himself to practicing, over and over again, until he got it right. He performed the presentation in front of a Duarte audience on two separate occasions, tried it out on his journalism students at least once, and then rehearsed it several more times by himself. It shows. Never underestimate the importance of rehearsal.

Enjoy!