PowerPoint Must Die!

written by Dan Whiting | Design

sleeping audience

I remember how enthralled we all were when PowerPoint first emerged from the labs in Redmond. Look—a spinning icon; star wipe transitions between slides; and sound effects reminiscent of the 1950s Batman TV show. All accessible to the novice. No audience will ever be bored again!

Now, at the very mention of an upcoming PowerPoint presentation, people start thinking about how they will distract themselves to make it through the drudgery.  It has lost its lustre.  Many in the creative world—and even on the outside—long for the death of PowerPoint.

But this isn’t about killing PowerPoint. True – PowerPoint has its limitations and annoyances, but what drives the mainstream hatred of PowerPoint isn’t the tool—it is how the tool is used. We have all seen it—the presenter, uncomfortable with their speaking abilities, who puts their entire speech on slides, or the over-ambitious user of special effects, or the purveyor of comic sans and butterfly clip art to make the presentation on accounting procedures “fun”.

It doesn’t matter if people use PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, Google Presentation, or anything else to create a presentation. We are still going to be inundated with bad presentations. Garbage in, garbage out.

In the creative design world, we craft a lot of presentations for clients. We are locked into PowerPoint because that is what our customers use, but we don’t let that stop us from developing spectacular presentations that communicate our customers’ messages effectively. I like to say, “They ain’t your momma’s PowerPoint.”

At the end of the day, PowerPoint doesn’t create bad presentations, people do.  

We can’t all hire a professional.  So, we need to teach people how to craft captivating presentations.  Below are some resources, but you will go a long way keeping these ABCs in mind:

  • Animations and design that support the message
  • Big graphics, less bullets
  • Clear, concise language.

PowerPoint is still very much alive and can be used to create jaw-dropping presentations.  Know what you want to communicate, follow the ABCs, and, please, please don’t ever use comic sans or zippy sound effects. You might just find your audiences looking forward to your presentations.

(and star wipe to black)

Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule for Presentations

Worst PowerPoint Slide Ever Used by a CEO

 

Unexpected Marketing Brilliance at Bring Your Kids to Work Day

written by Jon Barnes | Community, Marketing

Energy Drink Brainstorming

ADG was recently invaded. By kids. Teenagers.  Small creative people.  
What we thought would be just another “Bring Your Kids to Work Day” turned out to be an 8-hour long sugar rush of creative energy and untapped marketing genius.  Here’s what happened (Pictures here).

Setting:  11:45am.  Conference Room.  Eating pizza.
A stressed-out account executive pops his head into our casual lunch with the kids.  ”Remember that huge energy drink client?” he says, frazzled.  ”They just called and they have a huge project for us. A million bucks.  But we’re all tied up.  Can they help? (nods at the kids).

And so began our afternoon mega brainstorming session where the students worked off an ADG creative brief to develop a brand strategy, logo, tagline, product design, video and marketing strategy for XLI Beverages, an energy drink “client” from Columbus, OH.  The goal?  To create an identity for a new orange-flavored energy drink to debut at the summer X Games.  In the next few hours the students completely owned this project, coming up with deeply insightful brand names (“If we use the letter ‘C’ people will think it’s healthy”), key market differentiators (“The shape of our can should be different than all the others”), and fairly realistic viral video concepts (“Make that boring car turn into a Corvette”).

Kids at work presentation

At the closing presentation to the parents, account executives and other ADG staff, the students presented their ideas and reasoning, defending their market strategy and branding concepts.  We were all impressed.  Like a lot.

Lesson to learn?  Don’t underestimate the creative power of groups when there’s passion and ownership.

Although no one in that group had an MBA or design degree, the students came up with incredibly creative and unique ideas totally on their own.  Kudos, students. Well done.  And now, let’s get to know Orange Flip-Out, the delicious new flavor in the Outburst180 line of energy drinks (Ideas by the kids, sketching by ADG).

 

Where I Work: Writing & Strategizing from the Corner Cube

written by Meghan Hunt | Community

“Where I Work” is a new series from copywriter Meghan Hunt, profiling ADG Creatives in their unnatural habitats.

From where I sit, far to the left-hand side of this giant, creative space, I have access to a whiteboard full of code I quite honestly don’t understand. It’s like reading hieroglyphics backwards and upside down… 

The workforce of ADG is diverse—designers, strategists, developers, and program managers all collaborating within a space perfectly sized for a paintball civil war or an intramural dodgeball league (if you can dodge a stressed designer, you can dodge a ball). We’re an odd grouping of creative people and we work tirelessly to keep our customers (and ourselves) happy. Management works to keep our beer kegs well-stocked…which definitely keeps us happy.

In front of me and to the side are developers—people who spend their days programming and wireframing. They play with code and bring ideas to digital life with keystrokes and content editing.

Behind me is my “creative better half”, a strategist and logical thinker who grounds my own ideas in a reality I’m not always willing to admit exists. Writers have a hard time living outside their heads—the colors are always just a little brighter on the inside.

ADG is the kind of company that confronts new challenges every week. Each of us runs these marathons with a sprinter’s speed, moving so fast we can occasionally look like we’re standing still. Blink…and we’re gone, our momentum taking us forward at lightning speed as we run head first into the next project.

We do what we do for love of the game. Which reminds me…time to go challenge the developers to a Breakdance Off. Pop ‘n lock, y’all.

Why 3d is Not a Gimmick (But Awful for Films)

written by Joel Loukus | Design, Technology

one

Like a lot of sensible people, I believe the recent rash of 3d filmmaking to be about as ridiculous as Smell-O-Vision.

And, it’s not because it’s a gimmick, as is popular to wax on about. I don’t even mind a little gimmick in my film. Sometimes the cinema salad just needs a little more mayonnaise, and there’s nothing wrong with that…after all, today’s gimmick is just yesterday’s innovation, and tomorrow’s retro.  So what is the problem?

Immersion is not expression.

3d is a fine technique for immersing a player/user/viewer into an experience. But, films are expressions made by their creators. You don’t watch Casablanca with the intention of wandering around West Africa; you watch it to be told a story—and the filmmakers championing 3d don’t seem to really understand the shift required if they really want to do immersion instead of story.

A good example is depth of field—in traditional film, the depth of field of a shot is used to direct the audience’s attention to a particular area of the frame—by racking camera focus the filmmaker is able to direct the viewer’s focus. Observe: The Governator:

terminator-2

You can’t help yourself.

Your eyes go to the gun at the end of the shot, and not by accident, but by the filmmaker’s design, and you don’t even notice. This is the way visual storytelling works: Direct the film to direct the viewer. James Cameron did this masterfully in Terminator 2.

So, in a particularly horrid moment in James Cameron’s later foray into 3d: Avatar, the protagonist wakes up in a chamber of fluid—revealed by some air bubbles in the foreground.

Bubbles!

Bubbles!

Even though hundreds of millions of dollars have been expended to shoot the film stereoscopically (3d), to allow the audience to focus on whatever focal plane they like-  they force a rack focus, just like one would in traditional cinema, throwing the main subject out of focus so that you have to look at the tiny bubbles.

Which hurts your eyes and brain when you see it in 3d, and this is one reason that many people complain about headaches when seeing stereoscopic films. Cameron is trying to continue to use traditional expressive techniques with this new immersive medium, and the seams are visible and ugly.

It’s true, Cameron could have shot the entire film with wide angles and deep focal planes, so that nothing would ever be out of focus and making the images completely immersive- but only by sacrificing the core strength of the film medium, the ability to express specific things to the audience with a visual grammar. It would cease to be a story, and in terms of visual grammar, it would be like reading a dictionary instead of A Tale of Two Cities.

People like reading stories written by authors with a command of language…they don’t like being immersed in the language itself. The more immersive approach is making the medium less expressive. There’s nothing wrong with simulation, immersion, innovation, or even gimmicks, but if the film ceases to be expressive, the novelty will quickly wear off and become an impediment- hindering the story instead of helping it.