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Showing posts from March, 2012

A word on visuals: Transitions

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There are many lessons to learn from films, such as story-boarding, visual composition, and editing. Here is a quick trick to make your visuals moving forward through your talk. The trick is called "wiping" and in it you move from slide "A" to slide "Z" by wiping "A" with "Z", like this: The line between the two slide is meant to give a connection between them.  The connecting element is important it provides continuity.  This simple scene is made of two main elements: The transition itself and the connecting line.  Let me show you the details. 1.  The transition.  Although it looks like Z wipes A, The transition is done in A, it is called "Push" and it is done from right to left.  2.  The lines. Moving A from right to left and connecting it with Z means that the line is at A has to at least go to very end of the slide, in this case the slides are 1024×768 are therefore the line goes up to 1024. To keep the continuity,

Duarte's Diagrammer

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Diagrams are an essential part presentations and Nancy Duarte knows it. In her book Slide-ology she gathered many type of diagrams and organize them in a taxonomy. Now, Duarte Design has come with a great idea, Diagrammer , a collection of diagrams in a simpler taxonomy that presenters can buy as PowerPoint slides. I recommend you check out them out. The basic taxonomy will just be enough to get you started using the right diagram for your task. I used the linear-flow diagram to represent a progress that otherwise would go in a list of bullet points:  In case you wonder TPWL is a numerical method to simulate very big dynamical system developed by Michal Rewienski at MIT.

Three examples using text as images

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This week I got a newsletter of presentation couch Olivia Mitchell. In it she linked to a book of former Google creative director and current Facebook creative director Ji Lee. Well, in fact she didn't directly link to the book, but to the related video of it. I bought the book, and I love it. It reminded me of a design principle I found in Timothy Samara's Design Elements A Graphic Style Manual. The principle is Treat the type as image, as though it's just as important. Here are two other cool examples of using type in a great many. First, the Girl Effect video, and second a video of the RSA Animate