And don’t kid yourself. Your visuals are important. People are inspired by a good presentation. They’re energized and motivated, and they have a tendency to believe what you’re saying when they’re genuinely interested. The point of giving presentations is generally to convince your audience of some idea or fact. You want them to engage in what you’re saying, not sit there desperately trying to read the endless slides of paragraphed bullets that you’re essentially reading verbatim. Provide very succinct points if you do want text on screen, and remember, VISUALS. And not a single slide of 30 shitty, stretched, low-res graphics that you pulled off Google. Go fullscreen with your images. Use metaphors. You don’t have to be so literal. Put something up that makes them think, and chuckle at the clever relationship between your image and what you’re speaking about. If your presentation is about financials, just put up the RELEVANT numbers. Giant endless tables of data is completely indigestible in a presentation setting. Pull out trends and highlights.

Too many presentations seem to be doing double duty as a leave-behind. If you need a leave-behind, print out a Word doc. Word documents are great at showing excessive amounts of text and tables. Or, leave behind your PowerPoint deck, with a really robust set of slide notes. There’s really no good reason to have the entire content of your presentation on your slides.

And some additional tips for making your presentations look better in general:

1. Who says slide backgrounds have to be white? Try some coloured slides with white text.
2. Don’t ever ever ever stretch an image past its natural aspect ratio. What I mean is, when resizing an image, hold down shift, and never pull the transform controls only up or only side to side to fit a given area. You’ve either just stretched the shit out of someone’s logo, which is probably a no-no in their brand guidelines, or you’ve stretched someone’s face, which they likely won’t appreciate after losing 20 lbs on the South Beach diet. Every time you stretch a graphic, the terrorists win.
3. Animations animations animations. Both in-slide, and transitions between slides. You’d be amazed at how much more dynamic a presentation becomes when you give it some movement. Vary the animations, and dammit don’t use the barn door or spiral transitions. Get the latest version of PowerPoint, there’s some nice new ones in there. Just be careful with animations, it’s easy to get carried away and turn the thing into a seizure-inducing nightmare.
4. Who says you have to use Arial? There are some great free fonts out there, if you don’t want to purchase. Just make sure that the machine giving the presentation has the correct fonts installed on it. Moving away from the defaults will help scrub off that template stench
5. Simple slides with minimal text. You present the point at a high level, and then discuss. Put the question onscreen rather than all the answers. (These bold statement/question slides look great on aforementioned coloured backgrounds with non-standard fonts.)
6. Be a minimalist. Don’t embellish your slides with a bunch of junk. The more you put on each slide, the more you take away from its impact.
7. Use master slides. You’ll be doing yourself a huge favour when you change your mind on slide visuals if you’re working from a tempalte, and your presentation will be much more consistent looking.

What I’m surprised by is the people who are disappointed that the form factor didn’t change. We heard a lot of that when the iPhone 4S came out too. And most of the people complaining that the form factor didn’t change also don’t list any gripes with the current design. Why do so many people want change just for the sake of change? Are we comforted by changes on the outside, as its our only visual assurance that we’re not being duped into buying the same device all over again? Personally when it comes to Apple products I’d rather have overhauled guts and speed boosts than a redesigned outside. They’re already doing a pretty slick job of the outside, even on Gen 1 models.

One of the driving principles of iterative design is this: don’t change the parts that are working. Often when graphic designers are coming up with multiple concepts for a creative piece, we carry across the elements that are “right”, typeface being the most common. When you spend hours searching for that perfect font, you don’t throw it away just for the sake of a second concept execution.

Not to say that Apple device designs are always perfect. Personally I think the Magic Mouse is a good example of where form has always trumped function. It’s not remotely ergonomic, and I still drag lazy fingers across the touch sensitive surface and end up shooting my cursor across the screen to the nether regions of my desktop. I do think the iPad form factor is pretty damn good however, and I’m not sure what you could do to improve it. I also like the iPhone 4 design and was pleased when they didn’t update it, although I do find the glass back makes it slippery as a damn bar of soap.

Aaaanyway, I guess my point is that we should all be more thoughtful in our wish lists. Remember that every time a product changes its physical design and dimensions, most of those lovely accessories and peripherals you bought for it no longer work on the new one. And I don’t want to hear you bitching and complaining when your iPad 3 case doesn’t fit your shiny new iPad 4, ya dorks.

Here are the best ones:

About 6 years ago when I was going to art school I started to become interested in photography. At the time DSLRs were relatively new, and being a student, I was poor. I bought a D40X with money from a tax return, and was blown away by the difference between it and my old Kodak point-and shoot. I didn’t buy a kit lens—but I also didn’t buy an expensive one. I knew my limitations. No amount of lens was going to make me not suck as photographer.

Over these past 5 years, I’ve become more comfortable with a camera, and while I’m by no means good, I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to feel limited by my 5 year old entry-level DSLR. The small sensor and pathetic ISO make it very unsuitable for hand-held shooting in low light, as I became painfully aware of when trying to take shots at my friend Kyle’s wedding this past weekend.

Exhibit A: noise

At 100%:

There were already a couple of amateur photographers shooting the wedding, and I didn’t want to get in their way, so I found a pew with a reasonably unobstructed view and zoomed in with my 18-135mm lens. The church was somewhat dim, but I couldn’t bear to turn the ISO any higher than 800, because in the D40X an ISO of 1600 (highest available) produces extreme noise. Even here at 800 it’s getting pretty substantial. I also had to shoot in shutter priority setting so that I could keep it fast enough to not blur whenever my subjects moved slightly. This meant I had to artificially boost the photos a fair bit in the RAW editor, but I was able to salvage them. I figured I could fix dark, but I could never fix blurry (just one of the many things I’ve learned the hard way over the years).

Exhibit B: Blurring

I love the blurring in the bubbles, but I wish Katie’s face hadn’t suffered from blurring due to movement. Her expression is so unabashedly joyful, I wish I had been able to capture it sharper. It was just after sunset and the dusky light was limiting. I shot continuously as they came out of the church but only a couple of images were even usable.

Still, I do think it’s a great image, and not remotely because of anything I did. Those two are truly that happy.

In addition to its poor low-light performance, I’m also bothered by the fact that the camera body doesn’t have an AF motor (which sucks considering the new wide angle lens I bought also doesn’t have an AF motor—I have to focus everything manually, which leads to me missing shots). It would also be nice to upgrade to a camera that does HD video, although not terribly important considering I already have 3 devices that do HD video.

So, I’ve been looking at cameras online, and I’m considering a Nikon D700. It’s a semi-professional DSLR, and the most inexpensive full-frame DSLR that Nikon offers. I read about it last night for a couple of hours and have determined that it’s the best bang for my buck if I want to get a more serious camera. I still won’t be a great photographer, but I won’t be so frustrated by my camera’s limitations. Sure, anyone can take a great shot with an iPhone, but your expectations for quality are always managed. I expect more out of my DSLR, and in the 5 years since I bought my D40X, DSLRs have come a long ways, and so have I.

Update: The D800 was announced today. Holy shitballs. I’m getting one of those.

Click the thumbnails to view high res images.