Design Matters

Clothes Count…

And so does design. In fact, a properly designed presentation can help you to organize and integrate your ideas better in your own mind, making the process of presenting them to others that much easier for you.

A Well-Dressed You and a Well-Dressed Presentation

And like a crisp business suit, a well-designed presentation can say a lot about you.

Design mistakes like the one above can disrupt the continuity of your presentation and like mismatched socks, preoccupy your audience with non-essentials – after all, the design isn’t supposed to be what’s important, right?

But more importantly, it keeps people focused on your message and ideas, rather than wondering about that mismatched font and the text running off the end of the screen.

A Well-Dressed Presentation

But unless you’re already a whiz with PowerPoint, fixing those design mistakes can be maddening… …and a distraction from what you do best – thinking about and creating your content.

Welcome to Liquidambar

How can we help you?

How can we help you? Liquidambar can:

Create slides from your hand-drawn originals – so you never even have to touch PowerPoint

Create a template customized for your business or, if your company already has a template, ensure that your presentation adheres to your company’s brand guidelines or style sheets

Clean up “borrowed” slides – we all do it, borrow slides from presentations created by others, but the design elements may be completely different. Liquidambar can clean up and/or recreate these “hand-me-downs” to match your presentation

How can we help you? Liquidambar can:

Embed tables or charts from Excel or rebuild them in PowerPoint if necessary

Create or customize illustrations

Correct problems with Black & White printing (like those annoying black lines around boxes, black text over colors that print too dark, chart colors that are too similar)

Create tasteful animations that don’t overwhelm the viewer

How can we help you? Liquidambar can:

String separate PowerPoint presentations together seamlessly – even if they are using different templates

Help find tasteful stock photography or clip art that stays within your price range

Free up your time to spend honing your ideas, not struggling with PowerPoint

We can even come to you if necessary (NY Tri-state Area only)

Before and After

The next slide is an example of something we might get from a customer. Don’t worry if the data doesn’t make much sense, the idea is to just see what kind of design changes we might make.

Market Segments

•Market share ~78%

•Makes up 12% market volume

•Strong Preference

•Market share ~22%

•Makes up 6% market volume

•Strong Preference

Brand X

Brand Y

Brand X achieves Better Share differential

0.00

50.00

100.00

East West North

East 20.4 27.4 90 20.4

West 30.6 38.6 34.6 31.6North 45.9 46.9 45 43.9

1st Qtr

2nd Qtr

3rd Qtr

4th Qtr

Has the market share increased?Has volume increased?

Have referrals increased and by how much?

Note: Very tiny notes at the bottom of the screen

Source: 2010 Internal

Before

Market SegmentsBrand X achieves Better Share differential

Brand XMarket share ~78%

Makes up 12% market volume

Strong Preference

Brand YMarket share ~22%

Makes up 6% market volume

Strong Preference Has the market share increased?Has volume increased?Have referrals increased and by how much?

0

20

40

60

80

100East West North

East 20.4 27.4 90 20.4

West 30.6 38.6 34.6 31.6

North 45.9 46.9 45 43.9

1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr

Note: Very tiny notes at the bottom of the screen

Source: 2010 Internal Department

After

How to make great presentations

Some guidelines to think about:Keep slides light – weight that is – don’t pack too much information on one slide – if your viewers need access to complicated data, give them separate printed handouts instead

Go easy with animation – too much can be distracting – use it only for emphasis or to control the display of information – as with a quiz for example

Keep fonts legible – 8pt fonts are too small but if you absolutely need to use small fonts, use a sans serif font like Arial instead of Times New Roman

How to make great presentations

Some guidelines to think about:Avoid 3D charts if your data is complex – they can look nice with simple charts, but with complex data they can be distracting

Be consistent in your placement of footnotes and sources

Always use master slides and a correctly formatted template – this can make all the difference if you ever need to change templates or colors later

How to make great presentations

Some guidelines to think about:And lastly… when it really counts, hire a professional to help ensure the quality of your design

That’s what we’re here for! Need help?

Request a Quote from Liquidambar today!