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Where To Find Beautiful FREE Fonts:

70+ of the Best Free Fonts for Graphic Designers.- unstage
40 Beautiful Free Fonts For Creating Attractive Typography Headlines
15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts
65 Beautiful Free Fonts for Web and Graphic Designers

At my last job I was asked to give a 30-min social media talk to a small group of people.

The feedback was positive and feeling overly confident I said to my boss: “Ya, you know this talk should really be 3-hours, there’s just so much stuff to cover”.

A few months later it happened, he took me up on my offer.

This was going to be the first time that I spoke in front of an audience of 150 or so people that was paying good money to come hear me tell them a good story… Did I mention the longest talk I had ever given before was 30-min and not 3-hours?

I didn’t sleep for a whole week and made a 239 slide presentation that was going to blow them away.

Here’s what happened:

(Video has been edited to 3-min, but the whole thing lasted about 20-min, the voice over is what’s going on in my head.)

Now, I’m lucky that the camera guy was on hand to help me out, or else I would have most likely had to refund everyone in the room and probably never be allowed to speak in front of an audience ever again.

So…

My Super Easy Contingency Plan If Sh*t Goes Horribly Wrong…

Always, always, have a PDF version of your presentation.

It doesn’t matter if you’re using Keynote, Powerpoint or whatever else, if you get to the venue and your presentation won’t load, you’re dead.

I could’ve been spared 20-min of one of the most horrific experiences of my life if I had a PDF copy of my presentation and shown it on a PDF viewer. It wouldn’t have had my videos but 90% of the presentation would’ve there.

I’ve also heard horror stories of speakers having their laptops stolen just before a talk, so its this is another reason why you should email yourself a PDF backup of your presentation just in case.

Thankfully this has never happened to me since and the more talks I gave the better I became with dealing with whatever went wrong (cause something always does go wrong). 

Here’s a clip from a talk to the same organization 2 years later, only this time about 10 times the amount of people came to hear it. 

Slides:

Video:

Using Props or Small Animals

Just like using bullets points, animations and sparkling little bits in your slides overdoing prop is just not cool.

If it adds to your story then use it.

Where you’re done, put it away.

Here’s a great presentation from Seth Godin showing just the right amount of prop use.

and the use of small animals should be avoided at all cost.

A Super Sneaky Way To Follow Up With Your Audience and Capture Their Email

Use this line:

“Oh, I only printed 2 copies of my presentation, first come first serve after my talk, or you can email me at {*****} and i’ll be more than happy to send it to you.”

Then send them a SlideShare link.

It just happens to save a lot of trees also, which is a good thing.

1. I Don’t Get No Respect

Designed by: Owen Shifflett
http://www.owenshifflett.com

 

I think this opening slide is nothing short of genius.

The big bold headline, the highlighting ‘SPEC’ (short for speculative work) are really impactful. And my favorite, if you look closely in the background you’ll notice legendary comedian Rodney Dangerfield who was famous for his “I get no respect” line.

2. Behind the Kimono

Designed by: Todd Zaki Warfel
http://zakiwarfel.com

 

The strong red is fantastic. I like how Todd has focused on the lower part of the Kimono leaving ample space (and whitespace, or read in this case) for the headline.

See the difference:

The Education Gap & Brand Gap

Designed by:
Prabhakar Jampa
http://www.younnovation.com/

 The “Anything” Gap is a pretty good headline to use for your presentation. This is a very effective and creative way to communicate this and all you need is to hit that space bar a couple times.

Also similar:

The Brand Gap

Designed by:
Marty Neumeier

http://www.neutronllc.com/

4. Editorial Design with ExpressionEngine

Designed by: Gregory Wood
http://gregorywood.co.uk/journal/editorial-design-with-expressionengine
 

Super simple, bold and readable from space!

5. 10 Ways Be A Marketing Genius Like Lady Gaga

Designed by: me

Big number are always impactful, using a 10 ways to…, 3 lessons from, 5 things you can … is good format. 

For more design ideas from last year’s most popular presentations check out:

Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte |Book Brief

Made To Stick: Presentations That Stick

1. Be Simple 2. Show something 3. Tease before you tell

Nancy Duarte who wrote slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations says the effort required for superior presentations is 36-90-hours for a 30-slide 1-hour presentation. 

I totally agree. 

Putting together 90-min presentations has often taken me all week and its paid off in big ways.

Putting in the extra time means you’re going to have a presentation that will move and inspire people.

At best I only remember 1 or 2 presentations from a full day conference and they are always the ones where the speaker has put in the most amount of preparation. 

Speaking to large audiences is one of the most thrilling and nerve raking experiences. I always find it’s well worth putting in the long hours to make a presentation that people will still talk about weeks or months after.

The bar is being raised at the same time as the barriers to entry are being lowered

We’ve all seen how wonderful Steve Jobs is at announcing the latest toy from Apple, or those presentations on TED that blow you away.

This is the standard for superior presentations today and the tools needed to create those presentations are no longer off limits to you.

The difference between 10 views and 20,000 views

I wrote a draft for a presentation called Personal Branding 101.

It was ok, but not great.

Then I caught a glimpse of an article in Vanity Fair about Lady Gaga and for the next three days I dug deep into everything about her.

Then I created this: 10 Ways to be a Marketing Genius Like Lady Gaga

It was well worth the fuss, because everything from the opening slide to the gossip magazine color scheme made it one of the most talked about presentations on Facebook and Twitter, and It got picked up by people whose work I admire greatly.

Put in the extra hours, your audience deserves it.

Having great content and a well designed presentation is obviously the key, but even the best stuff doesn’t always get seen without a little extra effort promoting it.

Here’s a few things you can do:

Upload Your Presentation To slideshare.net

It’s like the YouTube of PowerPoint and Keynote files and it’s full of smart people who love sharing great work.

Suggest Your Work For ‘Top Presentation of the Day”

If you think you got the chops tweet your presentation URL with the hashtag #BestPreso and it will get reviewed by the slideshare team for Top Presentation of the Day. When my presentations get featured I see an instant spike of thousands of views. Plus i’m famous on Twitter and Facebook for like a whole day. 

Promote on Twitter

3 things you can do:

• Share your presentation with your current followers
• Include @username of people who can help you spread the word, this ensures that they see your URL and tweet in their mentions
• Use hashtags - #SlideShare #PPT are all monitored by people who love presentations. Every time my Lady Gaga presentation got retweeted with the #LadyGaga hashtag I got hundred of views right away.  

Use a short URL

I really like bit.ly. But there are a number of services you can use. 

It takes your links that look like this: http://www.slideshare.net/GlobalGossip/10-ways-to-be-a-marketing-genius-like-lady-gaga-4894115

and makes them like this: http://bit.ly/gagapres  

Not only does this make it easier to share your URL on Twitter but it also makes it easier track how it is being shared. 

Upload to Facebook

Just like a YouTube link, presentations uploaded to slideshare will play in Facebook. This is a great way to get feedback before you do a big release. 

I wouldn’t really post stuff like your corporate sales projections, I don’t think your friends will like that very much. 

Share With Blog 

Do a quick Google search on blogs related to your presentation and send in your link.

If it’s good you’ll get a blog post out of it. 

I almost fell off my chair when I started getting tweets congratulating me on having my work featured on Mashable (which is read by millions of people). 

Turns out that it was actually featured on Mashable France (slightly smaller). It had been picked up by the author who saw it another blog. 

Also looking at stats of which blogs your presentation is being posted on is a great way to make new connections. 

Tagging On To Hot Topics

May of this year is when I joined my first advertising agency and the following month I was lucky enough to sneak my way into the Cannes Lions festival (the Oscars of advertising). There I saw some of the best presentations ever and made a compilation of the best looking ones.  

Only a few short minutes after being uploaded on slideshare it was being featured on some of the biggest advertising blogs who were hungry for any content from the festival.

In the end it became the most watched presentation, even beating out the biggest industry names. 

It’s not really a competition or anything, im just saying :) 

Share With Design Directories

Sometimes a beautifully designed presentation is reason enough for people to share and talk about it. 

One of my favorites is: noteandpoint.com - I’ve never met these guys (or gals) in person but they seem really nice and they’re are all about sharing cool stuff. 

Again having your work featured on a site like this brings some great quality people to your work.  

The Easiest Way to Get Noticed

Comment on other people’s work.

Everyone loves to know that their work is appreciated, so take the time to write something nice on stuff that you love, authors will notice and will click through to find out more about you and maybe even share your work. 

Thank People For Feedback

If people take the time to show you some love, show some back. It goes a long way. 

How To Prevent Someone From ‘Stealing’ Your Presentation

Unless you’re dealing with top secret stuff don’t be. 

Design a presentation that only you can give. 

If you use the methods I suggest the only person able to give your presentation should be you. 

Using things like images instead of text refreshes the memory of someone who was at your talk, but means nothing to someone who wasn’t. 

Use High-Resolution Images

The bigger the better!

Most presentations using Keynote or PowerPoint are 800 x 600 pixels.

So picking an image around this size means you’ll get no pixelation.

What To Do About Low Res Images

Using Rulers for Perfect Alignment

At a quick glance this slide looks ok:

But it’s not. The alignment is all off on the title which will be amplified on a big screen.

See:

Every design program come with a ruler. Use it for perfect alignment.

Much better:

How you can show a Twitter conversation. 

The slides:

Showing a Twitter Converstation

Turning Something Boring Into Cool

One of my favorite things to do is have images pop up as i’m speaking. What i’m explaining to people is always crystal clear in my head, but it just doesn’t always come out of my mouth the same way. I found this is a good way to make sure people know exactly what i’m talking about.

The slides:

The video:

One Simple Word That Will Always Bring Up Quality Finds

It’s hard to find quality ressources like fonts, images or templates. I sometimes just like to go with what other popular design blogs have found. Just add this one simple word to your Google search: Beautiful

It’s a word that almost every designer with style will use to describe something that they themselves like.