Latest / Presentation Thinking / #219. Nolan Haims wants your presentation to pack a punch

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#219. Nolan Haims wants your presentation to pack a punch · Presentation Thinking

0:20
Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, AKA the Storyteller
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Study Club, a podcast that spends a weird amount of time
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nerding out about slides and couldn't be joined by a cooler
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guest today. Nolan Hames has designed decks
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for Fortune 500 CEO's. Ted Speakers some of the biggest
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pitches on Madison Ave. He's a PowerPoint MVP through
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Microsoft, founder of Nolan Haines creative, the inventor of
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the better deck deck, a car deck built to help presenters ditch
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bullet points for good. And before any of that, working
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as a magician who performed with the Moscow circus.
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Yeah, Nolan, you're a fellow podcaster within the
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presentation industry, having Co hosted 250 plus episodes of the
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presentation podcast with your Co hosts.
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You're fresh off a talk from the present to succeed conference.
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Probably you gave a quite a few because you do that when you
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show up to conferences, you you, you multitrack, but you you dove
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into data storytelling and in a in a recent talk, and you've
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done this for for quite a few years.
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And so I would love to just unpack that a little today, but
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just really talk about your life as a in presentation design and
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maybe we can start out there. Nolan is how'd you get into this
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stuff? Well, thanks.
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Thanks, Mikey, for having me on. So like anybody.
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Yeah. I just fell into it like there's
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no, I've never met anybody who had a career path, who, you
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know, trained it, went to schools and I'm going to do
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this. I was a theater director.
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You mentioned magic and juggling.
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When I was in my teens, I was a performer, knew I never wanted
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to perform. So then I went to school for
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writing and directing and was a professional theater director
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and, and, and writer for a decade and all of my 20s in New
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York, around the country, Chicago.
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And then my, my day job was my survival job was temping.
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So, you know, start off with office stuff.
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But then I also sort of myself was always a self-taught graphic
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designer. So that kind of morphed into
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some graphic design work as well.
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And I landed at a magazine and I was for this long term job and I
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had this boss that was always presenting, always, you know,
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very visual. And she's like, can you make me
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presentations? And I was like, all right, sure.
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So I knew PowerPoint was the thing, didn't know how to use it
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like anything. So I taught myself that and I
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started creating presentations for her, taught myself
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illustrator there because, you know, you know, Photoshop and
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stuff because of that. And then that just morphed into,
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and when I, when that job ended, then I started working in
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agencies, Omnicom agencies and went to Edelman, the largest PR
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firm in the world. I founded industry first
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department there, dedicated presentation.
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And then when I got tired of that, I, I went into business
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for myself. And so that's kind of how it all
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morphed into. And so the, the whole theater
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comes, you know, storytelling, writing, design, like, you know,
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I can, I can go on site to a presentation and talk to the
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lighting designer like I right. So that's all.
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Beauty, like that's what, you know, sometimes we think of
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like, hey, make these slides pretty.
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But clearly there's a lot of a lot more that goes into these
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like top 1% presentations where it is, it's, it's like you said,
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that it's the story, the narrative, bringing those slides
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to life in a, in a meaningful way that actually helps move the
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room. And then like the finishing
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touch, like the, the actual delivery.
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And so do you end up doing quite a bit of like even stage
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coaching given your your theater background?
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I, I used to do some and I sort of, I had a, a great partner
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who's a brilliant speech coach that we would kind of, we would,
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we would train sort of tag team. She would do the more
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traditional coaching and I would talk about how to design the
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slides and how to actually work with the slides.
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That's something most speech coaches actually don't do.
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They don't talk about how to interact with your visuals.
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So I, I did some of that and then I just, I, I looked around,
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I was like, you know, there are people that do this far better
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than I do. So now I just always refer out
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to to other people, but it unofficially sure, you know, now
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and then, but I, you know, if somebody's like, I just need a
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speech coach, I'll these days, I'll, I'll just say, you know,
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there are people that do this day in, day out.
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You. So I think we first encountered
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you as one of the staple speakers at the Presentation
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Summit. Shout out Rick Altman.
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He's going to be on presentation podcast.
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Our next episode, we're talking about the the summit coming out
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the full Rick. Thank for recording this
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afternoon. OK, well, yeah, we, we're huge
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fans of, of that entire summit. Yeah.
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Every year we'd come and we'd see Nolan speaking like, like I
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said, like several times. I don't know how you keep it all
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straight in your head. Yeah.
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But. Wreck.
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Wreck would keep loading me down with different sessions.
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Can you do this one? Can you do this one?
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Yeah, yeah. I think one of my favorite
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things you ever said at at these was calling out the Beastie Boys
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story as one of the one of the greatest presentations ever
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given. Yeah, Well, it's a film.
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Yeah, it's a Spike Jones film. If you have not seen this, it's
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phenomenal. It is.
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And even if you're not a Beastie Boys fan, like I'm a casual fan,
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but like, you see this and I think it's on Apple TV, it's
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kind of hard to find. But yeah, that's a phenomenal.
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It's a presentation. It's a documentary, but it's a
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presentation. That's cool.
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And you've been talking about charts for a long time too, like
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the the good, the bad, the ugly. And and recently, as I said,
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you, you gave a deeper talk at present to succeed.
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Were you over in Sofia? Yeah, I was, I Bulgaria was not
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on my bingo card, but and I had spoken I think maybe at the
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first one remotely for Boris and them and then, you know, it's
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it's primarily European conference with European
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speakers. But yeah, so I went over it was
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a phenomenal, it was a great group of speakers.
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I got to know and it's a it's an amazingly well produced
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conference. So, so go, even if it's just a
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remote, if you're joining remotely, yeah.
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Well, what? Why do you think dataviz is so
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important, especially as it relates to to presentations?
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So you know, my, my core trainings, I call them present
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your story and present your data.
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And then we have, you know, other side trainings, but you
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know, I bucket everything into those and I describe them as
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qualitative presenting, which is your more traditional, you know,
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images and, and and boards and then quantitative, which is
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based on data. And most, almost any
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presentation is going to have both, right?
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So mostly when I train, it's like, do you use some, Do you
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use a lot of charting? You know, the financial
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companies like, yeah, it's mostly that.
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And the, you know, the nonprofit artistics are like, oh, it's
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mostly not. It's the other thing.
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But it, it, every presentation is going to have some sort of
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quantitative information to communicate and, you know, big
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data, blah, blah, blah. The last, you know, 20 years,
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it's just exploded with, you know, people trying to make
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sense of their data and, and use it and communicate it.
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And so it's just, it's just become essential to be able to
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number crunch all that do the analysis, which is not what I
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do. But once I always tell people,
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if you understand your, your numbers, like first of all, I
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say, if you don't, I can't help you.
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Like if you, I've, I've had people, you know, like sales
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people say, can you come and do some presentation training?
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Because my, my people don't understand, you know, our
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company and our numbers. I'm like, dude, that's your
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problem. Like, but if you can, if you
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know, and this is also something I help people, you know,
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acknowledge, like if you understand what your numbers
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mean to you, I can help you communicate it that to a
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stakeholder, to an audience. That's where, because most
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people are OK at their jobs and they understand it, but it
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breaks down when they try to say, you know, go to a client
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and say, here are numbers, blah, blah, blah.
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And the client's like, OK, So what?
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Like I'm looking at a bar chart. I'm looking at a whole bunch of
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scattered numbers. Like I don't like, what does it
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mean to me? And that's where the
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storytelling comes. And that's where the
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visualization of needing of, of, of helping people look at a
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chart and they instantly know, oh, great, OK, that's going to
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help my business. Oh, that's going to, you know,
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push us into profitability. And you said you're a bit of a
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history buff too. So you you dug into the history
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of data visualization. What?
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What was it first like setting out to solve?
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So, yeah, so, so this talk in, in, in Sophia, I, you know,
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Boris asked me to, I'm sorry. He's the he's the the organizer
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of this. Boris and Eva are amazing.
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So he actually gave me the title.
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He's like, Hey, I want you to do something on data storytelling.
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And, and I got a great idea for a title and I'm like, OK, great.
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And it was your pretty, your pretty charts aren't stories
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because the whole, the whole conference, the theme was
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storytelling. So, so your pretty charts aren't
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stories. I'm like, I love it.
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Like I, I love that thing. And so I, you know, I went back
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to my material, my material that I train on all the time.
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Like, you know, what can I, you know, it's like hours and hours
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of material. This was 1/2 hour talk.
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I'm like, what am I going to do? You know, what am I going to
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pull out? And I started to sort of,
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because it was a big venue, you know, great sort of theatrical
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thing. I'd started thinking about the
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history of Dataviz, which is something that that I do know
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about. And, and I, I've done a lot of
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research and work on, but I did a ton more, learned a lot more
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and I, and I sort of landed on this thing of throughout
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history, you know, for the last couple, 100 years, bar charts
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were invented at the end of the 1700s.
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People have been going back and forth between sort of cleverness
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and clarity between like trying to impress people with, you
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know, from the very beginning, like, oh, I've got cool
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handmade, you know, charts in the 1800s, whatever.
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They've been going back between trying to impress people with a
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visual and trying to communicate clearly.
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And it's this push pull, this thing.
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And we keep like teeter tottering back and forth and,
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and, and sometimes we as a like as data visualizers, we
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overcorrect and then we got pulled back like, you know,
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overcorrect with, you know, example like Chartoons and, and
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you know, very like over designed cartoony type charts.
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And then, you know, Edward Tufty, you know, comes back and
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he's like, OK, guys, let's pull this back.
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And but even going back before that, you had like, you know,
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the original, you know, bar charts and everything were very
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clean and basic board. And then Florence Nightingale
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comes around like, yeah, that that Florence Nightingale, she
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created a new type of chart called a rose chart.
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And that was very, I will almost say over designed.
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It's actually not a great chart to use because it distorts data.
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But it did exactly what she was trying to do, which was get the
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British government to basically invest in hospitals and
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sanitation and save this lives of soldiers.
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So it was a successful chart. But it, you know, throughout
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history, we just sort of keep going this back and forth, you
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know, after tough to you. Then we go into, you know, in
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the 20th century, we get into, you know, data art and that over
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design and those infographics. Do you remember those?
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Like remember those infographics that you had to scroll and they
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would just keep going and going and going and like, and
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everybody wanted one. It's like, I sell coffee, so
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make me an infographic on coffee.
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It's like, who cares? Like And so that over design.
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And then we again, we get pulled back to try really, it's like,
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OK, trying to communicate what we're really trying to, you
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know, say here like, and, and the, and the design and the
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impressing doesn't matter. But so anyway, so that was a
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long answer to, I just saw these parallels today between I want
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to impress people with a pretty chart, but actually, more
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importantly, I need to actually communicate what I'm trying to
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say to make a business decision. So I, I just went back in
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history and kept giving these examples of like, it's not you
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like we, we struggle with this all the time.
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And then showing examples from history of, you know, here's
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when somebody did pull things back and it was wildly
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successful and here's where they went, you know, too far into
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the, you know, Dad attainment. Yeah.
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You know, Dad attainment realm. Yeah, I mean those because if
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those New York Times, you know, articles that they're database
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team like mind blowing stuff, super novel and interactive.
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But then I think you might have had like a if you just look at a
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classic Steve Jobs deck keynote, it is basic, right?
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And it like it is. Bare.
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It is minimalistic, yeah, but not a lot there, yeah.
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Who do you think is winning that fight today between cleverness
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and clarity as it comes to our database in in 2026?
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It's, it's, it's funny, 'cause I, it's hard to know like who,
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who is out there. There's so much, I mean, there
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are, I mean, there's some great data people out there, you know,
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like Cole Nussbaumer and Affleck with, you know, data
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storytelling is still, you know, is, is still great.
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You know, Stephanie Evergreen and you know, they're a bunch of
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bunch of, you know, good people sort of fighting the good fight
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and and teaching people what to do and that.
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But then you got like, and I, I, I hate being critical of her,
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but do you know who Georgia Lupe is?
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Yeah, I've seen I I have a book or two of hers with like
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beautiful, like kind of hand rendered sketching and colors
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and. Yeah, so she's a she's a a
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partner at at Pentagram, the design firm, which is like my
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favorite design firm, like totally talented.
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And she focuses on data design, right.
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She sometimes calls herself an artist, sometimes a designer.
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And she will do these beautiful data art things that then come
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with a whole page or two of how to read this chart or hat like
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it required. It's so they can be so involved
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and so symbolic and representative that it's like,
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yeah, it's great art, but I'm just not getting a story from
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this or I'm not getting the date, the story of the data.
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And then, you know, so I showed some examples of her stuff.
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And again, I, I, I, I feel bad criticizing her.
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But, you know, if it's, if it's art, it's art.
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Like, OK, you know, art's up for interpretation.
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You should doesn't, shouldn't be, you know, dumbed down to,
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for communication. But then she, you know, I also
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show some examples of when she was hired, for example, like by
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Deloitte for their sort of magazine where she had to create
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basically a style of charting for their in house designers to
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move forward with. Like this is, you know, they
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kind of she helped redesign the magazine.
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And when you look at what she did for them, it's like, oh,
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that's like I do that. Or like, oh, that's pretty
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basic. Like I could do that in
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PowerPoint or Excel. And so it's that understanding
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of like, what is your audience? What is the purpose knowing that
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when it comes down to being in business and like I got to make
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a chart to make a point to my, you know, on this pitch, That's
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not a place for data art, data attainment.
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That's not a place for the how clever can I get?
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Like that's a place for communication.
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And so, you know, I don't discount prettiness.
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Like it grabs attention like those, you know, like Nigel
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Holmes's charts from Time magazine.
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Those are those are often criticized and shown.
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You've probably seen them like the, the big, like the monster
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or the, the, the girl, you know, the show girl about, you know, a
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chart about diamonds or something.
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And USA TODAY used to do that. They they would call them chart
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tunes like these little cute, you know, quick, you know, pie
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charts, like who likes what topping on their pizza?
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Like that kind of stuff is meant to grab attention and it does
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that good on them. Congratulations.
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Like you. But that's like those kind of
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charts are not meant to make a business decision.
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Those aren't meant to win a pitch or, you know, anything
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like that. And so you've got to sort of
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know what you're trying to do with a chart.
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And if you're if you want to make a chart or want to make
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something to hang in a museum or to or like the New York Times
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sometimes will, which I think they're actually the best in the
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business at a storytelling. But occasionally they'll make
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something that is takes a long time to read and figure out and
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it's interactive. But, but, and I'm like, OK, but
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that's long form journalism. That's like saying you can't
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write a, a, a journalistic article that's more than 500
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words. Of course you can.
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You can write an article of 10,000 words.
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Like that's a valid form, but it's not your, it's not your
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headline, right? Like, oh, you know, this just
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happened, you know, in the world, whatever, like front page
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article. So knowing like what your format
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is, your audience, your situation, how much time your
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audience is willing to spend, you know, with your chart is
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really important. So and we see that like through
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history, like that spectrum. Yeah, and that's that's great
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thinking about the context and the goal.
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We know like sitting back with the the Sunday edition, someone
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might be just in a more casual mood and and might be willing to
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like solve that puzzle, right. But you and I probably live in
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the world of executive comms. Got it, got it, got it.
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Go, go, go. Like it needs to read quickly,
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right? And so I think you talk about
16:47
this really snappy idea. Do you call it the one second
16:50
chart? Yeah.
16:52
Yeah, I want to hear about that. Yeah.
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So, so the, the, the talk in, in Sophia was the the first half,
16:58
maybe 2/3 was sort of the history of it.
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And then I moved into some selections for my sort of
17:04
typical training, which is how to create a one second chart.
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So I gave them like 5, you know, 5 techniques.
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So the one second chart, the idea is as you were saying is
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like you're in a business context you and let's say you've
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got A50 slide deck with 30 charts.
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Well, if each one of those charts currently, due to various
17:22
things like just laziness, legend, you know, pie chart,
17:25
whatever. If all those things you know,
17:28
mean that the chart takes 15 seconds for the audience to
17:31
read, 15 seconds isn't, isn't the worst in the world.
17:33
But multiply that by 30 charts. Suddenly now you're like taking
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all this time. You're supposedly the expert in
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this information that you're presenting.
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Your audience has to stop, figure it out.
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You have to explain it, but if you can redesign those charts in
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a way that it takes one second as close to one second as
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opposed 5 seconds, 4 seconds, 3 seconds, 7 seconds, that adds up
17:55
tremendously. And it it gives you your
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credibility as a speaker. So you put a chart up and the
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client's like, oh, oh, I see. Oh, I get it.
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Oh, yeah, oh, I see immediately how, you know, our numbers have
18:05
dipped in what we can do. And then you're able to move on
18:09
to the next slide, to the next chart, but more importantly move
18:12
on to making that business decision.
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And that's what it comes down to.
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And I, that's how I define often business storytelling is it's a
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story that helps you make a business decision.
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And that's what a chart should do.
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Like you're not entertained. We're not USA TODAY.
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We're not entertaining people with charts.
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We're not putting it up on a museum wall like Georgia Luffy
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might. We're trying to get our
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stakeholders to make some decision and we have to make
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that case as quickly as possible.
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And and sometimes you like again in the presentation context, we,
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I think, I think as presentation designers, we are a little bit
18:50
more pro like more slides, right, Like we someone at at
18:54
presentation somewhere. You guys charged by the slide,
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is that what we do not? Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, Like we, yeah, we we truly believe what it someone said
19:02
like slides are free. Like why not Adam?
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We get it when there's a send ahead, send behind, people are
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get pretty caught up with page count.
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But I think when we're thinking about like sequential
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storytelling and versus like a dashboard, right?
19:17
I think like these days, an exec group might just huddle around a
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dashboard and they, they have to talk through, oh, look at this
19:23
one. And it's kind of hard to focus,
19:28
right? And versus kind of working
19:29
backwards to the end state or to the goal that you're talking
19:33
about. So yeah, is it OK to have
19:36
several sort of like mini charts in a row if you're trying to
19:39
build to this greater take away? Yeah, I mean you, I mean
19:44
absolutely. I mean to use whatever you can.
19:46
I would say like it's OK to put the same data on a slide on a
19:51
screen in different ways. Like we sometimes, you know,
19:54
we'll take the same data, make it a pie chart and then right
19:57
next to it, there's a scatter plot or, or whatever, because it
20:00
shows different aspects of that data.
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But but yeah, I mean, this, this, this idea of sort of
20:08
having to show instantly and clearly is, as I said before,
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like it it, it increases your, your credibility.
20:17
What are what are some of the the common pitfalls you see
20:19
people presenters adding to charts that that sort of slow
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down the intake? Usually I'm so one of my
20:27
favorite quotes is I'm, I'm sure you know this from my French is
20:30
awful about Antoine Saint de Zubry, the the author of the
20:33
little Princess and I and I said this is the the closing quote of
20:37
the talk. It's perfection is achieved not
20:42
when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing
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left to take away. So coming back to your question,
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I think the pitfalls that that most people do is they don't
20:52
take away enough. They accept the defaults that
20:55
Microsoft or whoever gives them. They accept a legend, for
20:58
example, a legend is this key, you know, I talked about like
21:02
Georgia's like very, you know, she had a whole page of
21:04
explanation. But if you make a a typical bar
21:06
chart or pie chart, it's probably going to come with a
21:09
legend by default. And that is a key that requires
21:12
your audience to go back and forth and back and forth.
21:14
Is it blue? Is it green?
21:16
I can't like, I can't really tell like the and so that we're
21:19
way past the one second mark at that point.
21:21
So, for example, so something they do is they don't take away,
21:27
they don't take that legend away and replace it with direct
21:31
labeling, for example, So somebody looks at the chart and
21:33
they see the bar. Oh, the labels right there.
21:35
I don't have to use this magic secret decoder ring to figure
21:38
out what the data is. You know, they might defaults,
21:41
might give you a whole bunch of color.
21:43
Color's distracting. It's the color should be there
21:46
for a purpose and it serves no purpose.
21:48
It's decorative, it's distracting.
21:50
So they don't take away that color.
21:52
They don't strip it out. They don't and usually have to
21:56
put it on these days, fortunately, but they don't take
21:58
away 3D or shadowing or beveling or all that ugly stuff that it
22:02
doesn't. If it doesn't actually
22:04
communicate the story, get rid of it.
22:06
So I think the biggest pitfall is people just don't take away
22:09
enough. And this this comes back to the
22:11
like pretty charts. Oh, it's pretty.
22:13
What can I add to it? Oh, I can.
22:15
Oh, I just figured out how to, you know, put a pattern into my
22:19
my bars or I just figured out how to, you know, put upload a
22:22
PNG and have that be the barge. No, don't do that like.
22:27
You said it's hard to be just like the good old bar chart.
22:30
Why? Why do you think it whole stands
22:31
the test of time? OK, well, first of all, it was
22:34
the first chart created. It has stood this test of time.
22:37
You almost will never go wrong with a bar chart.
22:40
It is a just basically and their variants on of course, column
22:43
chart, bar chart. But it is basic.
22:46
It's just so straightforward and it shows trends, it shows the
22:50
actual values. You can compare them.
22:53
So I'm not saying it's always, you know, the right choice, of
22:56
course not. But you're almost never going to
22:58
go wrong with it, you know? And similarly, if you have a 30
23:02
charts in a deck, you probably may not want them all to be bar
23:06
charts because then nobody can remember anything.
23:09
But yeah, don't feel bad about, don't feel bad about using
23:12
something that has been proven for hundreds of years to work.
23:15
Yeah, basically. It kind of works.
23:17
Are are there any just like common advice that you hear
23:21
given in Business Today that you might have a contrarian take on
23:25
with presentations, whether it's database or just presentation
23:29
advice in general? That's an interesting question.
23:31
I mean, I, I guess I'm always contrarian in a way, but I mean,
23:36
isn't it less fun not to be? Yeah, sort of like typical.
23:40
I'm trying to think around data storytelling.
23:42
I mean, I think, OK, so I mean here would be 1, I think maybe
23:47
it's tailed off a little bit, but the few years ago there was
23:49
a real desire for interactivity and this kind of gets down.
23:54
And so there's some great software out there from like,
23:58
was it data wrapper there? There's a, there's a lot of, you
24:00
know, good software, Power BI can, can do stuff like that
24:03
where you allow the audience to discover like their own data
24:08
story within your data. And yes, in certain ways, if
24:13
it's like a New York Times long form thing where you know,
24:17
here's a chart and you can't like on the, you know, the
24:20
national debt, for example, and you can add in your own
24:22
categories and it's like this interactive cool thing that
24:25
you'd like to educate yourself. Like that's one thing, But in
24:29
business, like generally you don't want it.
24:33
Just like, just like with art, like art is up for
24:36
interpretation. Of course, that's great.
24:37
That's what it should be. But in business, no, we don't
24:40
really want our clients interpreting things on their
24:42
own. We want to tell them what our
24:46
story is, our businesses, what our data is.
24:48
And so I think this the whole like drive for interactivity,
24:51
it's like, are you really going to put this up online and have
24:54
your client go through 50 slides and have them, you know, play
24:58
with the things or that no, they will just want to be told what
25:02
this is so that they can move on with their lives and day and
25:05
make a decision. So yeah, I think that that
25:07
interactivity I just think is overblown in in business, OK.
25:11
Can be a distract can can lead people to their own conclusions,
25:14
which is probably not the point. Right.
25:17
I mean, I like, I would say, and a lot of the design that, that
25:21
like in the one second chart and everything I, I talk about
25:24
wanting to manipulate your audience and that being a good
25:28
thing. Like manipulation has kind of a,
25:30
like it feels like a negative word, but it's guiding your
25:34
audience. And so when I, when I do my data
25:37
training, I, I give everybody a 5 minute crash course in graphic
25:42
design before we start. And I do it by showing one image
25:46
and it's a, it's an image of a post of, of Casablanca.
25:50
Have I, have you ever, have you seen it 'cause I, I?
25:51
No, I don't think so. So it's a poster of Casablanca.
25:56
There were a lot of different versions of it designed by like
25:58
this famous Hollywood movie poster designer.
26:00
He died just a few years ago at like 96.
26:03
And I, I, I show people first. I ask, I'm like, what do you
26:06
look at first? What did you look at 2nd?
26:08
And it is such a brilliant piece of graphic design because it
26:11
guides the audience through the poster in the order of
26:15
importance of characters and names and information about the
26:19
movie. And this designer, this Bill
26:22
Gold did it in such a way that he is manipulating every one of
26:26
us. He's not alive anymore.
26:27
Every time that poster comes up, he's manipulating the audience.
26:30
He's guiding their eye gaze through it in a positive way,
26:34
right? To tell the story of this, this
26:36
movie. And so I tell people, this is
26:38
what I say. This is what we're going to do
26:39
with charts. We're going to design them in
26:41
such a way that you will force people to look at this part of
26:45
the chart first, that part second, that part third.
26:48
And the least important part will be the last thing they look
26:50
at, and that is what you should do.
26:53
You're not deceiving them, you're simply helping guide them
26:56
through the forest in the right way.
26:59
That's huge. I've heard that kind of back and
27:01
forth with regard to a like a board meeting where you know, do
27:06
do we present it all and let so that they know we're not hiding
27:11
anything. But I do think it's as long as
27:14
you are honest at heart, you're you're doing them a favor by
27:17
sifting through all the noise, finding the signal that you
27:20
believe is the story, giving to that, giving it to these very
27:24
busy people to to ingest and then be open to questions and
27:28
maybe be open to saying like, yeah, we looked into that.
27:31
We looked into this. Here's what we really believe is
27:34
is the data story here. So I mean, how do you guys
27:38
handle that? Because I, I have some solutions
27:39
myself for, for clients of when you have all this information.
27:44
But let's say that, you know, your client's client has asked
27:47
for 100 slides worth of information.
27:49
And then they say, all right, client come in and present for
27:51
1520 minutes. Like clearly they have to
27:56
deliver that 100 slides, but not in that 15 minutes.
27:59
Like what? What?
28:01
What do you? What do you do?
28:02
I love embracing like an appendix, you know, like must
28:06
have nice to have and just like what's the core, core, core
28:10
story here? And if it doesn't, if this slide
28:13
doesn't support it, like let's talk about it later if we can.
28:16
But I think it is that process of distillation.
28:20
If, if they can articulate what that North Star statement is,
28:23
needs to be, then hopefully each, each slide that they're
28:27
selecting for the director's cut or whatever, like the needs
28:31
needs to somehow point to that same story.
28:33
I don't know. And so, yeah, I'm a fan of the
28:36
appendix for that reason is like, let's talk about the let's
28:39
get through it and then let's have a discussion and I can flip
28:42
to that. But be very be familiar with
28:44
everything in the appendix too. Can I, can I give you my Yeah.
28:48
What what I like to do? Well, first of all, even before
28:50
we get to that, I always in more formal talks and everything, I
28:53
like to outline everything on paper beforehand and you know,
28:57
kind of slide by slide basis. And I usually ask the client to
29:00
do a lot of that heavy lifting. But the first like column on the
29:04
slide, you know, by slide outline is timing.
29:07
And invariably they fill it like I want 3 minutes to talk about
29:09
this, I want 2 minutes on that. And they add up all their time,
29:12
like, OK, no one, I've got, you know, an hour's worth of
29:15
material. I'm like, great, you have a 20
29:17
minute time slot. What, what are we going to do
29:18
here? Like, so before we even start
29:20
designing slides, they start to realize, oh, I guess I can't go
29:24
into that story about high school.
29:25
I guess I can't do that. It's like, no, you can't, you
29:27
have 20 minutes. But so one of the solutions I,
29:30
I, I like a lot, I call the executive summary.
29:33
So, you know, I say, OK, great, they've asked for 100 slides of
29:37
content, great of research. Do it.
29:39
Make all those hundred slides and then go into slideshow mode
29:44
and look where you start going too in depth for your 20 minutes
29:49
like, oh, I've got you know, and and yeah, you're I oversimplify,
29:52
you're going to have to do some rejiggering and everything, but
29:54
identify, let's say it's 80 slides that you just go too in
29:58
depth and you hide those slides in place, but you hide them.
30:02
So you make your PDF now and again, as I said, I'm
30:05
oversimplifying this, but you make your PDF out of the 100
30:07
slides. That's the pre read, that's the
30:08
post read, that's the whatever. And you know, you send the pre
30:11
read. Nobody reads it anyway.
30:12
And then you get into your slideshow and you only show
30:15
those 20 visible slides and I call that the executive summary.
30:21
But the cool part is, let's say you're on slide four and slide 5
30:25
is hidden with all the detailed information and the client's
30:27
like, hey, where did that number come from?
30:29
How did you, you know, where's the research that I asked you to
30:31
do, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, well, hey, it's
30:34
in the pre read. You clearly didn't read, but
30:36
sure, I'm in presenter mode. I'll just go to the next hidden
30:39
slide. There it is.
30:40
OK. You want to talk about it?
30:41
Great. We can talk about it.
30:42
OK. Are we ready now I can go back
30:44
to my executive summary. Great.
30:45
And you go back to the next. It ends that's so much smarter
30:48
because then you're in, you're still in the order that you know
30:50
it through and chapters. And you can also take those 80
30:53
and put it into appendix as well.
30:54
That's another way of doing. It I love that I am as guilty as
30:58
anybody about trying to stuff I I just want to say everything
31:01
like you said you 30 minutes but you give like probably 4 hour,
31:04
you know, half day workshops on this stuff.
31:06
How do you distill? It yeah.
31:08
How do you tell yourself like there's a they don't need it all
31:12
right now, You know, there's a Part 2, maybe.
31:14
Maybe they'll come and ask me for a workshop.
31:17
You, you just have to do, you have to, you know, murder your
31:20
darlings, right? And it's like, you just know
31:22
that, you know, I got like, I, I and Sophia spoke for half an
31:26
hour, Like I never speak for half, like less than an hour of
31:29
like, how am I going to fit all of the sudden?
31:31
It was a lot of, you know, rehearsal and timing and my and
31:35
I am a huge like just believer in timing and like as I said in
31:39
the outline, 3 minutes on this, two minutes on this one of my
31:42
favorite add insurance. Do you know about talk time?
31:45
I don't think so. So do you know Jamie Garach?
31:49
So Jamie is Bright carbon. Before he joined Bright Carbon,
31:53
he was a, a, a developer and I met him at a conference and I
31:57
was saying, you know, I do all these trainings and I have all
31:59
this like these library sets of slides.
32:01
And, and then I'm asked to speak for an hour or 90 minutes or two
32:04
or three. And I have to like assemble
32:05
these slides and I have to rehearse it.
32:07
Like, I wish each slide could be tagged with a time.
32:10
And so as I assemble each deck, it'll tell me, oh, you're 2
32:13
hours and 4 minutes or whatever. And so literally, I, I saw him
32:18
in the hallway and then I saw him after the next session was
32:21
about an hour later. And he said no.
32:23
And I've got a, I've got a working prototype.
32:24
Oh my. God, yeah.
32:27
Yeah, yeah, I know. I he's just a genius.
32:29
So he and I helped develop this add in which is free.
32:33
You can get it on my site, Nolan Hinds, creative.com/goodies or
32:36
it links to his site. It's free.
32:37
It's just for the PC. But it's this little add in that
32:40
allows you to rehearse and tag your slides and they move from
32:43
deck to deck. So if I, so I've got, you know,
32:46
let's say 67800 slides in my master deck.
32:49
If you need to, if you want me to assemble a talk for 38
32:53
minutes, I grab a bunch of slides, pop them in and I say,
32:56
oh, it's 45 slides. OK, I guess I'm going to have to
32:59
hide or delete some. So and I have to do that.
33:02
I literally have to do that when we hang up here and I have to
33:05
put together a three hour training for a client.
33:07
I'm going to be doing that and seeing because I just think
33:10
timing is one of the most important metrics for
33:14
presentation. No one for navigate.
33:16
OK, going from a 30 minute talk on a big stage to a three hour
33:21
workshop. How many people might be in a
33:23
room for that? Like such a three hour session.
33:26
2025 and how? Do you like to structure that
33:30
like in terms of you speaking time versus them and, you know,
33:34
asking questions or trying things out for themselves?
33:37
What? How do you make sure that
33:39
there's that Carmen Simon like, save the middle, keep them, you
33:42
know, back and forth between listening and trying things.
33:45
Yeah, so I'm the only time I really do exercises and stuff is
33:50
in person for for, you know, over 2 hour trainings, like 3/4
33:55
full day trainings. Otherwise, I just find that it's
33:57
too much of A time suck and and it's like, what are we?
34:00
I have a 2 hour training. I'm going to take 20 minutes to
34:02
do an exercise. Like that's just too much away.
34:04
So my theory always is I want to give my audiences as much
34:09
information as possible and there's a workbook and
34:11
everything. So, so I would prefer to give
34:14
you more rather than less. And so that means we can't do as
34:17
many exercises. But if we're doing 1/2 day full
34:19
day, yeah, we do exercises. So we'll go, you know, I, I'll
34:23
go through and it's mostly lecture, but then yeah, we'll
34:25
stop every once and now and then to say, OK, let's put this
34:28
principle in action with this exercise.
34:31
Let's get your hands dirty. Let me lean over you know your
34:34
your computer and and show you how to make a circle in
34:37
PowerPoint because you said you were all intermediate users and
34:41
you don't know how to make a circle.
34:43
So I mean, look at that. So.
34:44
Everyone's got, yeah, the laptop's open, Yeah, PCs are
34:47
out, You're sharing your, your do you jump back and forth
34:50
between slides and yeah, kind of demo.
34:53
And demo, absolutely, yeah. I love that back and forth all
34:55
the time. Are you seeing and sorry to get
34:57
so granular seeing more Mac, more PC these days when you when
35:02
you do these kind of talks. No, I, I feel like it hasn't
35:04
changed much over the years. I mean, what Mac is still like
35:07
1015%, but in business it's, it's sort of less and everyone's
35:11
like, it depends on the company. Usually it's mostly PC, but
35:15
below is occasionally there's like a, a Mac here or there or a
35:18
company that's all Mac. And, and I, I'm Mac based, but I
35:21
use Parallels so I, I can always jump back and forth.
35:24
Yeah, as needed. On the same boat, and like, I
35:28
know you aren't at liberty to talk about any specifics, but as
35:32
a Microsoft MVP, you typically know what's cooking, you know
35:36
what's new. Not necessarily That's no,
35:41
that's that's a big myth, actually.
35:42
OK, unlike I'm sorry, I, I, I cut you off if I.
35:46
Had a question. I just want to learn more about
35:48
it. Yeah.
35:48
Like I tell me about Yeah, what's what.
35:50
People think, OK, so like Adobe's insider program or
35:55
whatever it is, they get Adobe still releases versions, right?
35:59
And the big version each year, Adobe Max, right?
36:02
So like my friends who are Adobe Insiders and I'm not, they'll
36:06
get the, the new software, the new features like months before
36:10
they're even announced to beta test and everything.
36:12
So they're like, Oh yeah, this is what's coming down the the
36:14
Pike. It doesn't work like that with
36:16
Microsoft. They are in a rolling, you know,
36:19
update. It's they're always bringing out
36:22
new things. And yes, I, I mean, yes, we, we,
36:25
we, and this has changed over the years.
36:27
It comes and goes depending on who's in charge these days.
36:30
Right now, yes, we are getting a lot more NDA stuff.
36:34
It usually comes down and, and, and actually exciting, not just,
36:38
hey, this is a feature we're putting out, but sometimes
36:41
here's a, here's a prototype of something that like an engineer
36:45
thought of like, what do you guys think?
36:48
And that's really cool to say because, and, and we haven't
36:51
been having our voice heard a little bit more lately, which is
36:55
good. We'll say, oh, that's a bad
36:57
idea. Or that that's, you know, what
36:59
if you did this or that, can you move that?
37:01
And we're seeing little things like did you, you, we're talking
37:04
about Mac PC. You know that on the Mac you can
37:06
double click anywhere on the slide and you get a text box,
37:09
right? Any empty?
37:11
Yeah, it's. Amazing.
37:12
You can, we've been able to do that for years on the PC.
37:15
You can't. You always have to go insert
37:17
text box. And that was something I've been
37:19
saying for years. I'm like, hey, Microsoft, can't
37:21
you just like it's such a simple thing and they just introduced
37:24
it on the PC. So it's like that is such a
37:27
small little thing, but it's useful.
37:30
Hopefully we'll get them to be able to double click an object
37:32
and then launch the panel now the way you can on the Mac.
37:34
Can't. Do that.
37:35
Are there any are there any other things on your that have
37:37
been on your wish list that you'd be like?
37:39
Thank you. Just, I mean, oh, I mean huge
37:43
things like the having the animation timeline on the Mac.
37:48
But I mean, yeah, we have lists and lists of things, but I, but
37:51
I, but I think the overall theme is, and I can say this is that
37:57
for the last couple years, it was all AI, only AI.
38:00
That's all they cared about. Like, and they literally just
38:03
were like, if it's not AI, we, we're, we're literally not
38:06
putting any effort into, into the improving the program.
38:09
And that has changed. And I think this year that they
38:12
are now just like that, that small stupid example I just told
38:15
you, they're now introducing more just software features and
38:20
fixes and things like, you know, better background image,
38:23
background removal, which everyone been asking for years.
38:26
Yes, it's technically AI, but it's, it's just a boom, boom.
38:29
And the background gets removed, which you should be able to do.
38:31
So they're introducing a lot more and working on a lot more
38:34
basic features in PowerPoint, which we're all thrilled about
38:37
Things that have been ignored for years.
38:40
You know, they'll still ignore some a lot of things, but
38:43
hopefully this is a good trend. Good, good direction they're
38:47
going in simultaneously with all the AI stuff for sure.
38:50
And walk and chew gum at the same time.
38:52
And you know, this will be my last question in our, in our
38:55
session, but I am how have you seen, have you seen any changes
38:59
in, in the decks that are coming to you from clients with more
39:02
adoption of of AI as they build? I personally haven't and and I
39:09
should also say I I actually doing less and less direct
39:13
client design, you know, more so training.
39:16
But we did an episode of presentation podcast where Lori
39:20
Caller, Troy's partner and wife, basically broke down a recent
39:25
project that they had done for a client.
39:27
And it was really interesting because what the client did was
39:31
they used AI to create the, the, the content 1st and to create
39:37
designed content using brand, blah, blah, blah.
39:39
But we know it's not perfect. And basically they set, instead
39:43
of sending Lori an outline or undesigned slides or just a
39:47
weird Franken deck, they ran it through AI.
39:50
They had it done, they sent a turn, of course, it was all
39:52
flattened. And she, but she took that, she
39:56
said, oh, OK, I this is just simply a more visual design way
40:01
of receiving the content now and then she had to get to work and
40:04
basically redesigned it. And made it live so in and I
40:09
said, was that a good experience or not?
40:11
She said yeah, because it actually she thinks it actually
40:13
forced the client to think a lot more rather than just giving
40:18
this huge data dump to the designer to her saying, oh you
40:21
figure it out. Here's a whole bunch of like
40:23
they it forced them to, you know, really think about how I
40:26
want these five things here and and I want to Chuck this out
40:29
here and I want this image. And then Lori looks so it's
40:31
like, OK, I I got you. That's a terrible image.
40:34
I'm going to get a better one. I'm going to, you know, this is
40:36
off brand. I'm going to fix that.
40:38
But that's, I think, probably the way more and more people are
40:42
working. That's promising to hear because
40:44
I've heard, I've heard that yeah, they're coming over more
40:47
and more having used that clod or or ChatGPT as their sparring
40:53
partner to build it. But I've also.
40:55
Heard I've been actually asked you.
40:57
I've heard, I've heard the opposite where it was like they
41:00
did that, but it was, it was almost like they outsourced
41:04
their thinking and, and it's to, to where the, you know, team
41:08
might be like, Hey, can you, can you explain slide 14 for us?
41:12
And the client's like, no, you know, because like, no, the AI
41:15
wrote it for me. So I have no idea what's going
41:17
on on that slide. So I, your miles may vary.
41:21
I'm sure it's all everyone is hopefully using it and still
41:23
pouring their own thought into it to get to that next draft.
41:28
I hope so, yeah. Can I, can I give you one AI tip
41:32
that that I think is good for presentation because you just
41:35
mentioned like, well, I don't know what slide 5 minute AI did
41:38
it. You can take your deck and OK,
41:40
if you have AI do it, you can take your deck and then drop it
41:44
in the cloud or whatever and say, what are audiences going to
41:47
ask me about what, what should I be prepared for on Q&A or does
41:50
anything not seem right? And I did this just the other
41:52
day with a, a really old client deck just sort of as a test.
41:56
It was like a board deck that they were presenting and I
41:59
didn't didn't even remember what any of it was about.
42:01
I dropped it in and it gave me this whole list of saying, well,
42:04
you know, on slide 4, you say, you know, 45% blah, blah, blah.
42:07
But then two slides later, you kind of say something that
42:09
sounds contradictory, like can you're going to have to explain
42:12
that I'm like, like, and and there there's maybe a legitimate
42:15
explanation for it, but that it it's it can check you.
42:19
So yeah, have like I would say have a one AI create the deck
42:22
and have another one check it for.
42:24
I I don't hate that idea at all. Yeah, get get you ready for the
42:27
stage and for the for the grilling.
42:29
OK, we're going to move into the spice cabinet, Nolan.
42:33
OK, rapid fire. What's like What's your one
42:38
PowerPoint presentation pet peeve?
42:41
Too much. Too much content, too much Just
42:43
not slides that aren't glanceable and slides that that
42:47
draw your audience's attention away from you.
42:50
If you're speaking right, you're that they, they should slides
42:53
should be your backup dancers. Like they, nobody buys a ticket
42:56
for them really. Like they're there to see you.
42:58
Like, let them be, you know, let them be in tune, let them look
43:00
good, but let's get attention back to you as quickly as
43:03
possible. I love that.
43:04
Do you have a favorite speaker or like all time talk?
43:07
I just love Steve Jobs. And yeah, I mean, my my favorite
43:11
of his was the was the MacBook Air launch where he took it out
43:15
of the envelope. Remember that?
43:17
Like there was just not like I love visual explanations.
43:21
Like he could have done nothing except take that out.
43:24
I mean, because he was, it was a visual proving the points like
43:27
this is the thinnest computer ever made and it's in an
43:29
envelope. Like that was just genius.
43:32
In the repetition of that talk, the headline, he he says World's
43:36
Thinnest Notebook. Like if you were, if it was a
43:39
drinking game, you'd be you would not be able to walk out of
43:41
that theater. It's it's brilliant.
43:44
I'm with a. Member in 20 years later or
43:46
whatever it is. What about books?
43:47
You mentioned you know some like Dataviz books, but are there any
43:51
any that you think should be on the bookshelf of any aspiring
43:54
presentation designers for? Dataviz I you know, it's hard
43:57
because I, I literally I am a book fiend.
44:00
I have so many books. I'm trying to think of one of
44:03
one of my favorites. I, I love a book called Good
44:06
Charts by Scott Baranato and I, it was, I think it's a little
44:11
under the radar, but, but I sort of, I quote it every time Scott
44:16
says that And this, this the use of the word pretty.
44:19
He says it's not a pretty chart right now.
44:22
We said it's not a good chart because it's pretty.
44:26
It's pretty because it's a good chart.
44:29
I like that. And so, you know, I use that as
44:31
a launching, you know, thing to say, OK, we're, we're going to
44:34
build charts that are effective pieces of communication.
44:37
And if they, if you do that correctly, like with one second
44:40
chart, then both Scott and I guarantee that it'll look good.
44:43
Like I know you want to look good, but that's not the first
44:45
step. Right, I love that.
44:47
OK and OK, I don't know if you got to choose over in in Sofia,
44:51
but for your next big keynote or talk, what is your go to walk
44:56
out song? Walk out song.
45:01
What is my good I, you know that I, I have a stream deck in front
45:05
of me and I have AI have what I I have a couple of songs like
45:08
for my trainings, but I have one just for daily usage, which is
45:12
you Make My Dreams Come True by Hall and Oates because I just, I
45:15
can't if I'm ever in a bad mood, I literally hit that button.
45:18
I'm like, I I just need a little bit of that.
45:20
So yeah, I've used that song before.
45:22
It's a great energy. Nolan Haynes, thank you for
45:25
joining us and for elevating the industry for all these years.
45:29
Like we, we really look up to you and have have loved crossing
45:32
paths over the years as well. So really appreciate you you
45:36
sharing the knowledge. Any parting shots for the
45:38
presentation thinkers out there? Just less, less, just less.
45:43
Take it it's not be minimalistic.
45:44
You like Steve Jobs, like have the discipline of Apple
45:48
marketing to not put 1000 words on a slide.
45:51
Like the only reason those presentations look good is
45:54
because there's so little text and content.
45:58
So that's the first step. Content effects design always.
46:01
And if you're unwilling to minimize your content, your
46:04
number of words, and be better at that, use AI for it, whatever
46:08
you want, then you're not going to have a, you're going to have
46:10
a clutter design. You can't have minimalistic
46:12
design without minimalistic content.
46:14
All right. Well, thank you, Nolan.
46:16
Check out Nolan Hames at nolanhamescreative.com.
46:19
I'm sure you're on LinkedIn. Check out the presentation
46:22
podcast and anything better deck.
46:24
Deck. The better deck deck.
46:25
If you if you want a code can use the code podcast, just go to
46:30
thebetterdeckdeck.com and you can use the the code podcast for
46:33
a discount on any any version of the deck.
46:36
Heck, yeah, that's the gift that keeps on giving.
46:38
All right, Nolan, thanks the time for for joining.
46:40
And until next time, keep on pitching.