The Hired Guns Blog

Wow. That’s some real loud condemnation on a piece of software. But I’m a little disappointed that someone with your experience can’t seem to differentiate between the software tool and the product it is most often (but not always) is used for.

The latest Mac version of Quicken is a horrible piece of software, but would you also recommend that everyone abandon balancing their checkbook and that nobody should go into accounting?

I totally get the frustration, because you probably have only seen “presentation specialists”–people with little to no design training who simply know the ins and outs of PowerPoint and end up creating poorly designed, text-laden decks with header bars for corporate America.

However, believe it or not, there are actually “presentation designers” and “strategists” who do have design training, can work with clients to create and refine their story, and then bring it to life with onscreen visuals—that may indeed be in PowerPoint…or Keynote…or Flash…or InDesign…or Prezi…or CustomShow…or Video…

I’ve been in the world of high end presentation for years as a designer, director and strategist. 95% of people I see are those “presentation specialists” and I’ll never hire them. But there’s a small percentage of trained graphic designers who I hire (and pay very well) who don’t disdain presentation and PowerPoint. These are the kind of people (including me) who work on multi-million dollar pitches, helping a client express their message, or sit side by side with a major CEO crafting their TED Talk or create a multimedia roadshow for a television network. No, it’s not always sexy, but these are also the kinds of people who will work on a boring financial presentation over the weekend and take away a few grand for the trouble. It’s actually quite nice work if you can get it, as you know.

And since presentation has become the way business communicates these days, these types of designers are severely in demand—as you also seem to recognize.

By the way, it seems like you are happy to take people’s money for presentation work—but you also are counseling people not to do it? I’m confused. Do you hold the same disdain for your clients in these cases? Do you even try to create good layout and design in these cases or do you just abandon your training and experience and accept the cash? I’m sorry that you feel the work is so beneath you…

And sorry if this comes off as my own rant, but as someone who has more work than he can handle and who can’t hire good staff and freelancers fast enough, it’s frustrating that so many talented designers have such contempt for a legitimate design discipline. And, with print drying up, every 14 year old with a PC now a “web designer,” Indian Elance designers offering branding for a few bucks, I think it’s incumbent on design schools to recognize and teach effective presentation design along with every other type of design. But, it will come as no surprise, that every attempt I’ve made to reach out to design schools about lecturing or looking for presentation designers is just ignored.

It’s a shame because I would LOVE to be able to hire a trained, talented designer like you who might be able to create the print collateral, web presence AND the onscreen speaker support for an event. Or just a well-designed, boring financial pitch—can’t be any less honorable than a boring financial annual report layout, right?

If I’m completely misunderstanding, and you’re simply frustrated with Microsoft’s product, then all I can say is that experience has taught me (and others) that PowerPoint doesn’t have to look like “PowerPoint.” There are so many ways to use tricks, techniques, creative workarounds and imported graphics files to elicit the response: “What program did you use? It couldn’t have been PowerPoint…” (By the way, Microsoft frustrates me, as does the fact that Adobe never grabbed the opportunity to create presentation software.)

Oh, and by the way, there ARE award-winning presentations. Those who have won Slideshare’s annual award and those whose work has been featured in best-selling books or who have won the “award” of designing presentations for major thought-leaders like Guy Kawasaki or TED speakers have seen their stock rise and the work pour in. And that’s not to mention the rapidly growing world of presentation design firms, led by Duarte Design. If you do nothing else, take a look at the work of DuarteDesign.com…

If you or any of the other “likes” out there are interested in talking more about the differences between “PowerPoints” and “Presentations” and the psychic and financial opportunities of the latter, definitely drop me a line at nolan@nolanhaims.com. I promise, I won’t bite Also, I write a lot about the subject at my site, presentyourstory.com.

I also spend a lot of cash hiring freelancers…for presentation mostly, but also on occasion print, web, video, flash…

- Nolan