Context Matters

The essential is invisible to the eye. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

For a moment in college, I imagined myself as a female madman-esque advertising designer. This seemed like an exciting career choice and I closely watched brand campaigns unfold in the world around me. I tasted the Skittles rainbow, my M&Ms melted in my mouth and not in my hand. If I needed a break, I grabbed a Snickers bar. It’s possible that my early enthusiasm for marketing came from a love of chocolate and candy more than any specific artistic talent.  This affinity to commercial taglines did prompt a part-time gig working for the university student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, as an ad designer.  

For a full-time student taking a heavy course load in general business and French literature classes, having a job on campus at the IDS was convenient. I would try to schedule the earlier shift before classes started, and this meant walking from my east-side dorm across the prettiest parts of campus to the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism building. I would bundle up in my Old Navy wool petticoat, fill my backpack with the day’s books and set out on foot. Arriving at the IDS office, I’d locate my ad assignments, settle into a desk and power-up the Mac computer.  

My first year at IU was tumultuous and momentous for the university. Having spent much of my remembered life in Indiana, I identified as a general Hoosier and embraced my status as an Indiana Hoosier. It was fun to be diametrically opposed to my Boilermaker boyfriend studying engineering two hours north. In our rural hometown, basketball was king, and we were navigating high school smack in the middle of the Bobby Knight / Gene Keady rivalry. 

That first year at IU, things got out of hand and Coach Knight’s legendary temper exploded. Chairs were thrown, Coach was fired, and the students rioted. My suitemate and I joined the crowds briefly, with no goal other than to be a part of the experience. At the first sound of riot guns firing into the crowd, we turned around. We watched as the mob burned an effigy of IU President Miles Brand from the safe distance of our sixth-floor dorm balcony. 

The front page of the IDS the next day was iconic, “FIRED” emblazoned across a less than flattering image of Coach Knight. As a newspaper employee, we were given the opportunity to purchase tintypes of the cover, which I did, and I still have it buried somewhere in the closet. What a strange memento to carry around, a still image of someone’s professional worst memory. I wish I could have kept a copy of the original paper, because tucked inside the pages were also my first ads. Small squares and rectangles, text blocks and clip art. Some stock images, each ad intended to inspire customers to eat locally, visit the bookstore or rent from off-campus apartments. My style was too art-housey for my own good, minimalist with bold contrasts and puny taglines.

My co-workers were creatively brilliant, talented artists. They produced visually stunning, clever images.  Their examples and those early hours spent aligning, layering, color matching and copywriting shaped my visual sensibilities. I learned about white-space and letter kerning, how to lead readers through an ad as if it were a story. 

Ad design requires close observation, attention to perspective and consideration of your intended audience. Small details, such as a misplaced shadow or an extra character, will reduce the value of the piece and subsequently potentially degrade the consumer’s impression of the product or service you are representing. A poorly designed advertisement riddled with punctuation errors does not portray confidence and professionalism. 

In the business world, PowerPoint is a simple, widely available, and accepted communication tool. At times, I’ve called myself a PowerPoint Engineer given the hours invested generating, updating, repurposing and presenting slide presentations.  My time in the ad design office taught me to create visuals that tell the story. Good slides, or presentation decks, should be stand-alone, so that if they are forwarded or shared after your presentation they can be easily understood. One main idea per slide; simple, intuitive, and memorable.  

I once attended a presentation at a corporate sales training retreat where team-members were asked to give a ten-minute overview of sales activity, opportunities, and risks in their respective territory. The first presenter shared three slides, densely packed with words, paragraphs and bulleted lists, in nine-point font. They then proceeded to read the information word for word from the slides. The text overload and monotone flow of their recitation was ineffective. 

The next presenter was at the opposite end of the spectrum. Most of the slide real estate was bare, containing only one-work prompts without context.  A third presentation provided better balance of text and images, but it was littered with typos and wild formatting. Thirty-minutes into the meeting and I still have no idea what the sales team is experiencing out in the field. It’s true that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but your professional skills will absolutely be judged by the state of your PowerPoint slides.    

I once learned this the hard way.  I was invited to be a guest speaker for an undergraduate career planning class.  I procrastinated, and after a full day of regular work, I had thrown my slides together in a late night marathon session fueled by diet cherry coke and chocolate chip cookies. I was to speak third on the agenda, so once class started, I sat back with my coffee and settled in to observe my colleagues. 

The first two gentlemen were charismatic, their stories engaging, slides visually interesting and intuitive. This was not a recitation of their work-history lifted from their CVs; This was a series of beautiful stories about really fascinating humans told visually. They didn’t use elaborate automations or advanced PowerPoint features; they simply organized their ideas into resonating summaries and then spoke from the heart. 

At my turn, I took the podium, advanced the deck to my introduction slide, and promptly noticed a glaring typo. How embarrassing. Not only was I underprepared and dull, but my nonchalance also erased my credibility in the first five minutes. I decided to do better, to expect better of myself going forward. If someone, anyone was giving me the benefit of their attention, I would make it worthwhile. Be prepared, be attentive, know my objectives and have a plan to communicate them clearly.  At that moment I was determined to become more than a talking head, I wanted to become a storyteller.

Back to that sales presentation.  At the lunch break, I pulled the Sales Director aside and suggested that we implement a presentation template for the Team. This tool would provide guidance on the type of required information necessary (market size, percent saturation, key prospects etc.), while also establishing a consistent methodology for the sales team to assess each region. We would create an example, focusing the conversation on the content and not on the design. 

The team was given the template and an assignment to update it overnight and re-present when the group gathered the next morning. The feedback was resounding! The template took less time than the original deck and the final presentations provided leadership with a consistent overview from territory to territory that could then be compiled and compared in a meaningful way. Now we can see the stories unfolding in each territory objectively, visually. 

Visual tools, including slides, charts, white boards, and other diagrams, focus the audience and provide structure to the conversation.  There is a time and place for free-wheeling, brainstorming. But in general, I’ve observed, folks tend to benefit from having a visual roadmap to help shape, remember and interpret information. Project management provides endless opportunities to put this human tendency into action: Gantt charts, stop-light summaries, live agendas and minutes, even four-block summaries and fishbone diagrams.  No matter the tool you use, making information visible enables objective decision making and action.