Presentation design often comes at the back of other marketing communication (advertising, scripts for brochures, white papers, and web sites). In many cases, marketing can benefit from the opposite approach. Visuals are much better to lay the foundation of a marketing story than text. And it is far easier to involve a CEO or other senior executive in a visual presentation design process, then force her to go through revisions of text.

Most financial or scientific data slides gave all visual elements equal weight.

1. The big trend in the data (a declining line for example)
2. The amounts are in EUR million
3. The explanation that 2010 includes France
4. The fact that 2011 results are still unaudited
5. The source of the market data
6. All data is to be treated confidential

This is not how the novice discovers your data. Make the first order element pop out, so people get the message without the clutter of all the other information. 

I said before that it is a shame that PowerPoint (or Keynote) do not have these powerful replicators that you can find in motion graphics software. Filter Forge is a nice piece of software that plugs into PhotoShop and extends the range of filters you have available for your images.

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