Case Study - Before and After of a corporate presentaion slide update.

1. Case study
A visual update to 60 existing slides, for an investors’
boardroom presentation – in 5 days.
From this… …to this.

2. Brief• To visually update a deck of 60 slides for an investor pitch for a new web retail brand in
Japan. At least two proposal concepts required.
• Slides needed a vibrant, contemporary look with a visual theme to run throughout. Other
than the original presentation, no graphic assets or style guide were provided– even the logo
had to be redrawn.
• The presentation needed to be translated into Japanese within 24 hours of final delivery, so
all text had to remain editable in PowerPoint. Even an embedded Excel table had to be
editable, yet conform to the overall look.
• A video, (still in production until hours before the final deadline), to be seamlessly
embedded.
• Flexibility and version control was crucial, as the content and order of slides was being
constantly updated by the investor team.
• Limited budget for stock images, although some very specific images required.
• Format to 16:9, for a large format digital display.
• To be delivered within 5 days, with client contact limited to evening calls from Japan, and
occasional emails.
Original slides

3. Method• Created a flat look, with a palette of 6 colours, to help navigate through each section of the
agenda. The combination of two sans-serif fonts , (Gotham, Franklin Gothic Demi), was used
to increase legibility and impact.
• The logo was re-drawn as a vector, and then reused in other graphic elements.
• After the look was created in Photoshop, a shell template was built that created as many
graphical elements as possible natively within PowerPoint. This allowed for an agile response
to the numerous amendments.
• A live collaborative document was created on Dropbox to share revisions and amendments,
from which updates were then copied to the main document - which was kept safely offline.
• Final delivery package contained all paid for images, fonts, video, and the presentation itself
with completely embedded fonts and video, as well as all legacy formats, (plus a backup pdf
for good measure).
• An experienced freelancer was brought in to help with both initial concepts and production of
final slides, to ensure delivery within a very limited time-frame.
Total hours:
81 hours over 5 days
Updated section headers & Contents page

4. Before After
Contents page, with colour-coded navigation

5. Before After
Section headers

6. Before After
Bar graphs

7. Before After
Bar graphs

8. Before After
Bar graphs

9. Before After
Bulleted lists

10. Before After

11. Before After
Even though I would personally never recommend using a word-cloud in a presentation, this was a specific request from the
client. An added challenge was the need to accommodate late amendments to words and their size and colour weighting.
To overcome a potentially time-consuming graphic, this was created procedurally using a generator, converted to an .svg and
imported to Photoshop to scale and re-colour before exporting to PowerPoint.
Word cloud

12. Before After
Simplifying the message

13. Before After
Simplifying the message

14. Before After
Refining graphics

15. Before After
Refining graphics

16. Before After
Refining graphics

17. Before After
Refining graphics

18. Before After
Refining graphics

19. Before After
Refining graphics

20. Before After
Refining graphics

21. Before After
The table used here needed to be amended at the last moment, and so the original Excel spreadsheet was embedded., and
heavily formatted in order to conform with the rest of the overall look. Although this took much more time than simply
recreating a table using other means, it retained all the formulas required for late amendments.
Embedded Excel table, for last minute changes

22. To retain editability and minimise file size, raster graphics were kept to an
absolute minimum. The text “Compelling content = more sales”, although
created originally in Photoshop, was identically replicated using
PowerPoint’ 2010’s improved drop shadow effects.
When certain graphics proved more of a challenge to recreate natively in
PowerPoint , layered transparent .pngs were used instead so that key
elements, such as the 3d arrows here, could still be independently
animated and quickly amended (without a trip back to Photoshop).
=
Keeping it editable