The document provides guidance on effective slide design and data visualization techniques for presentations, emphasizing the importance of clarity and audience engagement. It discusses the distinction between presentation slides and reading decks, and offers design tips such as using limited colors and fonts, as well as proper visual encodings. Additionally, it outlines different types of data and chart types, culminating in a summary of key principles for successful communication through visuals.

1. Simple Slide Design +
Visual Encodings for Data Viz
ESC the City NYC Founding Members Lightning Talk
http://www.escapethecity.org/nyc

2. Agenda
• Reading versus presentation slides
• Key design tips for presentation slides
• Key content tips for presentation slides
• A quick note on reading slides
• Data visualization definition
• A crash course in visual encodings
• Resources

3. Decide Your Purpose
Are you presentingyour slides or do you expect people to read
them?

4. Deck Variants
Presentation slides
are a
speaking
aid
Reading decks are
designed to be
consumed
alone https://hbr.org/ideacast/2015/11/slide-deck-presentations-dont-have-to-be-terrible.html

5. Presentation Deck Design Tips
http://www.slideshare.net/slidecomet/great-presentations-are-like-ads

6. Avoid Themes Like the Plague
Go beyond standardized font schemes or themes in Keynote or
Office
http://www.slideshare.net/edahn/10-tips-for-making-beautiful-slideshow-presentations-9210564/17

7. Quick Design
Pick five theme colors
Three fonts
title, body copy, accents
http://www.slideshare.net/edahn/10-tips-for-making-beautiful-slideshow-presentations-9210564/17
Four basic layouts
 Transitions
 Image slides
 Text slides
 Mixed slides

8. Make It Easy
Learn to use tools and resources
Office Styling Templates
Keynote Styling Templates

9. Last Word On Design
Show restraint
Don’t distract from content
http://www.quiethorizon.com/2013/12/the-virtue-of-restraint.html

10. Presentation Content Tips
And then let’s not get crazy
http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/content-is-king-context-is-queen-.png

11. Define and Sketch First
1) Find the purpose
2) Have empathy
3) Storyboard and outline first
http://i2.wp.com/ianmckendrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/powerpoint-storyboard-template.jpg

12. Image Tips
Icons as a way to demonstrate concepts
Google image is your hustle friend
Use Stock Photos wisely
https://www.colourbox.com/image/white-weather-icons-with-black-background-image-10881867

13. Keep Slides Friendly
Source your content
15 words or less
Appendices are your friend
White space is your friend
https://5thcolor.wordpress.com/tag/white-space/

14. Last Word On Content
Show restraint
Ideally one idea and one minute per slide
http://www.quiethorizon.com/2013/12/the-virtue-of-restraint.html

15. HBR on Reading Slides
So I find some of my most compelling slides to be one beautiful photograph that
may have no words on it at all.
Clearly, that doesn’t mean a lot to someone if they’re
reading it on their own.
So my version of what we call the reading deck is pretty much the same as the
presentation deck, except at the bottom it can have
two, three, four, even five lines of copy at the
bottom. That the reader would sit and literally
just read those sentences.
https://hbr.org/ideacast/2015/11/slide-deck-presentations-dont-have-to-be-terrible.html

16. A Quick Note on Reading Slides
Show restraint
The added content should serve more as annotations than a novel
http://www.quiethorizon.com/2013/12/the-virtue-of-restraint.html

17. Data Visualization Crash Course
https://kimoquaintance.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/screen-shot-2011-08-16-at-6-04-54-pm.png

18. What is Data Visualization?
Mapping data to pictures that convey a story accurately
http://www.ibm.com/design/assets/language/images/framework/visual/color/Color_Assets_chart.svg

19. Data Visualization for Slides
Define, decode, and find narrative
in your data
Make the reader take minimal effort
Source properly and don’t distort
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/08/15/social-media-conversations-about-race/

20. Visual Encodings
https://www.udacity.com/course/data-visualization-and-d3js--ud507
Pick the right tool
and chart for
what you’re
trying to
convey
*This might not what looks
most cool or sexy

21. Chart Types & Visual Encodings
https://www.udacity.com/course/data-visualization-and-d3js--ud507

22. Storytelling above all
https://www.udacity.com/course/data-visualization-and-d3js--ud507
*Don’t be afraid to break the rules

23. Summary & Last Words
 Know what you’re trying to communicate
 Find system and purpose that works for you
 Customization is key for design
 Don’t force your audience to think
 Study visuals and presentations
 Take advantage of free resources
 Hustle

24. Thank You

25. Appendices Go here

26. What is Data Visualization?
Continued
• Data viz is about conveying a story with as little words as possible
• Use color size, shape, and other visual
encodings to convey info and insight to reader with storytelling
and narrative elements.
• Mapping data to visuals
• Turning numbers into pictures and stories
• Helps people explore and understand the data
• Good data viz = aha moments!

27. Data Types
• Types of Data
• Numeric/Quantitative Data: Any data where data points are exact numbers, have
meaning as measurement (eg. height and weight) or a count (number of hits)
• Discrete: distinct values (home runs - e.g. only whole numbers)
• Continuous: any value in a rank (fall anywhere between a range, like a batting average,
income))
• Categorical/Nominal Data
• Represents characteristics (eg. position, hometown, team)
• Can take numerical scales, but they don’t have mathematical meaning (e.g. 1 and 2 in
basketball, you can’t add them together or take average)
• Ordinal Data
• Categories with some order or ranking (power ratings, 1 to 5 stars for a movie)
• Time Series Data
• Data collected via repeated measurements over time (avg number of home run/player
over many years)
• Some implied ordering

28. Chart Types
• bar chart: highlights individual values, supports comparisons, can show
rankings or deviations
• boxplot: shows distributions and quantiles, especially useful for comparisons
• pie chart: shows part-to-whole relationship and best suited for one category,
poor for making comparisons
• stacked bar: shows part-to-whole relationship and best suited for showing
composition within categories and totals
• bubble chart: shows how three or more sets of values vary, shows correlation
• line chart: shows overall changes and patterns, usually over spaced intervals of
time
• map: values are encoded on physical locations and patterns may be drawn by
comparing locations
• scatterplot: shows how two pairs of values vary, shows correlation

29. Resources
Slide Design and Presentation
10 Tips for Making Beautiful Slide Show Presentations
Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test
Slide Design for Developers
Slide Deck Presentations Don’t Have to Be Terrible
Guy Kawasaki's 10-20-30 Rule for Presentations
How Can I Make My PowerPoint Presentations Amazing?
How to Give a Killer Presentation

30. Resources
Some Favorite Slide Examples
Frog Design’s Slides
Displaying Data
What Would Steve Do? 10 Lessons from the World's Most Captivating
Presenters
The best stats you’ve ever seen
Crap. The Content Marketing Deluge.
Sponsorship trends for 2014

31. Resources
Finding Colors, Style Schemes, etc.:
COLOURlovers: Color Trends + Palette
Adobe Color Wheel
Paletton
Color Hunter
Flat Icon

32. Resources
Data Visualization Books
• Data Points and Visualize This by Nathan Yau of FlowingData.com
• The Functional Art by Alberto Cairo
• Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
Presenting Data
Displaying Data
Data Visualization 101: How to Design Charts and Graphs
From Data to Visualization, what happens in between?
Data Journalism Handbook

33. Resources
Learning Data Visualization
Perceptual Edge Whitepapers
8 Basics of Data Interpretation
OpenVisConf Videos
Data Stories
Viz Examples
DataIsBeautiful
Pew Research Center
FiveThirtyEight