Creative Insights Archives

Every presentation skills teacher and coach has their own perspective when it comes to building and using PowerPoint slides. I have come to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time telling people not to use slides. You’re going to use them, so instead of fighting it, I have come up with, with some influence from Garr Reynolds, my Ten Commandments for using PowerPoint slide decks:

1. Thou shall only use slides if absolutely necessary

2. Thou shall never use an old deck to build a new deck

3. Thou shall stop tweaking your deck 24 hours before thou presents

4. Thou shall beware the Bullet Point

5. Thou shall only use one idea per slide

6. Thou shall never, under any circumstances, read a slide out loud

7. Thou shall not use a slide deck as a hand out

8. Thou shall say “no” to animation

9. Thou shall only use high-resolution images

10. Thou shall not build a presentation around a deck but rather build a deck around a presentation

While most of these PowerPoint commandments make sense on their own, let me elaborate on a few.

2. Thou shall never use an old deck to build a new deck

How many times have you opened an old deck to start work on a new presentation? It’s a common occurrence and you are not alone. There really is nothing wrong with this, chances are you are going to tell a similar story and use some of the same slides. If it’s a capabilities pitch then chances are 90% of the pitch is already built. The problem is that you are starting a presentation by using technology, and before you know it, you’ll be knee deep in slide tweaking and not focusing on building a storyline. Remember the Brain Rule to Unplug and Go Analog? This is where it comes into play. Your presentation is a story and your slides are to support your story. Figure out what you want to say first and then see if there is an old deck you can use.

3. Thou shall stop tweaking your deck 24 hours before thou presents

As I have said many times, a presentation is not a meeting; it’s a performance. In fact, your presentation is often a one-act play and it needs to be treated as such. Meaning, no edits or changes 24 hours before show time. Can you imagine the director of a play walking into the a lead actor’s dressing room 2 hours before show time with new dialogue? It would never happen and the same can be said for your presentation. Any changes the day before the presentation will mess up your timing, your cadence and more than likely throw you off your game. This is especially true when it comes to Ensemble Presenting.

4, 5 and 6. Thou shall beware the Bullet Point & Thou shall never, under any circumstances, read a slide out loud & Thou shall only use one idea per slide

Commandments 4, 5 and 6 go together. The main point is that the content on each slide should be minimal and focus on one idea. If you find yourself creating a bullet list with 3 points, then you should create 3 slides. It’s that simple. Two things happen when you put up a slide with multiple bullet points:

Your audience reads ahead
The presenter reads the slide

Basically, everyone in the room reads and no one is presenting. If you are going to read your slides, then just email the deck to everyone and cancel the meeting. With everyone reading, there is no time to perform and engage the audience. It goes against everything I have been saying.

I use these PowerPoint commandments every time I build a deck and present. They provide a solid foundation and remind me to take my time in preparing and to respect my audience.

Michael Weiss is Vice President of Marketing at Creative Circle. He is a digital strategist and presentation coach.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn here.

The day that I crushed social media engagement for a post I did on the fly for my company’s Facebook page was one of the giddiest days of my professional life. I was working for The Salvation Army Midland Division and I posted something about Cardinals’ opening day (which is a de facto holiday in St. Louis) with a picture of Stan Musial (a Cardinals’ legend) ringing the bell around Christmas time. It BLEW UP and set the stage for more followers and better connection with potential donors and volunteers. I had a little extra strut in my step that day.

Similarly, when I went to SXSW with my fellow Creative Circlers, I jumped up and down with Creative Circle’s social media maven when we became the top followed group talking about SXSW — we reached so many people and fostered future relationships that could be built upon.

So when I started the best job of my life at Creative Circle recruiting my fellow passionate social media marketers, I noticed something kind of icky…

Most of us don’t have any kind of social media portfolio to show off our work.

“But I’m not a designer,” you might say. Or even worse, “Here is the link to my Twitter feed.” Have you ever tried to digest that firehose? Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram are an epic stream of consciousness, and a hiring manager does not (and will not) want to filter through a long history of posting to find the gems of what makes you good at what you do.

Follow these five tips to improve your social media portfolio and make sure you’re not glossed over for your next application. Also be sure to check out our Portfolio Guide for more tips like these, or hear what my New York counterpart has to say about portfolios.

1. Screenshots are your friend

Learn to love the Print Screen/Snipping/Screen Capture Tool. Any time you write a quippy masterpiece, take a screenshot of it to save for later. A hiring manager is basing your skills on your ability to write solid copy in a limited amount of space as well as the engagement metrics that are shown (likes, retweets, etc.). Once you get a handful of your favorites, you have enough content to justify landing that next great position.

2. Organize by campaign

Social media is part of a larger, integrated strategy, so talk about the campaign objectives, and how social made an impact. Choose one or two screengrabs that showcase solid engagement and denote the metrics that followed: 15% increase in follows, 20% conversion rate to the denoted landing page, or anything else showing that your work caused something positive to happen that met your team’s goals.

3. Analytics, Analytics, Analytics

When I was putting together my portfolio, I took screenshots of analysis metrics that showed what I contributed and why when I was running the social media ship good things happened. Remember, while it’s good to know what your team did, when you’re being considered for a job, they want to know what YOU did as part of that team. Whether it’s Facebook Analytics, Sprout, Google Analytics, or other programs, dive into the numbers and look at engagement and conversion spikes so you can show that you can not only get things done, but you can read the data to forecast what can work next. A natural at social media has great gut reactions, but if you can’t back it up with data, then it’s much harder to justify. Reserve a page or two in your portfolio for analytics and showcase your “sexy stats.” Whether you worked for a small business or a multinational corporation, if you increased engagement and conversions by X%, then that gets attention.

4. Did you do anything else digital?

This is up to your discretion, but I know plenty of passionate social media connoisseurs that have other responsibilities of managing website content, deploying email marketing, or even doing some hands-on design for posts. Include that! You don’t want it to dominate your portfolio if you are seeking a primarily social position but put it towards the back to show that you have other skills that can bump up your candidacy. In the same vein for my portfolio, I took screenshots of emails that I had deployed, spreadsheets I made for project management tracking, and some scrappy designs I made just to show that I can definitely dabble in those other areas.

5. How do I lay it all out?

Some people prefer a simple PDF, like I did (totally effective!), or to use a portfolio site such as Squarespace, Wix, Coroflot, Cargo Collective, Carbonmade, Issuu, or others if you want to be publicly searched. The benefit of hosting it publicly is that you can tweet a company or hiring manager while showcasing your skillz in communication, ya know? The frameworks are the same — upload the image of your work and write a description beside it with those sexy stats and campaign descriptions. Just like anything else, the people who put in more work on this initial presentation will garner more attention from hiring managers. If you put a solid amount of thought and effort into your portfolio, the perception is that you will go above and beyond for your next position, so really put in some time to craft this. If you do make a PDF, keep it under 5MB so that it can be easily emailed and shared to prospective companies.

Also, remember if you create a portfolio site, always include the website on your resume — and make sure it is hyperlinked! I have had to do much copying and pasting in my tenure as a recruiter and it can be a surprising time-suck for those reviewing resumes.

Have you seen something that attracted the attention of hiring managers or anything that we missed? Send it to us! And of course, if you lay out a slick social media portfolio, we gotta see it. Apply on our Talent page, and if a company with a need has your name written all over it, we’ll get connected!

Until then, check out our Resource Guides for more ways to make yourself the best candidate you can be.

Dana is a Recruiter in Creative Circle’s San Diego office, after starting with the company in St. Louis and Denver. She is a social and digital geek, passionate networker, and always getting at the root of what makes people tick to land them in the right positions for their skills. She can be found breaking out into song unannounced, recreating Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare monologues, exploring Colorado with her dog Frannie, or impersonating Bubbles from the PowerPuff Girls.

Food Desert, Idea Jackpot: The Design Week Open Houses of NW Portland

I may have spoken too soon when I declared that there was no need to plan for dinner during Design Week Portland’s series of open houses. In contrast to Tuesday night’s tour of N and NE Portland offices, where giant tamales, Mediterranean BBQ, and pizza abounded, the scene in NW was a relative food desert.

Nevertheless, it was a welcome excuse to check out Citizen, a truly remarkable company that concerns itself primarily with the intersections of design and technology, performing research and analysis of market and culture trends to find new ways for tech advances to integrate into our lives—and they create some seriously elegant flowcharts in the process. They also have one of the coolest office spaces in the city, tucked away on the fringe of where NW starts to become primarily industrial. Upon arrival they had Purple Rain projecting on the wall (respect), a few paces away from a ceiling pendant that had been fashioned out of Apple earbuds.

Design Week Portland Alternate Usage for Earbuds at Citizen Inc

At this point, we’re so deep in Design Week that you can’t help but start to recognize people who are working the same circuit you are. Such was the case with Luke, an architectural consultant I had also seen at Wednesday night’s party at NORTH. Mutual recognition demanded we introduce ourselves, swapping notes about the other events we had already attended, and those we planned to. It was pleasant enough that I stayed longer than I meant to, but eventually I pulled away, on to the next adventure.

Big Frog Custom T-shirts has been hidden in plain sight on W Burnside for four years, though I’d never heard of them. They’ll digitally print a design of your, or their, making with no minimum, on tees that come in an array of colors and sizes and… that’s pretty much it! But they did have snacks.

Design Week Portland Big Frog T-Shirts

The simplicity of Big Frog afforded me more time at Hand-Eye Supply, a shop that specializes in the best versions of tools for all kinds of projects. There’s a global selection of writing instruments, notebooks, tools, axes, and workwear—a curated retail haven for the fetishization of creative supplies. They are the retail arm of Core 77, an influential design site whose job board, Coroflot, is having its new office built within the adjacent Hand-Eye warehouse. It’s actually on wheels, and began as a planned tiny house by Laurence Sarrazin of Los Osos design studio, built with wood milled on the property it was originally slated for. I’ve met Sarrazin once before—she’s brilliant, and I enjoyed sharing a beer and conversation with her, though my stomach was starting to rumble by the time I finished ogling the Italian-made staplers on my way out.

Design Week Portland Hand-Eye Supply

My last open house of the evening was Anthropologie. I’d been curious about how they’d activate the store for the occasion, and thought they might use the opportunity to highlight their collaborations with independent designers. Nope! They were simply open, business humming as usual. It worked out since I needed to price out a duvet cover, but I didn’t dwell long before walking the few blocks to the westside tomboy headquarters of Wildfang.

Presented by Sockeye creative studio, the event at Wildfang was accompanied by—finally, hooray!—freshly cooked up dim sum treats by Boke Bowl, which just about saved my life. It featured Piers Fawkes, founder and editor of PSFK, a site that specializes in future-thinking news, inspiration, and forecasts. The night’s topic was “The Future of Retail”—basically a breakdown of the latest technology tools being used by companies to communicate with customers, maximize the availability of product information, and streamline their overall systems in ways that are both admirably efficient and depressingly capable of eliminating human employment. It was on the dry side for a jovial, dim sum and canned wine kind of crowd, but it got my juices flowing, and I drove home thinking through the inspiration it gave me for my billion-dollar startup idea.

And no, obviously, I’m not telling you what that is.

Marjorie is a former Creative Circle candidate based in Portland who recently accepted a full-time offer for her dream job. She is a writer/editor and stylist/producer with an emphasis in the design world. If you are interested in working with someone like Marjorie, please contact your nearest Creative Circle office.

Still on the fence about attending events or open houses?

Read our blog on why it’s important.

Points NORTH: The Power of a Good Party

The description was vague but intriguing for “Further North,” a Design Week Portland event being hosted by NORTH, an advertising agency known for its work with Columbia Sportswear, Pacific Foods, and Cover Oregon (not their fault!). Would it be a panel, a lecture… ? Turns out, it was mostly just a party—a really good party—albeit with opportunities to make your own poster in the spirit of NORTH’s handmade methods for creating fonts and label designs. There was also a booth (where you could ask a NORTH employee anything), free burritos, beer on tap, and a display of how the creatives at NORTH go from literally doodling with ink and paper to creating some of the most recognizable package design on the shelves of the grocery store.

Creative Circle_Marjorie S_North Relatable Art

Full disclosure: I knew there would be some familiar faces in the crowd. One of NORTH’s Creative Directors is an old acquaintance who dates one of my good friends, and an art director I’ve worked with for years produces his outdoor adventure magazine, Stay Wild (to which I also contribute writing and copyediting), under NORTH’s custodianship. Since I was rolling solo, this took the edge off potential awkwardness, but instead of limiting me to interactions with people I already knew, these associations served as a bridge to get to know other, looser contacts.

Standing in the same conversation circle as the aforementioned CD put me in position to strike up a long conversation with the NORTH’s Executive Producer—who I’d technically met previously, but only slightly knew. The arrival of a freelance photographer I knew led to an introduction to a Portland-based wardrobe stylist whose work I’ve been following. I didn’t know that Kelley Roy, founder of the ADX manufacturing hub and Portland Made advocacy center, would be there, but I ended up talking to her for most of the last leg of the evening, and I even met, IRL, the owner of a modeling and talent agency before we realized we’d already corresponded over email months ago.

Creative Circle_Marjorie S_North Plans for Cans

I was surprised to check my phone and realize that I’d stayed for almost the entirety of the three-hour event, floating from conversation to conversation, and getting an impromptu tour of NORTH employees’ desk collections (including a ticket stub from Dollywood, a sea monkey terrarium, and a preserved baby shark), their hilarious “email treadmill,” and the dark, upholstered booths hidden throughout their offices for private phone calls (though they look like they’re for making out).

In an industry where relationships and personal chemistry are a bedrock, NORTH set the tone by being welcoming and curious about its guests. There may not have been much formality or structure involved, but I left the event feeling fulfilled, connected, and as though the time—though about twice as long as anticipated—had been well spent.

Still on the fence about attending events or open houses?

Read our blog on why it’s important.

Open Houses and Oversharing: The Design Week Portland Meal Plan

Good news: No need to make dinner arrangements during these few days that Design Week Portland’s open houses are in effect. This year, the studios, agencies, and retailers who are opening their doors have really kicked it up a notch with the hosting duties. Show up early enough and you may well find a full dinner awaits. In fact, if I’d wanted to, I could have eaten three dinners last night, between attending four open houses and one well-sponsored event.

I began at Beam & Anchor, an out-of-the-way gem of a design shop on N Interstate that traffics in beautifully curated housewares and one of the best selections of accessories in the city. Above the retail space are a few studios occupied by makers of various sorts, who welcomed the public upstairs for a rare glimpse behind the scenes.

As a serial DIY-remodeler, I’m a magpie for all things home-oriented, so I was immediately drawn to the corner of the space occupied by Current Collection, a not-quite-launched line of pendant light fixtures designed by Nash Martinez. There’s no website or official list of stockists yet, and Current’s Instagram is claimed but unused, but you can glimpse a few of the pieces exclusively downstairs in Beam & Anchor should you be in the market for an illuminating conversation starter. (Note: there was hummus and grapes and that sort of thing, but the gustatory highlight of this open house was definitely the bottle of limited edition Spanish red wine Martinez opened for the occasion.)

Design Week Portland Beam Anchor Current Collection Open House

Moving on, around the corner I had to check the address twice to be sure I had arrived at The Brigade. The black door leading up to the spacious, whitewashed offices of this young digital agency is marked only with their logo, a pair of crossed swords. It’s an agency with a musical bent—they’ve worked extensively with Spotify, and helped create the Nike Women Move Mix app, which curates athletes’ playlists based on taste, type of workout, and pace—and a young, friendly staff, who gathered around an enormous spread of tamales from Tamale Boy, which is set to open a new location in The Brigade’s neighborhood. After downing an enormous vegetarian version, I set about making new friends, including super-nice Brigade partner Zeke Howard, with whom I connected over a few mutual contacts and swapped email addresses.

Design Week Portland The Brigade Open House

Dining and networking needs addressed, it was time to move on to 534, the shared studio space of Spacecraft, Merkled Studio, New Refined Basics, and VINCAdesign, where there was a casual, family friendly Mediterranean-style cookout underway. Used mainly by people working with wood and metal for furniture and jewelry, the space has a garage-y vibe, littered here and there with intriguing evidence of ongoing experimentations, like a giant egg-shaped tree burl that’s been polished smooth for no apparent purpose. There I bumped into a few familiar faces from Portland’s independent retail and fashion design scene, sampled an unlikely sounding cocktail involving spicy black pepper, pomegranate, and cucumber infusions (unique, delicious), and took a peek at furniture prototypes inspired by tree shapes and midcentury aesthetics.

Design Week Portland Tree Burl

The last open house of the evening was actually more of a group sale featuring the work of students from the MFA in Applied Craft + Design program created as a collaboration between the Oregon College of Applied Craft (OCAC) and the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). Students, alum, and faculty offered an array of work priced at $50 or less, spanning hang-able art, wearable art, ceramics, handmade books, and more. A few clever items, like the grapefruit drinking vessels by Cat Chidester Brown, made me wish I had as much space in my cabinets as I do love for discovering new ceramics designs (read: limitless).

Design Week Portland Cat Chidester Brown Ceramics

I ended the night next door, in the spacious XOXO Outpost warehouse, where I passed on dinner opportunity #3 in the form of free pizza from Roman Candle. Worry not—it was decimated without my help by fellow attendees of Overshare, a panel discussion and podcast taping hosted by the creative freelance network Working Not Working. The Portland-centric panel featured illustrator and educator Kate Bingaman-Burt, The Pressure’s Adam R. Garcia, and newly minted Nike designer Rich Tu. Beginning with a round of white wine shots (ewwwww) to break the ice, WNW co-founder Justin Gignac set about grilling his panel on everything from their feelings about Portland past, present, and future to admissions of their worst professional anxieties.

Design Week Portland Overshare

Billed as a casual, unguarded exercise in real talk, plenty of F-bombs were dropped as the panelists proved themselves generously forthcoming about their methods of self-preservation, early days of struggle, and the ongoing work of staying inspired (turns out maintaining a state of perpetual dissatisfaction may be a sign you’re doing it right). There wasn’t a lot of prescriptive advice, but it helped serve as evidence that those who pursue a creative career path share the same struggles. Not only is that struggle real, but in the long run, it’s also the point.

Still on the fence about attending events or open houses?

Read our blog on why it’s important.

Design Week Portland starts this week. We asked designer Matthew T. to share how Portland lives creative through some of the city’s inspirational spaces.

The Good Mod

Creative-Circle_Matthew-T_The-Good-Mod

Nestled in one of West Burnside’s longstanding warehouse loft spaces, The Good Mod boasts a diverse stockpile of refurbished Midcentury furniture and design. Ascend the old-school industrial elevator via the unassuming glass-paned entrance on street-level, and you will be greeted by a pleasant host who will help you navigate the towers of Eames chair frames and nordic coffee tables. A unique quality of The Good Mod is its ability to seem peaceful and minimal while functioning as an active repair shop. The open concept and natural light allows for a moment of peace in the buzz of Portland’s thriving West End neighborhood.

Ace Hotel

Creative-Circle_Matthew-T_Ace-Hotel

Further embedded in Portland’s West End is the flagship location of Ace Hotel, an independent hospitality effort focused on design-driven hosting, with extra care attended to the presence of local designers and an engaged staff. Aside from its bright lobby, which also houses a Stumptown Coffee location, the upstairs common areas host an intimate study area where anyone can go to relax, meet others, or read one of the many publications complimentarily provided.

Clyde Common

Creative-Circle_Matthew-T_Clyde-Common

A staple of the west side, Clyde Common features a clean, rustic interior which buzzes with activity during happy hours on weekdays. Common plates include poutine, rustic eggs, or a charcuterie plate to share. Pair those with a local draft ale or their “pacific standard” cocktail, and you have an outfit ready to suit your spring evening.

Good Coffee

Creative-Circle_Matthew-T_Good-Coffee

As the name might imply, this cafe was established with the intent to put a quality cup first. Started by a few industry veterans, the new cafe now boasts two locations on Portland’s east side. When you go, look for a variety of bean offerings as well as the unique drinking vessels you are served.

Olympic National Forest

Creative-Circle_Matthew-T_Olympic-National-Forest

A drive outside of the city may find you in one of the nearby national forests. One popular destination has been the entryway to the greater Olympic National Forest, which resides near Lake Cushman, Shelton, and other rural communities. Nearby you’ll find trellises, old bridges, and an abundance of nature trails.

Matthew is a Creative Circle candidate and your guide to DWP’s events and open houses.

Still on the fence about attending events or open houses?

Read our blog on why it’s important.

Can’t attend?

We all have body issues, well, at least I do. Sometimes it’s bloated and every so often, it feels too wide or tall. On occasion, I don’t feel comfortable with it, or it just isn’t appealing enough for readers to get to know better.

Are you working hard in one area but not making overall progress on your page?

Pages of copy will not be paid attention to unless the type looks irresistible. But I’ve found a way to have readable sections, svelte rags and desirable line lengths that just feel so… right.

Here are seven ways to make your readers beg for more (information).

1. Read it first, or at least scan it.

Review and take notes on the content types. Then be sure the typeface you choose contains the weights, special characters, and glyphs found in the draft copy. You don’t want to be typesetting for two days in and realize the font you’re using doesn’t support the fractions on page 24.

2. Keep it simple.

Avoid using display fonts for body copy. Display fonts have a lot of personality, and that personality gets in the way of the reading experience. Leave the personality to the cover type, headers and subheads. For run-in subheads, body copy and smaller type, stay legible and readable with roman typefaces.

Our Notebook_Typographic Tidbits_display

3. Contrast communicates context.

When pairing, choose faces from different classifications. When typefaces are too similar, they play tricks on your readers eyes. The body copy might be Helvetica but if the subheads are Arial, they might be difficult to identify. To play it safe, choose a serif and sans serif.

Our Notebook_Typographic Tidbits_pairing

4. Less is more.

An elegant typography system can be created with different weights from the same family. You don’t need more than two typefaces to create beautiful body copy. And in many cases, it can be done with just one if the typeface has many fonts. Many families have gorgeous italics or small cap fonts to help you create variety while maintaining consistency.

5. Maintain consistency.

Establish a system early in the project to ensure the same fonts and guidelines for usages are adapted among your team. Cement the system designated with headers, subheads, body copy, captions and legal into a style guide and utilize across all media for a persistent look to all brand communications.

6. Keep your lines comfy.

Readers’ eyes can only scan so much at one time, typically 50-70 characters per line, so keep your line lengths short. When lines are too long, it’s difficult to find where to begin reading the next sentence and continue. When lines are too short (less than ten words), your copy block will lack elegant rhythm and proportion. Try to either adjust the font size or create two columns to create a comfortable line length.

Our Notebook_Typographic Tidbits_linelength

7. Create body shape.

Left justified type is lovely, and even more so when the rags are shapely. To create beautiful, curvy rags at the right edge of all of your paragraphs, use hyphens. Avoid leaving a hyphen on the first line, and don’t allow three hyphens in a row (the term for three in a row is called pigtails), because it’s difficult to locate the next line. Keep to three or four hyphens per paragraph, if possible.

Our Notebook_Typographic Tidbits_Body Copy

Incorporate these tips as part of your copy setting process, and then stand up and be proud of your body! Your page layouts will invite the reader in and they will love your new body copy.

To gather inspiration on how others create hierarchy and set body copy well, we refer to the printed versions of Worth , Fast Company , New Beauty, McSweeney’s Quarterly and more. If you’re looking for really clean blocks of copy, download a few Mercedes brochures. Nothing like a little German engineering in the typesetting to inspire us all.

For those who are really into refining your body copy, read more about Michael Stinson’s secret to setting a perfect block.

Do you have any favorite magazines or books that draw you in with their body copy and keep you reading? Let me know by tweeting us at @TypeEd. I’d love to see what inspires your design work.

Rachel Elnar is the producer and co-founder at TypeEd, where she helps bring the craft of typography back to design education. Get more type in your inbox and sign up for more about TypeEd columns (and other announcements).