Anything but powerpoint
Making work fun
In 2015 I got bored of making decks. Endless slides, copied and pasted from one another, with tasteful photography and knowingly cool typefaces. There’s nothing specifically wrong with powerpoint or keynote, but I think they’re too often abused as a lazy way to convey an idea or justify time (more slides = more work).
So rather than make decks, here’s some stuff I made instead:
Sketchbook
We worked on a new-bank prototype, and to help capture the energy and stories around the project I turned my sketches into a nicely printed book. It combined memes from the initial client workshop with photos and early designs. It also had blank pages so that it would be a usable tool.
Took 2–3 days of design time and a small amount to print.
On the same project as the sketchbook, the client asked for regular updates. We were taking lots of photos already so it made sense to start a private feed and open up the process to the client. It gave the client a chance to ask questions and join in with the process, and still stands as a time-capsule of what we were thinking and doing at the time.
Took a couple of minutes to set-up, and then regular posting.
Videos
Thanks to Jonny I’ve gotten massively into making videos. For the past few months we’ve been working with the COO of a major challenger bank to help make them more collaborative. We knew traditional deliverables wouldn’t convey the stories we were hearing, so we made regular episodes centred around specific projects we were starting or teams we met. Annoyingly I can’t share them publicly but here’s a screengrab.
Each video was 2–3 minutes long, took a day of shooting, and a day of editing.
Website
The above videos lived on a site. Nothing revolutionary, but it was an idea that really worked. The clients could comment on work as we did it, we could track how much our audience was growing, and like the instagram feed serves as a neat capture of the whole project.
Took a couple of hours to set up and then regular fiddling.
