Management Consulting Presentations - How to use Icons for Slide Presentations — Transcript

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1. 0:00when creating business presentations it
2. 0:02easily happens that the slides that you
3. 0:04come up with
4. 0:05look like walls of text when everything
5. 0:08you write might be perfectly
6. 0:10fine and correct just the look of it is
7. 0:13boring it's not
8. 0:14interesting and for sure this is not
9. 0:16what you want for your professional
10. 0:18presentations so when i worked at
11. 0:20mckinsey we often like to talk about the
12. 0:22look
13. 0:23and feel of a slide so independent of
14. 0:25the content what is the look and feel of
15. 0:27what you are creating so in today's
16. 0:29video
17. 0:30i am talking about how you can improve
18. 0:32the look and feel of your presentation
19. 0:34documents by
20. 0:35using icons so welcome to another coffee
21. 0:38break here on my channel firm learning
22. 0:40my name is heinrich and here on my
23. 0:42channel i want to help you to become
24. 0:44successful
25. 0:45in the first years of your career i want
26. 0:47to start by say thank you to simple
27. 0:49slides the sponsor of today's video
28. 0:51simple slide is a service offering slide
29. 0:54templates and infographics i use the
30. 0:56service myself and can very much
31. 0:58recommend it but more about that later
32. 1:00in the video so thank you for joining me
33. 1:02in today's video grab yourself a cup of
34. 1:04coffee as always today i'm just sticking
35. 1:06to my water because it's already quite
36. 1:08late in germany but i hope that you are
37. 1:10having a great time so let's now look
38. 1:12into a situation which i am facing
39. 1:14pretty much
40. 1:15every single day and this is i have a
41. 1:17page like this
42. 1:18so this is a typical text page in this
43. 1:20example there is a company who looks
44. 1:22into expanding into new geographies in
45. 1:24new sectors and now here you're
46. 1:26summarizing all the opportunities that
47. 1:28this company might have so for instance
48. 1:30geographic expansion to new countries or
49. 1:32sector expansion into new sectors
50. 1:34now why all of this might be completely
51. 1:37accurate what i write here somehow this
52. 1:39page seems kind of dull it seems kind of
53. 1:43boring it's pretty much
54. 1:44just a wall of text and while it's okay
55. 1:47to have some pages like that in your
56. 1:49document
57. 1:50you do want to make sure that not every
58. 1:52page looks like this
59. 1:54and indeed a simple way that you can do
60. 1:56to improve the look and feel of a slide
61. 1:58like this
62. 1:59is to use some icons to add some icons
63. 2:02to your page
64. 2:03and if you work for a large consulting
65. 2:05firm probably you have
66. 2:07libraries of icons libraries of little
67. 2:10infographics to your disposal that you
68. 2:12can use but now for the average
69. 2:14joe and probably also for somebody not
70. 2:16working in these typical consulting
71. 2:18firms
72. 2:18the access to these kind of slide
73. 2:20libraries is much more restricted
74. 2:23most companies just do not have
75. 2:24something like this off the shave
76. 2:26of course what you can do is to go on
77. 2:28google and google for some icons there
78. 2:30in the picture search
79. 2:31but here of course the issue is that
80. 2:32most of the material is copyright
81. 2:35protected so you cannot just use it for
82. 2:37professional context and just don't want
83. 2:39to use it in your business presentations
84. 2:41even if you're an employee because
85. 2:42otherwise you might risk that your
86. 2:43employer gets into serious trouble if
87. 2:46you use these copyright protected
88. 2:47pictures
89. 2:48so thankfully there's a service that i
90. 2:50also use myself for my presentations and
91. 2:52this
92. 2:52service is called simple slides simple
93. 2:55slides is a library of slide templates
94. 2:58and infographics that are at your
95. 3:00disposal and if you get simple slides
96. 3:02you can use all the material for
97. 3:04whatever application you want so for
98. 3:06business and commercial purposes as well
99. 3:08they have over 10
100. 3:09000 slides and infographics at your
101. 3:11disposal and the library is constantly
102. 3:14being updated
103. 3:15also it doesn't matter what software you
104. 3:16use so whether you use powerpoint google
105. 3:18slides or keynote they have material for
106. 3:20all these software packages so you
107. 3:22should be covered in either way simple
108. 3:24slides offers three different tiers
109. 3:26personally have the premium access which
110. 3:28gives me access to all of their
111. 3:29materials and all of future updates as
112. 3:32well
113. 3:32and yes this is a lifetime access so for
114. 3:34a one-off payment you can use it your
115. 3:36whole life this is how it looks like on
116. 3:38the back end once you've opened an
117. 3:39account and then here on access slides
118. 3:41you have access to the search bar
119. 3:43where you can look for whatever you want
120. 3:45so if we type in
121. 3:46strategy you get different results for
122. 3:49that if we type in marketing you get
123. 3:51different results for that and all of
124. 3:53these are search results leading to
125. 3:55slide packages where then you can access
126. 3:57many different infographics and slides
127. 3:59that fit the individual theme but now
128. 4:01i'm looking for icons because i want to
129. 4:03add some icons to the powerpoint
130. 4:05presentation
131. 4:06so let's search for icons and you can
132. 4:08directly see that several search results
133. 4:10are popping up so let's just start by
134. 4:12looking into the vector icons and here
135. 4:14they now offer a package of all kinds of
136. 4:16vector icons that you can use for your
137. 4:18presentation so if we now download here
138. 4:20the powerpoint version
139. 4:21it pretty much looks like this now i've
140. 4:23opened it here for you guys
141. 4:25this is now the package that you get so
142. 4:27about 14 pages full of different icon
143. 4:29sets that you can use for your
144. 4:30presentation
145. 4:32including also some world maps which you
146. 4:35can use and then also use individual
147. 4:36countries out of it
148. 4:37so let's now go back and prepare the
149. 4:39page for adding some icons so i'm
150. 4:41duplicating the page now let's first
151. 4:43make some space our goal is to add the
152. 4:45icons to the left here
153. 4:47so let's make this a little bit smaller
154. 4:49let's move this
155. 4:51to the right and now we have some space
156. 4:53to add some icons here to the left so
157. 4:55first we have here two countries
158. 4:56germany and france and here of course
159. 4:58now it would make sense to get
160. 5:00some country icons so here now you can
161. 5:02click in and select
162. 5:03germany to then get the icon for germany
163. 5:06now it's of course pretty gray so let's
164. 5:09color it in such a nice dark blue and we
165. 5:12have the first one
166. 5:13now let's add the equivalent for france
167. 5:16let's insert it this way
168. 5:17color it now we have an icon for france
169. 5:20let's make this a little bit smaller
170. 5:22maybe
171. 5:23now it looks good to me let's properly
172. 5:25align it
173. 5:26very nice now data analysis so let's
174. 5:30just look for what we could use for data
175. 5:33analysis
176. 5:34probably something like this makes a lot
177. 5:36of sense let's color it as well
178. 5:38now for express services probably
179. 5:40something like a delivery service or
180. 5:43parcels or something like that this one
181. 5:46here looks good to me let's insert it as
182. 5:47well let's color it
183. 5:49probably not also another advantage of
184. 5:51these types of infographics that you see
185. 5:53here is that they are vector graphics so
186. 5:55this means that it doesn't matter
187. 5:57how big they are whatever the sizes that
188. 6:00you need
189. 6:01they will never look out of resolution
190. 6:03right because the resolution
191. 6:04automatically scales which is of course
192. 6:06very comfortable when working with them
193. 6:08in different sizes
194. 6:10but let's make this smaller now here we
195. 6:11go and let's now add this to the page
196. 6:15as way next mining services so probably
197. 6:18something with
198. 6:18workshop tools would look nice for
199. 6:20instance something like this
200. 6:23let's add it let's color it let's insert
201. 6:26it
202. 6:27and here we go so now we have it we have
203. 6:29icons included in the page and i hope
204. 6:32that you agree that now this looks a bit
205. 6:34more interesting
206. 6:35it's a bit nicer to look at your
207. 6:37presentation looks a bit
208. 6:39less dull if you do this so in general
209. 6:41whenever you have some distinct
210. 6:43elements of your page that you talk
211. 6:45about distinct buckets of things this is
212. 6:48usually always an opportunity to include
213. 6:50some icons to make it a little bit more
214. 6:53visually stimulating what you should
215. 6:55avoid though what i see some people do
216. 6:57is to only show the icons without the
217. 7:00explaining
218. 7:01text so pretty much to something like
219. 7:03this just here the text and the icons
220. 7:05this is something i cannot recommend you
221. 7:07to do because the problem is that icons
222. 7:10often are not
223. 7:11that self-explanatory it often takes
224. 7:13quite some time and mental energy to
225. 7:15interpret what exactly this or this or
226. 7:18this
227. 7:18means and easily different people will
228. 7:20have different opinions on that the only
229. 7:23very few icons which are universally and
230. 7:25interculturally accepted and recognized
231. 7:27to use this very carefully use icons
232. 7:30only to add to an existing name but do
233. 7:32not
234. 7:32only rely on the power of icons so when
235. 7:35should you and when should you not use
236. 7:36icons in your professional business
237. 7:38presentations and my general
238. 7:40recommendation would be to use them but
239. 7:42to use them sparsely
240. 7:44so often a good way to use them is if
241. 7:46you have some elements
242. 7:47some opportunities some levers some
243. 7:50other buckets of things you
244. 7:51have in your presentation that repeat
245. 7:54throughout the slide deck because this
246. 7:56way you can establish some icons in the
247. 7:58beginning on some structure pages and to
248. 8:00help the reader to make some connections
249. 8:02among the different pages due to the
250. 8:04repeating icons that you use so
251. 8:06applications like this in my opinion
252. 8:08make a lot of sense because they improve
253. 8:10the look and feel of the pages and
254. 8:12they also have a valuable benefit for
255. 8:14the reader what you should avoid is
256. 8:16completely spamming your presentation
257. 8:18with icons
258. 8:19of course in these business
259. 8:20presentations on almost every page you
260. 8:23will have an opportunity to in theory
261. 8:25add a couple of icons to them but if you
262. 8:27add icons to everything they just become
263. 8:30meaningless and at some point it also
264. 8:32looks
265. 8:32very repetitive and also to some extent
266. 8:35unprofessional and childish if you do
267. 8:37that
268. 8:37try to convey meaning via the icons try
269. 8:40to use them as a true value add for the
270. 8:42reader
271. 8:43this is the sweet spot that you should
272. 8:45really look out for when using icons in
273. 8:47your presentations i hope this was
274. 8:48insightful if you have any questions
275. 8:50leave me a comment below in the comment
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277. 8:54answer
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314. 10:01weekend and bye bye