Work is Changing.

Before we can solve this problem, we need to accurately identify the problem.

When people reach out to Slidedesignr for help, universally, they think they have a design problem. “I’m not an artist, I’m not very creative, I’m not a designer, I can barely draw a stick figure”, that kind of stuff. You're not alone!

But I find over and over again that that’s not true—the problem is far deeper than that.

The basic idea is this: we have to present about something, and we sit down and we write. We write paragraphs, lists of bullets, and outlines. And then we go…great, how do I get from here...to impactful slides?

Or how do we take data from a lot of different sources, a lot of writing from a lot of different team members, analyze that, and synthesize it into a clearly visualized idea that connects back to business value?

That’s not an art problem! That’s an analytical problem.

It’s a mistake to reframe it as a design issue to be solved by either a designer or some design software.

Because, as an Insights Pro, I believe it’s up to you—and you have all the expertise you need to be able to solve this problem.

Why not just get a designer to do it for you?

Because being able to present your insights visually isn’t just a desirable skill—it's a necessity.

92% of business leaders¹  expect employees in non-design roles to have design skills and knowledge, according to Canva’s Visual Economy report.

There’s lots of ways you can visualize things—even with Generative AI.

You no longer need to be an expert digital artist to generate cool-looking images.

(Since GenAI is just a mashup of the work digital artists put online.)

But what about when you need to create a visual model to communicate a new insight? Every project is different, so most insights work is custom.

So it’s likely not going to fit into a template.

And GenAI can’t generate custom visual models, since, again, it's a mashup of existing content.

So, I’m not convinced AI will help you with that.

According to the same survey, 90%² of business leadership also thinks AI has improved the quality of visual communication.

"Quantity" I could believe, but, "quality"?

Out here in reality, it hasn’t, so it’s weird that they think that, but don’t be surprised if what follows is a real expectation that anyone can just use AI to quickly generate slides that do viscom better than a human could do on their own.³

Combined with the democratization of data collection, this could mean a lot of people trying to analyze data and crank out slides presenting "insights".

It could even mean teams shrinking.

This means you’ll have to work harder to visually differentiate yourself and demonstrate your business value as an insights veteran.

If there’s one thing you could do differently tomorrow to solve this problem, it’s this:

Learn the one thing that the best slide designers know how to do better than their competitors—optimize words and images for the human mind.

If you look at their decks, it isn’t obvious. Like good engineering, when it’s done correctly, no one notices it’s there.

Yet their slides are far more memorable, and people can understand them 60,000x faster⁴ .

That’s what separates the best slide designers from everyone else.

On August 1, 2024, I’m teaching a workshop that will boil this down, make it dead simple for you, and give you some free resources you can use on your next deck.

Click here to read all about it.

PS - if you have any questions about the workshop, hit reply and let me know so I can address them. I read every email.

🦶📝

1  Canva’s Visual Economy Report. n=3,707 total respondents residing globally includes Heads of (VP, C-Level) or Directors in Marketing/Communications, Creative, HR/People, Sales, & Ops/Admin.

2  “Believe the quality of visual communication has been improved by AI”. n=3,707.

3  It’s also funny that on the next page, respondents say how they’re actually using AI…and it’s all about helping them write stuff, like blog posts and social, with 0 mentions of it being used on any visual work.

4  The Picture Superiority Effect. We humans process images around 60,000 times faster than text.