About the presentation

Duke Children’s Hospital needed a new way to tell their story. They wanted to strike an emotional chord with their audience, conveying the importance of the hospital and the countless lives they affect. The presentation was to be shown at The Teddy Bear Ball, the hospital’s large annual fundraiser gala, so it also had to honor the hospital’s many departments and staff.

Our job was to synthesize a huge collection of facts and anecdotes into a single, powerful presentation that was relatable to a non-medical audience. I’d like to share with you some of the thoughts that went into the presentation design process, with several tips you can use for your future presentations.

Tips from behind the scenes

Choosing visuals to depict the work done by a hospital was a challenge. Early on in the process we made the choice to not show any photos of sick children or children undergoing surgery — it’s just too depressing. We wanted to focus on the transformative nature of hospitals, not the reasons for visiting them. So we went abstract and used brighter, happier images while avoiding the stock photo cliches. Rule #1 was always be respectful to the seriousness of the content.

The story has a clear transition from the past to the present. We underscored this transition with the way we used photos in the slides. For the sections about the past, the photos have white borders and shadows and are dropped onto the slide, with the text lying outside the borders of the photos. It creates a look and feel of an old scrapbook. For the sections about the present and future, the photos switch to full-bleed (they are extended to the edge of the slide) with the text incorporated into the images. This more modern, professional feel pulls the audience into the content in a vivid and visceral manner.

The theme of the presentation was “our story,” so we used a repeating visual of children reading storybooks. At the start of each new section, there was a pause in the rhythm and an image of a child holding a brightly colored storybook. This motif culminates at the presentation’s emotional climax with a bold slide depicting a row of huge, brightly colored storybooks. “Our story is just one part of millions of much bigger stories.”

Similarly, we heightened the emotional impact of the story’s climax and ending with an old filmmaking technique. Throughout the presentation, the photos of the children gradually go from wide-shot, to medium close-up, to close-up. By drawing the perspective in closer to the subject’s face, the audience is drawn closer into the storytelling and will make a stronger emotional connection with the content.

I hope you enjoy our presentation and this glimpse into the presentation design process on a project like this. Duke Children’s Hospital is a wonderful organization that does some truly amazing work. It was a pleasure working with them.

Link to presentation video.

(The video version above is set to music from Disney-Pixar’s Up!)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Examples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.