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(read this book yonks ago and drafted a summary of my notes but it’s sat in my Drafts for 18months)
John Steel…
It’s not about being right, it’s about winning (achieving your desired outcome). What is the desired destination of your audience?
Many presentations fail to find out what audience really wants/ or needs

Good pres

• Less is more
• Understand audience’s pre-conceptions
• Involve -(let them join the dots). Picasso…”I just get rid of all the bits that’s don’t look like a lion”
• simple – distill
• belief- surprise
• Audience never listening to you, listening to what it means to them

process

• Grazing – research and analysis of specific an general info
• Connections – Organise thoughts (post-its or similar). Story arc.
• Digest/compute – leave it all
• Adapt and Distill – shaping and developing to practical usefulness.
  • Scripts 5 elements – inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax and resolution
  • ‘Flower’ opens to tell the entire store in first few minutes

My colleague Steve gave me a book by John Maeda, the eminent digital designer and professor at MIT on the subject of ‘simplicity’ – in design, technology, business and life. A simple read (with only 100 pages) and some simple points ;
Maeda’s 10 Laws of simplicity

1. Reduce – thoughtful reduction aids simplicity. try “squinting” when you’re critiquing design. Use Shrink, Hide, Embody quality (SHE) e.g weight of a B&O remote embodies quality
2. Organise- an ordered list or hierarchy will makes a system of many appear fewer
3. Time – saving time/ speed feels like simplicity (task completion bars aid this)
4. Learn – knowledge/ habit makes things feel simpler
5. Difference – simplicity and complexity need each other
6. Context – what lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral – think how white space “opportunity lost by more white space leads to more attention of what remains – proportionately more attention is paid to that which remains
7. Emotion – more is better than less (no EI on computers)
8. Trust – In simplicity we trust
9. Failure – some things can never be made simple
10. The One – simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningfu

No.10 is thought provoking…
“art is about stimulating questions, design is about clarity”
“there’s little room for personal ego when the true priority is pleasing the customer”
“learning to swim requires people to trust water – try leaning back”
Gestalt- Gestalt psychologists believe there is a variety of mechanisms within the brain that lend to pattern-forming and self organization (give a clue in the design and let the brain work it out). The Gestalt effect refers to the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.
Accompanying the book is the obligatory blog.
lawsofsimplicity.com

Judo Dogs. Yeah!
YouTube or on their own site

Mix Tape / Mux Tape.
Just love the simplicity of design, interface, retro styling,
fun that can be had here. My tape coming very soon.
Thanks to Grumble Mouse for introducing this to me

Note to self. Must change template for this blog as it’s rubbish.

backed up, switched hosted, restored old blogs, re-directed, uploaded  then couldn’t find the damn password. Finally recovered everything. Phew! …now for some spring cleaning