Installing Truck Graphics for EHS Pest

We get called into all kinds of interesting projects. I recently wrote about our summer project, a large environmental wall graphic for MGH hospital in Boston, well no sooner was that completed then we jumped into developing and producing the graphics for a fleet of service trucks for EHS Pest of Norwood Mass. EHS is a leader in using environmentally friendly products for ridding the world of pests in commercial buildings, homes, schools, you name it.

The project was to take their logo and their new branding and apply it to their new fleet of trucks. The project involved developing a design for 4 different kinds of vehicles. Two styles of panel trucks and two type of pickup trucks. The images shown here show the installation of the graphics on three of the trucks. Graphics are applied, side, front/back and top. Production and installation was performed by DGI-Invisuals of Burlington, MA.

Applying Cut Vinyl Letters on the Front of the Ford Transits Truck

It was really something to watch this installer work. It was almost like he was dancing around the truck. He never stops moving, applying and adjusting each graphic with confidence. Even with the best of design planning judgment calls have to be made on each vehicle. This installer was a master at doing that. While on the site visit at DGI-Invisuals I also got to view a portfolio of his work. Everything from trains, to cars, to all sizes of trucks, from simpler graphics like mine to full vehicle wraps this guy has done it all.

EHS Ford Ranger Truck

We also worked on two other Ford trucks, the Ford Ranger and a Ford 150. Above you can see the design applied to the Ranger. The Ranger also had a bed cap that needed to be designed. On the Ranger we moved the quality seal from the back to the door. This is a supervisor truck so it serves a little different function than the Transits. It is also marked with a quality logo by the rear tires.

UUA Green Sanctuary Manual Book Design Project

Cover for the Unitarian Universalist Green Sanctuary Manual. We designed and produced this 100 plus page book and cover for the Green Sanctuary program at the UUA. The purpose of the manual is to motivate Unitarian Universalists to community action on environmental issues

This manual was developed by Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth (UUMFE). We worked on the new version of the manual which has been reorganized, rewritten, and edited to include new stories from congregations currently participating in the Green Sanctuary program.

The manual can be download from the UUA website, uua.org .

You can see other examples of projects we have worked on at our main web site, www.brucejonesdesign.com

Logo and Identity for a High Tech Startup

We work on all kinds of projects and with all kinds of clients. One of them is BakerSolar which is a spin off ME Baker, a leader in wet process technology for producing printed circuit boards. The firm need a new logo that didn't move to far from the Baker logo. Working with the client we developed the logo above, using the wave to highlight the wet process.

Drawing Countries of the World for Presentation Maps

Over the last year and a half we have been involve in a large project for one of the top 3 world wide accounting firms to draw maps of approx 50 countries in the world. These maps were added to our existing maps to make a collection of about 90 countries. This accounting firm needed maps for each country where they have an office for presentations purposes. The maps were drawn from original CIA country maps and then converted into PowerPoint for presentations. The key of the maps is that there are editable and the elements can be colored and changed. The maps show the country, the surrounding countries, capitals and major cities. We recently completed this project and will start on a new collection of countries shortly.

If you are interested in learning more about our editable maps for presentations please check out www.mapsfordesign.com

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project, Video

Short video on the design, production and installation of the new environmental graphic wall mural around the Eat Street Cafe at Mass General Hospital in Boston. To learn more please read below.

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project, Final Results

Final results for the upgrade of the basement hallway around the Eat Street Cafe at MGH Hospital in Boston. New floor, wall, bumpers, ceiling and wall graphics

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project, Installation

The installations of the wall panels had some challenges because these two hallways are used to supply the hospital all during the day, everyday. Above you can see one of the supply cart trains. Plus thousands of people a day travel through them and this is the way to the main cafe for the hospital. So the DGI guys did a lot of squeezing. All went well with installation taking about 7 days.

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project, Installing Graphic Panels

Pictured above is installation on two different kinds of wall surfaces. We had sheet rock walls and cinder block walls. Installation involves applying 4 foot wide adhesive backed graphic panels to the wall surface. A pretty easy process on a sheet rock wall. Get it straight and then burnish it down. On the cinder block walls we used a new 3M material that is shrink wrapped into the cement grooves between the blocks. This involves going over every square inch of the panel with a heat gun. It takes about an hour per panel, we had about 35 panels per hallway.

Production of the wall panels and installation was done by DGI-Invisuals of Burlington, MA

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project, Design and Installation

Bottom image is a screen capture from the original design and layout of the wall project. The top image show installation of the adhesive vinyl panels. Because of all of the work involved in a project like this it took over 2 years to complete. We went through an original design and approval process and then had to wait while all of the renovations were completed. After new floors, walls, ceiling, lighting and signage was in place we came back and completed the layout and then installation.

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project, Original Wall

Original hallway wall around the Eat Street Cafe located in the basement at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. The project involved renovations to the floors, walls and ceilings. Our part of it was designing a mural that ran between the top bumper rail and the ceiling in the two hallways around the edge, approx. 270'. The mural was to highlight food elements, the Cafe, brighten up the hallway and let people know that there was a cafe behind the wall.

These two hallways, which form a large L, in the basement at MGH handle a huge amount of foot and motorized cart traffic during the day. Approximately 10,000 people a day go through the cafe entrance. The carts, which are kind of like little trains, carry supplies, food, trash, all kinds for stuff that runs a hospital.

LMA New England 2009 Conference

The LMA New England 2009 conference is closing in, we have all been busy getting ready. This year's conference is November 19-20, 2009 at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel. I am on the Conference Committee again as the graphics person and I recently produced this short video on the event. It was a lot of fun working with co-chairs Dan Hampson and Kate Katzenberg pulling this all together. Hope to see you there.

9 Ways to Get Retweeted

I subscribe to Joan Stewart's Publicity Hound email newsletter. Every Tuesday she sends out her weekly post of ideas and this week included 9 Ways to Get Retweeted. The newsletter is free and a great source of ideas. Click on the link above to signup. This week's had a great post on reTweeting.

2. Get Retweeted These 9 Ways

One of the measures of your influence on Twitter is the number of times your followers retweet your tweets.

Viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella, an avid Twitterer and author of The Social Media Marketing Book, spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets. Based on his scientific research, he offers these nine tips for getting retweeted:

--Link, but don't use Tiny URLs.

--Ask your followers to retweet your posts. "Please" and "retweet" were his third and fourth "most retweetable" words.

--Avoid idle chit-chat like what you're eating for lunch. Do NOT answer Twitter's question, "What are you doing?"

--Don't be stupid. Use words instead of abbreviations and emoticons. :-(

--Use punctuation, especially colons, periods, exclamation points, commas and hyphens. But don't use semicolons.

--Break news.

--Use proper nouns correctly.

--Bottle your emotions. Nobody cares about your problems at work. They don't like swear words either.

--Tweet at 4 p.m. on Friday.

Give Dan your email address and get his entire report.

Do what Dan does. Capture email addresses by giving away something for free, and then keep in touch with people on your list regularly, just like I do when I send you this newsletter weekly.

Janvier Miller Artist Blog 2008-2009

We recently pulled together a book for the artist Janvier Miller. The book highlights a year in her life as a painter and artist. What is unique about this book is that is was created over a year by recording daily blog posts on her paintings, influences and life. This was an excellent way to build a book. It is very hard to sit down and just write out a book but it isn't to hard to write small daily or weekly thoughts on your subject.

Along with the text she also loaded up many many painting images and an occasional video. After the year was done we download all the material and created the book. The blog was a great place to host all this material, she could work on it no matter where she was and get a feel for the flow of the material. She could also get comments from readers and all of the material is in the right format for someone like me to come along and collect it. Another great benefit was that as we worked on the book corrections would come up, Jan could just go into the blog, make them, and I could just download the new copy or image.

I highly recommed if you are interested in pulling together a book that this is a great way to do it. If you are clever you will also put up an email sign up box and collect name and address for when you are ready to sell. The material is out there getting indexed and maybe commented on.

I also recommend this method even if you are not thinking of doing a book, just writing a blog on your interests can really help shape your thoughts and you never know a book might just start appearing.

The book is printed use a print on demand service called lulu.com, doing it this way the production costs are carried by the reader, there is no inventory and it is available from anywhere in the world. To check it out click on this lulu.com link

Click to check out Janvier Millers blog.

Video Projects Mixing with Graphic Design

Over the last couple of years we have been dipping our toes into the video world and learned a lot. Video is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the marketing picture these days. With the ability to shoot with very affordable, high quality cameras and edit on your desktop video has entered all areas. Along with the ability to distribute globally for no money through sites like YouTube, Blip.TV and your own blogs and web sites. We don't need to go to expensive producers to get our message out. An it looks like a lot of fun. So for the last couple of years I have been learning and producing all kinds of video.

My projects have included over 20 "How to Videos" for my World of Maps Clip Art for PowerPoint and Illustrator, studying with Bill Gentile and the PBS show NOW in Washington DC, last Fall, producing my own series "Acoustic Music TV" for singer songwriters, becoming an independent video producer for my local cable station. Something over 50 productions, from 1 minute to hours long, it has been lot fun and a great learning experience. I have been able to combine my design knowledge with the video knowledge. New skills for the all media all the time age we live in.

I am currently working on a couple of shows on the conservation lands of my town along with a companion book, and a short film on a bonsai garden. To see some of the examples or what I have been working on check out my Video blog at http://brucejonesdesignvideo.blogspot.com/

World of Maps Antique Historical World Maps Book

Our latest book is a printed collection of our Antique Historical World Projection Maps from 1500-1900. This book is the companion to our 3 CD-Rom royalty free Antique Vintage map collection. Twelve different world projection maps in three sizes over 36 pages. Perfect for scrapbooking, artist trading cards, education projects, maybe a graphic design assignment. All royalty free and ready for your projects. The book is available in print or in a pdf format at lulu.com, watch for the North American volume next.

MGH Eat Street Cafe Hallway Renovation Project

Video to highlight a recent project we completed at Mass General Hospital. The project involved the renovation of two hallways around the Eat Street Café at the hospital, total footage about 270' feet. Our job was to design and produce wall graphics for the upper half of the walls to highlight food elements relating to the Cafe. The project took over 2 years from start to finish. This video takes us through the major steps of the project. Product and installation was performed by DGI-Invisuals of Burlington, MA.

New Brochure for an Engineering Firm

We just designed a new brochure for an engineering firm in Southeastern Massachusetts, Coneco Engineers & Scientist, Inc. Coneco is an engineering firm specializing in Civil Engineering, Environmental Consulting, Surveying and GeoThermal Sytems. The assignment was to develop a brochure for them to use in marketing to new clients.

We produced an 8 page, self cover, 4 color brochure highlighting all of their services. What is unique but is becoming more and more common is that we only printed a couple of hundred using a digital press. A few years ago we didn't have this option but now this is becoming the norm. Printing this way keeps your cost in control, lets you test the brochure and market, lets you get feed back and allows you to make changes as you move forward. It is a very efficient way of printing even for a larger brochure like this one. The quality on the digital presses these days is outstanding. Printing was done at Hanson Printing located in Brockton Massachusetts.

Pull Up Banner Display for Trade Shows

We recently completed a pull up banner display for Spirited Sisters, Inc and their Healing Threads line of specialty clothing for undergoing medical visits. Their clothing has been specially designed for preserving modesty and dignity while undergoing mammography, breast care, radiation and doctor visits.

For this project we recommended using the portable pull up banner displays. They are easy to carry around, affordable and give a great presentation. Working with existing photos from their other marketing materials save a lot money and gave a consistent look.

To learn more about Healing Threads check out their website healingthreads.com

Magnet Wall Installation at a Boston Hospital

A short video of the step by step installation of the Magnet Nursing Program wall mural at a Boston Hospital. Watch how the 4' vinyl panels are assembled and installed by the crew from DGIinvisuals of Burlington, Mass. The mural was made up of two parts, a 14' floor to ceiling section and a 30' long top banner section. On top of the larger section were installed two snap frames for announcements and programs.

Video shot and edited by Bruce Jones.

Beginning of Wall Mural Installation

We were involved in a cool project recently to design a wall mural celebrating the involvement of one of Boston best hospitals in the Nursing Magnet Program. The Magnet Program recognizes excellence in nursing services. These photos show the installation of this project. It took about 6 hours with a team of two from DGI-Invisuals of Burlington, MA to put up the 14 foot mural with an additional 30 foot banner. The 4 foot pieces are applied one after the other, carefully positioned and then burnished down. DGI-Invisuals produced the mural material and handled all installation.

Installation of Enviromental Wall Graphic

Close up of installation of Magnet Wall graphic. Each 4 foot piece has to be carefully positioned.

Installation of Magnet Wall Graphic

Installation of graphic by DGI-Invisuals of Burlington, MA. The graphic is assemble in 4 foot pieces. Each piece slightly overlaps the previous piece. The pieces have a two step adhesive, light tack for repositioning and permanent tack when everything is positioned correctly.

Site Photo of Magnet Wall Graphic

Completed enviromental wall graphic, including mounted display frames.

Design for Wall Installation Celebrating a Magnet Program

Final design concept for a 14 foot enviromental wall graphic at a Boston hospital celebrating their membership in the The Magnet Nursing Services Recognition Program for Excellence in Nursing Service. The wall was designed to hold two display frames and the top band extended an additional 30 feet with a list of services.

Save the Date Post Card Mailer for Non Profit

Save the Date postcard for the upcoming Silent Spring Institute spring fundraising dinner. Part of a package of save the date, invitation, program book and event graphics. Continues with the green theme from the previous year.

NoteBook Chord and Music Charts from Bruce Jones Design

I am always working on multiple projects, clients and my own. This is my latest creation, NoteBook Chord and Music Charts, with chord and music charts for guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. The charts are designed to be used as reference charts while you play. They contain major, minor and 7th chords, arpeggio scales, barre chords, soloing scales for blues, folk, country, and rock music, blank sheet music.

If you are a musician you most likely have a notebook or three with your favorite songs that you take to play with your friends. And when you start out learning guitar or mandolin you spend a lot of time searching for music information to fill in the gaps. A lot of what you find is to complicated or isn't complete enough. I designed these charts based on my own efforts over the last 10 or so years to find this information. The charts are produced as pdf files and as actual pages that you can put into your music jam book. The type is big and the pages are 3 hole punched for your notebook. If you are interested you can check them out at my music web site AcousticMusicTV.com.

Twitter and All the Other Social Media Platforms

Perry Belcher covers all the important elements in the Social Media world in the one video.

A Great Plan for Using Twitter for Your Business

I follow and receive every Tuesday a great PR email newsletter from Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound. She usually tackles upwards of 10 topics on PR and general business. Always informative and timely. This week she included a nice piece on how to deal with and use Twitter, the exploding micro blogging site. I also recommend signing up for her free newsletter it is excellent, info at the bottom of this post.


Confused about what to tweet about on Twitter?

Do you hate those "what I ate for lunch" tweets and vow you'll
never write them, but you can't think of much else to say that
your followers would find interesting?

Here's a helpful tip from Perry Belcher, who accumulated more
than 52,000 Twitter followers in only 128 days. At the Live7
event hosted by Stompernet, the Internet marketing membership
group earlier this month, Perry shared his formula for the
content of his tweets:

--30 percent: Tips that help make people's lives better

--10 percent: Information that keeps them informed

--30 percent: Anything that makes people laugh (He says
http://www.Fark.com is a great site for humorous content)

--25 percent: Compliments and praise

--5 percent: What you're doing

Have you been writing most of your tweets about what you're
doing? If so, try this formula and see how much more quickly
people start following you.

Granted, this takes a little more time and discipline. But I'm
sure it's the reason Perry has been able to attract such a huge
following so quickly. You can follow him on Twitter at
http://Twitter.com/perrybelcher and you can follow me at
http://twitter.com/PublicityHound


Yes, you can use Twitter to promote. But you have to do it much
more subtly than the way you promote in other venues. Twitter
expert Warren Whitlock gives you the step-by-step process on "How
to Use Twitter to Amass an Army of Followers, Customers &
Valuable Contacts--and Promote." It's available as an electronic
transcript and your choice of CDs or MP3s. Publicity Hounds raved
about the two teleseminars I hosted with him several months ago
because his advice helped shorten their Twitter learning curve.

Read more about how to use Twitter to promote at
http://tinyurl.com/3lbcaw

Reprinted from "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week," an ezine
featuring tips, tricks and tools for generating free publicity.
Subscribe at http://www.publicityhound.com/ and receive by email
the handy cheat sheet "89 Reasons to Send a News Release."

A Cool Book on Presentations

Nancy Duarte of the Duarte Design has released a cool book full on practical approaches to telling stories visually, Slideology: the Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. The book combines conceptial thinking and inspirational design, lots of case studies. For those of us who are always making presentations this book is full of helpful ideas and techniques.

You will learn how to connect with audiences, turn ideas into informative graphics, develope graphics that help audiences process information, make truly influential presentations and utilize technology. Available at Amazon

Also check out her blog, lots of cool stuff.

New CD for Our World of Maps Editable Clip Art Collection

A quick announcement, we are now shipping our newest World of Maps Editable Clip Art Collection CD Rom. We have been working hard on updating the collection and the web sites. But the biggest part is done, the CD and it is shipping. The web sites will be updated with all the new maps shortly.

Tons of new country maps for business presentations, illustrations, web sites and education.

Watch our World of Maps blog for details.

New Book on Customizing PowerPoint Maps

We have just published a new short book on "How to Customize PowerPoint Clip Art Maps". This book goes along with our How-To videos on editing our World of Maps Clip Art collections. The book can be viewed and downloaded at www.Scribd.com, which is just the coolest site, kind of like a YouTube for print.

Book Description
Learn how to customize editable, royalty free, PowerPoint clip art maps from MapsForDesign.com. Learn about coloring, setting up sales and marketing territories, group and ungrouping, using the shift key, adding text, and building hyperlinks. The book takes you through step by step techniques to get the most out of your PowerPoint editable clip art maps.

You can also click the link over on the right.

New Backpack Journalism Workshop

"Bill Gentile conducts the first Backpack Journalism Workshop With Bill Gentile and NOW on PBS at American Film Institute (AFI) in Silver Spring, Md. In an intensive, four-day workshop, students learn the full range of skills for effective video storytelling -- from idea development, to shooting and editing, and how to pitch ideas and stories to NOW on PBS, and other outlets. "

I recently attended a great workshop run by Bill Gentile and the PBS/NOW supported Backpack Journalism Workshop in Washington DC. Bill is running a new workshop in March and is well worth attending if you are interested in learning about producing programing. It was a lot of fun and I learned a ton about producing video stories. Check out the video I produced below.

To learn more about the workshop check out the website on the PBS/NOW Backpack site.

Inspired by Paper, Film by Bruce Jones

Film by Bruce Jones "Inspired by Paper," completed at the NOW on PBS sponsored program with producer Bill Gentile and the Backpack Journalism workshop in Washington DC mid December. The 4 day workshop held at the America Film Institute Silver Theater was designed to build skills using prosumer video cameras and laptop computers to produce compelling broadcast and web programing. For my story I went to the Pyramid Atlantic Print and Paper Making studio and did a story on the paper artist Elizabeth Parthum.

The workshop was an amazing experience. Starting with a given assignment we were sent off to shoot footage over two or three days, find and develop a story about the place, tape interviews and produce a three to five minute program. During the four days we learned how to use a tripod, conduct an interview, set up shots, work with story arcs, develop a script, use our cameras correctly, deal with lighting, sound, it just went on and on. The classes ran for 12 hours a day, for four days, none of us left. With lectures by Bill Gentile of American University and PBS/NOW, Lesley Norman-a NOW producer, and a rep from SONY Video, plus assistance from two of Prof. Gentile's former students we learned how to use the power of visual information.

This experience dovetails nicely into the other video productions skills I have been learning lately and has really pushed me to the next level. Great time.

Answering the Phone

One of my design tasks in life is to get people to put their phone numbers and other contact information on their marketing material. I am always surprised how many companies don't. So ok we have the number on the material so now lets answer the phone when a customer calls. Below is a great comment from Seth Godin on this very subject. To read more from Seth check out his blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

How to answer the phone

The KitchenAid tea kettle (adorned in bright Squidoo orange, of course) in my office melted, leaving hot orange plastic on my thumb. Yes, it hurts as much as you probably imagine it does.

But that wasn't the worst part.

I called 1-800-334-6889 to whine a little bit and to hear why they made a meltable teapot. I counted how many prompts I had to press in order to talk to a human being. It was NINE.

Nine! Try it. I'll wait.

The last step was a recording that they were closed and I should call back after 10 am. Click.

I know you've heard this before, but it's really simple:

The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy.

If you're not doing this or you are unable to do this, do not answer the phone. There is no middle ground on this discussion. There are no half measures. Saving 50 cents a call with a complicated phone tree is a false savings. Think of all the money you'll save if you just stop answering altogether. Think of all the money you'll make if you just make people happy.

Your choice.

We need a logo, how much does that cost?

We were asked today from a potential client how much it would cost to design a logo. The firm is in the middle of a transition and wanted to add a new logo to their announcement. They have been up until this point just going with very basic stationery and business cards. I usually deal with companies that already have some kind of design look and logo, but there are still many out there that don't.

I answered the question this way: That is a big question. Logos can be little or a lot. They reflect the look, feel, and personality of the firm. You can do simple logos of just the name in a nice typeface or you can go way more complex with adding a graphic element or doing something funky with the text, the sky is the limit.

Members in a firm take their logo like their own name and especially in a partner based organization like a law or consulting firm it often involves balancing many people's ideas. With service firms I have done them quickly for under $500 and have also taken a year and spent thousands. A lot of the cost is the process to come to a logo, how big the marketing committee is, how big the firm is, how much you pay attention to partners that aren't in the committee.

Logos are often also done in conjunction with a business card and stationery. You want to pay attention to how it will be used in other firm and marketing uses. With a merger you are adding in a whole group of new people, are you giving them a say, or you get the idea.

I also noticed that you don't have a website, so developing a logo might also want to be the start of an overall marketing look. You don't have to go crazy here but a logo does fit into a larger picture and this is where the process starts.

Penske Truck Rental

Some new images from a slow in the process book project. It is hard to not notice the yellow. Big, cool and graphic. Enjoy.

New Kids on the Block

I have loved wall art forever. It just kind of builds itself, nice and graphic, often messy with repeated elements.

Parking Motorcycles

I have taken many photos of parking motorcycles, something about the curves, the intense colors, the out of the box parking locations. All cool.

News Paper Boxes

These rows of the free press are all over our cities. Read them or not, they make for a colorful line of alternative writing.

Nine Steps to PowerPoint Magic

I have been crazy busy lately and haven't had time to read my favorite blog by Seth Godin. Being that I sell products for PowerPoint I thought this was excellent. Except for the first. Just kidding.

"Perhaps you've experienced it. You do a presentation and it works. It works! That's the reason we keep coming back for more, that's why so many of us spend more time building and giving presentations than almost anything else we do.

Here are some steps to achieve this level of PPT nirvana (Your mileage may vary. These are steps, not rules):

1. Don't use Powerpoint at all. Most of the time, it's not necessary. It's underkill. Powerpoint distracts you from what you really need to do... look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times Powerpoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.
2. Use your own font. Go visit Smashing Magazine and buy a font from one of their sponsors or get one of the free ones they offer. Have your tech guy teach you how to install it and then use it instead of the basic fonts built in to your computer. This is like dressing better or having a nicer business card. It's subtle, but it works.
3. Tell the truth. By this I don't mean, "don't lie," (that's a given), I mean "don't hide." Be extremely direct in why you are here, what you're going to sell me (you're here to sell me something, right? If not, please don't waste your time or mine). It might be an idea, or a budget, but it's still selling. If, at the end, I don't know what you're selling, you've failed.
4. Pay by the word. Here's the deal: You should have to put $5 into the coffee fund for every single word on the wordiest slide in your deck. 400 words costs $2000. If that were true, would you use fewer words? A lot fewer? I've said this before, but I need to try again: words belong in memos. Powerpoint is for ideas. If you have bullets, please, please, please only use one word in each bullet. Two if you have to. Three never.
5. Get a remote. I always use one. Mine went missing a couple of weeks ago, so I had to present without it. I saw myself on video and hated the fact that I lost all that eye contact. It's money well spent.
6. Use a microphone. If you are presenting to more than twenty people, a clip on microphone changes your posture and your impact. And if you're presenting to more than 300 people, use iMag. This is a setup with a camera and projector that puts your face on the screen. You should have a second screen for your slides--the switching back and forth is an incompetent producer's hack that saves a few bucks but is completely and totally not worth it. If 400 people are willing to spend an hour listening to you, someone ought to be willing to spend a few dollars to make the presentation work properly.
7. Check to make sure you brought your big idea with you. It's not worth doing a presentation for a small idea, or for a budget, or to give a quarterly update. That's what memos are for. Presentations involve putting on a show, standing up and performing. So, what's your big idea? Is it big enough? Really?
8. Too breathtaking to take notes. If people are liveblogging, twittering or writing down what you're saying, I wonder if your presentation is everything it could be. After all, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just blogged it/note-taken it for them, right? We've been trained since youth to replace paying attention with taking notes. That's a shame. Your actions should demand attention (hint: bullets demand note-taking. The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, "write this down, but don't really pay attention now.") People don't take notes when they go to the opera.
9. Short! Do you really need an hour for the presentation? Twenty minutes? Most of the time, the right answer is, "ten." Ten minutes of breathtaking big ideas with big pictures and big type and few words and scary thoughts and startling insights. And then, and then, spend the rest of your time just talking to me. Interacting. Answering questions. Leading a discussion.

Most presentations (and I've seen a lot) are absolutely horrible. They're not horrible because they weren't designed by a professional, they're horrible because they are delivered by someone who is hiding what they came to say. The new trend of tweaking your slides with expensive graphic design doesn't solve this problem, it makes it worse. Give me an earnest amateur any day, please."

Reprinted from Seth Godin's Blog, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/nine-steps-to-p.html

To read more from Seth Godin check out his blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ or some of his books at Amazon.

New Wall at Children's Hospital in Boston

New environmental graphic at Children's Hospital in Boston highlighting the history of the hospital. Wall installed by DGI-Invisuals of Burlington, MA, wall covering with framed prints.