Community Is…

By Nancy Duarte

Duarte Design recently participated in design tennis sponsored by Ethos 3 hosted on SlideShare.  Scott Schwertly pulled it together and posted the first slide. Each participant built on the concept proposed by Scott in the original deck “What is community”. It was an interesting study to see if complete strangers could build a story and a presentation without collaborating.

When the first few slides came in we noticed that they were defining community, which was good. When the day came for our submission, we pulled together a small team to brainstorm. Even though the contest had no criteria, I did. I wanted to see if we could re-direct the deck towards the benefits of a community and the fruit we could yield if we worked together. So, we gathered in a conference room. Diandra, Chris, Daniel and I were in Mountain View, and Ed joined on camera from Chico. Now that’s community!

We quickly brainstormed around ideas such as global community, melding of cultures, close friends across continents and even potlucks.  We narrowed the concept to reflect the impact that a global community can have.

The next step was for Ed to sketch out a handful of ideas.

All the sketches had the same concept but were arranged differently. Once we selected a sketch, Diandra identified an image for reference on illustration style and color palette.

There are a few lessons you can learn when you look at the final file:

1. No cohesive story emerges without collaboration (community): If you are working on a presentation where there are multiple presenters, collaborate at the beginning and agree on a direction so the final file has an audience “aha moment” in it. If people in your organization just randomly submit what they want, the audience can become confused and your structure may be unsound.
2. Everyone has their own visual preferences: Visual constraints are good. Before a group of people dives into preparing their presentation, someone on your team needs to determine image style, illustration style, font and layout decisions so that all the slides hang together visually.

Our slide sticks out like a sore thumb. In an effort to elevate the story and turn it into a conversation, it didn’t do its job. It was a fun study in community though!