Mac's Colour Picker

[This post is part of the Keynote Design Tips & Tricks Series.]

Colours are an extremely important part of any design process. I previously mentioned in 7 Simple Tips to Stunning Keynote Presentations, that having a right colour palette for your presentation plays a big part in determining how receptive your audience will be.

If you’ve ever wondered how designers obtain a certain shade of pink or a particular hue of blue, it’s usually done via a Colour Picker.

Luckily for us, OS X already has a built in Colour Picker that Keynote cleverly makes use of. However, I managed to find a simple add-on to OS X’s Colour Picker that would streamline this process even more. This allows you to easily make use of #Hex colour codes from colour palette sites like Kuler.

Trust me. You don’t have to be a geek or computer guru to complete this tutorial. It’s really simple and best of all, the 5 minutes you spend now will pay off really quickly.

Continue Reading…

[This post is part of the Keynote Design Tips & Tricks Series.]

Before you get started officially with Keynote, here are a few things you can do to ensure you’re making the most out of the application and getting the most bang for your buck.

Feel free to make use of these tips to customize Keynote to your liking. You’ll find most of these settings under Keynote’s Preference Pane.

Continue Reading…

If you’ve read my Why am I special? list, you’ll know that I’m someone who’s extremely particular when it comes down to details. In this case, I’m really particular when it comes down to having good visuals for my presentations/pitches and that’s why I spend many hours preparing and refining my presentation aids.

If you’re someone looking for tips to incorporate great design into your presentation aids or even an entrepreneur looking for ways to improve the design of your pitch deck, you’re definitely in the right place!

As entrepreneurs, we always have to find ways to convey our key messages and thoughts to others and the best way to do this is to make use of great design. Whether or not you find yourself preparing for a presentation or a entrepreneurial pitch, you’ll find it very useful to make use of this list to refine and aid your preparation.

I’ll be covering the tips and rules that I live by when preparing my presentation aids in this Tips and Tricks to Killer Keynote Presentations series.

Most of my presentations are prepared using Keynote, an awesome and easy-to-use application thats available on a Mac. You shouldn’t have much trouble following the tutorials and applying them to your own presentations.

Tips and Tricks to Killer Keynote Presentations:

Here’s the list of Tips and Tricks to Killer Keynote Presentations that I promised you (It’ll grow over time as I fill it up over the next few weeks):

1. 7 Simple Tips to a Stunning Keynote Presentation
2. Unlocking Keynote’s Full Potential
3. Harnessing the Power of Mac’s Colour Picker

Stay tuned as I’ll be adding more posts to the list as I finish writing them!

Continue Reading…

[This post continues from where I left off previously, from What Makes People Listen? Or Read?. Do check it out before reading this.]

Write Like You Speak! is going to be especially relevant to you if you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner, a blogger, an individual aware of his personal brand online, or even anyone who uses the Internet.

I previously mentioned on What Makes People Listen? Or Read? that there are thousands of websites on the Internet nowadays, and that many of us often find ourselves struggling to prevent our opinions from getting lost in the sea of information out there.

Getting your content (blog, papers, self-branding pages, etc.) indexed and Search Engined Optimized (SEO) is already difficult enough, such that when someone actually chances upon your content, you’ve really got to make that opportunity count!

Here’s the question: How do you actually make people stick around to read what you write?

The answer is really simple. Just like how we previously designed ourselves, we have to actively design the way we write:

1. Write simply, in a manner that is easy to read. In other words, we have to design our writing.
2. Always keep it conversational. Imagine yourself talking to your readers in person and you’ll never go wrong.