Product Mangers Need To Learn How To Use A Color Wheel

So I’m just a little bit off the beaten path with this discussion, but I’ve recently had to sit through so many bad presentations that I’m feeling an overwhelming need to try to make the world a better place for Powerpoint slides to live in.

We all live and die by Powerpoint. I can’t begin to tell you how many bosses that I’ve had that insisted that I provide them with status updates in Powerpoint form. What part of my hero Edward Tuff’s write up after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (“Powerpoint Does Rocket Science“) did they not read?

Well no matter, we have to do what we have to do. However, at the very least we should be able to do it to the best of our ability. One of the greatest errors that I’ve been seeing as of late is the criminal use of colors that in no way should ever be used together. Look, I realize that for most of us (guys) getting dressed in the morning can be a challenge (what goes with what), but we should have the same level of concern when it comes to creating slides.

So how should a product manger pick colors for his/her Powerpoint slides? Simple – use a color wheel. Using a color wheel and just a bit of color theory, a product manger can start to produce professional looking slides. It turns out that using analogous colors (colors that are next to each other on the color wheel) or complementary colors (colors are across from each other on the color wheel) are easy ways to get your colors right.

Thanks to the Internet, there are now free sites that if you need to start with one color (company color, product color) will allow you to find out what colors work with that color. If this all seems to be too much for you, then you can visit the Colors On The Web site and press the button in order to get a random color scheme that has matching colors created for you.

How do you select what colors to use in your presentations today? Have you ever seen a really bad set of colors used in a presentation? Have you ever used a color wheel before? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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How Can Product Mangers Create Better Powerpoint Slides?

Yeah, yeah I know that everyone says that they hate Powerpoint – “death by Powerpoint” and all of that. However, the reality of modern Product Manger life is that we end up using Powerpoint to communicate a lot of information about our products and the current status of our projects. Thank goodness you took all of those Powerpoint classes back in college…

What? You’ve never had a Powerpoint class in your life? Hmm, can I at least assume that you know about the color wheel? Dang – struck out there also? Looks like we’re going to have to have a talk here.

There are some people out there that are really gifted artists. One that comes to mind is Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen. However, then there is the rest of us. Powerpoint has a bunch of flashy features that lots of people like to use; however, the key is to remember that it’s really a communication tool. This means that you’d like to get good enough at using it that you can get your point across in a clear way that will stick with your audience.

So how does a product manger go about doing this? It’s actually pretty simple – it will just take an investment in time. I would suggest that you find a Powerpoint presentation that you’ve seen that really worked for you – it communicated what it was trying to say in a concise, clear way. Then you need to sit down with a blank Powerpoint presentation and try to recreate it from scratch.

This is actually a lot harder than it might seem at first, getting all of the details of a presentation that someone else created (fonts, colors, line thicknesses, what goes on top of what else, etc.) can be a challenge. However, as you go through this copy / creation process you’ll discover how a really good presentation comes together.

I’m out of room this time, but we’ll chat about color wheels next time…

How did you orignally learn to use Powerpoint? Have you ever had any formal Powerpoint classes or has it been all on-the-job training? What was the best Powerpoint presentation that you’ve ever seen? Why? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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