In the age of digital design, one of the biggest challenges for businesses and individuals is creating materials which truly stand out from the crowd, or at least meet the standard the crowd has come to expect. As discussed in a recent Codeless Conduct piece, beautiful designs have become the norm, so an imperative balance arises between needing something to look good, but not dedicating more time than necessary when technology exists to apply exceptional design without any real, well, design work.
Presentations have always been a necessary evil in the business space and is one that has gotten relatively little innovation love relative to its age. Slidebean is New York-based startup that is trying to introduce a new spin on the old game of slide deck creation and design, attempting to make the process different, relatively painless, and rather pretty. Started in 2013, they have raised an additional $70K in Seed and Angel funding to help push their slide technology along.
The experience is essentially broken down into two parts: content definition and insertion and content design. To begin, users may choose a “pre-filled” deck type that contains a complete outline of what effective presentations of that nature often contain. Beyond standard templates which simply have a basic theme to the text and perhaps a background, these decks contain comprehensive, intelligently sequenced layouts with charts, color schemes, and other essentials out of the box.
Slidebean even has pre-filled decks from notable individuals and companies. For example, there’s the Airbnb pitch deck and a 10 slide investor deck designed by Dave McClure.
User can also choose to start from “scratch”. That means that much like a PowerPoint experience, they add their start from a blank canvas and then use simple element selections to pull in content-type containers, fill in their own custom content within those containers then apply pre-set style options to quickly design the content.
Videos are easily added by inserting a URL, charts are populated by simply copying and pasting Excel cells, and users can even access and then customize a broad variety of icons, through a partnership Slidebean has with The Noun Project.
Preset designs can also be tweaked incrementally and in the cases where Slidebean does not have a template, color palette or even font you want to use, you can request that the team upload or whip up something to meet your requirements.
There is also a built-in photo search capabilities, allowing them to search professional photography and add as many images as they need, at no additional charge.
When viewers go through Slidebean-hosted presentations online, the owner is able to view essential details such as unique visits, average time on presentation, and the average completion rate. It’s similar to the analytics built into hosting platforms such as Slideshare, however Slidebean shows you the metrics for each individual viewer in addition to the aggregate stats.
There’s also dynamic editing support, meaning the presentation owner is able to make revisions and updates in real-time. At any time in the presentation process, users are also able to export their files in PowerPoint (PPT) and PDF formats.
The service is built with HTML5 and JavaScript so no additional software users need to download. Additionally, presentations created on the service maintain the intended style, whether they’re viewed on a PC or Mac.
Pricing for Slidebean starts at $8/month for individuals, $24/month for up to five team members, and $160/month for up to 25 team members. Slidebean also offers a full-service slide redesign and touch-up service which starts at $10 per slide.
