We’ve heard it before. “Presentation design? Is that a thing people do? You do that? And you make a living doing that?” There are many variations, but the message is clear: we need to spread the notion that what many of us do is a necessary, valuable, and viable function. It’s one of the reasons we formed the Presentation Guild.
This week, we saw a sign that this notion is spreading.
The Creative Pro Network, an online resource since 1999, hosts Creative Pro Week, a conference for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and digital and print publishing professionals. This year, it’s in New Orleans in June.
Making its debut this year as part of this conference is Click: The Presentation Design Conference. It’s just one day, and they’re still lining up speakers for this portion of the overall week-long confab. The leader, however, is no stranger to either presentations or presentation industry leaders. The Click emcee and editorial director is Mark Heaps, who has “spent over 20 years designing and building presentations for both boutique businesses and Fortune 500 clients, and was the Director of Development for Duarte Inc.” according to the website. Their bullet points answering “What will be taught?” and “Who should attend?” hit a lot of the right notes.
So, this news has our ears perked up. As you know, we already have one multi-day presentation design/delivery conference serving our industry, but we’ll be following developments on this new entry and reporting back to you.
In the meantime, feel free to begin a discussion here in the comments or on our forum. Are you going to go to this? Are you interested? Is this another sign that presentation design is really a thing?