The Client
Akoya Biosciences, ‘The Spatial Biology Company™’ develops, manufactures and sells instruments, services, gear and software for life science researchers. Their technology is state of the art, and they love taking an innovative approach in everything they do.
The Problem
Akoya Biosciences' management needed a PowerPoint template that went beyond the basic 15-slide standard that most corporations are used to. They were after a template that unifies their corporate communications, is easy-to-use, maintains a slide library, and looks visually stunning.
The Solution
A sleek and modern PowerPoint template made up of just over 120 slides. The template is a perfect extension of the Akoya Biosciences brand (to the point where the bullet-points were customized), and more importantly, was so easy to use that anyone in the firm can use it.
NOTE: The slides you're about to see were designed by Slide Cow in a co-creation process with the client. Because we really value client confidentiality, we've purposely not shown some of the slides of the final deck, and have also omitted some sensitive copy by replacing words with "Lorem Ipsum" dummy text fillers where applicable.
Kicking It Off
The project got going after a short call between Slide Cow’s CEO, Yousef “Yoyo” Abu Ghaidah, and Akoya Biosciences’ President, Terry Lo.
Terry made clear that PowerPoint was an integral part of Akoya Biosciences’ visual communication efforts, and as such, there were high expectations of getting this done right.
And that's when things got real fast. The two PowerPoint fanatics discussed a number of topics, including:
- Images, layouts and illustrations that needed to be implemented into the template
- The value of certain assets being structured and exhibited
- Strategies to achieve total brand alignment
- Balance between using Slide Master (for slide layouts) and Normal View (for slide assets)
The Mood Board
"You know what the most exciting thing about this project is? We're going to find ways to make a topic like biosciences sexy!"
Yousef "Yoyo" Abu Ghaidah, CEO of Slide Cow
Once we got a plan of action in hand, we put a mood board together. We figured it would be best to do this for two reasons.
First, a mood board helps us easily identify and assess Akoya's brand elements. This ensures that the template is produced as an extension of the Akoya brand.
Second, a mood board gives us the chance to play around with our creative software and figure out what we think would work best. It's a process we like to call 'slide doodling,' and we usually do this in a co-creation process with the client so that they can get a heads up on what to expect.
There's no getting around it: The Akoya Biosciences brand was the glue that held this mood board together. This isn’t a boring jargon-speaking and science-only research firm. This is a state of the art, technology-driven research firm that understands what it’s like to do business in 2019.
Just take a look at the imagery that they produce. Yes, these are actual biomedical research images that are produced as a result of Akoya's work, technology and people.
How on earth could we not incorporate them into the PowerPoint template?
We Even Customized The Bullet Points!
We got so carried away with making the PowerPoint template perfect that we even customized the template’s bullet points.
To do this, we played around with the circular elements that make up the Akoya Biosciences identity.
The Final Product
A little over 120 slides later, we created a delightful PowerPoint template that was loved by the Akoya team.
We made sure that it was chock-full of different slide layouts and experiences. Everything from lists to infographics was neatly packed into the template.
The best part?
We created off-slide assets for the Akoya team to use when it comes time to design their slides. #DetailsMatter
We felt we did a fantastic job. And hey, the feedback we received doesn't disagree.
"Yoyo and his team delivered an excellent product for us. The design and thoroughness of building our template was really on the mark for what we were looking for. Most importantly, Yoyo was incredibly responsive in addressing questions and input with really fast turnaround time."
-Terry Lo, President of Akoya Biosciences
On to the next one!