This last year we’ve been doing a lot of work in pharma, mostly market access and launch planning etc. One of the things I’ve noticed is how much they value work that is well presented visually and we’ve had great feedback for some of the things we’ve done to convey some complex concepts in pictorial form.
I’d like to invest a bit more time in this side of things, to improve the professionalism of what we are able to produce from a graphics and imagery standpoint. We don’t want to move over too far into a marketing agency skillset, but toward that direction would be helpful.
So I’m wondering if any folks here use/ could recommend software/ apps and even training courses that might be of interest. Or point me in the direction of people who have similar skills that I might pick their brains a bit.
Not sure if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, thinking you mean visual presentations, like slideshows etc that look better than the average powerpoint?
We have in-house graphic designers that put our documents and presentations together, or refine the bodged ones we put together. We use InDesign, which allows you to do some pretty fancy things with images, text etc, but I have to admit I’ve found it difficult to go beyond the basics without asking for help.
Adobe Illustrator gets used a lot to, for producing nice looking diagrams, highlighting parts of images etc, creating icons, very much in the style of current web design and communication.
The basics of Indesign are worth learning, so that you or colleagues can set up or alter presentations.
Bringing logos in, inserting images and text is not much more difficult than PowerPoint, BUT how it differs is that it references the content into the document, so all of your source material has to be kept organised and accessible to the software whilst you edit.
The graphical content, created from scratch I would think would be best done in Adobe illustrator. Look into it, you may have time or colleagues that have the patience to learn, but I would perhaps think about using a graphic designer as a consultant if funds allow.
The GD could set up a master document for you to amend as needed, keeping brand consistency etc.
Let me know how you get on, our head of graphics/marketing is a helpful guy who I am sure would assist, advise on training for people or freelance designers worth speaking to in the region.
I think we’re going to have to sub contract some of this in 2021 as we are already looking 75-100 days over our capacity and about a third of that would be design and production of stuff.
Here is a powerpoint presentation explained by a company.
Their client is NS, the Dutch railways. In the beginning you see the traditional ppt, later he explained what they made of it. It is all from a train passenger experience. If you’re Dutch, you’d recognise all the corporate identity and layouts that exist for real. Just for inspiration. They only used ppt.
Just by way of update, we have engaged a graphic artist and animator who will now work with us on producing some exciting and innovative new content for our pharma client projects. Early days but this might open up a whole new area for us and really enhance our reputation for this kind of thing.
