In this chapter, we describe a graphics generation system, Improvise (Illustrative Metaphor PROduction in VISual Environments), focusing on how it can be used to design coordinated multimedia presentations. Improvise is a knowledge-based system that can automatically create sequences of animated graphical illustrations to convey a wide variety of data. Our emphasis here is on describing how four important features of Improvise facilitate coordinated multimedia presentation design. These four features are: a knowledge-rich representation of input data, a fine-grained temporal model of visual techniques, an action-based inference engine, and a portable visual realizer.