You know how dull it is to be part of yet another drawn-out, boring, lifeless PowerPoint presentation, and worse yet, to be the one giving it? People come to a meeting to hear you and be informed by you and your message. Don’t let your message and your ability to tell a story be derailed by slides that are unnecessarily complicated or busy.
Know your goal
Be clear about the goal of your presentation before you begin composing it. What do you want the audience to understand or do? Make sure you achieve that, and don’t wander off message. Open with something surprising or intriguing, something that will get your audience to sit up and take notice. The most powerful hooks are often those that appeal directly to your audience’s emotions.
Keep it simple
Nothing in your slide should be superfluous. Your slides should have plenty of “white space” or “negative space.” The less clutter you have on your slide, the more powerful your visual message will become.
Write a script
You should know what you intend to say and then figure out how to visualize it. Make sure you write out or at least outline your presentation before trying to put together slides. Make sure your script follows good storytelling conventions: give it a beginning, middle, and end.
Use as little text as needed to support your story
If you put lots of text on the slide, many people try to read it all (and not listen to you). Or worse, they may ignore the slide and read nothing at all. Stick to the most important message and leave the rest for you to talk about. Where most presentations fail is that their authors put everything they want to say onto their slides, in great big chunky blocks of text. If you ever have to say, “I know you can’t read this…” then you have failed the exercise. If you need to reinforce your message with a flyer, brochure, or handout, then create one. Don’t put it in the slides.
Pay attention to design
Use animations and slide transitions judiciously. Some animation is a good thing, but stick to the most subtle and professional. A simple “Wipe Left-to-Right” is good for a bullet point. Listeners will get bored very quickly if they are asked to endure slide after slide of animation.
Use high-quality graphics
Use high-quality graphics including photographs. Avoid using PowerPoint Clip Art or other cartoonish line art. You can purchase professional stock photography, or use the plethora of high-quality images available on line (be cautious of copyright issues, however). Never simply stretch a small, low-resolution photo to make it fit your layout.
Spend time in the slide sorter
People comprehend better when information is presented in small chunks or segments. In the slide sorter view you can see how the logical flow of your presentation is progressing. You will be able to notice more extraneous pieces of visual data that can be removed to increase visual clarity and improve communication.
Edit a lot
Look for consistent messaging, sentence clarity, a strong takeaway, a strong call-to-action, and overall “correctness” throughout. Share it with a colleague before presenting it.
DataUntangle 