Every Tuesday I publish a short post with quick, consumable presentation tips. Here is Tip #5.
One of my most popular presentations I deliver to audiences is about Effective Presentation Design. Within that presentation, I like to give a concrete example of how my method (not a method I invented, but one I’ve adopted) of PowerPoint presentation design is put to the test.
I found a few key facts about a random topic (Reasons to Add Yoga to your Gym) and did what 99.9% of people using PowerPoint would do: Choose a standard template, place a title at the top, and place each important reason on the slide next to a bullet point. It’s the default “boring slide” and it’s no wonder – that’s what the templates tell you to do! Click to add title. Click to add text. Etc…
The key to improving this type of slide, aside from adding some nice imagery, shortening the text, and using a unique font, is to break each important reason for adding yoga to a gym onto its own slide. Thus, from one bad slide came four beautiful slides. My audiences always like this sequence because it shows my method in action and really drives home the idea of separating your supporting points onto their own respective slides.
(The four images above would be four separate slides, not four quadrants of one slide)
Your idea and it’s supporting points are like characters in a Broadway play. You rarely remember the ones who are part of the ensemble, but the ones who get the spotlight are unforgettable. Allow each point within your presentation its own time to shine in the spotlight. This allows you to use supporting imagery for each point, subsequently allowing your audience to remember each idea more clearly.
And don’t worry about how many slides this results in. My 50-minute presentation has 90 slides. It’s not about how many, but how well your presentation flows with them. Not to mention, keeping the slides moving helps keep their attention.
Have you already adopted this approach?
Image courtesy of Phillipp Hilpert on Flickr
