Presentation Zen: Obama, JFK vs. Bad PowerPoint

Through a couple of mock PowerPoint decks, Garr Reynolds demonstrates how poorly implemented slides can detract from an otherwise great speech – definitely worth checking out!

Tags: garr reynolds, conventions

A March 2007 talk by designer Philippe Starck recently appeared on TED.com, and it got me thinking again about why I design slides the way I do and how to continue refining the approach. Here's the talk in its entirety, and you can read a transcript right here. (While accents don't usually throw me, I have to admit I found the transcript very useful in this case.)



While not one of my favorite talks on TED, some of the quotes resonated as applicable even beyond his direct context (as many good talks do). In his presentation, done without the use of slides at all, Mr. Starck talks about three basic philosophies of design. Cynical design, narcissistic design, and humble design.

On cynical design:

The one, we can call it the cynical design, that means the design invented by Raymond Loewy in the '50s, who said, what is ugly is a bad sale, La Laideur se vend mal, which is terrible. It means the design must be just a weapon for marketing...

I think many of us have seen slide presentations that are visually stunning but do little to add to the presentation itself. It's as if the presenter is trying to win the audience over with his mad PowerPoint skills rather than any specific content. I know this is an easy trap to fall into with Keynote, and I can only imagine the temptations in PowerPoint 2007.

Oddly enough, I think some of Microsoft's own slides illustrate this approach:


images from Microsoft.com

In these examples, the slides are visually impressive, but the impressiveness is at the cost of readability and clarity. We can do the same with too many graphics, unnecessary clip art, and a plethora of animations and transitions. We treat the slides as a weapon to attract (or distract?) our audience rather than to augment the important points and concepts.

Then comes the narcissistic approach. In Mr. Starck's talk, he defines these designers as those who design for the appreciation of other designers. In slide design, I see this as designing the slides for my own benefit. These are the slides you look at while talking, reading bullet points to the audience.


I'm not too proud to admit these are mine

These slides are designed for one person alone: me. I may say they are for the audience's benefit, but they really exist so I can read my presentation off the slides. I may even spend significant time with my back turned to the audience in the process. While common practice, such slides are basically selfish. They are used as a crutch rather than a supplement.

Finally, Mr. Starck touches upon a more humble approach:

I try to not make the object for the object but for the result, for the profit for the human being, the person who will use it. If we take the toothbrush -- I don't think about the toothbrush. I think, "What will be [finger in mouth] the effect of the brush in the mouth?"

A toothbrush is about the most basic thing you have laying around the house, but think of how many horrible toothbrushes you have used that look really great (as far as a toothbrush can go). Aren't some of the best toothbrushes the epitome of simplicity? They do the job, and they remain unobtrusive in doing it.

The same principle can be applied to slides. Ask, "How does this slide affect my attention, my eyes, my comprehension, my concentration?" Does my audience have to concentrate too hard to comprehend what the slide is communicating? Does the slide supplant me? Is it basically distracting? In my own slides above, an audience member might have to really concentrate on the slide to read it, concentration that comes at the expense of me. In fact, I could throw those slides up on a screen and walk offstage. They really render me quite useless. In the case of the Microsoft slides, they are simply distracting – cluttered and complex, requiring too much effort to decode and digest.


same presentations as above, revised (and reflection-obsessed)

Our slides are meant to benefit our audience, to help them digest the most important facts and ideas. If we're going to create effective slides, the focus has to externalize and consider how the slides impact an audience's impression of the overall presentation. In this, I think a certain balance must be present between aesthetics and functionality. Looking nice is important – but not to the detriment of meaning.

Next time you're working on a deck of slides, take a moment and remember our friend Philippe Starck. If your presentation was a toothbrush, how would it feel?

Tags: conventions, philosophy, design

I was recently doing a quick makeover for some friends' PowerPoint presentation, and they noticed I simply deleted several slides rather than improving them. They were slides that said things like, "Q & A," "Discussion (10 Minutes)," "Break (15 Minutes)," "Lunch," etc. Some would introduce the person speaking. Another was an agenda. My friends questioned me about the removal of these slides, and I responded that they were gone because they aren't really relevant to the presentation.

To this, one replied, "Well, those are really there for us." This response got me thinking. Who do we prepare our slides for? How we answer this question will decide what we put on our slides.

If I prepare my slides for myself, then I will end up with walls of text that reduce the pressure to memorize my talk. I will use the slides to lay out the structure of my talk, so I remember where I am going. I will use bulleted lists to remind myself of my main points (often resulting in choppy non-conversational speech). In all this, I'm probably setting myself up to face away from the audience throughout my talk as I gaze at my own slides.


these slides are just for me, thankyouverymuch

In contrast, if we make our audiences the main priority, our slides will be far less cluttered. The information will be presented more clearly, and we'll use fewer words, larger fonts, and better imagery. If we focus on audience first, our presentation will have a much more natural feel and flow because we will be talking to the people in the room – not to a stoic set of slides.


these slides are more for you

Making a PowerPoint presentation has become such a rote practice in many fields, and I think we've lost the point. (No pun intended.) Visual aids are meant to help our audiences digest the information and make connections – they are not to be a speaker's crutch. Prepare slides if you must. I know I have an unhealthy addiction to Keynote. However, remember who you are preparing them for. When you are on stage, the audience is your world, and all of your preparations should go into enlightening and inspiring them with your presentation.

Tags: conventions, philosophy, connections

We all know what to do when we need to present a list of information on a slide – break out the bulleted list layout, and plug in the facts. The results are predictable and reliable but are also, unfortunately, bland and repetitive.



In a presentation I have given a couple of times, I broke one of my rules while revising the slides and had several points on each slide. However, the tidy lists tend to be visually repetitive, and all information is equal. Bulleted lists equalize data – nothing appears more effective or more important than anything else.

In changing approaches, I kept a tidy list when presenting the facts because all of the information was equal in my opinion. However, when it comes to interventions, my experience has shown some more effective than others. In this approach, I scattered the data, and they appear in no particular order. Here, some points are larger than others, non-verbally communicating my experienced effectiveness of that strategy.



In addition to eschewing bulleted lists, these slides are also more visually engaging and the language is simpler. Less reading equals better listening. Even though they are conventionally accepted, bullets are not always the best solution for presenting information. Break the predictable, and arrange your information in a way that is unexpected and fresh, helping your talk be all the more unique and memorable for your audience.

Additional reading: Presentation Zen: Bullets and "delusional" briefing slides

Tags: text, conventions

We've probably all seen this happen: The speaker has either not made good use of his or her time, or the presentation is actually designed for a different time allotment than that given in the current situation. Suddenly, the speaker turns to face the screen and begins clicking through slides and bullet points, either just reading the headers to the (literate) audience or making no comment at all.


If you are rapidly skipping slides, you are sending your audience mixed messages. This material is obviously important enough to include on the slides, but it's trivial enough to skip. Only you know what the real importance is to your talk, and that will affect how you handle these slides during preparation.

If all of your slides are important, then you need to be practicing your talk to make sure your timing allows all the material to be covered. It sounds elementary, but practice is a very important element for a good talk. On the other hand, if you know you aren't going to be using these slides, remove them from the presentation entirely. Create long versions and short versions of your deck if you know you'll be presenting the material differently in different settings.

Skipping through slides effectively pulls your audience out of the attention they were giving you. You want your talk to be a smooth experience for your audience. Skipping disrupts the flow. It's something we are used to seeing, but commonality does not make it a good practice. Get your timing down ahead of time, or remove slides as needed. Keep your presentation as fluid an experience as possible for your listeners.

Tags: conventions, avoid

I must seem a total stick-in-the-mud when it comes to slide design at times. I talk all about slides to avoid. I go one about image and background quality. I rant about fonts. Really, all I want is for your professional presentations to look better and more effectively reinforce the things you are trying to communicate. Still, some topics beg for a more casual and "fun" approach to slide design. Here are two examples in my own catalogue.

For some time, I've been working on a presentation about using Scrabble in classroom settings. Scrabble is a game, and I couldn't help but pay homage to its distinctive gamepaly on many of the slides in painstakingly recreating tiles on which much text appears.

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Add to this fact that every slide has numerous animations and builds (I'm particularly proud of some of the slides that record scores), and you end up with a presentation that breaks most rules of sensible design. The great thing, though? The presentation works anyway.

In about a month, I'm going to be giving a talk at a conference in Indianapolis discussing the merits of positive reinforcement in video games and classroom application. Video games! How can you pass up having fun with that topic?

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(I picked up material that helped with these slides from this blog.)

Silly fonts, bright colors, tons of animations again, and here we have a presentation that tells sensibility to take a long walk off a short pier. Regardless, the slides fit the talk, and they entertain while they reinforce.

I would never suggest this approach with talks about serious subjects, but, occasionally, topics lend themselves to fun. Remember, though: quality still counts, and whimsy is no excuse for a sloppy job. Creating fun slides is serious business and takes as much work as any other presentation. If done well, though, fun presentations can be every bit as engaging and effective as more professional ones.

Tags: conventions

This one's going to seem hypocritical. If you've seen any of my slidecasts, you know that every one of those has a title slide – but we'll get to that in a minute. Usually, this slide precedes the mandatory "About Me" slide in a talk, and it tells you what you are going to hear about and who is delivering the message.


(Of course it needs a logo!)

In reality, chances are your audience knows what they are coming to hear, and if they don't know who you are, attaching your name to a slide offers no enlightenment. Like other slides we've talked about, the title is filler. It's expected and predicable, and you want to be typified by neither of those qualities. In public settings, forego the title slide, and just dive into your material from slide one. You'll save time that is better spent on your material, and you will succeed engaging in your audience more immediately.

Explanation

Why then do my presentations have titles? Simple: first, some were made before I began adopting many of the principals I now advocate. Additionally, I find that the title slides make for nice placeholders on my presentations page. They allow you, the reader, to see the topic of the presentation and get a preview of the look and feel of that specific presentation. In this setting, it seems appropriate.

Tags: conventions, avoid

Is it me, or do we see agenda slides just about everywhere? We presenters can't seem to help ourselves, and, before any meeting or presentation, a slide like this will be staring everyone in the face. Now don't get me wrong. It's appropriate to pass out agendas from time to time. Just because I can't think of an example doesn't mean they don't exist. However, the agenda has no real reason to be incorporated into your slides.



Your audience can handle solid food. An agenda slide is a form of spoon-feeding – plain and simple. In most settings, your audience is intelligent enough to follow what's going on without point-by-point preparation. Chances are good you are working with professionals who are quick and flexible in their thinking. An agenda slide kind of insults that intelligence.

Who's going to remember anyway? Honestly, five minutes into the talk or meeting, no one is going to remember all of the agenda points. If you handed out an agenda, why did you stick it on a slide? That's just redundant.

Only three more items, and we're outta here! Face it – you just gave the meeting participants a checklist. They will continually refer back to your agenda to see how close you are to finishing. It becomes more of a distraction than a facilitator to anything.

I know I'm going to get some flack from colleagues regarding this post. Agenda slides are old hat. We're used to them, so why bother eliminating them? Quite simply, it comes down to the small touches. If you want your presentation to stand out as unique and individual, sidestep cliché and the mundane whenever you can. An audience won't be distracted by the absence of an agenda – and that is exactly what you want.

Tags: conventions, time use, avoid

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my blog when I say I am not a fan of mission statements. While I think direction and purpose is vital to any organization's success, mission statements are seldom more than buzzword laden paragraphs designed to impress an audience rather than direct and inspire our colleagues.

Moreover, like the About Me slide, the Mission Statement can serve little purpose when plastered onto presentation slides.



If you are giving a presentation to your employees, they should already know what your organization or company is about. You should be communicating that through your decisions and actions on a daily basis. If leaders embody the mission, then employees will understand and follow suit. If leaders and administrators are contradicting the mission, repetition of words will not undo the message you have communicated through your example. (By the way, making your staff unison recite a mission statement is creepy – like 1984 creepy.)

If the presentation is for those outside your organization, the services or products you deliver should be a testament to your mission. Like your example to employees, if your output contradicts your mission, consumers will only grow cynical and indifferent toward your offerings.

Missions have their place, but a Mission Statement is only for the benefit of managers and administration to guide their examples and decisions. Employees and consumers will know your mission if you live it. A slide does nothing to reinforce that message.

Tags: conventions, text, avoid

In presentations, getting "naked" refers to giving a talk without the aid of slides. This can be difficult because so many of us have grown to use slides as a crutch. (See this entry at Presentation Zen for a great illustration of that fact.) However, in many circumstances, abandoning slides is a good idea.



One example of this comes from my obsessive downloading of featured TED Talks, one of which has Sir Ken Robinson speaking about how education can sometimes "educate" the creativity right out of the child. His speech is engaging and thought-provoking, but not one slide is shown during his talk. In fact, slides would have probably distracted from the overall feel of his presentation.

Slides can greatly reinforce of our content, and they can often help create connections between our material and multiple areas of our audience's brains. However, sometimes they are just unnecessary filler. If this is the case, leave the laptop at home (or in the hotel room), and present naked. Don't hide behind your slides. Just let your audience see you for who you are.

For more tips on presenting naked or nearly-naked, follow these links (all by Garr Reynolds):

• Make Your Next Presentation Naked
• Clear Visuals With as Little Text as Possible
• Great Presentations Are Great Conversations

Tags: TED, examples, conventions, garr reynolds, connections

Dearest laser pointer, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways ...

In many business and technical presentations (as well as in the education field) it is not unusual to see someone whip out a laser pointer during his of her presentation to highlight important details on the slides. Somehow, if the important points are not already clear enough, this tiny shaking red dot is supposed to bring clarity to the situation.

The simple fact of the matter is this: if you prepared your slides well, you will never – and I mean never – need to use a laser pointer. Never.

Why do we even use those little things? Do we really think they are effective at highlighting points, or do we just feel more professional holding it? Like bulleted slides, does the pointer create a sense of security and comfort when we are presenting? I don't know. I've never used one, but I've seen them plenty of times and have played "find the dot" during many presentations – even some given at church!

Like slides, we have come to use the pointer as a crutch. Our slides are not clear, so we use the red dot to light the way – separating important bullets and charts from the filler we put in so we don't look unprepared.

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The above are two slides that we might feel merit the use of a laser pointer. There is a ton of information on each slide, and we want to make sure our audience knows exactly what the most important facts on each slide are. However, instead of using a pointer, what if we just simplified our approach?

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Stripping out the unnecessary makes it easier to emphasize the vital information. In this case, the most important facts include how much laptops are outpacing desktops by and the reasons consumers are choosing laptops over desktops. (By the way, these figures are completely made up, so don't cite them elsewhere.)

Still, there might be times that we feel the inspiration to highlight something that seems earth-shattering to us. In this case, during my talk, I might decide to draw my audience's attention to the fact that many modern laptops are perceived to be every bit as capable as desktops. At this point, a handy little utility called OmniDazzle comes to my rescue.



Using a designated keystroke, OmniDazzle creates a spotlight effect (or one of several other effects) in the cursor location, enabling me to highlight this text much more effectively than if I began waving a red pinpoint around. Alternatively, if I had this point planned out, I could have created a similar effect from within Keynote without needing to resort to an additional application.

Laser pointers are wholly unnecessary. They don't help you clarify your points; they can be difficult for the audience to see; and they are often symptomatic of slides that are too cluttered to begin with. Before you think to pack that pointer, rethink your slides and how you can simplify them.

Bonus: While I was working on this post, I found this article on KeynoteUser that has a ton of great tips on how to avoid using pointers. Go check it out!

Tags: conventions, clutter, readability

I'm not a fan of logos plastered over every slide in a presentation. Imagine how much different an Apple press event would feel if their slides looked like this:


Just in case you forgot whose event you were at.

Even at talks given within my own school district, I've seen presentations where our township logo appears in the bottom corner of every slide. This is totally unnecessary clutter, and it makes your slides feel generic and impersonal. Besides, your slides are not a marketing avenue. Your audience should not feel they are watching a feature-length advertisement – even if you are pitching a product or service.

Now, don't get me wrong. Even Apple uses branding for their presentations, but it usually looks like this.

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Before the presentation formally begins, a solitary Apple logo will be present, and in-your-face branding will pretty much remain absent for the remainder of the talk. You don't need to be reminded whose products you are learning about. The slides remain clean of marketing, and the whole experience is the better for it.

If you prepare slides for a company, business, or other organization, avoid bombarding your audience with your corporate identity. Yes, use the first and possibly the last slide to display your logo, but keep the rest of the slides clear of unnecessary clutter. your slides are meant to reinforce your talk. They are not an advertisement.

Tags: conventions, clutter, examples, graphics

Through the character of Zaphod Beeblebrox, Douglas Adams once wrote, "I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I do not know the answer." How such wise words came from the two-headed, egocentric President of the Galaxy is beyond me, but there it is.

Have you ever seen a teacher, instructor, or presenter clearly talk around in circles after a question, and it's apparent that the speaker just plain doesn't know the answer? Have you ever been stymied by a question yet found yourself babbling through something that almost resembles an answer? I know I have (on both counts).

I think one of the toughest lessons in public speaking is that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. Your brain has finite capacity, and you will miss things or forget things in your research and preparation. You don't have to save face by responding with an unsatisfactory answer.

In a presentation setting, try something like this: "That's a great question, but I don't think I can give you a good answer right now. Can you give me your email address, so I can contact you later?" Assuming you follow through, you avoid looking silly, you buy yourself some time to supply a good answer, and you give the issue closure.

You don't know everything, and you can't fool your audience into thinking you do. If you get a question that you don't know the answer to, think back to our friend Zaphod.

Tags: conventions, speaking

In the previous post, I made the statement that your slides are not the handout. All to often, we walk into a presentation, and we are handed a packet that is no more than a copy of the presenter's prepared slides with lines along the side for taking notes. (Does anyone actually use those lines?) In other words, you get something that looks like this:

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Boxes and lines do not an ideal handout make.

I firmly believe that handouts are important – especially when the aim of the presentation is some kind of professional development as my example is. However, this approach to handouts fails on a couple of levels.

• Slides are not documents. Your slides are not your conversation. Even if you practice Death By PowerPoint, every important detail will not end up on your slides. You are cheating your audience out of the full content of your presentation by substituting a meaningful document with slides that do not convey the whole story.
  
  
• Nothing is left to the imagination. You just gave away the ending ... and the beginning and the middle. You haven't given your audience a visual aid to help them pay attention. You just handed them a checklist that allows them to keep track of just how close you are to the end. Also, if you get rushed and have to skip slides (a cardinal presentation sin in and of itself), your audience will know.

Slide printouts are a waste of paper. Better to have no handouts than something that killed helpless trees for no reason. If you are going to have a handout with your presentation, make it meaningful and helpful. Create a document that is separate and apart from your slides to be handed out after your presentation is completed. (This way the audience can focus on you rather than sheets of paper.)

Below, we have two alternative methods to preparing our handouts – each appropriate to different situations.

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Now we're getting somewhere.

The first example is the best solution in my opinion. It is a standalone document that covers all of the material in the presentation. A more involved example of this would be the handout for ICE2006 on my Presentations page. These documents are wholly independent of the slides and make for good reference even long after you give your talk. The downside is that these documents require additional planning and time investment. If your handout is going to be a comprehensive document, you need to budget the preparation of that document into your schedule.

The second example is an annotated slide printout. I exported my slides as images, and dropped them into my notes. After some cleanup, making sure all text lined up with the appropriate slides, we have a serviceable handout. While less ideal than a standalone document, this solution will allow you to create a thorough handout in slightly less time. Again, though, hand this out after you have finished talking.

Hopefully, next time you prepare a presentation, you will think about investing some time in preparing your handout. Pages of little boxes with tiny type are not the best solution for communicating your ideas in print. Instead, work on an independent document that clearly communicates your conversation with the audience. Failing that, at least create a set of annotated slides that communicate more of the information than a simple printout.

For more reading on handout preparation, see these posts on Presentation Zen:

• "Slideuments" and the Catch-22 for Conference Speakers
• Handouts Can Set You Free
• Presentation Documents and Writing for Non-Writers
• The Sound of One Room Napping
• Using Annotated PPT Slides as "Handouts"

Tags: handouts, conventions, garr reynolds

I've seen way too many keynotes, seminars, and presentations now, and I've seen a ton of introductions. If you are at a keynote of some kind, the keynote speaker is usually somehow formally introduced. ("Our speaker today is known for..." or "Ladies and gentlemen, Insert Name!") If it is something smaller scale, you may get a one-sheet introducing your speaker, or you may have the speaker introducing him- or herself. ("...I want to wish you the best of mornings and tell you how truly fortunate I feel...") Once in a while, you get a presenter who wants to play some kind of get-to-know you game, but those shall not be spoken of here.

The video mentioned in my prior post has Steve Jobs being introduced by another speaker, and it distracted me because this is so unusual for Mr. Jobs. The usual Steve Jobs intro goes something like this: Lights dim; Steve Jobs walks out, says, "Good morning. Thanks for coming. We have a lot of great announcements today, so let's get started," and the presentation begins. That's it.

Your introduction will make an early impression on your audience. In my experience, respectful but concise is a good idea. You've acknowledged your audience and have expressed appreciation for their presence, but you're not going to waste their time either. There's not much more an audience appreciates than a presenter who avoids wasting time.

Tags: steve jobs, examples, conventions, time use, impression, connections

Once you pick the theme your presentation is going to follow in Keynote or PowerPoint, you are offered a selection of templates to choose from. Bulleted list, text with image, graph with title and text – these are those slides that are already laid out for us. All we have to do is plug in our information.

In the middle of these selections is the mysterious "blank" slide. It offers no guidance. You can't "click here to enter clip art." It doesn't tell you where to put your bulleted list. It is an enigma, but it can also be your best friend.


Does this slide intimidate you?

The blank template offers us unlimited creative potential, but, like the writer's blank page, it can be daunting. There is no obvious place to start, no guidance in placing graphics, headers, or text. The slate is blank, but this can be an exciting place to be.

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The slides above provide a simple contrast. The first slide uses a template for title, bullets, and photo from Keynote's White theme. I followed the template exactly, making no alterations except for shrinking the title's font size a little. The second slide is made with White's blank template. The freedom provided allows for a more visually interesting presentation of the exact same material. Did it take more effort? Yes. Was the result worth it? I think so.

(Secret: Most of my own presentations primarily use blank templates. See this post from earlier this month for an example of how drastically the "blank template" approach can change a presentation.)

Next time you have a presentation to give, challenge yourself, and see what you can accomplish using only the theme's blank template. You might surprise yourself with how much fun you have preparing your slides, and your audience will notice the difference.

Tags: conventions, prep

Conventional wisdom places quite a bit of text on slides. Even I catch myself transferring my outlined notes to my slides pretty much word for word occasionally. The result is mundane slides that contain walls of text. Your audience ends up reading more than listening. This is standard practice, I believe, for two big reasons:

• We don't want to leave anything important out of our slides.
• It makes printing a handout simple.

Sometimes, though, too much text can get in the way and take away from your message. Look at these two slides below. They are virtually identical, but they use their text very differently to get the point across:

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Which slide stirs your curiosity more? Which feels more impacting? The same important statistic is represented on each slide. In the first, it is surrounded by a bunch of other stuff making a complete sentence. Furthermore, it is likely that two or three additional points will accompany this point, relegating it to near obscurity by the time the clicking is done.

In the second, the stat is naked and unhidden. No one will question the point of this slide. Additionally, the second slide requires you to fill in the context and additional information. You have not relegated yourself to unimportance with this slide, nor will your audience be able to skim the information and zone out. This slide provides a fact, and you are there to fill in the rest of the information.

In general, I advise against using complete sentences on your slides. Sometimes it is necessary, but look for those cases when single words or short phrases can get the point across more concisely. Along this same vein, avoid paragraphs of text. The proverbial "Wall of Words" does not make for good slide layout and may become frustrating for those trying to pay attention to you while taking in all the information on your slides. In the case of text, less is more, and simpler is smarter.

Tags: conventions, readability, text

One of the most common slides we see in presentations is the dreaded "About Me" slide (or some variation thereof). It's the part of the presentation where the audience effectively shuts their brains off and waits for the presenter to get to his or her point. If the presenter is lucky, perhaps half of his or her audience will re-engage once the "About Me" section is complete.

At ICE, we presenters had a 45-minute budget to work with. Every presentation I watched had at least one slide devoted to "About Me." Now, in this setting, it is nice to know a little bit about who you are and where you are coming from, but one team spent 15 minutes on who they were! They spent 1/3 of their time budget off topic, and, quite predictably, by the end of their session, the team was rushing to get through the prepared material.

Why do we add "About Me" slides? Is it ego? I don't think so. I think we feel the need to talk about ourselves so our audience understands why we are qualified to talk about our given topic. We want our audience to have confidence in us as presenters. Unfortunately, the "About Me" slide is still adds nothing to your presentation and may serve as a detraction to the product as a whole.

• Qualifications do not make for a good presentation. Remember the people with 15 minutes of background and qualifications? Their material was blah. It had only marginal practical value (at least in the way they presented it), and they offered little other teachers could build on. Who you are matters nothing if you message is broken.
  
  
• Your audience doesn't care. Your audience is there because they want to hear what you have to say about your topic – not about yourself. If you speak well enough, and your audience connects with your message, then they will connect with you. As a result, you may find some people who want to get to know more about you after your presentation is completed.
  
  
• Your audience may already know. This is the opposite of #2. How ridiculous would it look for Steve Jobs or Al Gore to begin a presentation with a serious, in-depth "About Me" section. The fact is, if you have a reputation in your field, people WILL come because of who you are. If that is the case, why bore them with stuff they already know?
  
  
• It detracts from the whole. Again, you want your audience to be captivated by your message. You want them to be enchanted. Every minute you spend off-topic or on mundane details is a minute that your audience is losing its collective interest. In addition, every minute you spend off-topic is a minute less you have to spend on your topic.

I know that the "About Me" slide is almost a standard in presentations, but resist the pressure. Don't do it. Leave the "About Me" for your website (and make sure your URL is on the handout your guests receive). Make your presentation about your topic and nothing else.

Tags: avoid, time use, conventions

Expressionist painter Vincent van Gogh is not considered a great artist because he adhered strictly to rules of perspective, texture, or color balance. His bold, provocative works are the result of creativity usurping the rules or art classes everywhere. Van Goh didn't just break rules in his paintings randomly, however. He seemed to have a intuitive grasp of knowing just when and how to defy convention in order to gain maximum effect.

This same principle carries over to effective presentation design. Most good presenters are aware of Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – that is your presentation should be no more than 10 slides, 20 minutes long, and contain no font smaller than size 30. By and large, I can say I closely adhere to two of those three rules most of the time. Most presentations I have made for church have been 10-15 slides. My fonts tend to size in the high twenties to low thirties (the rule I'm not so good at), and, when rehearsed, most last twenty to thirty minutes.

In contrast to these, my presentation at ICE 2006 was 37 slides long. Why did I so fragrantly break the 10-slide rule? Quite frankly, the rule did not fit the situation. In this circumstance, it was appropriate to break a rule for the sake of impact. Was the presentation overly long? Not counting the Q & A section, I talked and demonstrated for roughly 30 minutes, and I had a 45-minute budget. Many slides flashed by in seconds to demonstrate an effect, and, in all, the entire presentation (in its final form) has only eleven "bullet points" (though no bullets are used).


Photo by Mylerdude on Flickr

Take one of my favorite presenters for example – Apple CEO Steve Jobs. A typical Seve Jobs Keynote (aka Stevenote) will last around two hours and contain roughly 150 slides. In fact, Kawasaki says Steve follows a 125+/90/60 Rule. Despite this, Mr. Jobs is practically the paradigm of good tradeshow presentation. His visuals are effective. Most of his demonstrations are carried out flawlessly – no BSODs here – and he uses text minimally but effectively. The 10/20/30 Rule is not entirely applicable to the situations he typically presents in, and he breaks the rule in a way that has an impact on his audience.

Even Guy Kawasaki, proponent of 10/20/30 used around 50 slides in his recent Art of the Start presentation at TieCon 2006. Why? The situation and style of presentation merited the additional slides. Despite the rather large deck of slides, at no point does Mr. Kawasaki feel longwinded or drawn-out in his speech. Even Garr Reynolds has a story of a time he used 285(!) slides in a presentation he gave about the Art of Presentations. If you are using your visuals effectively, your audience will not be aware of the number of your slides or how many or few of them remain. They will simply be engaged.

In this post, I've specifically tackled one rule of presentation design, and that is intentional. To go beyond this would create far too long of a post, but I may revisit this idea of rule breaking in the future. However, in order to break rules, we must first understand and respect the rules. I recommend reading Presentation Zen and the Presenting & Speaking category of Guy Kawasaki's blog for more tips. Additionally, you can see a small sampling of Steve Jobs' presentations right here. Anything worth presenting at all is worth presenting well, so take the time to learn some guidelines for creating your presentations. After that, you can find creative and meaningful ways to break those rules.

Tags: conventions, slide count, guy kawasaki, garr reynolds