I was looking something up on Dell's website a couple of months ago and came across this graphic below. I don't remember the context, but I saved the image thinking, "This slide needs a makeover."


© Dell

This slide falls into the same trap as many charts. There is too much in too little space, and the slide becomes indecipherable from a distance. What we have here is basically a Gantt chart, which is used to illustrate start and finish dates of projects – support for versions of Windows in this case. The problem is that Gantt charts really need more horizontal space than a typical PowerPoint slide provides.

If you are using Keynote 3, you may be able to account for this space by using a wide-screen theme, but I chose a different route that should be usable to all Keynote and PowerPoint users.


This is actually made from two slides.

What I did was simply make the chart span across two standard 1024x768 slides. The tricky part is getting things to line up across slides. To simplify this process, I made the first slide. Then I copied the slide and pasted it in the slide navigator. Then I just adjusted the onscreen elements to reflect the second half of the chart. I removed any information that did not specifically pertain to Windows as well as text blurbs that I could just verbally explain or include in a handout. For the best effect, use Keynote's push transition to smoothly move from one slide to the next, reinforcing the feel that these two slides are one visual.

You might choose to discard or keep different information than I did, but think about this next time you have a large chart to include in your slides. Ask yourself if the information can span multiple slides to give you more room to work with and allowing you to create less cluttered, more readable slides.

Note: This method is not original to me. As a matter of fact, I got the idea from a sample clip on Keynote Theme Park, advertising their Keynote theme, The Plan. You can view the clip and see this idea in action right here.

Tags: examples, makeover, graphics

We have to be careful about how much information we load onto one slide. We need to ask ourselves if our content is being clearly illustrated or if the valuable information is being lost in the clutter. I distinctly remember one presentation where a presenter divided his slide into four quadrants and then listed four detailed bullet points under each quadrant. What irritated me more was how an audience member was addressed when complaining that the slides were difficult to read. The presenter's response to this concern? "Get better glasses." He then proceeded to turn around and read these slides to us.

x
Imagine looking at these slides from fifty feet away on a screen only six feet tall.

This is obviously a case of visual clutter. The presenter is trying to cram too much information on a slide. Some people think this looks impressive, but what are you trying to accomplish? Do you want your audience to say, "Wow! That's a lot of information to digest," or do you want them to say, "Wow! It's so clear to me now?"

In these slides, the y-axis represents the Bloom's taxonomy level of a task, and the x-axis describes how broadly-applicable a task is. Items in the A quadrant would have a low cognitive domain and narrow application while items in the D quadrant would require higher-level cognitive skills and have very broad application. This is good information, but the delivery leaves much to be desired. Here is one possible alternative.

x
Now no one will need new glasses!

This approach keeps the same basic approach as the example slides. The first slide retains the chart, but it is vastly simplified. I've eliminated the miniscule text that obscured the labels. Also, the numbers are gone. Simple, meaningful labels win over meaningless numbers any day. A simple gradient and translucent border was added to the circles to give the illusion of depth, and a soft white drop-shadow is applied behind the skill set we're going to cover next.

The second slide just highlights important verbs in the skills we're talking about, emphasizing what is done in higher-order, broadly-applicable tasks. The various steps do not need to be typed out word for word. Of course, if you wanted to include more verbs, build out those points you are finished with, and build in the new ones as you are ready. This simply helps to control slide clutter.

This is only one possible approach to this information. What would you do differently? How would you convey this information in your own style? One of the great things about having someone else look over your material and slides before you present is that they may suggest an entirely different approach to your material. However you organize your content, though, cluttered slides will either be distracting and frustrating to your audience, or they will be utterly forgettable because that's how so many other presentations look. Taking the time to illustrate your material uniquely and clearly will make your presentation stand out as something different.

Tags: clutter, examples, text, makeover

One of the things that frustrates me about my new cell phone is that it takes seven button presses to tell it to dial someone in my address book. (No, I have not set up my quick dial yet.) Seven presses – exactly the same numbers of buttons I would use to just dial the number. It's just too complicated. I get it. I'm a technophile, so I understand how it operates. It's just annoying.

Unfortunately, many slides trip down this same path. The audience gets it. They understand the meaning of the slides, but the slides are overcomplicated. Visually, they are as annoying as the cell phone's menus.

These Microsoft slides are favorites of mine. I honestly don't think I could design more visually complicated slides if I tried.

x
© Microsoft. How complicated can you get?

What ends up being the result? The speaker has to keep referencing the slide, pointing out various areas, and defining what the slide is explaining. It becomes tedious and exhausting. The slides do not support the talk. Rather, the talk is supporting the slides. This is the danger in overcomplicating your slides. You may accidentally let yourself become servant to the visuals.

In contrast, if you set simplicity as a standard in your design, clearer results happen. Many claim the iPod's runaway success is due, largely in part, to its simplicity of design. The same is true of the Nintendo DS. David Pogue spoke at length for TED 2006 about the "Cult of Simplicity." Simplicity sells – not just products but ideas as well. Keep your slides simple and clean, and your audience will be more likely to buy into your message because they are no longer distracted by trying to decipher complex visuals.

Here is one way to simplify the slides above:

x
Same message, different approach. (Windows screenshots from GUIdebook.)

It would be unfair to say that there is never a place for complex slides, but, more often than not, simplicity trumps the alternative. When preparing your presentation, have others look at your slides. Ask them if they easily understand the big ideas conveyed. How much reading is involved with your slides? Are they visually cluttered? Make simplicity a standard, and understanding will follow.

Tags: philosophy, examples, makeover, clutter, graphics, design

Slides are often misused as a guided outline for note-taking or as a substitute for our own notes. As presenters, we let our slides become a crutch, and, instead of our slides providing a visual reinforcement for our topic, we let them simply spell out exactly what we are saying word-for-word.

Below is a slide from a Intel business presentation. Now, I don't know the exact context of this slide, but it does provide a nice example of some of the traps we fall into when creating our own slides – creating walls of unreadable and overly detailed text.


Behold the wall of text.

Now I don't know about you, but I can't read those bullet points without really straining my eyes, and I imagine that anyone sitting in an auditorium or conference room would have the same problem. The slide is just overloaded with text, and I can just hear the presenter saying exactly what is on the slide verbatim.

How can we approach this differently? In this case, I think adding slides will actually help. I'm going to take a part of the second bullet point, and turn it into two independent slides. The first will introduce the Core 2 Duo processor, and the second slide will reinforce the fact that these processors are shipping ahead of schedule. (That struck me as an important point.)

x

The initial build shows the logo for Core 2 Duo, and the presenter can extoll the benefits of this advancement. Perhaps even some highlights appear next to the image. Then those highlights fade away, and the Core 2 Duo Extreme appears. Core 2 Duo may disappear, and highlights of the Extreme edition can appear to the left.

x

The second slide shows a desktop calendar with the date of July 27. That's when the Core 2 Duo was supposed to begin shipping. The date fades out, and the slide reveals that Intel is ahead of schedule.

While far less detailed, this second set of slides succeeds at visual communication where the initial slide fails. Our slides do not have to serve as subtitles to our voices. Remember, slides are supplementary visuals to the presentation. They are not your notes. They are not the handout, and they are most certainly not the presentation itself You are the presentation. Your slides should serve to support you, not supplant you.

Tags: text, readability, examples, makeover, clutter

Sometimes we want our presentations to be more colorful than the standard subdued grays, whites, and blacks. Often, unfortunately, the use of more bold colors in a presentation often leads to something that can make your audience's eyes cry out in pain. Too often, I've seen (and I bet you have too) slides that are just plain difficult to look at because of the way color is abused.


Try staring at this for 60 seconds without blinking.

Unfortunately good color resources can cost a lot of money, but here is a way to gather some good color ideas without spending anything (provided you already own a scanner).Go to Lowe's paint department, and look for the American Tradition display. All along the display of color samples are tiny little booklets called "Color Ideas." The first neat thing about these booklets is the explanation of monochromatic, complimentary, and analogous color schemes.



The other aspect of these booklets I like is that they have sample color schemes that show an example of complimentary, monochromatic, and analogous (as well as pictures of rooms decorated in the selected colors). Below is one of the sample color selections from a booklet.



So how do I use these? First, I scan them and crop them down to what you see above – just the bars of colors. These color bars are stored in iPhoto, and I can use Apple's system color picker to choose one of the colors in the image. (To invoke Apple's color picker in any application, use the keyboard command "Cmd-Shift-C.") This allows me to use these color schemes as templates for any document or presentation I am working on.


The color picker in action.

In addition to these schemes, you have a color wheel built right into the color picker, and this allows you to look for your own analogous, monochromatic, or complimentary colors for your slides.

After tweaking the layout of the slide and adjusting my selected colors just a hair, the final result is hopefully much more pleasing than the slide that opened this entry:



Color is a powerful tool – it is emotional and impacting. However, color can also be distracting if used incorrectly. Here is just one way to use some free resources to make batter use of colors in your documents and presentations, hopefully helping you make a better impact when you use slides or handouts to facilitate visual communication.

Tags: colors, makeover, how-to

As noted in my last update, I've uploaded a new version of my crusty old presentation on Reactive Attachment Disorder. The RAD presentation was given long before I began studying presentation design or discovered the blog Presentation Zen, and it is a fine example of average (read: poor) presentation design.

The original presentation was 29 slides long, and some slides had up to eight bullet points on them. I can't even begin to count how many bullet points there were in that original slideshow. The new presentation is only 14 slides, and, while there is still a lot of reading in some areas, the text has been simplified and streamlined in many slides.

x

These two slides above have the same purpose. They demonstrate an attachment theory grouping of children into three categories. This presentation focuses on the second – detached – and the behaviors associated with that group. In the revised slide, imagery is much more important to the message. Notice how the faces compliment the headings above them. The middle image fades blue while the other two go out of focus, reinforcing the emphasis of this presentation.

I went on to outright omit several slides in the previous presentation that went into detail about the other categories. That information distracts from the focus. Unnecessary or peripheral information should never be included on your slides.

x

The points made on the first slide are summarized on the new slide. (This in turn allowed me to combine two slides into one slide for the revision.) When inserting text points onto a slide, look for redundancies and restatements. How can your points be made more succinctly? With the new slide, I can still say everything I did with the first, but the visual emphasizes a simplified view of the whole message.

It's worth noting that, because the "bullets" do not match my words exactly, I chose to build each column in as a group rather than by point. In most cases, though, you don't want your points to ever get ahead of you.

As far as other differences go:

• Slide numbers were removed. Never number your slides.
  
  
• The background was simplified, and no pre-made slide designs were used.
  
  
• Text color is now used sparingly, and color in general is very regulated. Many images are grayscale or tinted blue. The only full-color picture comes on the last slide.
  
  
• It is now impossible for me to use my slides as a crutch and just read off of them.

Understanding RAD is the result of discovering that there is no one absolute way to prepare presentations. The original is exactly what someone might expect to see during a "typical" PowerPoint lecture. However, I hope that revising the slides will provide a fresher, more engaging experience when I give this presentation agan. Presentations don't have to settle for average. Challenge yourself when creating your slides, and see how you can improve your presentation.

Tags: makeover, readability, slide count, examples

Earlier today, Macintalk posted an article regarding web browser performance on Mac OS X. The write-up is an interesting read, and you can find it right here. I couldn't help but notice that their graphs were created using Keynote's excellent Storyboard theme. However, one of the graphs distracted me, and I've reproduced it here.



This theme makes liberal use of Keynote's high quality shadows, and the shadows are enabled by default when you insert a table like the one seen above. It looks very pleasing, but a serious issue comes up when one tries to read the text below the graph. The shadow is obscuring the text. Now, Macintalk is not entirely to blame here. The author was not preparing an actual presentation, and this is the default location for the shadow.

Still, if I was going to present this at a technology conference or tradeshow, I would not want these shadows getting in the way of making my point. Fortunately, the solution is very easy. Using Keynote's Inspector palette, I can simply disable the shadow, or I can change its placement. Additionally, setting the text below the graph to bold will make it easier to read since it is smaller than 30 points.

In the image below, I tried to replicate the Macintalk slide as best I could quickly, and I made two changes. First, I set the text below the graph to bold. Second, I altered the shadow – decreasing its offset and changing the angel. The result?



Our table is still very attractive, and now everyone can read our text. We could still make some tweaks, but those two easy adjustments make the slide much more readable (and, if I worked for the OmniGroup, that would make me a very happy camper).

The basic lesson is this: Form is important in giving a presentation. Good slides make a good impact. However, do not let the aesthetic touches get in the way of your slides conveying your intended meaning. Look for confusing graphics and obscured text, and, if you find troublesome spots, simply fix them. After all, you don't want you audience squinting as the result of overshadowed text.

Tags: eye candy, readability, makeover, examples, text, clutter