If you’re alive and kicking, you’ve probably seen your fair share of terrible PowerPoint presentation slides. (Please note that, in this post, the hard-working but often-maligned PowerPoint appears as a stand-in for any presentation application.)
Denise Graveline, a D.C.-based speaker coach who helps prepare her clients to give TED talks, is intimately familiar with mistaken ideas about presentations. She presents them and remedies, too, in her article “Debunking 6 myths about presentation slides.”
The first of these myths is that fewer slides are better. Ms. Graveline thinks this idea leads to cluttered slides that speakers tend to dwell on too long. She recommends one thought per slide, which is easier on your audience. (Interestingly, PechaKucha, a presentation format devised by two architects, advocates 20 slides in 20 seconds. I’m not sure, though, that this approach necessarily leads to cluttered slides—at least not if presenters understand its intent. But I digress).
The other five myths and proposed remedies:
- “I need a slide for every thought.” Well, probably not—and especially if you don’t need to show something. As Ms. Graveline puts it, “This idea suggests that the speaker can’t communicate without a slide in view. This is how truly overcrowded slide decks are born.” (And inattentive audiences.)
- “Picture slides solve all these problems.” Not so. Instead, make sure each slide communicates a point.
- “Animations and other graphic tools keep the audience from being bored.” It may be that speakers overuse them out of boredom with nice, simple bullets. Or, heaven forfend, they may be bored with their topic. Keep your use of gimmicks to a minimum.
- “My slides should repeat my spoken words for emphasis and retention.” This is such a temptingly bad idea. Ms. Graveline quotes from “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking” in saying “There is no value in simply repeating in text what you are saying on stage … it may be worth having a word or phrase onscreen to remind people of the topic at hand. But otherwise, words on the screen are fighting your presentation, not enhancing it.”
- “I need slides that create a takeaway.” Some element of your presentation, such as your title slide or contact information get read just 40 percent of the time. So you may want to post this info on your website. Or if your talk is recorded, you may want to post a transcript instead of speaker notes.
Ms. Graveline makes excellent suggestions. There is no reason, that with a little care, slide presentations need to be an invitation to enervation.
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