Slides

You are currently browsing the archive for the Slides category.

Why You Should Put Less Text in Your Slides

January 2, 2010 in Ideas Presentability, Language : English, Slides, Speaking Tips | 6 comments

Most people complain about boring presentation that uses slides that looks like walls of text.

The brain don’t have the ability to listen et read all that text at the same time.

According to Microsoft, the average slide shows 40 words.

25 Years of PowerPoint

The BBC published an interesting article about the subject

You think bullet points make information more digestible? Think again. A dozen slides with five bullet points on each assumes that people are mentally capable of taking in a list of 60 points. If it’s a 30-minute presentation, that’s a rate of two-per-minute.

This looks a fairly interesting visual aid

This highlights the biggest problem with slide-based presentations, which is that speakers mistakenly think that they can get far more information across than is actually possible in a presentation.

I invite you to read the BBC article.

Share with me: How many words do you have on your slide?

Related posts:

Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel

P.S. – Remember to update RSS feed to the new URL. http://feeds.feedburner.com/PRESENTabilityWithDFG

Return to front page

Tags: Article, BBC, Boring, PowerPoint, Presentability, Presentation, Speaker, Speaking Tips, Text

How to create a magazine cutout look for your next presentation

December 18, 2009 in Language : English, Slides, Speaking Tips | 5 comments

Does all the corporate presentation look the same? Boring plain corporate template?

David Anderson demonstrates, in this online tutorial, how to create a different slide design for your next presentation. It is a magazine cutout look.

This tutorial is for E-learning Design and Development. However, as it is based on PowerPoint, we can use some of its ideas for public speaking.

By David Anderson. You can reach him on Twitter (@elearning) & at multimedialearning.com

UPDATE: Vivek Singh published some pertinent observations about this magazine cutout look:

1. Situation: You need to know when to use this technique and how. This template design should be used for informal situations and definitely not for quarterly review presentations. However, marketers and advertising professionals do have some more ‘creative’ liberty to use it in formal settings.

You can read his observation in his blog

Share with me: What astonishing slide design did you saw lately?

Related posts:

Posted by: Denis Francois Gravel

P.S. – Remember to update your bookmark and RSS feed to the new URL. I moved to my domain name recently.

Blog address: http://presentability.com

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PRESENTabilityWithDFG

Return to front page

Tags: Design, Magazine, Presentability, Presentation, Speaking Tips, Tutorial, Twitter

How to reduce the text in your slides

November 11, 2009 in Ideas Presentability, Language : English, Slides, Speaking Tips | 4 comments

Too often, we come across a speaker who puts way too much text on it slide.

Text is good for reading. Got it? READING. Not listening.

Which means that if you put text on your slides, the audience will read it INSTEAD of listening to you.

A bit of text can be fine. However, too much will distract the audience.

Jan Schultink the author of stickyslides.blogspot.com made this « presentation lessons for entrepreneurs presentation ». I hope it will inspire you too reduce the quantity of text in your presentation.

Downloadable PDF of the presentation lessons for entrepreneurs presentation

View more documents from Jan Schultink.

Share with me: What are you doing to enhance the effectiveness of your slides?

Related posts:

Posted by Denis Francois Gravel

P.S. – Remember to update your bookmark and RSS feed to the new URL:

Blog address: http://presentability.com

RSS Feed: http://presentability.com/feed

Return to front page

Tags: PPT, Presentability, Presentation, Slides, Speaker, Text

Audience will not understand your numbers

September 13, 2009 in Ideas Presentability, Language : English, Slides, Speaking Tips | 6 comments

It is hard for the human brain to conceptualize huge numbers. It is simply out of reach. If you present huge numbers to an audience, you have to keep that fact in mind.

As a speaker, we need to translate those numbers into something more concrete, understandable, digestible.

Today, I came across this illustration of the size of the Internet. It gives the answer for the question: How big is the Internet? It is named: If you printed the Internet. It is a good example of huge numbers translation.

Printing-the-internet-bed1

Printing-the-internet-printer

Those illustrations are effective because they translate the numbers in something we know. Minutes, days, years.

Sometimes, the numbers are still too big after being transposed. We need a second transposition. 3 800 years doesn’t mean anything to me. It is too big. Imagining Ancient Babylonians with inkjet printer is more effective. That comparison is talking to me.

While presenting data in a document or, while speaking, we must translate it to be reachable. We have to put it at audience level.

Best, adapt the example to your audience. If you’re talking to car dealers, tell them: If you printed the Internet, you will have enough paper to fill the trunk of 12 000 cars (I am guessing). How big is 12 000 cars? Bumper to bumper, it is a 66 km long file. THAT means something to car dealers. (Adapting your speech to an audience – blog post: Put your audience glasses)

In your next speech, make your number digestible and adapt your example to your audience.

Other illustrations in the complete post of: If You Printed The Internet …

Share with me: What good adaptation of huge numbers have you done lately?

Related posts:

Posted by Denis François Gravel

Return to front page

Technorati Tags: Idea,Presentability,Speaker,Speech,Audience

Source: @DesignerDepot

Tags: Audience, Idea, Number, Presentability, Speaker