Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The surest way to stifle an idea is to write a long-winded presentation deck about it.  PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi are powerful tools, but the power comes in how they’re used.  A weighty presentation deck can get in the way of the idea itself.

The classic Mark Twain quote applies equally when writing a presentation — “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Born out venture capital work as a recipient of many of PowerPoint deck, Guy Kawasaki has been advocating the 10/20/30 Rule for a decade. 

Beware if you are still creating slides full of bullet points!

Very soon, you will find audiences leave the hall in disgust or hold a placard in protest “No Bullet Points, Please.” Already you will find them moan in pain as soon as they see a bullet-ridden slide. That’s not surprising. The audiences are intelligent enough to know what will follow that boring slide on screen: a far boring talk with presenter reading the slides and audience figuring out whether to listen to the presenter or read the slides.

Such is the bullet-point terror in the presentation world that cognitive psychologist Chris Atherton writes, “Bullets don't kill, bullet points do.”

What are you supposed to do as a presenter then? All presentation experts will advise you to keep 1 message per slide. So if you have 6 bullet points on a slide, you can simply make 6 slides and save the audience a headache. But what if you do not want to follow this advice. What if you wish to keep those 6 bullet points on your slide.

Perhaps you are not presenting your slides on a stage. You want to send the presentation as an attachment to one of your prospective clients. You would therefore need descriptive slides in such instances. Or maybe you have a slide full of steps and you do not wish the break the process into multiple slides that’ll make it complicated for you as well as the reader. What to do then?...

PowerPoints are awful. Long and uninteresting, they are the corporate drone of visual media—synonymous with endless meetings, academic conferences, and corporate retreats.

For graphic designers, however, slide-based presentations like PowerPoint are synonymous with "client decks," and they're necessary for pitching a design to a client or potential client.

These are not your typical boardroom slide show presentations. They can be impeccably designed and visually engaging because, if done right, they'll persuade the client to go the direction the designer wants. Presentations can be a designer’s best tool for selling an idea.

Admittedly, it’s not graphic designers' favorite part of the job, but there is a lot that others can learn from how they do it. We asked five designers from four top studios and agencies for tips on creating slide-based presentations—whether on PowerPoint, Keynote, or some other program....

Tufte writes, “Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest amount of time with the least ink in the smallest space.” These are words to live by for the slide designer.

I thought I would share five lessons I’ve learned from Tufte over the years that could easily contribute to more effective presentations.

While he emphasizes simplicity and clarity in his graphics, he focuses on the importance of balance and complete, accurate presentation of information. This allows the audience to form opinions and make informed decisions about what they see....