Let’s Make Better Slideshows
OK,
look. We need to have a talk. A lot of you are out there giving lectures,
presentations, and workshops, and your slideshows need work. Maybe not all of
them, but definitely most. I thought I got the message out there a few years
ago when I urged people to read Presentation Zen, the book that forever changed
my own slideshows. But I didn’t have much of an audience back then, and since
that time I’ve seen far too many PowerPoints and other slideshow presentations
that still appear to be suffering from some very fixable problems.
So
I’m going back in. I’ve put together a list of seven things you can do to make
your slideshows better. A lot better. Here we go.
1.
PUT IT IN PRESENTATION MODE (PLEASE!!)
I
can’t count the number of times I’ve sat down to listen to a presentation, and
watched in horror as the presenter simply scrolled through the slides while
still in editing mode, where the featured slide takes up about half the screen,
the thumbnails of the other slides are visible on the left, and the editing
toolbar is still visible across the top. No no no no nooooo!!!
In
both PowerPoint and Google Slides, there’s a button you can click to put your
slide deck in presentation mode, where the entire screen is filled with just
one slide and the animations work as they are supposed to. Doing this gives the
audience a rich, full-screen experience with each slide, one at a time, which
is much more pleasing than looking at the back end of it all.
2.
CUT WAY BACK ON YOUR TEXT
Slides
are meant to supplement and enhance your presentation, to provide visual
interest and add new dimensions to your message. If your presentation is going
to be memorable, the audience should get something from both you AND the
slides. The slides themselves shouldn’t BE the presentation.
This
seems like common sense, but somehow we have arrived at a place where many,
many presenters use the slideshow to deliver the whole presentation: They put
ALL the information on the slides and assign themselves the role of simply
dictating that information to the audience. Once your audience realizes this is
what you’re going to do for every slide, they immediately start looking for
ways to occupy their brains for the foreseeable future.
➧ Shorten
your bullet points. Instead of writing long sentences or phrases on your
slides, try sticking to just short phrases. Then use the notes panel to script
out what you’re going to actually say.
➧ Make
more slides. Take one slide that has a lot of information and spread that text
over several slides, rather than cramming it all together on one.
➧ Create
a handout. Many presenters and instructors want to put lots of information on
their slides so they can provide those slides to students or audience members
after the presentation, for reference.
3.
UPDATE YOUR ASSETS
One
of the simplest ways to improve your slideshows is to update outdated artwork
and fonts.
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NEED
SOME FRESH TEMPLATES?
I
have just created a set of four slideshow templates that you might want to get
for yourself. They’re available in PowerPoint for Windows and Google Slides.
Each one contains 27 different slide designs, and they also come with a
separate template for a 2-page handout, styled to look similar to the
slideshow, so you can create a PDF to accompany your presentation.
The
templates also come with a collection of video tutorials that show you exactly
how to customize them for your use. Click on each design below to preview the
whole template, or scroll to the bottom to get the bundle of all four designs
at a discount! READ
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