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Click here for the June 2008 issue
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We’ve all seen them: bad, boring PowerPoint presentations. It doesn’t have to be.
The secret to success with PowerPoint or any other visual aid can be summed up on one sentence, a sentence as profound as it is simple. Write it on a Post-it note and stick it in front of your computer. Chant it as a mantra as you prepare your presentation. Use it as a test for each and every slide.
Are you ready? Here it is:
A visual aid should be visible, and should aid.
That’s it? you ask. That’s common knowledge.
Common knowledge, perhaps, but not common practice.
Think about this: is 12 pt. type on a slide visible? No. Is lime green text on a white background visible? No. Have we all seen slides like this? Yes.
Does having every line of text fly across the slide aid? No; it causes the pacing of a presentation to drag and saps it of energy. Do five hundred words of text on a slide aid? No, they distract from the speaker. (What should we as audience members do when we see this? Read the slide and ignore the speaker? But the speaker may say something important that’s not on the slide! Ignore the slide and listen to the speaker? But the slide may contain something important that the speaker isn’t saying! What to do? Slide or speaker? Speaker or slide? Whoops, too late, they’ve gone on to the next slide…
So here are some tips that can help your PowerPoint both be visible and aid:
Slide Design
The overriding principle is rapid readability. People need to read slides fast, so they can get back to listening to you. Pretend your slide is a billboard on I-95 and you audience is zipping by late for work.
- Use the “Rule of Six:” no more than six bullet points, no more than six words across each line. More than that, and there’s too much competition between the slides and the speaker. Along with that…
- Don’t try to put all your speaker notes on the slide; use note cards or paper or the Presenter View in PowerPoint for your notes. If you want the audience to walk away with a large amount of data, don’t stick all the data on the slides; make separate handouts and keep the slides sparse. Yes, it’s more work, but better that than the PowerPoint be unreadable. If it’s unreadable, it’s not visible and it doesn’t aid.
- Type size should be no lower than 18 pt. (28 or 32 pt. preferred). Lower than 18 pt. is too difficult to read, and if you have to shrink down that low it’s a dead give-away that you have too much text on the slide.
- Use upper and lower case, NOT ALL CAPS. (Readability studies show that people have a harder time reading text that is all capitalized; in addition, it looks like you are SHOUTING.)
- Use no more than two font styles. More than that looks cluttered and confusing. You can have one in a serif style (these have little details on them - examples are Times New Roman and Century) and one sans-serif style (these are plain, such as Arial and Tahoma)
- Avoid overly-ornate type. Lucinda Calligraphy is great for an invitation, but takes too long to decipher for a slide.
- Left-justify text. Don’t center text, except for headlines or key ideas of no more than two lines. Again, readability studies show that left-justified text is easier to read.
- Keep graphs and charts simple and clear. Avoid 3-D and anything that doesn’t directly support the message (what information design guru Edward Tufte refers to as chartjunk).
Delivery
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Remember, PowerPoint is there to aid you, not replace you. Keep the focus on YOU:
- Keep lights up high enough so that the audience can see you, while not making them so bright that the screen image is hard to see.
- Face the audience, not the screen. (After all, how do you feel when someone turns their back on you?)
- If your talk diverges from the slides for awhile, it’s helpful to black out the screen so it isn’t a distraction. Simply hit the “B” key while the slides are in Slideshow mode. To bring the image back, toggle the “B” key again.
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Have a backup for your presentation. Better yet, have two or three. The types and numbers of backups depend on the type of presentation and how high the stakes are if your original plan doesn’t work. A backup plan could be as simple as working from the notes if the slideshow fails. If you absolutely need the slideshow, ways of backing it up include saving it on a thumb (flash) drive, saving it on a CD, emailing it to yourself, uploading it to the web, and bringing it on a laptop. While you’re at it, make sure there is a LCD projector with working bulb.
So take advantage of the above design and delivery tips in order to use PowerPoint to your best advantage. Remember, if PowerPoint isn’t visible, if it doesn’t aid, then it has no Power, and therefore what’s the Point?
