Good Presentation Design: The Secrets

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Here is the main thing you need to know about good presentation design:

You are the presentation.

Good presentation design is not about throwing together a whole load of slides with perfect graphics. Good design comes from realizing that you are the center of the presentation and the slides are just there to support you.

Let’s look at Barny’s story…

Barny’s boss asked him to do a presentation on a new set of HR policies. Barny jumped straight onto his PC and started working with PowerPoint. He had a nice, clean company template that he could use. He filled the slides with short bullet points on each of the new policies.On the final slide he added a chart showing the cost savings that will be achieved following the new policies.

Barny put everything together in less than an hour and patted himself on the back for getting everything done so quickly.

A few days later he delivered the presentation to the executive management team. He spent most of the time looking at the screen behind him and reading through the bullet points.

Satisfied that he delivered the required information, he answered a few questions and then closed his presentation.

So, what did Barny do wrong?

Barny didn’t do anything wrong, in fact he probably did everything according to accepted company protocols. However, he delivered a stock-standard, boring presentation.

Here’s why Barny delivered a boring presentation:

Barny created his slides as a prompting device

Barny didn’t spend time thinking about how he would deliver his presentation. He used his slides to guide it instead. This is the problem most presenters run into: they deliver their presentations slide-by-slide, reading the bullet points from each.

The result? A dead boring presentation that every member of the audience wants to run away from.

What he should do is be able to deliver the presentation without using slides. Once he can deliver his presentation effectively, he should decide what slides he really needs to add emphasis to his presentation.

You see what we’re doing? We are preparing the presentation in such a way that slides are unnecessary. Now that slides are unnecessary we can add some slides that will actually add impact to what Barny says.

Barry had little more than bullet points and words

Bullet points have become an accepted way of displaying information in the corporate world. The trouble with bullet points is they detract from what you are saying as a presenter.

When someone is trying to listen to you, and read at the same time, they can’t do either well. The result is that your message gets lost and the audience gets tired. To correct this situation your slides should contain a minimum amount of written information.

Think of it this way: You present the information and your slides should represent visually what you are saying (note: represent visually doesn’t mean you need charts all the time. If you are discussing unhappy employees and how the new HR policy will make them happy, consider two slides that transition from an unhappy employee to a happy one.)

Don’t be a Barny… Use good presentation design… Create extremely simple slides that visually re-enforce what you are saying and the audience will love you for it.

More on this topic later!

Effective Presentations Have Three Important Elements

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It’s the Monday morning team meeting…

Your boss breaks the news that you need to give a presentation on Friday morning about your current project.

Panic sets in; you hate doing presentations. You’ve never enjoyed presenting and you know that no one really wants to sit there and listen to you “bang on” about any of your projects.

After the initial shock wears off you resign yourself to the fact that you’ll have to deliver a presentation. Friday’s not far away, so you need to get started on this presentation as soon as possible… So what do you do?

If you’re like most people, you head straight to PowerPoint and start filling out slides with bullet points.

Let me tell you upfront, no matter what kind of presentation you’ll need to deliver, starting with PowerPoint (or Keynote) is the biggest mistake you can make. For a truly effective, engaging presentation slide preparation should be one of the last things that you do.

So, what should you do first? What are the most important elements for an effective presentation?

PREPARATION

Preparation is always the key to a good presentation; real preparation comes a long way before you ever sit down at your PC and start preparing slides.

The three most important elements of preparation are:

1. Knowing your audience

Presentation experts often talk about delivering audience-focused presentations. So how do you do that?… Understand what makes them tick. To deliver an audience-focused, engaging presentation you need to tailor your presentation to emphasize the benefits to your audience.

Make no mistake, no matter which department you work in, when you deliver a presentation you are a salesperson. It is your job to get the audience to accept the information you are sharing, buy the product you are presenting, use the new process you are introducing, etc.

To give you an example, I recently had to do a presentation about a new administration system that everyone will be required to use. This is a topic that I must approach very carefully, because it means more work for the audience. To deliver a truly engaging presentation, one where the audience will be happy with the information I am sharing, I need to focus on the benefits to the audience.

I need to put myself in the audience’s position and ask “What’s in it for me?”

So, what’s in it for the audience when we talk about a new system that will mean more work for them?

I know how frustrated the audience can be by a complicated weekly reporting process they have to go through. So focus on that. Focus on how much easier their working lives will be once they can press a button and have all the reports they need to make a usually difficult weekly reporting process a breeze. Sure, it’s more work for them upfront, but they will accept that if you tell them about the long-term benefits of easy reporting.

2. Knowing your topic

Don’t you hate being in a presentation where the presenter looks at the screen the whole time and reads the slides to you? If you’re anything like me those “presenters” leave you thinking, “Why not email the slides to me and I can read them myself?”

Generally, people who stand reading their slides, rather than making eye contact with the audience, are those that either don’t know their topic well enough or haven’t done any practice beforehand.

To deliver an excellent presentation it is essential that you know your topic inside out. If you know your topic well, you can deliver a presentation with impact because you’re not reliant on remembering what you rehearsed last night. If you know your topic inside-out you can just speak about it.

Knowing your topic leads to point number three…

3. Knowing what you want the audience to do

Knowing your topic is important. Even more important is knowing what you need the audience to do or to take away from your presentation. Before you do any preparation ask yourself “What is my goal?” “What do I want to achieve?” If you know this before your presentation starts you can structure what you say to lead the audience in this direction.

And that’s it!

You should follow these three steps before you even think about opening PowerPoint or Keynote:

  1. Know you audience
  2. Know your topic
  3. Know what you want the audience to do

Get these three steps right and you have built a strong foundation for the rest of your presentation.

Good luck!