PowerPoint Doesn’t Suck, You Do

I’ve got news for you: You can’t blame your slides much longer. Audiences are wising-up.

A poor tradesman blames his tools.

PowerPoint, Keynote, OpenOffice… They’re all the same. They are just tools.

If your presentation sucks, it’s down to your delivery or your slide design skills, or both.

If you want to improve your delivery skills, check out:

10 Things awesome public speakers do differently.

In this post I’ll talk about some simple key points you can do to improve your slides. These apply to PowerPoint, Keynote, or any other tool you might want to use.

This list does not cover everything, but if you follow these 4 essentials you go a long way to improving your slide deck:

Ditch the bullet points

You know what bullet points are good for?… Giving the audience advance notice that the slide they are looking at is going to be read to them. It tells them the slides will be extremely boring. It let’s them know the slides will be more digestible if they were read in seclusion back at their desk.

Seriously, ditch ’em.

Showing a slide with bullet points is a sure-fire way to turn listeners off.

Here’s a trick:

If you’ve got four bullets on a slide, try convert each bullet into its own slide, ie. One slide becomes at least four.

Minimize text

People want to listen to your expertise. People want to be engaged. People don’t want story time while they’re at work.

Minimize the text on your slides so you are forced to explain the details as an expert rather than read from the slides as an amateur.

Be consistent

Do you know how to look like an amateur?

Use an inconsistent theme, thousands of colors and animations, a variety of fonts and sizes.

In any kind of presentation, you will look far more professional and credible if you have a consistent slide deck.

Stick to one font set. Only have varying font sizes for a reason. Stick to a consistent color palette (with minimal colors). Be wary of animations (if you are putting an animation on your slide simply because “you can” it’s probably unnecessary).

Does each slide pass the reading test?

Really simple test to see if your slides are up to scratch:

Can I digest the slide in a glance or do I have to read it?

If you only need a glance to digest the slide, you’re winning. If you need to read it, there’s more work to be done.

Read more about how to add impact to you here:

How to add impact to your slides

What slide design principles work for you?