Are you looking for a presentation designer? I’ve been asked so many times if I could recommend a presentation designer that I’ve decided to publish a list of PowerPoint and Keynote slide design companies and freelancers. I asked each presentation designer to talk about their approach to presentation design and to give me an example of a slide that represents their brand.

I’ve used a very traditional method to order these presentation designers – it’s alphabetical based on the principal’s last name.

You’ll see a tremendous variety in approaches – from business focus, to scientific rigor to aesthetics.

Rick Altman, Better Presenting
There are plenty of PowerPoint trainers in the world. There is also no shortage of speaking coaches. And finding a marketing consultant to help with message and branding is not terribly difficult. But finding a consultant with demonstrated expertise in all of these critical areas of presentation is not so common. Rick Altman is one of the few in the presentation community who blends presentation design, best practices, and software technique to serve his clients.

This finished slide, for the largest insurance provider in the United States, began as a typical slide, with far too many words, no white space, and no visual focus (text is greeked to respect company privacy). Pairing down the text to hone the message is just the first part of the solution; integrating an evocative visual is critical to giving the message its emotional weight. Finally, using PowerPoint’s support for semi-transparency allows the text and the image to be blended into a single story.

Claudia Bennett, Cestudio Design
The best presentation has the speaker’s message simple and right to the point and educates the audience in the subject message matter while keeping the story line alive. Like a good movie! I feel privileged to count myself as one of the few  presentations designers worldwide able to work in both English and Spanish. I’m based in Boston, Massachussets, USA.

Chantal Bossé, CHABOS
I have a passion for visual communications. Since I created CHABOS in 2004, my main goal has been to help entrepreneurs, trainers and speakers improve their presentations and performance with a real “visual communication” tool.

To convince audiences we need more than just pretty slides; we need a convincing and inspiring message! My approach to help clients set themselves apart from the crowd: flexible presentations. It gives them the possibility to tailor their message to the audience’s needs on the spot. It does take more time, and of course practice to master content structure and the use of the technology. But presenters willing to go that route have a memorable impact on audiences. Some clients have even increased their sales with this presentation method, and greatly reduced the need to design new slide decks all the time.

When people are not comfortable with this method, I stick with regular linear presentations but with very few bullet lists, using instead meaningful visuals and one idea per slide.

Jeff Brenman, Apollo Ideas
Apollo Ideas is a presentation consulting and design company. We help people with great ideas develop and deliver presentations that convince, inspire, express, captivate, evoke, teach, move, entertain, sell, engage, challenge, motivate audiences. Our mantra, “Clear Simple Expression”, is part of what sets our work apart. Everything we create is tested against three criteria: 1) Is the message clear? 2) Is the story simple to understand? 3) Is it expressive? A “yes” to all three defines Apollo Ideas style.

Louise Cunningham, Halo Media
Halo Media is a design company with a passion for presentations! Our focus is on the content flow and visual appeal – transforming your content into a professional, well-designed (and hot!) presentation. We’ve produced PowerPoint and Keynote presentations for well-known brands across the globe including:

Coca Cola  |  Unilever  | Orange (France Telecom)  |  GTS Lufthansa  |   Nestlé

We are South African based – this mean’s we are in line with GMT time (1 hour ahead of the UK), English is our first language and our exchange rate suits your pocket!
You’ll find our showreels on our site… we look forward to hearing from you!

Mike Davenport, Stick Figure Simple
I believe people are overwhelmed with information. They can’t cut through the mind clutter anymore. I believe people want easy to absorb information. Information they can grasp in a glance so they can learn, lead and find opportunities faster. Better. Easier. I believe people want simple communication – the simpler, the better.

Ever have that relieved feeling when someone says, “Wait, let me draw you a quick picture?”

It works. Simple pictures make communication better. And simple pictures – stick-figure-simple pictures – sweep away complex information, leaving us with what really matters.

Nancy Duarte, Duarte Design
A good story changes how people think, feel, and act–moving them to buy a product, embrace an idea, fund a cause or join a movement. Presentations have the potential to transform audiences by connecting authentically and communicating persuasively through the power of story. Duarte is the global presentation leader, with expertise honed through more than twenty years in practice, two top-100 Amazon business books, and global training curriculum based on the award-winning methodology. We apply visual storytelling techniques from cinema and literature to build engaging communications, high-concept campaigns and transformative experiences that inspire a groundswell response in any audience. Our presentations unfold across multiple channels, whether it’s a live keynote or breakout, video or multimedia content delivered on demand, or an immersive, user-navigated experience. Through a highly collaborative process, we’ll work closely with you to write, design, produce, and deliver a presentation–in any form–that accelerates the reach and impact of your message.

Artur Ferreira and Rogerio Chequer, SOAP
SOAP – State Of the Art Presentations –  was created by business consultants who, after participating in business presentations, realized that most of the presentations were boring and ineffective, and so opportunities were being lost. SOAP brought together elements from Design, Advertising, Consulting and Storytelling to develop a unique methodology that we call Soap System.

SOAP System touches on all the components of a presentation: defining the approach, writing the script, creating the visuals and coaching the presenter.

Our goal is to leverage strategic moments with impactful messages, stories and visuals that lead the audience to your objective.

Our leading-edge design studios are equipped with the latest technology for graphic design, animation, video production and other interactive media.

Ana Foureaux Frazao, AnaFxFz
I create designs that attract, inspire, and motivate people to respond to visual messages. My conceptual designs are original artwork focused on innovation. I am a Mac-based designer but proficient in a broad range of design applications for both Mac and PC. I am multilingual, with solid international experience, and have designed keynote and pitch presentations for high profile speakers, book authors, and technology entrepreneurs from around the world. I am currently based in San Francisco, California, where I launched AnaFxFz Communication Design, a studio focused on Presentations, Branding, and Information Design.

Sandra Johnson, PresentationWiz
Sandra Johnson is on a mission to help people use PowerPoint responsibly. By combining marketing communications and design expertise with known audio-visual learning tenets, her presentations bring her clients’ ideas to life in a way that connects with and compels audiences.

Johnson is a 20-year marketing communications veteran who has developed and successfully implemented marketing communications programs for clients like 3M Health Care, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and Porsche Cars of North America. Her strategic expertise and creative PowerPoint design and strategic consultation skills have made her a valuable resource for her clients since forming her PowerPoint presentation business in 2001.

Since 2008, Sandra has been recognized by Microsoft Corporation as one of a handful of Microsoft PowerPoint Most Valued Professionals (MVP) in the US.

Philippa Leguen de LaCroix, Cornerstone Presentations
At Cornerstone Presentations in London we do things differently: we’re into the science of how our brains process information, and we use this science to create strategically designed, highly-targeted slides that communicate effectively and engage the audience.

In fact, the multimedia learning science we follow actually proves that traditional onscreen bullet points are not only a tedious PowerPoint habit – they are also detrimental to your audience’s capacity to learn.

We’re a small and expert team and we take time to understand your business and your messages. Our scientific approach has been a big hit, and more importantly, hugely successful:  we’ve helped our clients win millions of pounds worth of business.

With excellent design and scientifically proven techniques – we’re confident that we can improve your presentations significantly. Give us a call or drop us an email for an informal chat about how we can help you.

Jason Leow, PopcornPrez
PopcornPrez is about crafting presentation experiences that delight, so that we deliver “presentations to have popcorn with” – which is our tagline. Ultimately, a delightfully great presentation experience is about getting buy-in to a product, service or an idea. I always tell my clients that I’m really a business consultant with a specialty in presentations. What I am really doing is to help businesses achieve their business objectives through visual communication and design.

We also love sharing our design inspiration and knowledge with more serious presenters/presentation designers, through a laterally-inspired curated blog where we get the kick out of connecting seemingly disparate pieces of information into inspiration for presentation design!

Rowan Manahan, Fortify Services
I come from a corporate background and have been crafting presentations at every level since 1989. From flipcharts, OHPs and 35mm slides to the latest in Slideware technology, I have seen the best and the worst that goes on when people stand up to speak. What makes for a good presentation, speech or talk?

(1) Having something that’s worth saying
(2) Having an audience that wants or needs to hear what you have to say
(3) Having the time to turn the thing that’s worth saying into something that’s worth listening to

My company, Fortify, can transform your presentation delivery, content and technology to whatever level you need and I work closely with every client on every project. We start at the end – what do you want to happen as a result of the presentation? – and work our way back from there, to determine the optimal approach.

Magda Maslowska, Haute Slides
My presentation design philosophy has been developed both through my interest in cognitive science and over 7 years of practice as an information graphic designer. This means carefully selecting design elements such as photography, icons, typography, colors and layouts so they dance harmoniously together emphasizing the idea.

I focus on visual persuasion and information retention through story, design and appeal.

• Story is the heart of the presentation. An effective presentation is an equal partnership of data and emotional connection with the audience.
• Design is about problem solving, organizing and presenting data to transform it into valuable, meaningful information.
• Aesthetic appeal serves an integral part of how we feel about the things we see.

Creative and production processes are based on years of experience developing audience-centric high stakes presentations for global technology leaders. The goal is to make slides both beautiful and meaningful with a purpose to effectively communicate the message.

Miguel Monteiro, Tribe Presentations, Portugal
At TRIBE Presentations, our main contribution, as design and communication professionals, is helping to build contents and add-value through visual illustration, optimizing understanding and achieving the best adhesion of audiences to the messages delivered.

Simon Morton, Eyeful Presentations
Many people know that their presentations are not quite what they could be and we are often approached by people asking for stunning design. The first question we ask is ‘why?’

The problem with stunning design is that a ‘stunned’ audience is in no position to appreciate your message. Time and again we hear audiences chatting about a particular slide, animation or transition that has wowed but ultimately overshadowed the rest of the presentation.

We combat this by a process that we call Presentation Optimisation. This is essentially a simple three step process which focuses on giving the presented material a logical and memorable story flow. From this point the design input is all about enhancing that story to give the audience a strong, memorable message to take away with them. This approach ensures that you audience is both educated and inspired by beautiful visuals, rather than merely stunned.

Nick Oulton, m62
m62 is one of the world’s leading presentation development companies. Having produced over 10,000 presentations for clients worldwide, m62 focuses on helping presenters convey their messages more effectively. This includes creating impressive presentations that effectively convey the presenter’s message, and training presenters to ensure they know what to present, and how to present it, for maximum success.  m62 creates presentations that are:

Impressive – so presenters portray a professional image
Engaging – so audiences actively pay attention
Memorable – so audiences can recall key messages

This combination ensures that m62 presentations are effective, and far more likely to be successful at achieving the presentation’s objectives.

With a solid foundation in cognitive psychology, m62 has developed Intellectual Property that has secured billions of dollars’ worth of contract wins for clients. Using successful techniques such as Passive Mnemonic Processes and Visual Cognitive Dissonance, m62 ensures that its clients’ messages are understood – and remembered.

Dave Paradi, Think Outside the Slide
I help executives and professionals sell ideas that are not easily understood, like technical or financial information, so the audience gets it. I start with the structure of the message and help create slides that enhance what you say.

I am not a designer, I don’t use graphics software, and that’s exactly why I might be right for you. I have an MBA, wear a suit and understand the bottom line orientation of business executives. If you are an executive, sales professional, engineer, or analyst who has to create and deliver presentations regularly to win business, update others, or inform a group, there’s a good chance I can help you.

I won’t craft a gorgeous set of slides or make your slides “pretty”. In my training workshops and consulting assignments, I provide practical advice to help you create and deliver persuasive PowerPoint presentations to colleagues, executives and clients.

Carl Pullein
Simplicity in design, naturalness in language and restraint in content. That is the fundamental approach to my presentation design and delivery philosophy.

We are teaching Korean people to present in English in a much more communicative and natural way that gets results.

Jan Schultink, Idea Transplant
Idea Transplant is a presentation design firm headed by Jan Schultink. Jan is a presentation designer without a formal training in graphics design. Instead, he spent 10 years as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company. This experience has taught him how to craft stories for a CEO audience.

Jan is based in Tel Aviv, but the majority of his clients are abroad (thanks to the Internet). These clients range from the smallest startups (fund raising pitches) to the largest multinationals (sales presentations, analyst presentations).

Jan is the driving force behind Idea Transplant, one of the most popular blogs about presentation design.

Scott Schwertly, Ethos3
The question here isn’t whether or not our designers are good or not. Our ironclad egos are 24/7, impenetrable self-esteem shields, and we feed them everyday. The question is whether or not design matters for presentations, and the answer is a resounding yes.
The aesthetics of your presentation are divided into two categories: expedience and resonance. Our designers are expedient because they walk around looking at things and ingesting lifelong lessons from their observations–it’s like Neo learning martial arts in The Matrix. Our designers are resonant because they are fully formed emotional creatures that have been augmented with 4+ year degrees entirely focused on how imagery precipitates change.Not everyone needs presentation design help. Take Ethos3: we don’t hire it out because we already do it. For the rest of you, let our skilled team turn your expertise into expedience and resonance. This is the correct interpretation of today’s horoscope.

Jon Thomas, Presentation Advisors
Presentation Advisors was founded on the cornerstone of my favorite quote, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. (Leonardo DaVinci)” Designing your presentation is less about repeating the presented information in visual form, but creating a visual backdrop that accentuates the information being presented by presenter. It requires visuals that engage the audience’s senses, giving them a visual cue to tie to the information being presented. It means fewer words, more images, unique fonts and large images. It’s about delivering your message in its simplest form (but no simpler).

Presentation design is also about weaving narrative throughout the presenter’s story. Since audiences have little time to hear a sales pitch but lots of time to hear a great story, presentations require a narrative format to truly resonate with an audience.

Simplicity + Beauty + Story = Presentation Advisors

If you’re a presentation designer and you’d like to be added to this list, let me know via my contact form (please don’t use the Comments for this purpose).

And readers looking for a presentation designer, tell me what could make this post more useful for you? Do let me know in the Comments.

I hate bullet-filled PowerPoint slides, but neither do I advocate having no words on a slide. That’s just going to another extreme. Images and words combined are the most effective PowerPoint slide design for most technical and business presentations. Here are eleven reasons why:

1. A picture may be worth a thousand words – but it may be a different thousand words for each member of the audience. By adding a clarifying sentence you ensure that every person in your audience gets the point you wanted to make with the picture. For example, this slide could make many different points. I ensured my audience got the point with the simple sentence:

2. Stunning photography can be memorable – but your audience may not remember the point (are there TV ads that you love but you don’t know what they’re for?). By putting some words directly on the image you ensure that the image is linked with your point in their memory.

3. An agenda slide gives your audience a skeleton from which to hang your oral presentation.

4. When you’re showing data in the form of a graph or chart the audience can often get lost as they try and make sense of the data at the same time as you’re talking. A concise sentence explaining the meaning of the data will prevent that.

5. A clear and succinct sentence expressing your key message gives your message longevity. If you say it, and an audience member didn’t quite hear it or didn’t quite grasp it…it’s gone. Having it on the slide allows them to reread it so that they can grasp it.

6. You can also highlight the points of your presentation in the same way. This has two advantages:

• If an audience member daydreams for a moment, they’ll be able to get back on track quickly.
• If you’re speaking in your second (or third) language, or if your audience is listening in their second language, one clear and succinct sentence on each slide will help your audience keep track and ensures they understand your main points.

But remember, the more points you emphasize in this way, the less each one is emphasized.

7. Most audience members find it useful to be able to read, rather than have to listen, to a longish quote. Put the slide up and be silent while they read:

8. When you’re explaining a diagram, including text labels to identify the diagram components will help audience members make sense of the diagram. This applies to simple and complex diagrams:

9. If you’re using unfamiliar words, jargon or acronyms having them on the screen will help people grasp and remember them. If I’m giving a presentation on Kiva without slides, I have to spell out the name Kiva. It’s much easier to use a slide!

I’d love to give you some research-based evidence to back this up, but the research focuses on the benefits of adding visuals to words, rather than adding words to visuals. That’s fair. It’s still the main battle we’re fighting when it comes to PowerPoint slide design.

My post Presentation Images: Are you making these mistakes? sparked many wise comments. German presentation trainer, Anke Troeder wrote about combining words and images in your presentation, and I invited her to elaborate on that comment. Here’s the article she wrote:

We should give up the false belief that any image says more than a thousand words. We are so convinced that an image trumps words that we fool ourselves into believing that everyone will get what we mean, no matter what image we choose. Trust me. Nobody gets what we mean until we tell them what we mean.

Image traps

Here are three typical misconstructions I come across daily in my presentation classes at a small college in northern Germany.

1. Images can mean different things to different people

When we start talking about images I show my students this image and ask them what meaning it might have in the context of presenting? Here are some of the answers I get:

• Chaos
• Structure
• It means nothing to me
• Too much information on slides is bad.

The answers may vary depending on what we talked about before. So don’t make the assumption that each member of your audience will take the same meaning from an image.

2. Images can evoke unexpected reactions

The student who used this image was trying to convince people to eat more broccoli. The headline says: “A heart for Broccoli”. The image started a discussion that the speaker hadn’t expected:

• This is creepy.
• It looks like an alien insect.
• I don’t like it.
• It makes me feel uneasy.
• It’s too dark.
• That isn’t Broccoli. It’s Romanesco.

Every image carries emotions. Make sure it carries the ones you want. Cold black-and-white-and-green colors won’t help when you’re after warm and friendly.

3. What’s clear to you may not be clear to your audience

With this slide the speaker wanted to show that broccoli contains twice the amount of Vitamin C than your average lemon.

It worked, but only after a while. We needed quite a few verbal explanations.

The numbers misled us too. What would have worked faster? An image with two or three lemons? On which side? Or a bowl of real lemons? Just a sentence? A metaphor? Broccoli is like a box of vitamin pills?

Sometimes cliches work best

I usually encourage my students to think sideways and out of the box, and I must admit I am getting a little nervous when I see another pile of zen stones used to advertise another wellness business.

But as for structure and direction or the idea of highlighting the way for your audience, I find nothing works better or faster than these photos of stones that my father collected for me.

The lessons ahead for us: Don’t produce eye candy. Make your visuals mean something. Make them relevant. Make them talk or sing out loud or let them whisper. But most importantly, make them mean exactly what you want them to mean.

For more great writing visit Anke’s blog at teachandtrain.de [there's more to life than slides].

More about Anke:

I am 49 and I am a lecturer for Public Speaking at a small college in Germany. Once or twice a year I coach our students for investor competitions. I am a TED translator when I find the time. I believe that a good talk is pretty much common sense: some passion, some relevance, and words and images that breathe light. I also believe that perfection is overrated.

There’s a disturbing trend – the use of irrelevant images in presentations.

Stock photo sites have made it easy to find stunning images. The problem is the images often have nothing to do with the subject of the presentation!

My partner, Tony, calls it “Visual Musak”. At best, the images become background wallpaper to the presentation. At worst the images are visually distracting.

Here’s a checklist of ways you might be misusing images in your presentation:

1. Teaming a random word with an image

Pulling one word out of a sentence and teaming it with an image is only useful when that word is a key part of your presentation. Random words don’t deserve that prominence. For example, danah boyd began her talk at SXSW with this phrase:

“I was asked to come and talk to you, to give you some sort of provocation, inviting you to think deeply.”

At the same time she showed this image:

But the presentation was not about provocation – it just happened to be the word she used in that sentence. (Note: the critical thinking in danah’s presentations is exceptional and I admire her greatly – but her slides, though interesting to look at, don’t enhance her presentations in a meaningful way).

2. Clever metaphors/references in your presentation

The search engines on online photo sites make it easy to find clever images to illustrate your metaphors. For example, here’s a slide from a slideshare presentation on K12 education:

As far as I can tell this photo is a reference to the ‘Penguin Effect”, a term coined in an academic paper about technology adoption. Most of the top google results are related to this academic paper and there’s no entry in Wikipedia. Few people in a lay audience are going to get this reference.

Your audience should be able to understand your metaphor or reference just by looking at the image. If not, it’s just interesting wallpaper or worse – it will take the focus away from what you’re saying as audience members try and discern the connection.

3. Image is just too stunning/interesting

Then there are images that are just too good. Even is they’re related to your point, the quality of the image may distract from your presentation. Here’s an example from Hubspot’s SXSW presentation:

It’s a great image and I can see how it relates to the message, but it also sends me off into a little daydream (how exactly does a little girl manage to out leverage a big guy on a seesaw). Once again, I’ve missed what the presenter says next.

And there’s the temptation with great images to reuse them, as did Hubspot in another presentation:

And this time there’s very little relevance to the point.

Avoid these traps. Use an image only when it helps make your point understandable or memorable.

What examples of visual musak have you seen?

I was reviewing a technical presentation for a client. The topic was the latest dental procedures. Every few slides a cartoon popped up. Cartoons about people with bad teeth. The cartoons were tangentially relevant to the topic of the presentation – but didn’t help to promote the message of the presentation. When I asked the client why she had included the cartoons she said: “My presentation is soooo boring. I need something to keep the audience awake.”

Can you relate?

Philippa Leguen de Lacroix

It’s a great temptation to do this. But is it justified? This list of pros and cons regarding using cartoons in your presentation by Philippa Leguen de Lacroix of Cornerstone Presentations will help you decide:

“Why you shouldn’t include a cartoon in your presentation

1. The cartoon can be a distraction

If the cartoon is at a tangent to the topic, it may remove your audience’s focus away from you and your message. You risk losing attention with each audience member going off into their own daydream provoked by the cartoon. For example, including this Dilbert strip in a presentation about creating better PowerPoint slides:

2. The complexity or subtle humour of the cartoon may be lost on the audience

In the case where half the audience laughs and the other half doesn’t: were they not amused or did they just not get it? In either case, you may have lost rapport with some of your audience members.

3. Your credibility may be undermined

If the cartoon is misunderstood, or is inappropriate to the subject matter, then there is a risk that your presentation won’t be taken seriously and that your credibility will be undermined.

The style of cartoon needs to be appropriate too. For example, adults are likely to prefer the Far Side to Mr Men.

Why you should include a cartoon in your presentation

1. You can reinforce your point

If the cartoon is “on-message” you will be reinforcing your point with an apt and powerful visual – this is priceless and highly likely to be retained by the audience.

2. The cartoon is a mind-break

A well placed cartoon can perform the role of a “mind break”. Mind breaks can be essential to keep your audience’s brains focused. By letting their grey matter have a rest now and again, you’ll be more likely to get them focusing again on your real content. The cartoon acts as a punctuation mark or breather for your audience – ensuring attention is refreshed when you start your next topic/message: this is more relevant when your content is particularly complex of course.

3. Cartoons are entertaining!

The role of comedy and humour can make a boring experience become a whole lot more fun. This will relax your audience, have a welcoming effect, which could make the presenter seem friendly and approachable – which would hopefully then result in a more productive meeting.

4. Communication and learning works best using a combination of images and narrative

Cartoons (and well designed presentations) fit this mold. Ideally an entire presentation follows a story, and this makes a presentation extremely powerful. It’s possible to go a step further and illustrate an entire presentation with a cartoon story (essentially all the slides would form a long comic strip). In this case, a well crafted narrative, with well built themes, and fleshed out characters and situation would be a powerful presentation.”

What would you add to Philippa’s list of pros and cons?

At last, we have some scientifically rigorous evidence to show that slides full of bullet-points don’t work.

The research is the work of Chris Atherton, a cognitive psychologist. Chris recently delivered a presentation at the Technical Communication UK Conference and has put up her slides on slideshare. There’s been a tremendous amount of interest in them, but as they were designed to complement Chris’s talk – they only tell half the story.

In this post I’ll explain the findings of Chris’s research. I’ve written the post based on Chris’s slides and asked Chris to comment on various aspects. Chris has also reviewed this post to make sure I’ve got all the science right.

The research

Chris tested the effects of using two different types of PowerPoint slides in a presentation. Students were randomly assigned to two groups. One group attended a presentation with traditional bullet-point slides (with the occasional diagram) and the second group attended a presentation with what Chris calls “sparse slides”, which contained the same diagrams, but minimized the amount of text, and broke up the information over several different slides. Both presentations were accompanied by the same spoken narrative.

Here are samples of the slides used:

A. Traditional bullet point with the occasional diagram

B. Sparse slides

Chris tested the students’ learning in two ways – multiple choice questions and short essay answers. There was no significant difference between the groups on the multiple choice questions. Chris comments:

This is most likely because it’s not very hard to pick out the correct answer from among distractors when you have only recently been exposed to the material and your memory of it is quite fresh.

Before marking the short essay answers, Chris worked with two independent people to identify the themes of information in the presentation. They identified around 30 themes by consensus. The short essay answers were then marked by counting how many of those themes the students wrote about.

As you can see the students who were in the presentation with the sparse slides did much better than those who saw traditional slides.

Theory behind the research

There are a number of theories which can be used to explain these results (if you’re not interested in the theories, scroll down to the next section “What does this mean for your presentations?”):

1. The limitations of working memory

Even the students who did well in recalling themes, remembered only 6-7 themes out of a possible 30. Chris suggests this is due to the limitations of our working memory. Recent work (Cowan 2001) has estimated working memory capacity to be around 4 chunks of information:

2. Two processing pathways

The brain has two major pathways for processing information.

The auditory cortex and the areas around it are involved in processing language – both spoken and written.

When a presenter uses bullet-point slides, they’re not using both pathways as effectively as they could. The audience member has to read the words on the slide and listen to the presenter at the same time, leading to overloading of the language areas whilst leaving the visual cortex with very little to do:

Chris notes:

The visual cortex is involved in reading the words on the screen -  it works on the lines and features to assemble the words that are being read, but it’s not really being used to the full, since there’s usually little color or texture information.

3. Cognitive load

The theory of cognitive load was developed by John Sweller. Cognitive load is the amount of work required to understand or learn something. There are two main types:

1. Intrinsic cognitive load – how inherently difficult something is.
2. Extraneous cognitive load – extra work imposed by the thinking/learning environment.

Chris suggests that the sparse slides may minimize extraneous cognitive load by creating fewer competing demands on attention — that is, because we don’t need to spend very long processing the visual elements, we have more attention for what the speaker is saying. She adds:

Having anything on a screen invites people to look at it, the same way their gaze would keep returning to a TV screen in a pub. Since you can’t control the audience’s visual attention, it’s all about controlling what visual information you make available at any given moment, and minimising what is there so it’s not distracting from the spoken narrative, while also ensuring that it is congruent with what you are actually saying.

4. Better encoding of information

Encoding is the process of putting something into your memory. McDaniel and colleagues have shown that a little more effort at the encoding stage can be beneficial to learning. Chris suggests:

Sparse visual cues could lead to better encoding of information — that is, having to work a little bit harder to integrate the speaker’s narrative with the pictures might actually improve our storage of the information (obviously this is only true up to a point; having to work too hard at integrating the two could actually be counterproductive, effectively producing a situation with high extraneous cognitive load).

What does this mean for your presentations?

1. Don’t say too much

Limit what you cover in a presentation. Your audience has limited capacity to take it in.

2. Split the load

Take advantage of the brain’s two pathways. Design your slides so that they can be processed quickly by the visual cortex, allowing the language areas to focus on what you’re saying. This means using more pictures and as few words as you think you can get away with.

3. Get rid of visual clutter on your slides

Do what you can to minimize the extraneous cognitive load on your audience. For example:

1. Only put on your slides things you want the audience to focus on.
2. Split information between slides rather than having it all on one slide, so that you can direct the audience’s attention where you want it.

4. Make your audience work

There’s some evidence that making your audience work a little to understand your point will make your point stick better. A big caveat to this is that obviously you mustn’t make it so hard that they don’t get your point at all. Some ways of doing this are to:

1. Show a picture that the audience has difficulty relating to what you’re saying. Either ask them to guess the relationship, or explain the relationship to them.
2. Show them the axes of a graph, and ask your audience to guess the way the data goes (give enough clues that they’re fairly likely to get it right – without making it too easy).

Thank you Chris

It’s great to have some solid experimental evidence on the use of slides in a live presentation, to back-up what so many presentation authors, trainers and coaches have been saying. I’m also deeply indebted to Chris for her help with this post. I’m looking forward to whatever research Chris does next.

It’s called the Assertion-Evidence Format and it was developed by Professor Michael Alley (I’ve mentioned it previously but somehow never devoted a whole post to it).

BTW, if you’ve downloaded and read my Presentation Planning Guide, you’ll see that this slide format dovetails nicely with the planning system I describe in the Guide.

First let’s look at the Assertion part of the format.

The assertion

An assertion is a complete sentence which expresses the point you’re making with the slide. It’s different from a topic heading eg: “Microfinance”. Topic headings throw away the opportunity to emphasize your point. An assertion makes a point eg: “Microfinance is about lending money to poor people”.

The benefits of assertions on slides

1. Having your main points displayed gives them emphasis. Be careful – this only applies when just a few points are displayed. If you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.

2. It gives the point longevity. It gives your audience more time to take it in and process it. If they were momentarily not paying attention – a quick glance at the slides and they’ve got the gist of what you’re talking about.

How to write an assertion

1. Look at your bullet-point slide and work out the single point you are trying to make with the slide. For instance with the slide below the assertion could be “Microfinance is about lending money to poor people”:

Write your assertion as a complete sentence.

2. The assertion should be short, but not so short that it’s cryptic. It’s more important for the assertion to say something meaningful, than to be short.

3. The assertion should not be a question – a question doesn’t leverage the power of displaying your point on the slide. The assertion should be the answer to the question.

Where to put the assertion on the slide

The default position for an assertion is across the top of the slide. If you put the assertion at the bottom of the slide there’s a risk that some members of the audience won’t be able to see it because other people’s heads are in the way. If you put it to one side of the slide, you’re likely to need several line breaks which makes it harder to read.

This is not a cast- in- concrete rule and will depend on the ‘shape’ of the visual content that you add.

The evidence

Now that you have the assertion worked out, the next step is to add visual evidence. Expressing an idea visually as well as verbally makes it more likely that the audience will understand it and remember it. From John Medina’s book BrainRules come the following figures:

Here are five types of visual evidence. They’re inspired by Dan Roam’s book:

1. Who/what? Photos or sketches

Photos are great for impact and evoking emotion. They can be illustrations of the real thing or a metaphor for what you’re talking about. If you have a hard time trying to think of a metaphor simply type the concept you want to illustrate into the search engine of a stock photo website (eg: istockphoto) and it will serve up lots of ideas.

If you’re telling a story to make your point, then the image can relate to that story. It will help the audience make the link between your point and the story.

Don’t use irrelevent photos for the sake of adding visual interest. It’s better to have no visual than a confusing visual.

2. Where? Maps and spatial diagrams

Only a few presentations will need a map to show where things are, but spatial diagrams take the idea a step further. When you create a spatial diagram you decide on the coordinates (the equivalent of North, South, East, West) and then place things in the “space” you’ve created. Spatial diagrams make abstract concepts more concrete as in this matrix diagram:

There’s also a lovely example of a matrix diagram on Dan Roam’s blog.

3. How much? Charts and graphs

My recommendation is not to import these directly from Excel into PowerPoint. Create your chart in PowerPoint and only include the numbers which are required to make your point. And then explain the meaning of the data.

It’s very tempting when you’ve got a whole lot of data to include all of it, but this only obscures the point you’re making (and if there’s no point to it – don’t include it). Check out this excellent post from Seth Godin for an example of this.

4. When? Timelines

Timelines can be a useful way of showing what needs to happen next and the order in which things need to happen. However, I would caution against using timelines of the past unless your topic is historical. It might encourage you to talk too much about the ‘background’ to the detriment of the present and the future – which is of far more interest to your audience.

5. How? Flowcharts

Flowcharts are excellent for illustrating a process. This is the most appropriate type of visual to illustrate my microfinance assertion:

More resources

For more information on the development of the Assertion-Evidence format see Michael Alley’s website:

Rethinking the design of presentation slides

Ellen Finkelstein has written about this format. She calls it the Tell ‘n’ Show slide design.

And Dave Paradi often uses this format in his short videos of slide makeovers.

The Assertion-Evidence format is just one way to makeover bullet-point slides. For other styles see my post The Top 7 PowerPoint slide designs.

Yesterday, I reported on the results of an experiment into the impact of Powerpoint custom animation on learning. I’ve now been given permission by the authors (Dr Stephen Mahar and colleagues) to publish samples of the screencasts used in the research.

Summary of the experiment

The purpose of the experiment was to test the hypothesis that:

incrementally introducing information on PowerPoint slides via custom animation decreases student learning over having all information shown on the slide at the same time.

Two screencasts were prepared – one animated and one non-animated. The screencasts are designed to teach basic technical information about internet security.

93 students were split into two groups. One group saw the animated version and one group saw the non-animated version. The students were tested on their knowledge before seeing the slides (five weeks beforehand) and just after seeing the slides. The test was composed of multichoice questions.

The samples published below are just under 3 minutes long whereas the originals were 17 minutes 30 seconds.

Non-animated version

Animated version

The results

Jan Schultink asked in the comments of yesterday’s post how the researchers calculated how much more the students had learnt. Here’s more detail on that:

Cognitive load

As I said in yesterday’s post, I think that the animation in this slideshow is generally simple. I don’t think the results of this research can be dismissed on the basis that the animation was flashy and distracting (with the exception of the zooming Dialog box).

However, I think the researchers didn’t adequately take into account the cognitive load (load on working memory) imposed by other features of the screencasts. Specifically:

1. Having to read bullet-points at the same time as listening to a narration
2. The lack of silence during the animations.

Guidelines for use of custom animation

I’m not ready to throw out custom animation on the basis of this research. But I think that animation has to be used carefully. In the next few weeks, I’ll review other relevant research and write a post with suggested guidelines on custom animation.

I thought that simple, non-distracting animations that brought in slide elements one at a time as I verbally introduced them was helpful. I thought that it helped members of my audience focus on the slide element that I was talking about.

Seems I might be wrong.

Research carried out by Stephen Mahar, Ulku Yaylacicegi and Thomas Janicki found that students who were shown an animated PowerPoint slideshow learnt less than those that saw a non-animated slideshow.

When I first read of the research on Science Daily Could PowerPoint presentations be stifling learning? I thought the researchers might have indulged in unnecessary and distracting animation. The rather dramatic introduction to the Science Daily article did little to disabuse me of my assumption:

Bold and brassy titles slide into view, tasty slices of pie chart fill the screen one by one, and a hail of arrows spikes the points the lecturer hopes to highlight.

The PowerPoint custom animation they used

I asked Dr Stephen Mahar, one of the authors of the paper, to send me the PowerPoint files he used. He generously sent me samples of the Camtasia files (Camtasia is screencasting software that lets you record narration as you click through PowerPoint slides). I don’t yet have his permission to post them on the blog (I’ll put them up if I do get permission) but meanwhile here is my description of the Camtasia files. Update: I’ve been given permission to publish the screencasts. They’re here: Custom animation screencasts.

Note: If you’re not interested in the details, skip this bit. But if you’re like I was and want to dismiss the results of the research because you think it was “bad” animation you need to read this.

The slideshows were designed to teach internet security principles. The samples Dr Mahar sent me were three minutes long and were composed of three slides:

1. One screenshot of a webpage
2. One bullet-point slide with four bullets
3. One bullet-point slide with five bullets – three with small images.

The slides and the narration of the animated version and the non-animated version were identical. The only difference was the animation. The screenshot slide had four animations:

1. A simple entry of a labelled arrow to the “https” in the address bar
2. A simple entry of a labelled arrow to the padlock in the address bar
3. A simple entry of a circle around the words “view certificate”
4. A zoom entry of the Certificate dialog box.

The zoom entry of the dialog box was a bit over the top, but all the other animations were pretty much what I would do, if I were having to present that information.

In the case of the bullet-point slides, each bullet-point was animated with a simple entry. I wouldn’t use bullet-points, but if I were forced to use bullet-points – this is how I would animate them.

The results

Ninety-three students were divided into two groups. They were demographically similar and got similar results on a test prior to the experiment. One group saw the animated version and the other saw the non-animated version.

Why would this be?

The authors give two reasons why animated slides may not help learning:

1. Animation increases the load on working memory (this is called cognitive load)
2. Animation decreases the time that students are exposed to the information.

Two limitations discussed by the authors

1. There was one question where students who saw the animated version got slightly more correct answers (58.93% to 56.76% for the non-animated version). The researchers speculate that this could be because the students were familiar with the concept tested by this question. Previous research has shown that where custom animation is used to deliver a familiar topic, the animation has a positive impact on student learning.

2. The authors also draw a distinction between teaching a conceptual topic (they classify internet security as a conceptual topic) and a problem-solving technique. As teaching a technique involves teaching one step at a time, with the steps building on each other, they speculate that in this situation the benefits of animation could outweigh the drawbacks.

My thoughts – the importance of cognitive load

1. Out of the sample that I was sent, two out of the three minutes of the screencast were based on bullet-point slides. If the proportion of bullet-point slides is similar in the full-length screencast (the length of the full screencast was 17: 30 minutes), the results may point to a problem with animating bullet-point slides. Trying to read bullet-point slides while the presenter talks increases cognitive load. Had the slides been more visual, the results might have been different.

2. The narration in the screencast was continuous. Students had to pay attention to an animation and the narration at the same time. This would definitely increase cognitive load. If the narrator had stayed silent during the animation, it would have reduced cognitive load and might have lead to different results.

This research has caused me to rethink my assumptions about simple animation. I’ll pay more attention to the amount of time my audience is exposed to different slide elements and ensure I stay silent as I introduce each animation. But I’m not yet convinced that all animation is bad. What are your thoughts?

You’ve read Presentation Zen and Slideology and you’re convinced about the benefits of using visually-engaging PowerPoint slides when you present. But everyone else in your organization stubbornly sticks to the bullet-point slides. How can you persuade them to change their minds?

The absolute first thing to do, is to be a good role model. When you present, demonstrate the effectiveness of presenting with visual slides. This is the most persuasive action you can take.

However, it’s not always enough. There’s an obvious irony to the fact that when people are surveyed about presentations, their No 1 “hate” is people reading off bullet-point slides. Yet the majority of presenters probably read off bullet-point slides. I’m sure there’s an overlap between the two groups:

People are reluctant to change their slide style for a range of reasons. Different people will have different sticking points. To change their minds you need to engage directly with their sticking point. Find out what it is by asking them what they like about bullet-point slides.  Then you’ll be able to offer just the right counter-argument, encouragement or advice which may entice them to make a change.

Here are the common reasons why people are reluctant to ditch bullet-point slides and how you can address them:

1. People are emotionally attached to their bullet-point slides

Bullet-point slides are a security blanket for many presenters. They give them reassurance that if they have a mind-blank, they can just read off the slides and survive get through the presentation. People also imagine that if they have bullet-point slides, the audience will focus on the slides and not look at them. And for them that’s a good thing.

Don’t just grab their security blanket off them. To go bullet-less would be far too frightening. Encourage them to convert one or two slides to start with and see how they go. Suggest that they also have hard-copy notes (which is a useful back-up for technology failure anyway) and that they gradually transition from using their Powerpoint slides as their notes to using their hard-copy notes. After weaning themselves off their PowerPoint slides as their notes, they’ll be more willing to try out visual slides.

Note: This is probably the No 1 reason why people stick to bullets, though they may not admit it and use one of the reasons below instead.

2. Some people genuinely like bullet-point slides when they’re in the audience

Difficult to believe, but true. I think there are some people who have adapted to the bullet-point style of presenting. Possibly this is particularly true of the generation that has recently gone through university and college and been educated by a continuous diet of bullet-point slides. They had to adapt to the bullet-point style or fail. Now they’re adept at reading the bullets and gleaning any additional nuggets from the presenter.

For these people, acknowledge that they have adapted to the bullet-point style, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best learning method for most people. Point them to the research of Professor Michael Alley. Michael Alley is a Professor of Engineering Education. During the summer break he transformed the teaching slides for a specific class and then compared the test results of the students who took the class prior to the slide makeover and those who took the class after the makeover.  Here are before and after examples:

[Note: If you want to be able to read the slide, click on it to be taken to a larger image. I put them side by side so that you could compare them directly.]

The students who were in the “pre-makeover” class received an average score of 59% when answering a multichoice question based on the slide, while the post-make-over class average was 77%. (For more details on this study including the “conditions” of the experiment and the statistical results see Michael Alley’s article). So presenting information visually increases learning for most people.

3. Some people don’t want to stand out

In many organizations, bullet-point slides are the way presentations are done. They’re the standard (still). To do anything different is to stand out and attract attention. And many people are not up for that.

If you suspect this is the reason (or they tell you), suggest that they just change one slide out of their whole slideshow. Convert one slide of bullets to a photo or simple diagram. They’ll get to experience the positive audience reaction when they show a more engaging slide and will be encouraged to try it some more.

4. Bullet-points are quick to prepare

This is true. So is sending a text to your boyfriend or girlfriend to break-up. Doesn’t mean it’s effective or the right thing to do.

For these people, here’s what I suggest. Have them identify the  3-5 major points in their presentation. Have them express these as assertions – a full sentence which completely expresses the point. Then put each assertion on it’s own slide in a large sans-serif font on a plain background. Plain assertion slides like these make effective presentation slides. They help the audience grasp and remember the main points because of the visual emphasis they’ve been given. They’re far better than bullet-point slides, and take less time to prepare.

Then, if they have more time, the next step would be to add relevant visual evidence to the slides – a photo, a simple chart or diagram. That’s the most effective. This chart shows the effectiveness of different slide styles versus the time they take to prepare:

5. Bullet-point slides allow other people to deliver the presentation

Many organizations stick to bullet-point slides for this reason. It’s sad because it means their standard for a presentation is somebody (anybody) reading off the slides.

But I accept the reality that in some organizations this is the way it’s done. Doesn’t mean you have to have bullet-point slides. Put the bullets into the notes pane of PowerPoint, to be the notes for the speaker (which is all they ever were). You’ve then freed up the screen so that it can be a visual for the audience.

6. “Visual” people like bullets

You may recognise this as relating to the theory myth of learning styles. Chris Witt has recently blogged on the lack of scientific credibility of learning styles theory. But even if the theory were credible, this statement represents a confusion between verbal and visual. Even though we “see” written words, they are essentially verbal – not visual. Below is an adaptation of an illustration in Richard Mayer’s book Multimedia Learning:

True visuals are photos, pictures, charts and diagrams. These don’t just help “visual” people, they help all of us, because anybody who can see has a strong visual sense.

But remember the best way to change the way other people do PowerPoint, is to be a great role model.

Are there other objections to visual PowerPoint that you’ve encountered? Write a comment to tell us about them and we can discuss how to address that objection.