The Top 10 PowerPoint slides from Slideshare

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Slidesharing sites like Slideshare and Slideboom are a great place to get inspiration on PowerPoint slide design. You can see different ideas and adapt them for your own presentations. Slideshare is currently running the World’s Best Presentation Contest (see footnote) which has some great examples of PowerPoint slide design. To save you time I’ve picked two sample slides from the 5 most popular entries. They’ll offer you inspiration for the design of your own slides.

(To see the whole slideshow click on the link I’ve provided for each set of slides).

1. Play with text

Non-designers (like me) tend to assume that text has to be all the same size, the same colour, left or centre-justified.

Here are examples of playing with text from Ethos3’s entry into the competition.

2. Illustrate statistics

Here’s an interesting way of showing statistics - zoom in on the trend lines. Note also the use of different coloured text to highlight the increase. This is from jbrenman:

3. Use pictures instead of words

This next example by pdharam is from the “Creative/Offbeat” category - but offers a possibility for business presentations. Use a picture that says it all - no words from you or the screen.

4. A fantastic metaphor

This slide deck by grahairs uses the metaphor of an elevator for the seven levels of love. Between each level, there’s a slide with the lift going up. What could you use this metaphor for?

5. Creative masking

This set of slides about the destruction of the Amazon by gauperes uses creative masking techniques. The mask is the semi-transparent circle underlying the text, allowing the text to stand out from the background. Normally the mask is simply a rectangle and is only there to ensure the text is legible. However, in this case, the mask also represents size:

Footnote

It’s not really the World’s Best Presentation Contest, because these are slide decks not live presentations. The slide decks have been designed to be self-explanatory without any narration. It should be called the World’s Best SlideDeck Contest.

Are you missing out on half the power of your PowerPoint slides?

If you use your PowerPoint slides as your notes, you’re missing out on half the power of your slides.

To make the most of them, dance with your slides.

Dancing with the slides means that you and your slides are partners in creating the presentation experience for your audience. Sometimes you will be doing the talking, and sometimes your slides will be doing the ‘talking’. Sometimes you’ll lead, sometimes your slides will lead. And you don’t want to tread on each other’s toes.

Here are some tips for dancing with your PowerPoint slides:

1. Introduce the slide before you show it

Let your audience know what’s going to be coming up next. For example, here’s a sequence in our  “Banish Bullets” presentation:

1. Tony says: “Most people do this when they start planning a presentation.”
2. He then waits for a beat before clicking the remote to reveal this slide:



3. He then stays quiet while the audience looks at the slide.
4. When the audience looks back to him, he says: “They open PowerPoint and start typing bullets.”

2. Use the writing on the slide to reinforce the point you’ve just made

When I was at school the teacher would talk, and then write up the point on the blackboard. The written words reinforced the point she had just made orally. You can do the same with PowerPoint. For example, I use this graphic to explain the power of using images.

Once I’ve finished my explanation I click to reveal the words - and I stay quiet - the slide does all the talking:

3. Create slides that make the audience do the work

Show the slide and then ask the audience what it might mean. Here’s an example of how this can work. Tony says “People listening to a PowerPoint presentation often look like this”. He then clicks to show this slide:

This gets a laugh - then he asks the audience “What are they feeling?” People in the audience volunteer the answer - the man on the left is suffering from information overload from all the bullets on the screen - the woman on the right is bored and going to sleep because the presenter is reading from the PowerPoint slides.

Dancing with the slides creates audience anticipation, surprise and involvement. If you’re not dancing with the slides you’re missing out on half the power of your PowerPoint.

The top four things I learnt from Garr Reynolds’ workshop

Garr Reynolds ran a day-long workshop yesterday in Wellington, New Zealand. I’ve devoured his blog, poured over his book and I was very excited about attending this workshop. Here are the top four things I came away with.

1. Beauty matters 

Garr’s workshop was an aesthetic experience. His slides nourished my visual sense. It was like going to a contemporary art or photo exhibition. Beauty adds another dimension to your presentation. As a non-designer I feel empowered to create the same beauty in my PowerPoint slides. 

2. Branding of slides

Garr does not “brand” his slides with a logo, but there is an aesthetic sense which pervades and unifies his slides. This comes from:

• the fonts he uses
• repeated design elements eg: the style of borders around his images
• the consistent visual backdrop (the book cover image without the stones) he uses as a background to text when there is no image.

This is the way to brand slides. Corporate logos are visual clutter. If you have to have a logo, put it on the first and last slide only.

3. Choose visual metaphors carefully

Some visual metaphors are becoming cliches (just like clipart). For example, an image of people shaking hands to represent partnership. Garr’s advice is not to use the first visual metaphor that comes into your mind. Brainstorm first to generate some possibilities. That’s what the Duarte Design team do (Duarte are the creators of Al Gore’s slides in An Inconvenient Truth). When you go to istockphoto or your favourite photo site, look at how many downloads a photo has had - over 1,000 probably means that its turning into a cliche. John Windsor has a creative post on how to freshen up an otherwise tired visual metaphor.

4. Use photo editing software

To create beauty and impact with your slides, the next step is to use photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. This is a challenge for me - I’ve got the software but it takes me ages and some emotional frustration before I can produce anything. But as a result of Garr’s workshop I’m motivated to give it another go.

Thank you Garr for a stimulating and nourishing day.

Six ways to take charge of what your audience remembers

We ask people on our courses what they remember from the last presentation they went to. Typically they either remember nothing, or a random point or story that the presenter told.

So when you’re presenting, take charge of what your audience remembers. Here are six ways to do that:

1. Focus your presentation around one Key Message

Decide on what is the most important point that you want to get across to your audience. We call this point the Key Message. Then build your presentation around that Key Message. It’s very tempting to have more than one Key Message. But by doing this you dilute the power of each message.

2. Make that Key Message simple and concrete

Take the time to craft your Key Message so that it is easy for someone else to grasp. A traffic engineer we were working with drafted this Key Message:

Implementing urban design principles will ensure that this roading project is sustainable.

We worked with her to transform it to this:
Look for abstract, conceptual words in your Key Message and see if you can replace them with specific, concrete words that your audience can “see” in their minds.

3. Flag your Key Message

You want your audience to be alert and paying attention when you state your Key Message. You can do this by saying something like:

Here’s the most important thing I want you to get.

Then pause….then say your Key Message. We call this a flag because it’s like waving a flag to say pay attention to the next thing that I’m going to say. It’s equivalent to a teacher saying “Pay attention now because this is going to be in the exam.”

4. Match your Key Message to a memorable image

Adding images to words, aids recall. However, do make sure that there is an obvious match between your Key Message and the image that you choose. If the picture doesn’t match, then not only will it not help, it will actively distract your audience as they try and work out what the link is. Richard Mayer has extensively researched multimedia learning. He concludes that adding interesting photos which are related but not directly relevant to the information being taught, interferes with learning. In an insightful article, John Windsor of You Blog calls pictures which are not relevant to your point “visual noise“.

5. Display your Key Message on a slide and leave it up for a while

If you’ve found a good image to support your Key Message, combine your Key Message and the image on one slide. If you don’t have an effective image, just display your Key Message against a neutral background. Al Gore did this for one of his points in his latest TED presentation. His slide looked like this:

This gives your Key Message longevity. When you say your Key Message it’s been and gone in just a few seconds - leaving it up on the slide while you’re talking about it will help your audience to remember it.

6. Repeat your Key Message

Martin Luther King repeated the theme of his 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 11 times. As a result, most of us remember “I have a dream…”, even though we weren’t there.

At the very least, say your Key Message twice, once near the beginning of your presentation, and once at the end. This will take advantage of the Primary Effect - (this is our tendency to remember things which are presented to us first) and the Recency Effect (our tendency to remember things presented last).

But you can also restate your Key Message during the body of your presentation. The repetitions are most effective when they are spaced-out over time. See John Medina’s BrainRules for more information on how memories are strengthened over time.

PowerPoint slide design - adding elegance

In my last post, I gave some basic advice on PowerPoint slide design. Now let’s add some elegance.

1. When you add text to a photo, make sure it is easy to read. You can add a mask (a rectangle of partly transparent colour) between the text and the photo. In the example below right the transparency is on a gradient so that it fades seamlessly into the photo.

2. Make blocks of colour more interesting by adding a subtle gradient and removing the line round the outside.

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3.  Use shapes with rounded corners. A book on the technical aspects of blogs that this was a “Web 2.0 design sensibility”! I think they just look more classy.

4. Experiment with asymmetry. As a non-designer, I used to think that everything had to be symmetrical - often centred on the page. But symmetry can be boring. Compare the two slides below.

So you don’t have to be a designer to be able to design good PowerPoint slides. These are just some of the techniques that I’ve gleaned from looking at other people’s slides that I’ve liked. You can do the same. If you’ve got some design tips, do share them in the comments.

PowerPoint slide design - the basics

I am not a designer. I was awakened to the possibility of improving the design of my PowerPoint slides by the Presentation Zen blog. Since then I have observed and analyzed examples of good design, even read some design books - and of course read the Presentation Zen book.

These design tips are not for bullet-point slides. I’m assuming you’re beyond that (if not start reading Presentation Zen).

These design tips are for the Assertion-Evidence format - this is gaining ground as the brain-friendly yet easy to put together alternative to bullets. The assertion-evidence slide format was developed by Professor Michael Alley. At the top of the slide is the assertion - a simple sentence which expresses the message of the slide. The rest of the slide is the evidence to support that assertion - expressed in a visual way. Ellen Finkelstein calls it the Tell ‘n’ Show slide format. Dave Paradi is using the format for his excellent slide make-overs.

This post will cover the basics - in the next post I’ll explore how to add some elegance.

1. Use a neutral background - either dark or white. You can add interest to the background by adding a gentle gradient or other subtle effect. Gentle and subtle are the key words here. Most PowerPoint templates are too busy to work well with graphics.

2. For any text, use a sans serif font such as arial or verdana. Choose a contrasting colour to the background.

3. Make photos fill the whole of the slide.

4. Use good quality photos without clutter. I use istockphoto as my first port-of-call when I’m looking for photos as I can be sure that they will look good and it’s fast. If you search for “sparkler” on istockphoto, the first page brings up many good quality photos. The same search on the flickr creative commons page only turned up one photo that I might use - and it’s not quite as good as the one above. John Windsor has an excellent post on ensuring your images are relevant. See also this post from Presentation Revolution. Research on e-learning by Richard Mayer has shown that images which are there simply to provide some light relief actually harm learning.

In the next post, I’ll look at how you can add some elegance.

Other resources

Ellen Finkelstein’s post on 5 steps to slide design for non-designers

The best PowerPoint slide format

On our training courses, participants get that bullet-point slides are not effective. But some people are resistant because they know how to do bullet-point slides and it’s easy. We use this series of slides to show the alternatives and how they stack up against each other.