I witnessed a presentation of excellent thinking by a respected marketing strategist this weekend that did not make it onto the PowerPoint slides with equal impact. The spoken words were brilliant -- but most of the audience got lost inside the experience of poor visuals.
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The slide to the right is a fair example of what was on-screen. Overly large headlines, underlining, unbalanced use of space, mismatched and multiple colors with no meaning, misaligned text, and way too many words for anyone to follow.
This was a presentation about marketing and the presenter was discussing the virtues of developing a complete branding program. If I did not already know how brilliant this person is I would not make a choice to hire based on this moment.
Throughout the presentation all I could think about is how the presenter could have fixed the slides to better match the message, the audience, and the brand of the presenter.
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To the right is the same slide from above, reformatted in a simple fashion, to better present an idea (the original slide was a step-by-step time progression).
The great thing about PowerPoint is that it is a simple tool to use -- no graphic training required. But it does require the operator to think a bit to use the tool correctly.
I will say again, no matter how intelligently you speak, if your graphics are amateur the audience will have a hard time believing you are an expert. Here are a couple of quick tips for creating a better impression even if you are not a graphics genius:
- Never put on a slide all of the words you wish to say.
- "White space" is your friend! The less the audience reads the more they are listening to you.
- DO NOT EVER UNDERLINE! Just a quick lesson from Graphics 101.
- Use color sparingly. One color, even if black (on white), is far easier to read than multiple colors with no meaning. It's not a party -- it's a presentation!
- Pictures are always better than words in presentations. Period.