This post by Kevin Sasser is the eighth in our Slide Tips series.
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(This post is a continuation from last week’s article….)

Famous last words of a sales person…
“…so I’m going to just blow through a few of these slides and then we’ll get right to the demo.”
…right before they dive into 30-45 minutes of slides.

In our first post, we discussed some fundamentals in building a sales presentation. To recap

Tip 1: Your Prospects Time and Your Slide’s Real Estate are Both Precious, Treat Accordingly

Tip 2: Follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule (Available on Slideshare)

Tip 3: Take advantage of innocent bystanders (practice with people not directly involved in your pitch)

Once you these basics mastered, the following two tips will put you on your way to creating and delivering effective sales presentations.

Tip 4: Clean is Good

If you haven’t watched a Steve Jobs presentation, please do so now, you can find some on SlideShare and on Apples’ website. I’ll wait.

In case you didn’t want to leave, here’s one slide from a recent presentation.

Do you know what he’s talking about? Most do.

Did you see precious real estate dedicated to extraneous logos or words? No.

The typical sales slide would look like this:

The image below is a screen shot of a presentation that contained a photo of Steve Job’s iPhone presentation, so an image capture, of an image capture, of a photo, of a presentation. Got that? Notice you can still clearly see the text, and you know what he is talking about. That’s the goal.

Steve Jobs is an uber-expert in design and has been the lead on one of the most successful corporate turnarounds in modern times, if anyone has earned the right to spew facts, figures, and other meaningful tidbits into a presentation it’s him.
However, Steve’s genius is reflected most in the simplicity, yet effectiveness, of his presentations. Think about that the next time you are almost overwhelmed with the urge to put a mission statement somewhere it doesn’t belong.

For your next presentation try this. Start with a blank template; change the background to a darker color.

Create your pitch using only a 32pt font and key words, no more than 3 bullet points per page, and no more than 3 words per bullet.

Run through the pitch and refine until you get the flow.

Now, at this point, to make any adjustments, you must ask yourself

“Will this help convince my audience to purchase my solution? If so, why?”

For example: “Will adding a photo image to this slide strengthen the point I’m making?”

If the answer is “yes”, crop the image down to it’s most relevant point, especially if it’s a screen shot of your solution or a website.

Tip 5: Credibility Rules

There are two measurements of credibility that apply to every sales presentation. The first is the accuracy and honesty of the content that is being presented. The second is the believability of the presenter.

You want to gain credibility and engage your client, start off with a very specific problem that when solved with your solution results in a tangible benefit.

For example:

“After implementing our Knowledge Management program, our clients in your vertical have lowered employee attrition rates on average of 18%, and some have experienced annual savings of over $60 million dollars, resulting in an ROI of 654%”

Remember a few years ago when several college football coaches were fired after it was discovered that some “creative licensing” was applied to their resume’s? One coach lost a multi-million dollar job with a major university; another was done in by a reporter who simply used a simple internet search to uncover the fraudulent details.

While the professional sales professional maintains his integrity at all costs, there are hidden dangers when making unsubstantiated claims.

Sales Rep: “Our customer service is superior”

Audience: “Really? How?”

Sales Rep: “Uhhhh….well…I know those guys and they are really good.”

Audience: “Thank you, please leave your name badges with the front desk”

If you are going to make a claim, be prepared to back it up. Remember, your audience will have web access and can double-check you at any point in your presentation.

Now to the news! SlideShare has secured a Series A investment to the tune of 3 million USD from Venrock, one of the prominent venture capital companies in Silicon Valley. With this investment, David Siminoff, managing partner at Venrock has joined SlideShare’s board of directors. This rounding of funding includes smaller angel investments from some prominent technology stalwarts- Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban, Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, David McClure (of 500 Hats), Saul Klein (founding partner of The Accelerator Group & ex Skype VP), Hal Varian (Chief Economist at Google), Yee Lee (ex Slide.com), Ariel Poler (former Chairman of Stumble Upon).

This funding will help us grow Slideshare better and stronger- bigger & faster servers, more engineers & employees to manage the website, bizdev folks etc.

And what better way to announce this than Meet Henry, the intensely popular & hugely infectious presentation genre that has inspired some many of our users (big thank to Ethos3 for creating this). Press releases are just so boring… they put you to sleep… why not let the lovable Henry (actually Dave, in this case) spice up the announcement just a little bit!

| View | Upload your own

This post by Kevin Sasser is the seventh in our Slide Tips series.
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I remember the day my father brought home our family’s first microwave oven. While we were far from the first on the block to own this modern culinary marvel, we still viewed this event as the catalyst that would catapult us deep into the heart of the middle class.

Dad unpacked the mammoth machine, as mom and I rushed to the store to purchase our first collection of prepackaged microwave dinners. On the drive home, I envisioned how my taste buds would react to the overwhelming, bountiful flavor that surely would erupt as soon as we introduced the cardboard boxes in our grocery bag to the powerful, yet controlled, radiation contained within our new oven.

As we prepared for the maiden meal, the atmosphere was careful and serious, like a crew preparing the space shuttle for launch. My father read the instructions to some feast-in-a-box emblazoned with the word “Gourmet” while I confirmed the verbal commandments and executed the dictated tactics.

“OK, cut a slit in the top of the box.”

“Cutting slit in box….check.”

“Put box in microwave. Set power on high.”

“Box in microwave, power on high…check”

“Set timer for 75 seconds.”

“Seventy-five seconds?”

“That’s got to be a typo, it takes 15 minutes to boil water, try 10.”

“10 seconds?”

“10 minutes”

“10 minutes…check.”

After we put the fire out, it dawned on us that technology, when not used effectively, can deliver havoc and wreck the most noble of intentions.

In that light, Powerpoint has been blamed for everything from lost sales opportunities to the death of personal verbal communications. While it was no more our microwave’s fault for the charred debris that had previously been destined to be my family’s dinner it is not Powerpoint’s function or responsibility to elicit effective communications.

We are an instant-gratification, I-want-it-now type of animal; however the majority of sales presentations are built on the false assumption that our audiences will find the value of our proposed solution as engaging and compelling as a new Harry Potter novel.

Successful sales presentations begin with the understanding that the objective is to persuade your audience to purchase your solution. You are not there to educate, entertain, or impress, however these are meaningful byproducts of your efforts.

Your primary goal in presenting is to latch onto audience’s attention span, stimulate their minds with information that is relevant and meaningful, and aid in the construction of the mental vision of a better world in which their challenges and goals have been met via the use of your products or services.

Tip 1: Your Prospects Time and Your Slide’s Real Estate are Both Precious, Treat Accordingly

The question you should answer before clicking on “File -> New PPT” is: “What’s the reward for my audience?” If you ask a group of professionals to stop their day sit still and listen to you for an hour, what’s in it for them? Can you save them money? Can you increase revenue? Can you give them a competitive edge?

Assume that your primary decision maker is going to be called away from your presentation after fifteen minutes. Structure your slides so that when this happens, he or her leaves knowing exactly why they should purchase your solution.

For some reason, in the beginning of a presentation, many vendors feel the need to state the obvious, especially if it’s stated by an industry analyst. For example:

Consider these two vendors – key points after 15 minutes

• Vendor A = A mid-tier player in the enterprise space with over 200 clients in the perverted arts vertical.
• Vendor B = The company that can help with my widget problem.

When planning your sides think more “elevator pitch” than “War and Peace”

Tip 2: Follow the 10/20/30 rule

One of Guy Kawasaki’s greatest contributions to mankind is the 10/20/30 rule for presentations.

10 Slides

20 Minutes

30 Point Font (min)

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html

If you are selling a complex, enterprise solution you may need to go past 10 slides, but break up your presentation into sections, each tailored to a specific group of decision makers. Each section should be as succinct as possible.

For example:

• For the Executives, clearly state how your solution will make/save their organization money.
• For the Business Users, clearly state how your solution will meet their goals. For example, “This is how we will help your team open new business development opportunities”.
• For the Technical Audiences, if you have a sales engineer, keep your mouth shut and let them talk. Clearly state the expected impact on their internal infrastructure and any skill sets needed to manage the system.

Keep this thought in mind, to purchase your solution; your audience will most likely have to answer to a higher authority who will ask the questions that demand the answers above. You want your messages to be as clear and concise as possible.

Tip 3: Take advantage of innocent bystanders

Practice your presentation on people who know very little about the technical aspects of your solution. Our receptionist, secretaries, and administrative staff are my favorite victims.

If after 3 minutes, they do not understand and are not following your presentation, throw it away and start over.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week.

This post by Lisa Lindgren is the sixth in our Slide Tips series.
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I don’t usually write articles; instead, I am usually the one for whom others write. For almost a decade I published the Presentation Pointers newsletter and managed the Presenters University Web site. We brought solid presentation-oriented advice to hundreds of thousands of people. It was satisfying work.

Well, all good things eventually end, and sometimes we need those endings to shake off the cobwebs and open our eyes to the changes happening around us. As I leaped from 1998 to 2008 to become the publisher of PresentationXpert, I was struck by how many changes had occurred in the Web world. From blogs, RSS feeds, and wikis, the Web has gone from a one-way, broadcast-type tool to a participatory medium where anyone can get the information that they want, when and how they want it, and have fun while doing so.

Have presentations changed similarly? Can we draw parallels between the evolution of the Web and changes in presentations? Like the Web, I think most of the changes have occurred in how the information is delivered and how the audience participates. And although changes have occurred across all aspects of presentations, many of the premises upon which good communications is built remain eternal.

Presentations sit on a three-legged stool

Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design may have been the first person who shared with me the analogy of presentations being like a three-legged stool, but this presentation concept is timeless. Effective presentations sit on the legs of a compelling message, clear visuals that support that message, and a solid delivery that does not detract from the first two fundamentals.

If you compare presentation advice in 1998 with today, there have been some shifts and changes for all three legs of the stool.

Visuals – From Better Bullets to Relevant Images

By far the presentation leg that has received the most press and attention are the visuals. In 1998, it was standard for most people to present slides consisting of primarily text-heavy bullet points. In fact, the advice of the day was to just cut down on the number of words. “Old-timers” may recall the 6-6-6 rule: no more than six words to a bullet, no more than six bullets on a page, and no more than six bullet slides in a row. And then you had to insert a chart or something for some visual relief!

Then there was the trick of putting the words inside different shapes to disguise the fact that they were really bullets. Here is a good example, and although better than a list of bullets with complete sentences, bullets they are nonetheless.

While many will argue that there are still too many mindless slides filled with copious numbers of words and bullets, the industry has changed, and started to do so seriously soon after the turn of the century. Edward Tufte famously declared that “PowerPoint is Evil” and Death by PowerPoint became a rallying cry to change presentation visuals from something that impedes comprehension, to graphics and design that actually supported the message.

Microsoft may have been alarmed about the animosity directed towards PowerPoint in particular, although probably not too much. The popularity of Corel Presentations had dwindled with the decline of the WordPerfect Office Suite, Keynote wasn’t yet very well known, Impress had a small following and the Web-based presentation tools weren’t yet available. So PowerPoint was, and still is, the main game in town. But the pointed attacks on PowerPoint may have played a part in Microsoft Press publishing Cliff Atkinson’s book, Beyond Bullet Points, which advocated writing your script first and then choosing simple photos and images to use as visual props and prompts for the vocal delivery.

For those who are interested in the research behind it all…

The use of simple images and narration as the basis for effective audience comprehension has its roots in Allan Paivio’s 1986 dual-coding theory— that visual and verbal information is each processed along distinct mental channels. Thus looking at a photo and listening to a narration relative to that image can help with comprehension because the visual and verbal information does not compete with each other. (…still with me?) But, written bullet points do just the opposite, according to Dave Paradi in his remarks at the 2007 PowerPoint Live Conference. As I understood what Dave said, when we see written words on a screen, we almost can’t help but read them to ourselves. Thus we have created narration in our heads while also trying to listen to the presenter, and by doing so overload that channel and decrease comprehension.

So should your presentation consist solely of photographs and images supporting your verbal comments? Possibly (and if you do, follow these steps from Geetesh Bajaj’s Compressing Pictures in PowerPoint to reduce file bloat), but that isn’t always practical. For many SlideShare presentations, those without accompanying audio, you need at least simple titles to act as the narrator for your story, as was delightfully depicted in Ethos3’s “Meet Henry.”

| View | Upload your own

I have one last point about visuals, and that is about business graphics. A photo isn’t always going to do it, especially if you are presenting data to your client or to your boss. In Designing Winning Business Presentations, Mike Parkinson reviews 10 rules for presentation graphics. In my mind, rule #8 is the most important. All visual elements should have a specific role in the explanation and a reason for being chosen and incorporated. The important point is that the graphic is relevant to your message.

Which brings us to content…

Content—From Mechanics to Emotion

The content leg of our stool has incurred more subtle changes than visuals in the last decade. As I perused the presentation articles of the late 90s, the emphasis was on a repetitive formula of “tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.” Presenters were advised to use a strong opening, with perhaps a startling fact to get the audience’s attention, then follow one of the then-prescribed models to inform or persuade—depending upon your objective—and finally end with a memorable conclusion that you knew cold and could launch into at a moment’s notice if the decision-maker suddenly announced that you needed to “wrap it up.” It was all pretty mechanical.

What was just then beginning to emerge was a focus on the audience. You didn’t just decide what you thought was important to tell them. You needed to understand where they were coming from, what was important to them, how to connect with them emotionally and collaborate so that you journeyed together through the presentation.

Where we are today is the dominance of storytelling as the means to share your content in a manner that resonates with members in the audience. A story demonstrates the human quality of your presentation. People have been using stories to inform and persuade since prehistoric times, so there is nothing new here. But perhaps the advances in technology, specifically software that could not only make snazzy visuals, but allow them to be changed on a whim, got in the way of relating the story. Today there are many resources to help you with your story, two of which are Scott Schwertly’s The Power of Story or Doug Stevenson’s YouTube demonstration of Leadership Story Presentation Skills.

Bert Decker wrote in his recent SlideShare post that YOU are the presentation, when he was talking about personal delivery. And in 1998 I would have agreed with that statement. In fact, I routinely gave a presentation on behalf of the now defunct Proxima Corporation that declared just that. And I do still believe it. YOU are the presentation when it comes to a powerful and well-crafted delivery. But I would argue that YOU are the presentation when it comes to your presentation content as well. It is YOUR message, supporting YOUR purpose, and above all, it’s YOUR stories, ones in which you are personally committed, that will get the job done.

Content will always be king. That’s why you do it first. Then you craft your visuals to support, not interfere with your story and finally deliver it in the most meaningful way possible.

This brings us to the final leg of the stool…

Delivery—A World Wide Difference

In looking for parallels between changes in presentations and the changes in the Web from 1998 to 2008, delivery is where I found them.

It all has to do with the control now demanded by us, the audience. We don’t have to physically show up for a presentation. We can see it on the Web—or in Second Life. If you missed it live, for sure there will be a link where you can access it later when it is convenient. And if you do show up live, you want the presenter to cover the content in the order that you prefer and address your questions as you go along, rather than sit end-to-end through a linear slide deck. So the presenters have had to adapt. Ellen Finkelstein offers one approach to dynamic presentations in Use a Menu to Create an Audience-Centered Presentation.

For the presenters giving Webcasts, slidecasts, podcasts and the like, new delivery skills are required. How do you physically change your presentation style when your audience can only see you from the chest up, or the neck up? What about if they can only hear your voice?

For those giving in-person presentations, the advice for 2008 is remarkably similar to the advice in 1998. You need a relaxed presence and good eye contact with the members of your audience, so that you are conversing with them as you share your story. But it doesn’t end there. You need to engage in what Jim Endicott of Distinction Communication calls purposeful movement—specific and planned body movements that you make with intent in mind. Here is an example. When beginning a story to make a point, move forward, towards your audience and stand close to them. All eyes will go to you and the audience will be drawn to what you are saying. As you complete your point, back up towards the screen, which is your physical cue to the audience that you are now moving on with your presentation. (This technique also works great if you have a disruptive audience member in a small setting who keeps interrupting your presentation. Walk up close to him or her. Actually get into their physical space. You’ll get their attention and the rest of the room’s too. Then you can back away towards your screen while speaking and take back control of the presentation.)

Technology—the Fourth Leg?

The tools we use, from projectors to software, all influence our presentations. Our goal should be that we use the technology to complement our efforts and not let it be a distraction. Where will presentation technology take us a decade from now? For a peek, see what Robert Lindstrom found when he was Trawling the CES Floor in Search of Presentation Treasure.

So much has changed since 1998. Ten years doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but when it comes to presentations, like the Web, sometimes it’s a generation.

This post by Scott Schwertly is the sixth in our Slide Tips series.
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Scott Schwertly is an epic storyteller. Today, he owns and operates Ethos3 Communications, an internationally renown and award-winning presentation design and training company located in Nashville, TN. Scott works with a wide spectrum of clients that includes Fortune 100 companies, Silicon Valley start-ups, and various other organizations throughout the world. Scott has a B.A. in Communications and an M.B.A. from Harding University and is author of the blog StoryBored: The Quest to Build Epic Presentations.

Break the rules. When you think about the way presentations are done today, there isn’t much to envy. So be different. Be groundbreaking. Be epic. Be like Forrest Gump.

The beauty of the movie Forrest Gump is that there is no real plot and no villains. Amazingly, there isn’t even a major moment of tension or discovery. The film begins with a simple introduction: a feather drifting with the wind and finally landing at the foot of an unassuming man sitting at a bus stop. This is the start of a powerful story – a story that breaks the rules.

As presenters, there is so much we gain from Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 dramatic film that tells the story of a man with an IQ of 75. It details Forrest’s epic journey through life and it’s through these mini-stories that we can gain so much. For starters, you can be successful with your next presentation simply by being different – by breaking the rules. After all, the status quo is boring. That’s the first lesson. However, if you look more closely at the film, you can learn some great lessons about presentations.

Here are five presentation lessons that you can learn from Forrest:

1. Understand that Presentations are Like a Box of Chocolates

Guy Kawasaki has a great quote from his book, The Art of the Start: “If there’s no projector when you show up for a meeting, it’s your fault. If your laptop and the projector don’t work together, it’s your fault. If the bulb blows out in the middle of your pitch, it’s your fault. If you start slowly, seem disorganized, and look disheveled, it’s your fault.” Everything related to or surrounding your presentation is your fault. Presentations are a lot like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get so make every effort to prepare and prepare some more.

2. Run, Forrest! Run.

Movement creates emotion. According to a recent study done at UCLA, 93% of human communication is nonverbal. So why do so many people hide behind podiums? That’s baffling since podiums hide 75% of our bodies. Let your audience see you. Move. There is no excuse to be stagnant with your next presentation. Work the room and move. Good news! You don’t have to move around for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours – just the 20 minutes you need to shine.

3. Repetition is the Fruit of the Sea

Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, talks a lot about the importance of three things when giving a presentation – brevity, levity, and repetition. On that note, great presentations and great stories contain repetition.

Remember this quote?

Bubba: “Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp Creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan-fried, deep-fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.”

Notice a theme? Will anyone forget this scene? That’s the beauty of repetition. Apply it to your next presentation.

4. Become a Presentation General

The reality about presentations is that most people think of them as a “got to” moment rather than a “get to” moment. Your presentation is your opportunity to educate, motivate, and maybe even change the world. Unfortunately, most presenters don’t seize the opportunity and their presentation becomes more self-focused than audience-focused. Stay on task. You are there to perform an assignment – to education, to entertain, and to motivate. Be like Forrest.

Drill Sergeant: GUUUUUUMP! Why did you put that weapon together so quickly, Gump?
Forrest Gump: You told me to, Drill Sergeant?
Drill Sergeant: … I’d recommend you for OCS! You are gonna be a general someday, Gump, now disassemble your weapon and continue!

If you have an attitude like Forrest, you may be a “presentation general” some day. After all, your presentation is your one moment to shine. You want that promotion, right?

5. Know What Passion Is

If you don’t remember any of the above lessons than please remember this one. There is a great scene near the end of the film where Forrest tells Jenny, “I’m not a smart man… but I know what love is.” That’s a strong statement. What it illustrates is that your tone and passion for your subject matter is far more important than your content. Your IQ and knowledge of the material is critical, but your level of passion is what your audience will remember.

So what are you waiting for? Take these lessons from Forrest Gump and go break the rules with your next presentation. You may just win an Oscar!

This post by Rick Altman is the fourth in our recently launched Slide Tips series.
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Sometimes, photos can tell too much

Those of us who came to the presentation community from graphics keep time by the evolution of digital photography. 1995…Kodak introduced the first digital camera in America, an $800 shoebox with 1MP of resolution. 2000…the first time I took a picture of a broken appliance and triumphantly entered Home Depot with my 2MP Olympus and its tiny LCD screen to say “Here, I need to replace this.” 2005…the first time my wife deleted an entire folder of photos and proclaimed she would never buy another digital camera.

These are not unique experiences. In fact, just the opposite – few industries have had such a profound impact on another as digital photography has had on presentations. We all remember our first PowerPoint experience, years before presenters knew how to import photos to their slides. For most of us, it was quite painful.

Therefore, you would think that I would be hailing the integration of photos to slides as a glorious development. Finally, relief from the endless and mind-numbing procession of boring bullet slides!

Well, not so fast.

There is no doubt that modern slide content is more colorful than that of a decade ago, and capable designers have woven incredible visuals into their messages today. However, it is now so easy to bring a photo to a slide, everyone is doing it, often with little regard for the photo’s appropriateness or suitability.

I find myself wishing on occasion that more people would take literally the advice of Bert Decker and just use black slides.

But that is not going to happen, what with every member of western civilization being a potential content creator with his or her digital camera, and more online stock photo libraries available than any one person could ever visit in a lifetime. And I wouldn’t want it to happen – I like photos. I love using meaningful photos in my slides, which in turn brings meaning to my message.

Here are three common issues that face unsuspecting slide designers when they leap into photo integration before they look.

1. Misuse of Contrast

If you were to poll a dozen professional photographers about the qualities of a good photo, it is likely that all of them would include contrast in their lists. Contrast creates energy, vitality, drama, tension and all of those other high-impact nouns that most of us don’t understand, while we nod knowingly anyway.

So it is no surprise that most presentation designers are drawn to photos with good contrast, like the one shown in Slide 1. This modern building taken from a cool angle has a nice edge to it, and it has lots of contrast. It would be a fine photo to integrate into a business-oriented message.

The first impulse of many (and it’s not an altogether bad impulse) is to size up the photo to cover the entire slide and use it as a background. Unfortunately, now the very quality that drew you to the photo will prove hazardous to your career, as the photo completely obscures the text in front of it, as Slide 2 shows. There is too much contrast.

There are all sorts of tricks you could apply to the text to improve its readability, like using a drop shadow or boxing it out, but the fact remains: this photo is too strong to serve as the background. Background images are not supposed to compete with foreground objects; when they do, they punish your audience for paying attention. That’s not good.

You don’t need to throw this photo away – you just need to make it sink into the background more. This is easily accomplished, across any modern version of PowerPoint, with a semi-transparent rectangle, drawn atop the entire photo. Fill it with black or navy, and set its transparency to about 25% to produce the look shown in Slide 3. The feel of the photo remains, but the contrast that destroyed readability has been removed. The tones and the contours are much more even.

There are other ways to accomplish this simple effect (Version 2007 can tint a photo as if it were your image-editing software), but the transparent rectangle is easy, flexible, and works with all versions of the software since XP. With it, you can experiment with layouts like the one in Slide 4, where you cover just a portion of the photo. You might then still face the problem of the photo being too prominent, but it’s worth exploring.

| View | Upload your own

2. Too Specific

The typical dilemma goes something like this. You are creating a set of slides for, say, a life insurance company. You want to project serenity, security, peace of mind, and all of those other qualities that exist together only in the world of advertising.

Slide 1 exudes many of those qualities. Plus, it is well-composed and has good color. And that is precisely its problem: it is too literal. Your audience might wonder who this couple is and if they are supposed to know or recognize the couple. Even if they understand that the photo represents an abstract notion, there is an inherent disconnect because the photo has such strong features. How ironic that this photo would work better if it were a bit muddled.

And that is your task – to muddle this photo, using the Muddle tools that every good image editor has. Slide 2 shows the result of a two-minute venture with Corel PhotoPaint’s Crayon effect. Adobe Photoshop can produce a similar effect with its Rough Pastel and Spatter effects. Removing the sharpness of the photo does nothing to change its evocative quality – it is still clearly a couple enjoying a moment of serenity. But now your audience won’t spend even a second studying the minutiae of it. To integrate the text we used the same transparent rectangle technique, with one twist: The transparency is defined gradually across the black rectangle, from 100% on the left side to just 20% on the right.

Often less is more. Less detail provides more powerful imagery. Let your audience members use their own imagination to tell some of the story.

| View | Upload your own

3. Too Much Focus

We thought it was the perfect photo. In the Editor’s Picks section at photos.com, we found a photo of a man in a hospital room with a caregiver behind him. It was ideal for a slide deck extolling the virtues of the Patient’s Bill of Rights.

Or so we thought.

We knew we might have a contrast issue (and of course, we knew we could solve that—see above), but what we really encountered was a sharpness issue. The photo we chose was perfectly exposed and optimally composed – too much so! The background, including the caregiver, was just too prominent, too sharp, too in-focus. Slide 1 shows the issue all too well, as once again the background takes too much attention away from the text and the patient in the foreground.

Most stock photo houses do not have a section entitled “Poorly Composed” or “Out-Of Focus” — the responsibility of mucking up a perfectly fine shot is yours entirely. Glibness aside, there are many legitimate reasons to add blur to a background, the two chief ones being to bring foreground elements into more prominence and to create a bit of drama. Photography 1A: photos with a long focal length (i.e. much of the photo is in focus) are descriptive; photos with a shallow focal length are dramatic.

With the help of image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, or Corel’s PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro, it’s not terribly difficult to separate the patient and his pillow into a separate layer or object, floating above the background. Once done, you can apply a blur to the background, but not the object. That produces a photo that is much more effective. As Slide 2 shows, now the patient is center-stage, even from his perch on the left edge of the slide, and the text is much more readable against a blurred background.

| View | Upload your own

If you are like most readers and contributors here at SlideShare, you have good ideas to circulate and you have good instincts about the visuals that could contribute to your delivery. Rarely is the case that you find the perfect photo online or take the perfect photo yourself. But with a bit of know-how and creative thinking, you can usually create the perfect scene in which to tell your story.

This post by Geetesh Bajaj is the third in our newly launched Slide Tips series.
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Geetesh Bajaj is based out of Hyderabad, India – and he has been designing presentations for more than a decade now. He’s been a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for 8 years now, and has authored four best-selling books on PowerPoint.

Visit Geetesh’s site at Indezine.com to learn more.

Doing makeovers of slides is such a satisfying task – maybe that is because removing the ugly and replacing it with near perfection is a reward in itself. Over the years, I have understood that the approach required to do any actual makeover is never the same – in the same way as the fingerprints of two humans don’t match, the approaches required to do various makeovers are dissimilar.

Suggesting makeover approaches is a large part of my work – that’s why I find it amusing to hear new schools of thought in the presentation sphere that promise to be a solution to all slide problems. These beliefs range from the no-bullet approach for slides to the total denouncement of slideware. Then there are opinions about keeping things simple and clean – and of providing more visual content. And there’s another school of thought that looks at creating diagrams, charts, and other info-graphic content in a way that’s more effective as is the debate between linear and linked presentations. Each of these approaches is unique and very useful in their own way – and properly applied, each of them may make a difference. But in the same way that a physician will not prescribe a drug for common cold to a patient suffering from body pain, the makeover artist will first examine the slides and then suggest an approach that may use, discard, or combine these approaches.

This brings me to the title of this post: “Every makeover is different”. If there ever was a middle ground that can balance the acceptance levels between purists and procrastinators, and for everyone from geeks to Gods, this is it! In the real world, targets have to be attained, deadlines have to be met, and slides need to be delivered to folks who need to make decisions. It’s such a fascinating world — and even if I did not mention this until now, rest assured that balancing between these approaches is so much fun!

Now that I have made you aware of the approaches, let us look at the amazing diversity in the slide world. Like every person in the world, every slide and every presentation is different. Just look at the content being uploaded to a site like SlideShare, and you’ll know what I am saying. Many of these slide presentations are intended for different audiences – but even if they were created for the same audiences, those audiences would expect slides to look distinctly different based on the content, the venue, the presenter, and the time. And what about where you are presenting – is it something being presented in front of a live audience, or is it a webcast, or are the slides just being emailed? That would make a difference too!

Combine those approaches and the sheer diversity of slides being created, and you can put them together like a warp and weft to create your own makeover strategy. Make a habit of combining the approaches and the differences – and then weave them together in pure harmony to weave the fabric of your makeover – this is so much like evolving dissimilarity to evenness. The result is that you end up with a different, harmonious makeover each time – something so different and individual that even you may not be able to replicate it again.

OK – I agree that I may have input a lot of poetic accord in the disarray – and you are just looking for a set of no-brainer guidelines. So what’s here for you? Try working with these concepts:

1. See your slides, and try to find similarity: See the slides you need to makeover with a completely open mind several times. Always see the slides in sequence, and then go back and forth often. Look for similarities between the slides in an attempt to find a common thread. This is not as difficult as it sounds, even the most dissimilar set of slides often have similarities that you may have not noticed earlier; viewing them multiple times will bring them forth.




2. Make note of these similarities – if you get some ideas when you make the note, jot them as well.




3. If you are creating this makeover for someone, do ask them if they have some fixed visual styles – maybe color, branding elements, layout, fonts, etc. This might first seem like a limitation but combine the similarities explored earlier with these fixed concepts and you have a fair idea of where you are headed. In addition, this will avoid you having to do costly mistakes that need to be corrected later. The left part of the human mind is great at getting adjusted to concepts that cannot be changed – thus leaving the right side with so much more creative freedom.




4. Go ahead and make changes. First start with changes that will affect all or most slides.




5. Thereafter go with the changes that affect only one or few slides.




6. View the entire presentation. Make a note of any interruption in the flow of one slide to the other as far as the design, content, or navigation is concerned. Try and improve those aspects.




7. And then start all over again. Repeat the process until you feel good about the presentation.

Even beyond these guidelines, the best way to get more comfortable with creating better makeover strategies is by doing more makeovers. I wrote an entire book on PowerPoint makeovers with Echo Swinford - PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. Get a copy of the book and try out all the makeovers. All sample files are included on the CD attached with the book. Once you have done a few makeovers, you’ll find a method in the madness!

And remember that every makeover is different.

This post by Bert Decker is the second in our newly launched Slide Tips series.
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Although this series is about design in PowerPoint support – don’t go to the PowerPoints first. Design is essential. But before design comes something else. Purpose.

Garr Reynolds is an expert on presentation design – his article last week, along with his blog Presentation Zen and book of the same name, prove it. In today’s post, I’ll leave design to the expert, and focus on creating what I call a Communications Experience for your audience, whether it’s one person or one thousand. To put it all in context, here’s how to prepare for a powerful presentation:

1. Create the message: one that is listener-based, focused and with action.
2. Develop the slides that best support the message – but don’t become the message.
3. Deliver it powerfully, remembering that YOU are the presentation.

1. Create the Message

Yes, you need a message first. Unfortunately, this is counterintuitive to many business people who create slides and support material first, then add the words. In 90% of the cases, business people go to their computers and hammer out the PowerPoints in text, words and bullets – with precious few visuals, unfortunately. Or worse, they begin pulling slides from old presentations, hoping it will all come together. Then they add notes and comments that they’ll say verbally – and deliver the presentation, with little relief from the flood of information. You cannot effectively create slides without a purpose. The message comes first.

Information vs. Influence
If your purpose is strictly to inform in a presentation, with many words, text and data, go no further. Write a book. Use those words and text. Create a training manual, white paper, or essay. (All of which can, and often, take the form of a 176 slide PowerPoint deck.) This is perfectly acceptable for information-laden (often technical, and highly detail oriented) presentations. But you will be creating basically a written document, one that can stand on its own, and does not necessarily need your delivery to make it a presentation.
Unfortunately, the great majority of business presentations (of which I’ve seen over 10,000 in the last 20 years) are basically written documents that inform, but don’t influence. They don’t inspire. They don’t generate action. And they certainly are not well designed.
Think of your next presentation as an opportunity to transform information to influence. Don’t give a status quo update to your leadership team on key metrics. Call them to elevate next quarter’s performance by allocating budget to your initiative. Why would you read information from an outline when you can answer a higher calling by making that information relevant to your listener, focused and action-oriented?
To prepare your message, begin with the end in mind. With what inspiration or action will people leave the room? Three elements are essential here – and are the Cornerstones of our Decker Grid™ methodology:

1. Point Of View: The “So what?” of your message. Think of this as the one think you want your listener to remember.
2. Action: What do you want your listener to do with the message?
3. Benefit: What’s in it for them? How will your listener benefit as a result of taking your action?

2. Develop the Slides

There’s nothing wrong with continuous slides in a presentation. There are fabulous presentations, in the form of what I refer to as a narrated slide show. Instead of text, the slides are rich with pictures, graphs, videos and other emotively moving images to view. One great example is Al Gore presenting his slide show of An Inconvenient Truth – very powerful visuals and impact. Or the many moving illustrated lectures similar to those presented at the annual TED conference. (To create these amazing visuals, be sure to reference the pros like Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte.)
There are two other categories that are narrated slide shows, and use the design elements mentioned above, but have no personal presentation.

• They are Webinars and conference calls in business, that have to have continuous slides and voice, and the Slidecasts in the Slideshare website, which have sound with a PowerPoint. Although the design principles are the same, text and words may have to augment.
• And then there is the pure slide show, such as we see in the Slideshare website. Here the design is everything, and all the elements above have to be even more dramatic.

3. Deliver the Message

For in-person presentations, adding one new design element to the basics above makes all the difference. It’s YOU! Your energy, enthusiasm and confidence go a long way to carrying the message. You and the message are one, and your PowerPoints are visual support to your message – it is NOT the message itself.
One of the best examples of creating the communication experience is Steve Jobs at MacWorld. He is not giving a narrated slide show, he is the show, and he is using brilliantly designed PowerPoint (Keynote in this case) support to emphasize, dramatize, and otherwise create memory hooks.
The reason so few presentations are communication experiences is that people have come to believe that the PowerPoints are the presentation. They miss the power in the gestalt of both person and visual making impact on a listener – and thus influencing an audience.

Use Black Slides (For in-person presentations ONLY)
The secret sauce in design of support for the Communication Experience is to use black slides in your PowerPoints. A black slide is literally a black, blank background slide. Not a logo, not a design, but a nothing – simply a black slide.
Using the Black Slide concept will do three things:

• Black slides will enable you to clear your screen when you have finished one point and are telling a story, amplifying, adding a postscript, etc.
• Black slides will enable you to cross in front of the projector when you want to move around, own your space, and not have to have the projector awkwardly showing some text on your body.
• But most of all, Black Slides will release you from PowerPoint prison, where you create your PowerPoints and they become your presentation. If you create your content first, and then decide what your support visuals are going to be, it’s a different ball game. And the payoff is enormous.

We coached a CEO of a major risk management company, who had used PowerPoints in the typical way. He embraced the Black Slide concept. He wanted to make his presentations a Communication Experience. So when he gave his next speech at his company kickoff meeting, when he hit the clicker and the screen went black, people were looking around, saying “what happened to the projector?” After a very few minutes they got used to it. They concentrated on the CEO, focused on his message, and bought into his vision. They also told him it was his best presentation ever.

Consider your purpose. Consider design. And then go beyond the basics.

We are starting a series of blog posts called Slide Tips - exclusive articles by the world’s leading presentation and communication experts. This post by Garr Reynolds is the first in that series.
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There are no panaceas leading to effective presentation visuals, and there are no quick fixes. But when it comes to creating more effective slides that complement the spoken words of a presenter, there is one graphic design principle that can make a huge difference if applied properly: the principle of empty space.

Emptiness or empty space (also called negative space or white space) is a key component of effective graphic design in general. Yet, as Alex White points out in The Elements of Graphic Design (Allworth Press), “the single most overlooked element in visual design is emptiness.” And this lack of attention to emptiness is one of the key causes of slides that are either ugly, ineffective, or both. Most people think of empty space—if they think of it at all—only as background, the canvas behind the text and graphic elements on a slide, the trapped space in between “the content.” Emptiness on a slide is not really something to concern ourselves with most people think. But empty space is not nothing, it is a powerful something. Empty space in your visuals can breath air into your key visual elements leading to greater clarity, understanding, and augmentation of your spoken word. When you start to view empty space as a positive element you are better able to avoid clutter by eliminating the non-essential.

Learning from the world around you

You can learn a lot about the idea of using fewer elements in a visual and using empty space to amplify your graphic by observing the visual design in the world around you. It’s everywhere. You can begin to improve your design mindfulness by reading books on graphic design as well as by the careful examination of the professional graphics around you right where you live. Graphic design is ubiquitous, especially in urban settings such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo, etc. but you can also find examples all around you in smaller towns too. As you commute to work or during your evening walk, begin to pay attention to the designs you observe—store fronts, advertising, posters, signs of all types, print media, and on and on. Designs that make good use of empty space will have messages—with or without text—that are easy to understand. Your eye does not wander or get confused. We notice differences. Designs that make use of emptiness often have good contrast and a clear design priority. We are not usually aware of “the design” of it, but we get the message. And the message is what it’s all about.

The land of Zen simplicity and visual clutter

Some of the best graphic design treatments in the world are done right here in Japan. And some of the most chaotic and mad examples of graphic design and communication are also right here. If you have been to Japan you know exactly what I am talking about. In Japan we have a 2000 year-old culture steeped in aesthetic appreciation and tradition juxtaposed with modern, fast-paced city centers which give one the feeling of living inside a giant pinball machine. Yet the lessons are everywhere. Below is an example from inside two department stores in my home of Osaka, Japan. Product displays in a retail space may seem to have nothing to do with presentation design, however, the importance of emptiness and removal of the non-essential can reveal itself in unusual places.

Above: This was snapped while shopping in an electronics store. We were shopping for an energy-efficient stainless steel refrigerator that would fit harmoniously with our kitchen appliances. However, while the price was easy to find, it was often hard to locate even the most basic information such as the exact size or energy consumption, etc. And it was difficult to imagine how this would actually look in our kitchen with the sea of clutter pasted over the very product we wanted to see.

Above: Here is a dining table in a furniture store just down the street from the electronics store. They get it. We need to imagine how the piece will look (and feel) in our home. The specs and details are there in a small sign, easy to find without searching.

Above: Advertising posters on trains offer good lessons as well. This poster (about 70cm wide) is encouraging passengers to take a trip to Gold Coast, Australia. Some of the type is no bigger than 10 point; I had to stick my nose to the glass to even read all that detail. Yet most people who see the poster will never be close enough to read all that detail. Good poster design should (1) be noticed, (2) be understood, and (3) be remembered (and hopefully get the viewer to take action). Posters and presentation visuals are different, but slides too must be noticed (have an impact), be understood, and help audiences understand and remember your point (or story, etc.).

In defense of the designer, this poster is a classic example of design-by-committee; the actual designer probably became no more than a computer operator with the client saying “Add this!” “Don’t forget that!” “Where’s the &^*#@! koala bear?!” and so on. Sadly, this poster resembles some design-by-committee PowerPoint slides which I have seen all too often in Japan. Often the default is: When in doubt, add more. “Slide-by-committee” is responsible for a lot of really bad PowerPoint slides everywhere in the world.

Above left: A classic poster that is painfully similar to a lot of PowerPoint slides. The designers of the poster on the right showed restraint, leaving most of the space empty.

Above: A lot of billboards which feature rich full-bleed images and a bit of text remind me of some good presentation slides. The entire “canvas” is covered by the image but the use of space, lack of clutter, and a clear focal point makes the visual easy to notice and understand in an instant. This huge billboard is across the street from the Apple Store.

Above: Here in a SlideShare deck are several examples and before/after slides that use empty space. All the slides were used to complement the spoken word in live talks.

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