On Slides and Presentations
A Few Useful Links
I've been interested in what makes presentations work (and not work)
since my early days of teaching, when I realized that sometimes my
slides were actually getting in the way of my teaching and distracting
my students from real learning. (I wrote this
about that.) There have been a lot of well-deserved critiques of what
we call "PowerPoint," including Edward Tufte's The
Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, which makes a case that bad
PowerPointing has literally cost people their lives. But there are
also some terrific books about making slideware work well, like Garr
Reynolds's Presentation
Zen and Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology.
In the spirit of those more optimistic books (and with real respect
for important critiques of "bad PowerPoint"), this page presents a few
key ideas about how to present well with slides.
Ten Basic Guidelines
Below are ten rules/guidelines that you can violate, if needed, but
that are a good starting point for stronger presentation design and
delivery. In the sections further down the page, I'll include some
additional links that make the case for why these are good
rules.
- One Idea. Typically, use one slide per big idea;
question your approach if a slide is trying to express more than one
big idea.
- One Image. For simple, effective design, try to
use one big, clear non-clipart image, corner to corner, on your
slide; ideally, it will be related to your point and will vividly
underscore what you're saying. (For
inspiration.)
- Few Words. Include approximately six words to
focus your audience; sometimes you can use more, but stellar
presenters often use fewer. An exception
to this rule might be a block of text you hope to consider together
with the group, but even in such a case, think twice before reducing
the font size much below 30.
- Big Text. The minimum font size for a typical
presentation slide is 30 points (or, alternatively, 1/2 of the age
of the oldest person in the room). (This rule comes from Guy
Kawasaki.)
- No Bullets. Completely avoid bulleted lists, if
you can; if you do use them, consider reducing them to mind-focusing
keywords, rather than putting a lot of text on screen.
- Handouts. Highly technical information belongs on
a handout, not a
slideument. (Credit to Garr Reynolds for the notion of a
slideument. More links on this, below.)
- Print. If we need a handout for highly technical
information, we should print one; if we need a handout with further
information of any kind, we should print one; if we need a handout
containing a block of text to consider together, we should print
one.
- Interaction. It's always good to interact with
whatever you've put on the screen.
- You. The presentation is in you, not on the
slide. (If the slides can really replace you as a presenter, we
should cancel the meeting.)
- Presenter Notes. Key clarifying information for a
slide that is to be archived or distributed can be included in the
"presenter notes" field, or in a slide attached at the end but not
meant for presentation.
There are some common moments where you'd violate a number of the
rules above, primarily because you're not designing a slide as a part
of a presentation about ideas but as a container for information. For
example, a meeting agenda on screen might have a whole lot of words on
it. But for presentations meant to move and explain, the guidelines
above have the potential to raise your game a great deal.
The MOST valuable link below is the first one under "Presentation
Zen," linking to Garr
Reynolds's 2007 talk at Google. The most important minutes of
that video are probably minutes 36 to 56.