Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Rule 3: Visuals Matter

This is a continuation of The Rules: Create & Deliver Effective Presentations Every Time, providing detail and depth on the third rule – Visuals Matter (but not how you think they do)

Picture and a Thousand Words

If you’re worried about following the presentation design guidelines – five bullets per slide, no more than ten words per bullet – you’re doing it wrong. Seriously, stop it.

If your slide deck is edge-to-edge words, you may as well tell your audience to read the proposal, or article, or hand out your notes and be done with it. Because reading is what they’ll be doing anyway, right before they nod off.

Text-heavy slides and bad visuals are where the death-by-PowerPoint meme was born. Endless, bulleted text on presentation slides are a crime against humanity that needs to stop.