make your slides stink less
DESCRIPTION
A few basic concepts to improve the standard PowerPoint type slide presentationTRANSCRIPT
Make Your Slides
tink
ess (a little)
A Very Bad Slide
A simple measurement of slide suckage is based upon the amount of text and visual elements. The worst slides are essentially text, and LOTS of it, like this one. These kind of slides are basically just a word document, turned sideways and put in 20+ pt font. If you have a compelling need to create slides like this, please just print them out and give them to the audience. These aren’t even visual presentations, so why would you even project them? Having said that, it is perfectly fine if your slides START this way as you are developing your presentation. Just don’t let them end this way!
Bullet points
• PowerPoint defaults to bullet points
• May help to reduce text
• Can separate your ideas
• Like posting your main speaking points
Good visual elements engage more parts of the
brain visual, social, emotional, face recognition, imagination The problem is
execution
Clipart is a problem
• Is this slide any better with a “visual” element?
• Clipart is small, cartoony, and usually trite
• Most clipart does not appear professional
• Consider photographic images instead
Image problems
• Small images don’t help much
• Images without emotion don’t help much
Big emotional
images force more parts of the brain to pay attention
Ideally, the image illustrates a concept or a
congruent emotion
Big images prevent stinky slides by encouraging less text per slide
So, why don’t we do this?
We put too much on one slide because
we are trying to deliver a
document, rather than an
emotion or concept
Slides are FREE, use as many as you want!
Is it complicated?
The easiest way is to add images
with white space
But, these usually have to be purchased
You can use any image with a substantial single color component
You can use almost any full screen
image, if you keep your text readable
Let’s use this image as an example
It is not the same dimension as the slide, so we will expand it and crop
Writing directly on the image doesn’t give good contrast
But, we can move to a darker part of the image and use white text
For more contrast, we can bold and add a black “glow” text effect
We can try darkening the picture a bit
Or brighten it, and reverse colors
We can leave a text banner at the bottom
Or use a 50% transparency fill to darken our text area
Or a try a solid color box
Or, we could use a note image.
PowerPoint: Picture tools> format> color> set transparent color> click background color of note image
Finding copyright legitimate images
Advanced search
I want to use an image that is the wrong shape for
full screen landscape. Now
what?
One option: Split the screen between image
and text
Another option: Copy, flip, cut and stretch
First copy the
image
Next, flip the new image to mirror the old one
Now crop the “non background” part of the new image
leaving this “extended
background”
Then stretch the new piece to cover the screen
One option: Split the screen between image
and text
Or, make multiple mirror image copies of the new piece, flipping
each to match the seams, like this
It isn’t photoshop perfect, but it is quick
and easy!
When might you want to use drawings or
clipart instead of a single, large
image?
For complex concepts with
multiple simultaneous
components, you may want to
build your own integrated illustration
Insurance Inc.
Creation or Transfer of New Policy
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 … Death
Gifts to be used for premiums
Death Benefit
to Charity
Some complex concepts may be easier if seen all at once
Gifts are deductible if donor keeps no rights in the policy
Insurance Inc.
Creation or Transfer of New Policy
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 … Death
Premium Payments
Death Benefit
to Charity
Visualize changes by change elements from the base slide
Gifts are deductible if donor keeps no rights in the policy
Insurance Inc.
Creation or Transfer of New Policy
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 … Death
Premium Payments
Death Benefit
to Charity
If you need more room for text, put it on multiple slides
Gifts are deductible if donor keeps no rights in the policy
For intimidating concepts, use illustrations to break it
down into simple components
Example of illustrating an intimidating
concept:
The hemodynamic response function
in functional magnetic
resonance brain imaging
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An fMRI picture of the brain is made up of
thousands of boxes, called voxels, just like me!
● ●
We voxels are small –
usually about the size of one peppercorn
● ●
Inside each of us
voxels are thousands of neurons
● ●
When a lot of these neurons start to fire,
the body rushes in
oxygen to help
● ●
This rush of oxygen comes through the blood and makes me start to
change color
● ●
As my blood oxygen
increases, I get redder
● ●
And redder
● ●
If this keeps going, I will be
totally red from all of the oxygen in my
blood
● ●
But then, if the neurons don’t keep firing, the
body will stop rushing oxygen
to me
● ●
And my color will start to
return to normal
● ●
I can get a bit blue at the end if my oxygen drops too low, right before it
returns to normal
● ●
In 20 seconds after the
neurons fired, I will be back to my normal color again
● ●
This whole color change process is called my
hemodynamic response
“Hemo” means blood. “Dynamic” means change. So, hemodynamic response is my “blood-change” response.
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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
SECONDS after neurons fire
Blo
od
Oxy
gen
Lev
el
When we model this change with math, we call it a
hemodynamic response function
● ●
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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
SECONDS after neurons fire
Blo
od
Oxy
gen
Lev
el
To get better, look at great slide
decks and steal their ideas!
Read cool books
View cool presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/ssod
Story
Dialogue
Monologue