marvelous makeovers - presentationxpert€¦ · marvelous makeovers for the busy professional for...

Marvelous

Makeovers

For the busyprofessional for whom

everything is due yesterday

Rick Altmanwww.BetterPresenting.com

Less is always more

Sometimes slides can simply try too hard. Too much background, too much

text, too many bullets, too many colors. Linda Pepper encountered this

dilemma with this status update to the H.R. team. It was as if her slides were

crafted with the intent to have them tell the entire story, leaving one to

wonder what the presenter would say when faced with them.

Unfriendly slide designThe mustard-colored framing isprobably unnecessary, but nothorrible. The shadow below the whiteoverlay is also unnecessary, but notcriminal. The gray gradientimmediately behind the red text,however, is worthy of a citation. Itreduces contrast, thereby hurtingreadability.

Too much everythingIf your headline spills into thebackground elements, as is happeningtop right, you know you have aproblem. The underlining is alsoproblematic; that’s your job to createemphasis. Don’t resort to the oldtypewriter days of underlining to callattention to an important point; dothat yourself.

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Marvelous Makeovers Less is always more

betterpresenting.com

Simplify, Simplify!This slide is a classic example of avisual that is about to sink under itsown weight. It takes an inordinateeffort to make it through just theheadline. With so little breathing roomand the contrast issues created by thegray background, there is little thatcompels an audience member to try todigest the slide.

First, create contrastWatch what happens when we justcreate a black-on-white motif: muchmore contrast and readability. Eventhough we haven’t made any otherchanges at all, the slide already feels abit better.

Shorten headlinesNow begins the process of honing anddistilling. By removing unnecessarywords and phrases, audience membersdevelop hope that they can make itthrough the content of this slide.

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Next, breathing room!With white space around text blocks,they inherit more definition andtherefore more prominence. At thispoint, this slide could be pressed intoservice without presenting risk ofoverpowering the presenter.

Keep honing, keep distillingThe title has been reduced to its coreessence, and unless it is of import thatthere are actually four classesupcoming, let’s lose the numbers.

Relevant imageryIt’s not hard at all to find photos oftraining sessions, and with the textproperly shortened, it can be placeddirectly atop the photo. We createcontrast with a semi-transparentshape placed in front of the photo andbehind the text.

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The Art Form that is Smart Sequencing

Using animation in a presentation is a wonderfully scary experience, where

you are never more than one step away from the boomerangs and spirals

that define the scourge that marks one end of this territory. Jo Clem shows

good instincts with her slides and just needs a reality test on when and

when not to use it.

A whole lot ofclicking and flyingThis lengthy list of attributes wasset so each bullet would fly infrom the bottom when Jo clicksher remote. That makeseveryone work harder: Jo on herclicker and her audiencemembers with their patience andwith their vision.

Who will read this?This is a nice story that manycould relate to, but when thedialogue arrives on screen, whois expected to read it, thepresenter or the audience?Animation can help provide acue for that.

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Marvelous Makeovers The Art Form that is Smart Sequencing


Playing videoThis photo is actually a trigger toplay a YouTube video, but thatrequires that Jo click on thephoto, have a reliable Internetconnection, and have herbrowser window sized andready. Playing video withinPowerPoint doesn’t have to bethat hard.

Sequence me!This graphic is crying out for abit of sequencing, but it’s all oneimported image. How might yoube able to use animation withoutrecreating it?

No animation neededTen attributes is too many todisplay on a slide. If you pick thetop four, you give them theprominence they deserve, andyou can discuss the others.Paring this list down removesthe need to sequence them atall—this slide is now ready to gowith the simplest of redesigntreatments.

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Animation makesbetter storytellersThis remade slide removes thetitle; that would be your job totee up this tale. The dialoguecomes in letter by letter, givingaudience members their cue toread it themselves.

Sequencing videoUsing one of the many videodownload tools, this short clipcan be captured to your harddrive, imported into PowerPoint,and placed in the animationstream so it is available “OnClick.” That eliminates the needto click the photo, have anInternet connection, and switchout to your browser window.

Hide until readyIt’s too much to expect that wecould recreate a diagram likethis, but with a bit ofshape-shifting of rectangles, youcan cover up each of the fiveparts of this graphic withsemi-transparency. Using exitfades, each click introduces apart for discussion so theaudience can easily follow along.

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When Messy Means Busy

When Heather Wilson was told that nothing on her so-called “messy slide”

could be removed, she was not a happy camper. If it’s the “most

comprehensive solution in the industry,” her co-workers argued, it had

better be busy! As tempting as it is to rail against that sentiment, it is not

only pervasive in

corporate America,

but it has a

semblance of

validity: slides like

this one do make

the point that your

company is active.

You don’t have to

agree with that, but

you will have to

accept it as a

business reality:

some battles you just aren’t going to win. The solution in that case is to use

the same treatment as the diagram on the previous page: hide each

column with a rectangle programmed with an exit fade or wipe. Each click

of your remote, therefore, will introduce a column. Bringing your audience

along gradually like this will make this slide much more digestible.

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Marvelous Makeovers


Change for the Sake of Change

Angela Avery wanted to do something different,

because she knew that her audience was going

to be “subjected to two hours of Death by

PowerPoint” prior to her presentation. Creating

portrait-sized slides was an admirable response

to the tired old sameness of conventional slides.

Formatting her agenda slide to be portrait was

not such a hardship—that’s just a string of text

elements. But soon it became clear that she was

swimming upstream when the images that she

chose to use were all wider then they were tall.

That required that she float those photos in her

vertical space, all the while asking her projector

and her screen to live in a portrait world that was

not native to either.

Angela had already populated her Notes pages

with a fully-fleshed-out talk track. Perhaps

without realizing it, she had composed her

thoughts in order to create a really nice set of

handouts.

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Marvelous Makeovers Change for the Sake of Change


Creating handoutsfrom notesPowerPoint lacks a good handout engine(the Handout master is nothing more than away to print slides in various formats), sountil Microsoft gets a clue about this, theNotes page stands as the best way to createhandouts. Here, the notes master has beenredesigned with the thumbnail removed anda much larger placeholder for text. Thisallowed for the super-easy creation ofhandout pages like the ones below.

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Slides should be landscapeBy creating such good handouts, Angela would

have satisfied her desire to deliver somethingunique and extraordinary to her audience. That

would have delivered her from trying to createportrait slides, an uphill battle againsttechnology and audience expectation. And

by providing so much detail in print, herslides could be ultra simple. That alone

would be a victory.

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Resources from Rick Altman


Presentation Skills WorkshopsRobust and 100% customizedworkshops for your organization.www.BetterPresenting.com

The best-selling bookwith the most inflammatory title.

www.betterpresenting.com/the-book

The Presentation SummitSeptember 27-30, 2015In the French Quarter ofNew Orleans. Four invaluabledays for the presentationprofessional.www.PresentationSummit.com

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