I was scouring blogs (no surprise there) and ran across this presentation about presentations. It’s actually a really smart little slideshow that does a great job of teaching the viewer how to kick up their Power Point (or similar) presentations so they don’t lull their audience to sleep or, even worse, make their eyes bleed. I found this to be welcome insight. I’m always wishing my slide decks were more interesting, more visual, more impactful. I believe that by utilizing the tips in this presentation, my own presentations may someday have someone blogging about them. Well, maybe not all that, but close…

I’ve pulled some of the finer points out of the presentation, but in reality, the whole thing is worth the time it’ll take you to watch it. However, for those of you who are “Cliff’s Notes” kind of people, here you go:

1. Sort out a cohesive color scheme for you presentation. A great tool to assist you with finding colors that look spectacular together is ColourLovers.com.

2. Do not, repeat, do not use more than 2-3 type styles in your presentation and if possible, find a font family and stick with it. Any more than this and it starts looking tacky.

3. Less is more. Various sources argue this point but the bottom line is that you should not be using more than 75 words per slide and it should really be closer to 40.

4. Incorporate videos as much as possible, but the ideal length of a video is 30 seconds, no more than 2 minutes.

5. Use photos instead of words. It is proven that people remember text 60% better when it is accompanied by a photo. That’s just how we remember things, folks. So, find a site that offers free photos, royalty free photos or use your own photos. Either way, use photos.

6. Do not print out your slides, ever. If you need to share, find a slide sharing site like slideshare.net or provide your audience with your email address and offer to email them the presentation after the show.

7. Do not ever use bullets. There are better ways than bullets, you just gotta believe me.

This entry was posted by Lisa on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Design Love, Marketizing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: keynote, power point, presenter tools, slide deck, slide show