Friday, March 25, 2011
22 Tips: Designing an Effective Slide Deck Presentation
freelance switch: "Every once in awhile an opportunity arises for freelancers to present their work or expertise to peers and prospective clients. Agreeing to take part is at best a fantastic chance to network, a way to exchange ideas and insights or to pick up contacts that will give you work. At worst, it is a terrifying and overwhelming commitment.
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4 comments:
This is a good article for everyone to read. Because so many of us make all these common mistakes that they warn against. It is also good to just be told again to run through your presentation beforehand and to make a promt for yourself. We dont have to do presentations that often but when we do it is good to be able to do it right. For instance in presentations that I have just given, the first of which was the first one in a while I made some of the mistakes of not being as prepared as I could have been, so for the next one I made sure to have notes and read off of the slides less. Articles like these may seem like common sense but they are important to know for also being able to conduct yourself in a positive responsible light.
I want this article passed out a month before the USITT conference. I feel bad saying it but every year I go to sessions and I have no clue what is going on, for their power point.
I also really agree with their point about bigger is better. Presenters don't take into account how far away their audience is. In conjunction with using few words, font size needs to be upped so people in the back can follow along as well.
This is one of those articles where upon first read it seems like all of the points are stupidly obvious, but when thinking about it in retrospect, I certainly have made several of the mistakes against which it warns. Preparation is paramount (all of the presentations for which I have prepared in design class this year have been considerably smoother), and making more slides each with less information not only makes the audience's job easier, but also allows for a smoother flow from slide to slide as each slide tends to go with a couple of spoken sentences rather than a couple of spoken paragraphs.
Sorry to hear that the powerpoints were suboptimal at USITT, Jimmy...
I agree that this is a pretty good summative document about how to give an effective presentation. It's one of those things you learn along the way, get bits and pieces of in critiques of your presentations of the years. But nobody outright tells you this. It's the kind of article I wish someone had given me before I started high school. I've certainly made many of these mistakes, but hope to not make them in the future.
Bigger is better, simpler is better, images are better. I think that often times with powerpoint presentations people get confused by the technology. The presentation is still the presenter talking to the audience. The technology should be there as a prop, not as a crutch.
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