I was recently reading a post entitled "Style vs. Substance" over at the Dahle Communications blog. The post addressed the issue of whether you should focus on the style of your speech or the substance of your speech. In other words, should you spend more time practicing your presentation or delivery of the speech or is it more important to focus on the quality of the content/story. It's a very good post. I suggest you read it.
This post got me thinking about "Under the Gun" presentation design. The average businessman/woman rarely has weeks (or even days) to create and prepare for a presentation. More often they'll have just days or even hours to develop, create, and practice a presentation. Unfortunately, this often ends in either poor delivery, poor design, or both.
I'm not claiming that a presentation can't be designed in under 24 hours. Quite recently an award winning presentation was designed in exactly that amount of time. But we have lives away from work and it's extremely difficult to commit to an overnighter just to develop the story and design the PowerPoint.
Unfortunately, more often than not presentations designed under the gun fall right into the bullet-point trap. It's just too easy to open the corporate .ppt template and start typing in the titles and bullet-points. Thus ultimately results in a poor presentation. So what's a novice presentation designer to do?
- Get off the grid and develop the story first - As the first rule in my ebook on effective presenting, developing your story "off the grid" or in "analog mode" is very important. When people hear "presentation" they immediately think "PowerPoint" without truly thinking about their message, their story, or their big idea. There are a number of mind-mapping programs out there that can help develop your brain-storms, but I like to truly get away from the computer. Get yourself in front of the biggest whiteboard you can find and start mapping your story. What's the one core message you want your audience to leave with? What are your macro points? Even just a pen and paper will do here. Like the Dahle Communications post I previously mentioned, Travis said "Your message should be the most important part of your speech." Don't sacrifice your message simply because you want to project some text.
- If your TRULY under the gun, don't force a PowerPoint - Too many times presenters think they have enough time to create effective supporting imagery, but in reality it's just enough time to dump all of their information in text form. If you don't have time to search for the right imagery and theme, don't use PowerPoint at all. Develop the story, create some notes for yourself, and instead of wasting time with a PowerPoint, create a nice looking take-away with all of your important points and ideas.
- If you do have enough time, find effective imagery to back up your message - When under the gun you have to prioritize. Wasting valuable time stressing over the "perfect font" won't do you much good. Try to find imagery that supports your message, the larger the better. Remember, your the objective of your PowerPoint is NOT to also serve as a takeaway. If you have time to make both, please do, but don't try to save time by morphing both into one. Simply search for a supporting image and use as few words as possible on your slides to make your point.
There's no magic potion you can pour over your presentation to make it perfect. Well, none that I know of at least. I've been under the gun to create numerous presentations and this method has worked best for me. Develop the story first, choose wisely as to whether or not you have time to create a supporting slide deck, and find effective imagery. I've seen numerous presentations that had zero "slide-design" (as in shapes, text, gradients, etc.), instead opting for all full-screen slides. They were just as effective.
I've always been one to preach that you don't have to be a designer to create effective presentations. You simply have to see your presentation from the audience's point of view and remember that YOU are presenting the important information, not your slides. Like Jazzy-Jeff is to Fresh Prince, your slides are there to back you up.
