A short guide to creating and delivering efficient presentations [part 2]

[see part 1 here]

Part 2: Designing the slides

Visual consistency saves mental effort

When you start creating your presentation, decide on the Master Template you are going to use. This will allow people to focus on the important elements of your slides, ie. the information. Pick a font and stick to it. Have the titles in the same place and the same font size. Use the align and distribute commands. Select a color palette. Ensure your letters have enough contrast with the background. Using a common visual code will help the audience save the mental energy to understand in every new slide where is what. It takes a little bit more time in the design phase, but it pays off.?

Use of slide summaries (non-live)

In presentations that will not be live-presented, it’s very useful to include 1-2 lines of text with the slide summary on the top of the page, right under the title. A reader who skims through the slides should be able to read just the titles and summaries and get all the important information from them without reading every single slide. If you feel you can’t summarize the slide in 2 lines, maybe you included too many points in this slide and you should consider splitting it up.?

Remove all unnecessary information?

Frequently, we feel the need to fill up slides with as much information as we can. The attention span of an average viewer is 3-5 points, and it goes further down the more information we feed them with. They say the perfect design is when you can’t remove anything else. So, while you can definitely start with putting all information you have available on a slide when you review the final result, don’t be afraid to cut things that are not that relevant or supportive to the main point of the slide.

Principle of no-punctuation (live)

When viewers in live presentations see text on a slide, they immediately and intuitively assume that it’s important and they have to read it. Since people can usually concentrate on one thing at a time, it effectively means that you will not have the audience’s attention while they read. No reason to panic. If the text is short enough, people will read it fast enough, and turn their attention back to the presenter. Especially if the text on the screen sounds like a summary of what the presenter is explaining.?

A simple rule of thumb to identify if there’s too much text to steal the audience from you is whether it needs commas, full stops, and so on to be readable. If it does, there’s too much text and you should consider reducing it.?

Highlight the important stuff

Mainly, in non-live presentations, even after keeping the important stuff only, you might end up with a slide with a lot of text or many bullet points. To make your slides easily readable and help readers focus on the most important points, you can bold the 2-3 keywords per paragraph (see what we did here?).

The same goes with tables of data that usually require lots of mental effort for someone to identify what piece of data should one focus on. You can bold numbers, change font colors, circle the most important points that you want to focus on, or blur out the less-interesting ones. You can use a white rectangle shape with ~20% transparency to blur out low-value stuff and use the duplication trick that we’ll talk about later to present it. Just a quick check, are you still sure your reader needs all that information on the slide?

Images help more than text

Communication goes far beyond logic and words. We are emotional creatures. We remember images and feelings much easier than a bunch of numbers. If the situation allows it, and it usually does, consider replacing or enhancing some of your slides with images that convey the same message. You can use full-screen images, icons, supportive photos, screenshots, and any other visual aid to build your message and make it memorable. Just keep in mind that the visual consistency we mentioned earlier also applies to the style of the images.

Diagrams & infographics help more than text

There are lots of different diagrams that can be used for different purposes. From a simple line chart for something that evolves in time to a stacked bar chart for multiple-value variables, a treemap to see how a whole is divided, or a waterfall chart to build a total out of its parts, diagrams are (usually) self-explanatory, easy to grasp, help us identify trends and outliers, and are perfect for presentations. Don’t forget to add important highlights such as custom or seasonal events (eg. black Friday) to ensure everyone gets the context.?

Rule of 2m (visual hierarchy)

This is by far my favorite rule. It says: stand two meters away from your screen. Observe the slide as if you saw it for the first time.

What do you make out of it?

Some of your viewers will glance at the slide for a second and then try to listen to you, so this rule ensures that they, too, will get the right information. For live presentations, any font size under 10pt is not readable. Don't forget the white space! White space helps viewers focus on the important information or distinguish between different areas of the slide. Placement also matters, as users start with titles from the left side, and glance with an F-shaped pattern (Nielsen).

Last checks

1 slide = 1 minute

A quick way to see if you have distributed the information evenly and if your presentation is of the right length is to count the time it takes for you to talk about every slide and the number of slides in your presentation. The rule of thumb is that every slide should take about 1 minute.?

Duplicate slides to show information in steps

I used to love movement in the slides. But for several good reasons, people more experienced than me convinced me it’s not a great idea. Some of the reasons are: it moves the attention from the information to the transition, makes browsing back slower, and if you need to share the presentation it won’t work in a locked (pdf) format.?

It’s still a good idea to show the information on one slide in steps if you think people will absorb it easier. A cool trick someone taught me is to duplicate the slide as many times as the transitions. Then, go to the first duplicate slide and remove everything but the first piece of information. Go to the second duplicate and keep what’s in the first one and the next piece of information and so on. The final slide should be the full one and as you present, stuff will appear as if there was an “appear” animation even in pdf.?

Attribute sources?

More often than not, people will want to read more about a piece of information you share with them. At the bottom of each slide that uses a source, use a tiny hyperlink (less than 10pt here works just fine) with a descriptive anchor text to let them follow through.?

Iterate and improve

The first version of anything is rarely the best one. When you are ready, go back to the first slide and read the presentation out loud as if you see it for the first time. Does it make sense? Ask someone to proofread it. Do they get the message you want to convey? What draws their attention? What do they remember from the presentation??

One pitfall we usually fall into, especially in the beginning, is spending too much time preparing the presentation and getting into an endless loop of tiny improvements. Set your time frame before you start and try to stick to it. The more you use best practices, the more naturally they will come to you and the design time will be shorter. No reason to strive for perfection from the first time, especially if you have a tight time schedule.?

Save as pdf

Finally, if you want to share it, especially if you want to share it outside your organization, always save it as a pdf with a title that people will instantly understand.

If you find this helpful so far, drop a comment to let us know :)

The guide has 3 parts:

1. Preparing your Content
2. Designing the Slides
3. Delivering the Presentation

Who, why, and when

Hi. I'm Vasso. I lead a small team of professionals that often need to present their insights and ideas to diverse and demanding audiences. I prepared this guide to help them be more effective and efficient, but then we thought hey, why not share it with the rest of the world too?

Quick disclaimer: Presentations are not the magic pill for every information-sharing need. We mostly use them when the audience is wide and the purpose of the presentation is to inform and educate them, rather than discuss solutions or ask them to make decisions. For these cases and small audiences (<10 people), docs are better.