Ten Deadly Rules for Visuals

If your goal is to show up with sleeper visuals, here are the steps you should take:

1. Before you begin the planning process, sit down and open your PowerPoint program and build your presentation with slides.
2. Put the text of your entire talk on slides, including sub-points. Have a corresponding slide for everything you say.
3. Crowd your slides with complicated charts that relate to your topic.
4. Use a small font not every person in the room can see. Load up on bullets.
5. Don’t use color photographs to add meaning to your message. Make sure slides carry text only and use complete sentences.
6. Don’t consider multi-media, video clips or audience interaction.
7. Use double-sided handouts of the slides.
8. Don’t be spontaneous or ad lib stories between your focus areas.
9. Prove you’ve done your due diligence with a huge deck of slides. More is better.
10. By all means read your slides to us, word for word, and don’t leave out a single slide.

Finally, don’t take time to see what today’s luminaries have to say about visuals.  Don’t look up Nancy Duarte or Garr Reynolds because they might help change the way you think. Stick with the say you’ve always done it.

Follow this advice and you will join the ranks of mediocre presenters who default to PowerPoint presentations instead of putting their heart into their communication.