November Slide Makeover of the Month

November’s slide comes from a company that specializes in indoor environmental quality. The message of the slide was that they could make some definite improvements on the level of service they were providing to their customers.

Before

This slide has a lot of information on it; too much to absorb at a glance:

• Main title
• Main bullet
• Sub-bullet
• Chart title
• Chart
• Declaration

The main point the presenter is trying to make is that nearly half of their OAS Agreements are late. Is this obvious to you? It took me a while to figure it out.

With so much text at the top of the slide, it’s hard to determine what the message is. Further down the slide, the chart title, “Overdue OAS Agreements – Active Installations,” indicates that there is a problem, but the text is so tiny that it gets lost.

Color also plays a role in the miscommunication. Usually, green means “go” or is seen as a positive color. By making the bottom half of the columns green, it implies that these figures are good. In fact, the chart shows that nearly half of all OAS Agreements are late, which is definitely not good.

Finally, the “100%” column on the far right isn’t needed, since by definition the totals shown in stacked columns on a chart of this type must add up to 100%.

After

I have eliminated the extra text at the top of the slide because I don’t want the audience to spend any time reading. Instead, I present a graph that clearly shows that the company needs to do better. Animation and color have been used to highlight the fact that over half of the OAS Agreements are late.

The colors were selected from the palette that I developed for this template, which harmonizes with the main aqua color. The first figures that you see, originally shown in green, are now a neutral grey. The data on late OAS Agreements are red, the color of danger and negativity.

After the animation plays out and the audience has had a chance to let this information sink in, the presenter would then talk about “rethinking Assurance Services delivery.”

October Slide Makeover of the Month

October’s slide makeover is from a deck I found on SlideShare. There’s a lot to do on this bad boy, so let’s get started.

Before

Ever hear of the “Adkins” Diet? Neither had I. The person who created this slide misspelled “Atkins” four times! If your audience is focusing on your typos and not your message, that’s a big problem. You lose credibility if you can’t even spell the topic of your presentation correctly! And people start making a game of it, wondering how you’ll screw up next. Not good.

There is way too much text on the slide, and it’s organized in a confusing way. Let’s break it down into single bullet points and type of message:

• Neutral The Adkins (sic) Diet is a popular low carb. diet
• Negative But it is high in fat and it has prompted health concerns
• Positive The Adkins Diet can result in more weight loss than other diets
• Neutral/Negative The Adkins Diet restricts fruits and vegetables, and restricts whole grains

When you are presenting a lot of data, it helps guide the audience along if you group like bits of information. By displaying the information in this order (Neutral > Negative > Positive > Neutral/Negative)the presenter brings her audience on a roller-coaster ride rather than leading them down the path of her well-crafted story.Graphically, it’s a mess. The off-the-shelf template is distracting because that purple color when related to food makes one think of grapes, berries, juice, wine, etc. — all of the foods that must be avoided in the Atkins Diet. The image of the plate of Atkins-approved food is nice, but it’s too small. And the title and bullet styles are just plain ugly.Don’t get me started on the punctuation.

After

We’re going to break this down into four slides, and reorder the text to make a more logical Neutral > Positive > Neutral/Negative > Negative path. For the intro slide, I’ve included an image of the cover of the Atkins Diet book and enlarged the photo of the dinner plate. Oh, and I’ve corrected the spelling of “Atkins.”

Images are effective, especially before-and-after photographs that show drastic results.

Photographs and the universal “NO” icon reinforce the idea of restricting certain kinds of foods.

At first I thought about finding some kind of graph about fats or an image of fatty tissue, but I decided that a stethoscope would be a better representation of “health.”

So remember the elements of a good deck: less text on a slide, design and images that support the message, proper grammar, and no typos!

Before-and-After Slide Show

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Should my logo be on each PowerPoint slide? No.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking along one of these lines:

“We paid a lot of money for that logo, and I want people to see it!”

“I’m reinforcing my company’s brand by showing my logo on each slide.”

“That’s the way our template was designed.”

I would counter that if you start and end strongly during your presentation, with a good title slide that has your logo on it and an ending slide with your logo and contact information, then people aren’t going to suddenly forget that they’re at the XYZ Company presentation during slides 2-48.

Branding has many aspects; logos are just a part of it. A company’s brand identity comes across in the designs they choose, the typography, the style of photographs and/or illustrations, the color palette, the type of messaging they employ (e.g., playful, serious, trustworthy, irreverent), their jingle, uniforms or clothing color, etc. etc. etc. These things come into play in all components of a company’s marketing mix, including the PowerPoint presentations.

Need more convincing? Well, let’s think of the logo-on-every-slide deck as a real-life conversation:

“Hello there, I’m Bob Jones of Bob Jones Investments. Thanks for visiting Bob Jones Investments today! I’m Bob Jones of Bob Jones Investments. How can I help you? I’m Bob Jones of Bob Jones Investments. I specialize in retirement planning. I’m Bob Jones of Bob Jones Investments.”

You see what I’m getting at here? People don’t need a constant reminder of where they are, who you are, why they came there, and what company you’re from.

You need more convincing? Well, how about this: your logo’s taking up a lot of real estate on the slide, room that could otherwise be used to get your message across.

Take a look at the slide on the left. Because the logo is part of the footer and must remain separate from other slide elements, it is taking up about a quarter of the slide! It’s competing visually for our attention with the graph because of the clashing colors and all that white space surrounding it.

In the slide on the right, the logo is gone so the graph can be bigger, placing the emphasis on the data.

So, not insulting the intelligence of your audience and having more room for important information on each slide. Pretty compelling reasons not to put your logo on every single slide, eh?

Your Turn

What do you think? Is it important for you to have your company’s logo on every slide in the deck? Why or why not?

What is the number-one PowerPoint annoyance?

If you think that a core dump and recitation of your entire store of knowledge on a particular subject makes for a captivating PowerPoint presentation, think again. According to a survey conducted by renowned PowerPoint expert Dave Paradi, a whopping 73.8% of the 603 respondents chose “The speaker read the slides to us” as the number-one most annoying thing that can happen at a presentation.

There’s a time and a place for reading things verbatim to an audience. As a matter of fact, I’ll be doing it all the time as a volunteer in my son’s Kindergarten classroom, where my audience will be learning to pair my vocalizations with those squiggly marks on the page. But when you do this to an audience of people who already know how to read, such as college students, seminar attendees, or the prospects you’re trying to win over, you are communicating very well. But you’re probably not sending the messages you think you are.

Here’s what you’re telling your audience by reading off of your slides during your presentation:

1. I have no idea what I’m talking about. People will be able to tell if you’re doing a cold read off your slides, and they’ll conclude that you not only have no knowledge of your subject but you’re unprepared.
2. I don’t value your time. In Galaxy Quest, a sci-fi comedy about a TV show much like Star Trek, Computer Officer Tawny Madison’s only job is to repeat what the computer says to the rest of the crew. At one point in the movie she yells that she knows her job is stupid, but it’s the only thing she does on the ship and she’s gonna keep on doing it. Similarly, if you aren’t improving the presentation experience then why are you in front of your audience? Why not save everyone’s time and just email the presentation to everybody? Oh, and by the way, create it in Word so at least you’ll have a little more control over formatting, page flow, and layout.
3. I don’t have a compelling story. Some of the best presenters don’t use PowerPoint at all. (Yeah, I know: “GASP!”) But if you have a great story and are animated when you tell it, then you sure don’t need to read it to your audience. Memorize the fundamentals and then improvise each time you present, changing little details here and there but basically sticking to the script. Your knowledge and passion for the subject will stay with the audience a lot longer than ten bullet points per slide ever could.
4. I need to use my deck as the handout. No you don’t. Your presentation is the teaser, the invitation to your audience to learn more. When they need more information, you can direct them to your Web site, send them documentation (professionally designed, of course), or schedule a one-on-one meeting.
5. No, my boss said I have to use the deck as the handout. What, your boss hasn’t seen a TED talk? Ok, then put all your information into the Speaker Notes and distribute that. Then tell your boss to stop hassling you and let you do your job as a stunning presenter.

So stop reading and start communicating!

Read the interview with Dave Paradi on the Indezine blog to discover the other top four biggest PowerPoint annoyances.

September Slide Makeover of the Month

This month’s slide makeover is from a deck I redesigned for Ellen Wingard of Ellen Wingard and Associates. She was leading a daylong workshop at the Harvard Business School and her presentation combined her own approach to management training with that of Linda Hill, a respected HBS professor.

Before

Ellen wanted an iconic graphic that would be seen throughout the presentation which illustrated Linda Hill’s framework on how to Lead with Excellence; this was her rough sketch.

She was required to use a standard HBS slide template. Unfortunately, the bold blue heading competes visually with the content and is distracting.

Her initial idea was to use pictures from the HBS community that illustrated the LWE concepts. Although we had a couple of photographs to choose from, it wasn’t clear whether the model releases that the photo subjects (hopefully) signed allowed this particular use. I found some relevant royalty-free images, but they made the graphic overly busy and impossible to read when reduced. So we decided that we needed to try another approach.

After

As it turns out, there is more than one HBS slide template. This one has more white space, allowing viewers to focus on content rather than background images.

This grey LWE Framework icon introduces people to the whole Leading With Excellence concept. Each of the three sections are highlighted as they are addressed, as seen below:

The icons were placed in the upper-left corner of each slide, showing the relationship of what Ellen was presenting to the LWE Framework.

By the way, these icons were created entirely in PowerPoint 2010, which has excellent drawing tools.

August Slide Makeover of the Month

This month’s slide makeover comes courtesy of the US Army. In this pair of slides, they list the main Strategic Issues that are impeding the smooth management of the Army Materiel Command.

Before

 

While this information is important, there’s too much text. You’d go into this amount of detail in a handout, not a slide.

An important issue the presenter is trying to highlight is the fact that Issue 5 is the “real root cause” of the problems. But the starburst callout is an ineffective way to do this.

After

In the redesign, I combined these slides into one and added animation.

I edited the Strategic Issue down into short phrases. The presenter would click through the animation as he brought up each issue, giving the audience the full text that I removed from the original slides.

I found images that illustrate each Issue to call attention to their their results.

To differentiate between Technical and Environmental issues, I changed the color of the text boxes and the title of the slide changes. This is a change that the presenter would call attention to, so there’s no need for a legend.

Finally, I separated Issue 5 from the rest of the Issues, made it red, and made it push the other Issues aside as it comes into the frame, signifying that it is the most important one. This is a fact that the presenter would emphasize during the animation.

The Principals of Copyright

You may have noticed a potential misuse of the word “principal” in the headline of this blog. But it was no accident: the subject of this blog is the new principal of my sons’ school. She gave a PowerPoint presentation that violated one of the main principles of the use of copyrighted images: you must pay for what you use.

The new principal was hosting a meet-and-greet to introduce herself and was telling us about her background. One of her slides detailed her hobbies, and looked something like this:

Apart from the fact that these images are tiny and therefore don’t communicate as well as they would if they were larger, they are clearly cut and pasted from a Web site, as indicated by the watermarks and the file information that appears below each one. I don’t think it made an impression on anybody else in the audience, but it made a profound one on me.

Photographers make money from the sale or licensing of their images. That’s why photo processing centers will not make duplicates of any photographs that bear the photographer’s or studio’s copyright mark, and it’s also why a portrait session with a professional photographer generally doesn’t cost a lot (they make their money by selling prints).

The Web has been both a blessing and a curse for photographers. On the one hand, it’s easy to get one’s work seen by a vast audience of potential clients. On the other hand, it’s incredibly easy to copy images from a Web site and paste it into whatever one wants. For free. And that amounts to stealing.

Photographers and royalty-free photo sellers such as iStockphoto, Getty Images, and Veer imprint all images with a watermark, usually a logo going right across the center of the image. It is supposed to prevent people from using images they haven’t purchased or licensed, but in this case it wasn’t enough of a deterrent.

While this instance of copyright infringement didn’t register with this group, imagine if someone did this in a corporate setting, say at a keynote presentation, annual sales meeting, or client pitch. The presenter would be demonstrating that:

1. He didn’t pay for the artwork
2. He doesn’t care if everybody knows it

Realistically, there is very little that photographers and their agents can do to prevent this type of copyright infringement. There are no Copyright Police who surreptitiously attend corporate meetings. You are not going to jail for snagging a picture from flickr and not correctly attributing it. And people typically are not going to report you for engaging in this practice. Legally, though, it is stealing. Ethically, stealing is wrong. By not paying for images we use in our presentations, we are saying that stealing is OK sometimes if nobody catches us doing it. Is that true?

You can be sure that I will be speaking with our new principal about copyright issues and the unconscious messages she’s sending so that she doesn’t make the same mistake again.

Free Photo Resources for PowerPoint

We all know by now that pictures can often help you to communicate better than words. And that people hate, hate, HATE text-heavy PowerPoint slides. So armed with that knowledge, you set out to transform your boring deck into a beautiful gallery of effective photography. But where do you go for pictures? And what if you’re a big cheapskate frugal and you don’t want to pay for them? There are plenty of free photo resources available to the savvy PowerPoint Ranger.

PowerPoint Clip Art Panel

In an earlier blog post, I told you about PowerPoint’s vast clip art collection. Although it’s called “clip art” there’s more here than just cheesy drawings and animated GIFs. There are plenty of photographs to choose from, and of course they are all free to use.

Not only that, you can edit these pictures in Photoshop or Microsoft Paint to suit your own needs. Follow these simple steps to get an editable picture file:

1. Place the image you want to edit on a blank slide.
2. Enlarge it to fit the whole slide.
3. Right-click on the image and select “Save as Picture.”
4. Give it a memorable name and save it.
5. Open this file in Photoshop and edit away!

Free Photo Web Sites

There are many Web sites that offer high-resolution photographs suitable for PowerPoint that are free for commercial or personal use. Here are some of my favorites:

MorgueFile: This site “for creatives, by creatives” offers a dizzying variety of photographs and a decent search engine. They ask only that you share the love by uploading some of your own copyright-free work once in a while.

Wikimedia Commons: With over 10 million photos, sounds, and videos, this is a great resource for all kinds of media. Some media are in the public domain and are free to use practically any way you like. Other media require an attribution, which is as simple as including “Image (c) Joe Blow via Wikimedia Commons” somewhere on the slide.

FreeRange Stock: Again, loads of photos here but be careful because when you search for images the ones at the top of the list are from Shutterstock and will cost you. Not much, but the focus of this blog is on free not cheap.

NASA Images: If you’re doing a space or aeronautics themed deck, then this site is for you! The images are gorgeous and can be used commercially or for personal use.

Before you use an image in a presentation it’s always a good idea to check the terms and conditions of use. Often these vary depending on the image chosen, and can even vary within the same site. Keeping on top of copyright issues is one of the things that separates the PowerPoint pros from the amateurs.

Some Cool PowerPoint Tricks

There are some great things you can do with PowerPoint that you might not know about! Here are four of my favorites:

Clip Art Library

Microsoft Office comes with an extensive library of photographs, illustrations, video, and audio that you can use in your presentations. And it’s not all cheesy line drawings — the above image came from the Office clip art collection. The best part? It’s searchable, so you just type what you’re looking for. But how did I get the image out of PowerPoint and onto the Web? Well, it’s easy if you use…

Save as Picture

To get that image out of PowerPoint and onto this Web site, I right-clicked the image and selected Save as Picture. This little trick will save any placed image in PowerPoint in a variety of formats such as GIF, PNG, JPG, and TIF. I opened the image file in Photoshop then rotated the image and added the blue glow behind the star. By the way, the use of the image in this blog is legal according to the Microsoft Service Agreement. Make sure your use is, too!

Insert Random Filler Text

When designers show layouts to clients, we don’t want them to get distracted by reading the documents, we want them to concentrate on the design. So for placeholder text (also called “dummy text” or “greeked text”) it is very common to use Lorem Ipsum, a kind of jumbled-up nonsense Latin that fills up space and can be used to show text layout, font choices, etc. Well, it’s possible to generate Lorem Ipsum in PowerPoint 2010 if you are designing a template or slide and want to show somebody the general layout. Just type “=lorem()” (without the quotation marks) in a text block and hit return. Voila!

Insert Screenshot

With PowerPoint 2010 it’s super easy to insert a screenshot of a window. Simply open the window, go to PowerPoint, then click on the Insert tab. Click on the fourth icon from the left (Screenshot) and you will be able to insert the entire window or a portion of it as a graphic. And if you want to save that screenshot as an image for later use, you right-click on it and Save as Picture.

PowerPoint Design Gets Set Back 20 Years

Image (c) DataViz, Inc.

Last week, the New York Times published an article about creating and editing PowerPoint presentations on mobile devices (such as iPhone, Blackberry, and Android smart phones, and iPads) using an app called Documents to Go. Reading it sent shivers down my spine — not the good kind — because this application sets presentation design back twenty years.

Sure, for the professional-on-the-go this might seem like a good thing. Why not create a presentation on a mobile device? You can add things as inspiration strikes, move bullets around, and add speaker notes. For somebody who travels often, it might seem like a boon not to be tied down to an office computer. But designing presentations on a mobile device isn’t a good idea. Here’s why.

When PowerPoint was first released, the general pattern a slide followed was: Title, Subtitle, Bullet Points 1–5. Although this pattern has, sadly, remained the norm for unenlightened PowerPoint users, those who wish to Cheat Death by PowerPoint understand that the latest trend of incorporating  images, sound, and movement into their decks creates more effective presentations. They’ve moved beyond the bullet point and entered the world of PowerPoint multimedia.

While entering text is easy to do on a mobile device, the audience won’t appreciate reading it. Neither will they enjoy the lack of images, animation, video, and sound. Viewing and editing presentations on miniscule screens removes people from the reality of the large screens upon which their presentations will ultimately be projected.

PowerPoint presentations should blend in with a company’s overall marketing mix. They should be (or appear to be) professionally designed, following specific design guidelines and standards. I can’t imagine that a presentation created on a mobile device would look like one that has been thoughtfully put together.

And while recording train-of-thought ideas is a great use for a mobile device, train-of-thought presentations are not. Presentations need to be well thought out, propoerly designed, and rehearsed before being given.

Sure, it might be handy to be able to make quick fixes to typos on a mobile device. But think twice before giving this whizbang technology a whirl for presentation design. You might be undoing hours of design and forethought while undermining the success of your presentation by creating your presentations on the go.