Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Kickass Powerpoint begins way before Powerpoint

How do you make a kick­ass Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion?  First, and most impor­tantly, it is a process that begins way, way, way before you even load Pow­er­point.  A kick­ass Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion is the end result of a thor­ough and thought­ful design and plan­ning process.  It is not, as some may think, sim­ply a mat­ter of choos­ing a good pre-designed template.

A good friend of mine updated his online sta­tus ear­lier today ask­ing if any­one knew of some resources for cre­at­ing a kick­ass Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion.  I told him what I’m going to tell you now.

1. Clar­ify your pur­pose and objective.
2. Pro­file your audi­ence to under­stand their con­cerns and what they want from you.
3. Design your pre­sen­ta­tion as a speech with a script to deliver your message
4. Sto­ry­board your visual aids — which is all your PPT is intended to be
5. Design your slide tem­plate (if you don’t already have one designed)
6. Design your visuals
7. Enter your text and visual
8. Stream­line your text to bare-basics
9. Test the flow
10. Stream­line the presentation
11. Prac­tice
12. Prac­tice some more
13. Prac­tice still more

Did you notice that it’s not (1) find Pow­er­point tem­plate, (2) dump all your con­tent in there, (3) add sound effects and whiz-bang effects?

Al Gore’s An Incon­ve­nient Truth is arguably one of the most pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial pre­sen­ta­tions cre­ated in the past decade.  That movie is really just a pre­sen­ta­tion.  It’s just Al Gore with kick­ass Powerpoint.

The pol­ished, pow­er­ful result that we see as An Incon­ve­nient Truth is the result of much plan­ning, thought, prac­tice, stream­lin­ing, refine­ment, and redesign.   And that’s just for Al Gore’s pre­sen­ta­tion part.  He could do that with or with­out the big stage, with or with­out the big screen, with or with­out the fancy slides and graph­ics.  His mes­sage and how he deliv­ers it is the core of what makes his pre­sen­ta­tion powerful.

The stuff on the big screens, the eye candy that gives his mes­sage even more power and oomph, is like­wise the result of much plan­ning, thought, prac­tice, stream­lin­ing, refine­ment and design.  It is not the result of design­ing a tem­plate or find­ing a tem­plate.  It is the end result of delib­er­ate plan­ning and thought­ful design.

Keep that in mind.  It’s all about plan­ning and design.

Take any short­cuts, and you end up with the typ­i­cal crap that we see way too much of in the work­place, and you’ll end up being yet another schmuck inflict­ing Death By Pow­er­point on the world.

I’ve given up on look­ing at the Pow­er­point slides that peo­ple pre­pare these days.  I don’t look at the screen, I don’t look at the hand­outs.  I give my atten­tion to the speaker.  If they suck, and their mes­sage sucks, the slides won’t help.  But if the mes­sage is good, and the slides are thought­ful, then I’ll look because they will accen­tu­ate the mes­sage — but in those cases, they are never the mes­sage in and of themselves.

Key take-aways here?

1. Know when to cre­ate a doc­u­ment, a brochure, or a slide presentation.
2. Clar­ify your objec­tive and pur­pose first.
3. Clar­ify your mes­sage next.
4. Design the flow of your presentation.
5. Design your slides with sketches.
6. Design your slides in Powerpoint.
7. Prac­tice.
8. Refine.
9. Prac­tice.
10. Refine.

There are no short­cuts to a kick­ass pre­sen­ta­tion, and kick­ass Pow­er­point that will make you as effec­tive as Al Gore at deliv­er­ing your mes­sage begins way, way, way before you even load up Powerpoint.

PS. If you want to learn from the folks who designed the pow­er­ful graph­ics for Al Gore, check out the book Slide:ology.  It’s a good intro and overview to the thought and design process.