Do you really need those slides?

These days it seems the very act of giving a presentation comes with the expectation that at least a few PowerPoint slides will be involved. If you’ve ever tried telling your boss you don’t want to use slides in a presentation, chances are the response you got was a shocked, gasping, “why not?”

Well, because slides aren’t always necessary, that’s why. In fact, sometimes a presentation is better without them. It just depends on the content and context.

Too often people forget the purpose of slides. They are a useful tool to support your message, not take its place. When they’re used well, good slides can take an ordinary presentation from good to great, but it’s important to remember they are never as important as having a good story to tell in the first place.

I was reminded of this when I came across a talk recently given by Michael Pollan in the Authors@Google series. Michael is the author of five books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, both New York Times bestsellers. He also happens to be an expert storyteller.

Even without a single visual, Michael’s presentation is vivid and engaging. He skillfully uses words and stories instead of slides to paint the pictures of his narrative. He even includes several statistics throughout his speech, not skipping a single beat as he recalls them from memory (an indicator of good preparation).

Michael’s presentation is a reminder that while slides can add a lot, having an interesting story to tell is what ultimately makes or breaks your presentation.

With no slides distracting our attention, we listen more closely to his words. It’s almost as though he’s telling us a few stories from across a dinner table, which is a style that works exceptionally well for his context and content.

Check out his Authors@Google presentation below, as well as his 2007 TED talk.

If you’re not familiar with Michael Pollan’s work, you’re in for a treat. I can guarantee you’ll find his perspectives on food and nature fascinating, potentially even life changing. Enjoy!

I love the feeling a great, simple design evokes.

If you’ve picked up a magazine or watched prime-time television in the past few months, then you have seen the ads inviting you to visit WeCanSolveIt.org.

The We campaign is a recent project by Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection. To paraphrase their mission statement, the campaign’s goal is to halt global warming by educating people around the world that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.

I absolutely love the logo for this campaign. The design is simple, but incredibly clever. As your mind works to figure it out the hidden meaning, the logo carries your brain through a fun little journey of realization.

You start by reading the word “we” in a plain green circle. Nothing fancy, but something doesn’t feel quite right. What’s with that little serif hanging off the edge of the “w”? That’s not supposed to be there. Odd… you know you’ve seen that somewhere before. Oh yeah, that little serif is normally on a lowercase “m”, not a “w”. In an instant you realize it’s not the word “we”, it’s the word “me” upside down! But wait — not quite exactly. The “e” is still right side up. What’s going on here?

You read on a little bit and find out what the logo is for — it’s a campaign to bring people together to solve the climate crisis. Suddenly you get it. The mental story your brain just experienced makes sense and you feel like you just solved a puzzle. Solving the climate crisis isn’t about one, it’s about many. It’s not about “me”, it’s about “we”. Neat.

That’s a fun logo and an example of great, simple design.

In addition to being well branded, the We campaign itself is a great thing. I highly recommend checking it out and signing up. http://www.wecansolveit.org/

If you’re interested in learning more about the process that went into developing the branding for this campaign, check out this article from the NY Times.

I’m sure you’ve heard it a thousand times, but it always helps to hear it again. Public speaking is all about preparation. It’s great to know how to think on your feet, but there’s no question the best presentations are the result of lots of practice.

So what’s the best way to prepare? Well, it depends. The chart above depicts the quality spectrum of speeches with varying styles of preparation.

At the boring end of the spectrum (the end you want to avoid) are the 10% of speeches that are prewritten word-for-word and read out loud from behind a podium. Think most graduation speeches. The people delivering these speeches don’t bother rehearsing the delivery since they assume there’s no need to—it’s all written out. But if you can think back to your high school days, you’ll recall that reading out loud to a room full of people is a lot harder than it seems. The rigid, stuttering delivery falls flat on the snoozing audience.

In the middle of the spectrum are the speeches delivered from an outline. For almost all of the presentations you will give, this is the best way to prepare. Speaking from an outline forces you to use conversational, natural language in your delivery, which makes the speech much more appealing to the audience.

The quality of your delivery will depend entirely on the amount of time you spend practicing. I don’t mean thinking about practicing while sitting at your computer writing your outline. I mean actually standing up in a room, facing a mirror or wall or lineup stuffed animals, whatever, and delivering the speech start to finish. The more times you can talk through your speech entirely, the more confident you’ll feel when the time comes to deliver it for real. Confidence is success.

Then, at the highest end of the spectrum are the greatest of great speeches. Like the worst speeches, these too are written out word-for-word beforehand, but unlike the worst speeches they are rehearsed so many times they practically become memorized. The process of delivering a speech like this has more in common with acting a scene than it does with reading words from a page or prompter. Think Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.

Writing a speech out in advance gives you the ability to choose every word, to predesign every metaphor for the strongest impact. It requires an enormous amount of preparation, weeks worth of it, so save this method for the speeches that really matter.

Being the opening act isn’t easy. The opening presenter at an event has two responsibilities:

1) Warm up the audience, and

2) Get through the logistical stuff that needs to be said before the person everyone is there to see takes the stage.

It can feel pretty grunt-level at times, but your role as an opening presenter is important and ought to be approached with the same passion you’d have if you were delivering the keynote address.

If there is one thing that is universal about presentations, it’s that a presentation without passion is a presentation without meaning. That’s why I am too often disappointed when I hear an opening presenter say something like this:

“Ok, so we’re about to get started! But first, I need to run through a list of thank you’s. It will only take a second.”

Run through a list of thank you’s? Tell me, what is the point of a thank-you when you run straight through it?

A thank you is meant to be something gracious. As much as people enjoy hearing their name read out loud, I don’t think hearing it quickly read from a list is going to give anyone the warm fuzzies inside.

A “running thank you” has no meaning and might as well be left out of your presentation.

The next time you’re an opening presenter and have people to thank on stage, take the time beforehand to understand why you are thanking each person. Slow your delivery down a notch and mean what you say. The audience will notice the difference, and I promise it will make your presentation better.

There is an old saying that says, “the reason we can see so far is because we stand upon the shoulders of giants.”

In other words, we owe so much of our knowledge and ideas to the countless teachers and gurus we learn from over the course of our lives.

It’d be impossible to write a blog about presentations without acknowledging one of the leading presentation experts in the world today, Garr Reynolds. If you are interested in presentation design theory and haven’t heard of Presentation Zen, it’s time you do.

Garr started writing the Presentation Zen blog back in 2005 as a way to regularly communicate his thoughts about presentations and design to the world. Today, it is one of the most popular and influential presentation resources out there.

Living in Osaka, Japan, Garr has an insightful take on presentation design and delivery that is strongly influenced by Japanese culture and the principles of zen philosophy. A few of my favorite Presentation Zen blog entries are: Gates, Jobs, and the Zen Aesthetic, Who says we need our logo on every slide?, Bill Gates and Visual Complexity, and Yoda vs Darth Vader.

Garr spent the past year consolidating several of the best ideas from his blog into the Presentation Zen book (available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble). Bearing no resemblance to your typical how-to manual for PowerPoint software, the Presentation Zen book is a much deeper exploration into the theory behind presentation design and delivery. As Garr describes it, it is “an approach”.

Garr really went the extra mile designing the book’s layout, so it as enjoyable to look at as it is to read. If you’re someone who ever gives presentations, you should definitely pick this one up.

These days the Presentation Zen blog is still going strong, with insightful new content being posted regularly. Check it out, I know you won’t be disappointed.

Below you can see a talk Garr recently gave at Google’s California headquarters. I think it’s an excellent presentation that gives a thorough overview of the Presentation Zen approach.

As you watch, pay particular attention to the way Garr keeps his audience involved throughout the entire presentation and utilizes his slides as backdrops to his conversational storytelling. Enjoy!

I recently attended a presentation that made me think back to a basic piece of marketing theory.

The purpose of the presentation was simple, it was to sell a product to an audience of prospects. Overall the delivery was good, but I was troubled by the way the presenter chose to differentiate her company’s product.

Instead of highlighting the benefits her company’s product offers, she spent the majority of her time criticizing each of her competitors and elaborating on the weaknesses of their products. This left a sour taste in my mouth and no doubt affected the impact her presentation had on the rest of the audience.

Only insecure companies need to spend so much time criticizing the competition, and they’re typically insecure for a reason.

If you can’t sell your product by highlighting the benefits it offers, chances are you don’t have a very good product. The same is true for the services you offer. The same is true for your company. The same is true for your life.

Be who you are, not who others aren’t.

Picture Power

It’s no secret beautiful pictures can improve the impact of your slides, but a lot of people don’t know where to find them.

Clip Art looks like it still belongs in the early-1990s, and Google’s Image Search rarely yields the high quality images we’re looking for. Not to mention, there are legal issues with reusing copyrighted images found in the random tubes of the internet.

If you’ve never heard the term, “Stock Photography” refers to photos that are not taken for a specific client, but instead are made available for use by any client for any purpose. “Royalty Free”, a phrase you’ll often hear around stock photos, just means the image can be used an unlimited amount of times in certain media without paying royalties to the photographer.

Historically, stock photo catalogs were only available to professional media and design firms. The images were priced out of reach of ordinary people.

Fortunately, the internet has leveled this playing field and in the past few years several stock photo resources have sprouted up aimed at both professionals and consumers alike.

Where to get ‘em?

By popular request, I’d like to share with you some of my favorite places to get good quality stock photos. (Note: When I use the word “quality” in this context, I’m referring to both the resolution and the overall attractiveness of the images.)

stock.xchng - (Free - Mixed Quality) When budget is an issue but you want good quality images, this is the place to go. Stock.xchng is, by far, the best free stock photo resource I know of. Their image tagging could be better, but on the whole their search tool works very well. Not all the images in their library are spectacular, but there are enough gems mixed in to make searching around worthwhile. There is also a for-pay sister version of the site (stock.xpert), which boasts higher quality photos (as well as illustrations) for very reasonable prices (about $1-$10 per image).

iStockphoto - (Inexpensive - High Quality) Out of all the stock photo resources on the web, this one is my favorite. iStockphoto has a gigantic library of photos to choose from (their library also includes illustrations and videos). The site enforces strict guidelines for the quality of images that can be submitted, so most of images come from professional photographers and designers. The entire library is very well tagged, so when you perform a search you almost always get the results you want on the first try. While the images aren’t free, they are very reasonably priced (about $1-$10 per picture). It’s a small price to pay for the impact and professionalism such high quality images will add to your presentation. Definitely check this one out.

Getty Images - (Expensive, Best Quality) Getty is the top dog when it comes to stock photography. It may be expensive, but when you have the budget or just need that one perfect picture, there’s no better place to go. Getty is the image resource for countless top-notch media and design firms around the world.

Of course, there are many more stock photo resources out there. These are just a few of my favorites that you may also find useful when making your next presentation. If you have a favorite photo resource I did not mention, go ahead and leave a note about it in the comments.

Greek to Me

Aristotle and his ancient Greek buddies believed the key to good rhetoric was the combination of three things:

1) Ethos - Character appeal

2) Logos - Logical appeal

3) Pathos - Emotional appeal

Credibility. Logic. Emotion. I like to personify these three as the “Spirits of Speech”. Think of them as good friends who like to hang out. If you happened to meet one at a party he wouldn’t be very interesting by himself, but get all three together and they become a dynamic trio that can convince you of anything.

Aristotle was on to something when he first discovered the Spirits back in 300 BCE. It was a major insight into how our brains take in new information and learn; so major we still use it to craft our rhetoric today.

“Rhetoric” in this context is just an academic way of saying persuasion, which is the point of almost every presentation. People give presentations to sell things: ideas, products, services, themselves. You can also think of rhetoric as storytelling.

Spirit Ratio

It’s not hard to see why a speech is better when it has the right ratio of credibility, logic, and emotion.

When we prepare for speeches the old fashioned way (without slides) we tend to get it right. We intuitively think about the three Spirits and make sure our words strike the right balance between them.

However, the moment a slideshow gets involved people seem to lose their balance. Big time. Almost all of the content people put on their slides comes from Ethos and Logos. Pathos never gets invited to the party.

Think back to the last presentation you saw. The first few slides might have listed the speaker’s credentials in an unconvincing attempt to establish credibility with bullet points. The rest of the slides probably listed facts, and charts, and diagrams that were all intended to impress you with logic. The emotional appeal just wasn’t there, yet this is how a lot of people think slides “should” look.

Since bullet points all too often double as talking points, the speech portion of the presentation also suffers. The result is a credentialed and logical person talking about something no one gives a damn about. The result is a boring presentation.

Finding Your Pathos

So how do you get emotion into your presentation slides? It’s simpler than you think.

Pictures.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand bullet points. Images have the power to abstract the emotional appeal of your message and evoke feelings in your audience. A picture can tell an elaborate story in an instant. Plus, pictures make your slides much more appealing to look at.

Some of the best presentations I’ve seen used no words on the slides at all, just pictures. While the speakers covered the Ethos and Logos with their words, their slides served as evocative backdrops, setting the mood (the Pathos) for the speech. It reminds me of the way set design and theatrical lighting set the mood for a stage actor’s scene.

Now don’t go reaching for your Clip Art library. The quality of images matters and Office Clip Art doesn’t cut it.

Photos you’ve taken with your own camera are the best choice, since they likely have a story to go along with them. If those don’t work for the particular presentation you’re working on then stock photography is the way to go. I’ll write more about stock photos and where to get them in a future entry.

Ethos. Logos. Pathos. A presenter’s three best friends. Keep each of them in mind for your next presentation and I promise you’ll be pleased with the results.

Let’s shift gears now and talk about design. Well-designed slides alone don’t make a presentation great, but they certainly don’t hurt either.

Little Designers

Design is a tricky topic to address because people tend to see design as a profession, something only “designers” do. In the same way that too many people think they can’t be creative, too many people think they can’t design things.

When we’re little kids we spend hours and hours painting pictures. We are born as little designers. We draw the things we see, the things we think about. We don’t worry about critics or cynics. We don’t care what others might think if we express ourselves, if we show our feelings. As little kids the world is full of new things. We notice a lot of little nuances, so many we can’t help but express the world we see. Yet somehow this creative drive gets sucked out of us as we grow up. We get used to the things in the world and start to feel self-conscious about expressing ourselves. We forget we were once little designers. We forget what we can do.

The first step to good design is good observation.

Slowing down just a little bit, paying attention to the world and noticing the nuances that make things interesting is the best design education you can get. Design is all over the place.

A Photography Lesson

There’s a great design tip photographers use that slide designers can learn from. It’s called the “Rule of Thirds.” (I’m normally not a big fan of “rules” in this context, so ignore what it’s called and think of it as a principle. “Rules” are hard boundaries of what you should and shouldn’t do. “Principles” are sails that guide you in the direction you’d like to go.)

You can set two photos of the same object side by side and see two very different images. Next time you see a photo you like, pause a moment and ask yourself why you like it.

The “Rule of Thirds” has to do with framing your shot, which is to say it has to do with where you line up the things in your photo.

Imagine drawing two vertical and two horizontal lines across your image, dividing it into thirds each way (like a grid with nine boxes). The idea is to line up the important elements of your photo (the horizon, the person’s eyes, etc) with these lines and their intersections, instead of lining them up with the exact center of the image as we’re inclined to do.

It isn’t exactly clear why (it has to do with the Golden Ratio), but images lined up on the thirds tend to look much more natural and appealing. Something about them is more interesting.

Applying it to Slide Design

Once you know about the Rule of Thirds you’ll see it being used all over the place. Magazines and other print media regularly use it for their layouts. Cinematographers line up movie scenes along the thirds all the time. Television directors do the same thing (notice where the news anchor sits and where the graphic lines up in the upper corner).

The Rule of Thirds can make your PowerPoint slides look a lot better too. Our first impulse is usually to place objects on the horizontal and vertical centers of our slide. Instead, next time you’re making a presentation try aligning your text boxes and images on the thirds. It will often lead to a less typical and more interesting looking slide that’s more appealing to an audience.

Using grid lines of any kind in your slide design also adds a consistency to your slides that makes the whole presentation look more polished and professional.

The Rule of Thirds is one of those great design tips that comes from nature, so it can be picked up intuitively. It resonates well with human perception and can make your slides look a lot more appealing. It’s a design tip that’s simple to implement and yields big results, so give it a try in your next presentation.