Beeker Studios

We've seen them all, we've seen bad ones, we've seen good ones, but for the most part they are just bad. And I am the first one to be up in arms about having to get my hands muddy in the crapstastic capabilities of powerpoint as a presentation tool. Every year, I have to assemble, and design a rather large, and fairly important presentation for my employer. This undoubtedly passes through no less than half a dozen pairs of hands, and with revisions, a dozen or so. It's pretty insane. For that very reason I am writing this blog entry. To most this may be boring, but this is my work life right now, and I am trying to present the matter of factness of having to use such a tool.

If you hate it, why use it?

Here's the problem, it's ubiquitous, it's like not supporting IE for the web, even though it does suck horribly. If I work on a PPT presentation for people, and hand it off, they can make editorial changes. If I make a presentation in a more robust platform, like flash, or even a specific presentation platform like keynote, ubiquity and ease of use go out the window. As it is if you are sharing or collaborating on documents, across platforms, Powerpoint is your only solution. Yah there is open office, but I have had issues with anything beyond the music functions of the file formats capabilities.

4 Tips that will help you make a better presentation

I am not a marketing person, so forgive me if I cloud this with a one sided approach, it's an approach nonetheless. I am a designer, and a digital media guru, so that's the perspective it's in.

Consistency

If you have consecutive or similar information, say headshots of people, make sure the size, and alignment of them from slide to slide, is in the exact or close to the exact same position. It can be jarring to see images jump around from slide to slide, you may have images in the exact same size, which is the best thing to do. Make sure your titles, or similar textual data from slide to slide, is aligned in the same locations. I can't tell you how many times I see powerpoints, they rush through 3 of the slides, and it's actually visually jarring, to see the text jump up and down. Make it consistent, make it clean, make it simple.

Design

Make your presentation unique, at the least come up with a background that is indicative of the content, and explains what the presentation is about, without cluttering it up with TOO much textual information. A blue gradient background with no other visual cues... boring! It's funny, I took this cue, and tried to make sure I didn't go too far with it. I had used an abstract image (which we used on another collateral), and someone's un-informed input was, "are you going to spruce this up", so in effect I hadn't made it complicated enough. Perhaps it was just a boring design, or it just wasn't visually intriguing enough for that one user, but the issue was indicative of my point here. Don't let your presentation look like every other presentation.

Less is more

This is definitely not a new tip, or is it even new to this medium, but people want to cram as much data, and information into one slide, so they either put bullet points of almost verbose what they are going to say, or try and put a very complex graph, or even multiple graphs, uhhhhggg! If you can't use an image, or a very short text snippet as a shell for talking, than use the notes section in the presenter tool, but don't just present the same exact info that you are saying, verbally, on the screen. This is a sure fire way to get a snoozapoolooza.

Use Media

Try as much as you can to steer away from bullet points or text, it's boring, and it will be visually uninteresting. A picture speaks a thousand words as they say. And this goes for diagrams, and charts as well.... BORING! Have you seen info graphic designs, there's a whole graphic design subculture built-up on those alone. If you can swing making your charts, or diagrams more interesting by introducing design elements, by all means DO IT. As an example right now I am looking at a presentation on "green food", I could totally see having a thousand and 3/4 cows grazing on an imaginary pasture to represent the amount of beef americans eat in a given year. Far more visually interesting than say a graph bar, comparing this year, to last year. BORING! Video is great too, if you can't swing getting a video into powerpoint, but the video is on youtube or something similar, have it cued and ready in your browser, and pop out of it real quick. The addition of a visually, and auditorally interesting element, will add a lot to your presentation, and get your viewers interested in what you have to say. Now don't go and add a video just to add a video, that is pointless, and meandering, it needs to be relevant, and good.

I think that about sums it up, I am curious to see what people respond with.