If you often make presentations that are showcased on the web, take a look at this one, announcing the VMware acquisition of SlideRocket.
Nice layout, nice font, nice transitions, and very easy to follow.
Did you catch the bullet points?
No?
Well, reload the page again and think of which content could have been presented with bullets, but was not.
Be inspired!
This is a real-life slide, part of a deck presenting alternative business cases.
Notice how everything is centered. I know that PowerPoint defaults to centered headings so I can understand a centered title ( though generally I have a preference for left-aligned) but certainly not centered bullet items!
Here is a very simple make-over using PowerPoint SmartArt graphics to make the slide more readable. If you want to show two options, the easiest way is to make two columns and use different colors. I used the same font everywhere, and did not use italics.
How would you have restyled the slide?
To define the structure of a new presentation I am using the post-it method. Post-its have the advantage that they can be moved around on a page and their small size helps you to focus, focus, focus. Many presentation gurus (Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds to name just two) suggest using them at the beginning. I use an A3 sheet of paper on which I printed the BBP template from Cliff Atkinson, which I find to be a good starting point. The hierarchical structure helps me to focus the content around 3 main points, and then develop 2 levels of sub points.
This manual (analog) method doesn’t make my mind wander off to thinking what could be visual ways of presenting the information, what fonts would be appropriate, what charts and what photographs. I’ll leave these decisions to later.
Once I like the structure, I copy the text from each post-it into the outline view in PowerPoint. This gives me a single slide for each post-it.
Now comes the second phase.
This is a good point to think about outsourcing, if you have resource constraints. Get in touch to see how I can help turn your structure into an effective PowerPoint. Take a look at what my clients say about my work.
How do you start building a brand new presentation? Post-its? Straight to PowerPoint?
