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ALL Presenting is Persuasive
All Presenting is Persuasive
After stumbling a bit, most presenters are able to name the
purpose of any presentation they might give. However, most
really stumble when asked if their presentations are meant to
persuade anyone of...
Corporate Elder Care Programs Help South Florida Employers Maintain Productivity
Seventeen percent (17%) of caregivers quit their jobs to provide care for aging family members, and another 15% reduce their work hours to assist their loved ones. This shocking loss of employee productivity is hitting South Florida businesses very...
Don' Take No For An Answer When It Comes To Federal Grants
Your federal government grants agency telling you no on your federal grant proposal? I know how discouraging that can be. You have a great grant proposal to help you business, community or social group. You have spent time finding the right...
Organisation Tips For The Mobile Executive
Despite the fact that everyone sighs "How glamorous!", the life of the business traveller can actually be hell! Fighting international datelines, jetlag, airline food, hotel pillows filled with rocks, and the constant packing can turn an...
Winning Proposals: 10 Guidelines
The concept of proposals has accomanied business-activities throughout the past few centuries. In recent years this concept has become a more integral part of how we conduct business. If you are in any industry you should be completely aware of the...
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The 7 Basic Rules Of Proper Presentation Design
Abstract: This article elucidates the rules of presentation
visual design that, if heeded, will almost always assure that
your audiences will be able to follow your ideas every step of
the way. Of course, you must keep in mind that visual design is
only one-third of the package required for a successful
presentation, the other two being content and delivery. Like a
fine dining experience that requires equal parts food, service
and atmosphere to really work, the visual design part of the
presentation process is every bit as necessary as the others to
achieve the desired result - in this case, true knowledge
transfer.
So without further ado:
7. Maintain paragraph integrity. First, all 1st Level Paragraph
text must be the same size in every slide. Likewise, all 2nd
Level Paragraph text must be smaller and of a different color.
Lastly, don't go beyond the 3rd Level, and this text should not
be smaller than 20 points.
If all information of the same importance is of the same size
throughout your presentation, your audience won't be raising
question marks as to just how important this information is with
each click of the slide. Take this concept one step further by
ensuring that all material of the same nature is the same color.
If, for instance, you use a lot of numbers in your bullet
points, make them all one color, different from the text. Once
your audience recognizes this pattern, they'll spend less time
digging through the text to find their figures.
6. No boring fonts. Rarely is there a need to use more than two
different fonts in any presentation. However, there is a HUGE
need to use any two fonts other than the PowerPoint defaults
Times New Roman and Arial!
The problem is that because everybody else uses these two fonts
99% of the time, if yours is the fifth presentation your
audience is seeing that day, pretty soon all the text starts to
look the same, and you lose much of your meaning and impact. We
often hear from clients who have to sit through presentations
themselves that after a while, they can't remember which vendor
said what - it all becomes a big blur. Make sure you're not part
of the blur.
5. Use proper builds. Without a sense of good design, which in
most cases means simply showing restraint, animations can
quickly overwhelm an otherwise well laid-out presentation. The
trick then is to introduce concepts one at a time in a way that
doesn't draw more attention than the concepts themselves. Builds
are essential elements in turning slides that would otherwise
have TMI into ones that audiences can follow; but like other
elements of good design, a proper build should never announce
itself. Rather, a well animated presentation should simply
appear to "happen", without a clue as to why it seems so easy to
follow.
4. Be colorful - Light on dark. Watch much black-and-white
television these days? Although black-and-white works as an art
form in many ways, humans tend to like color. Even
old-guard
newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal
finally concluded that to avoid losing readers to more modern
media, they had to go to color. While humans can discern a dozen
or so shades of gray, they can see millions of different colors.
We've evolved to use our sense of color to survive - help your
audiences survive your presentation by not blinding them with
black on white.
3. Less is More. This rule is central to good presentation
design, but absolutely essential for graphs or charts. We often
see pie charts come across our review desk with over a dozen
slices, many so small they need to be annotated with lines and
arrows far from the graph itself. Do you really think anyone
will remember all 25 competing products in your market and their
percentage share? Might be good information for a handout, but
in a presentation few people can absorb more than six elements
in any graph.
You make your point much more effectively when you limit your
displayed data to the stuff the audience is likely to remember.
Less information becomes more retention of the stuff you really
want them to go home with.
2. One concept per visual. Here's another really common problem
we see in the majority of business presentations, and the
solution flows from rule number 3.
When more than one concept appear at the same time, your
audience not only tries to figure out the concepts, they also
try to determine which one deserves most of their attention, how
the two or more are related, whether one is the "right" one or
the "good" one, and so on and so forth - all having nothing to
do with your actual message itself. This extra time and effort
acts as a drag on presentation flow, and explains why a 45-slide
presentation, properly broken down into one concept per, takes
less time to present than the same information packed into 15.
1. Favor Right-Brain information. We humans have evolved with
two different ways to deal with stimuli from the outside world
so that we can react to it in the way most likely to keep us
alive. Our right brain reacts to input such as colors, graphics,
shapes and patterns instantly, without stopping to process the
information first. Our left brain kicks in when presented with
speech, text or numbers; however with this kind of information
we first pause to analyze it before storing or reacting to it.
We have filters on the left side on the brain, and not
everything gets through.
If you want your ideas to strike fast and be readily absorbed,
then every time you can, figure out how to turn your left-brain
type data into shapely and colorful right-brain images.
About the author:
J. Douglas Jefferys is a principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com,
[http://www.publicspeakingskills.com] an international
consulting firm specializing in training businesses of all sizes
to communicate more efficiently. The firm spreads its unique
knowledge through on-site classes, public seminars and
high-impact videos.
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