Episode #205: Slide Decks And Presenting

Today we are going to look at the proper use of visuals when we are presenting. Many people ask us at Dale Carnegie, what should I do with preparing my slide deck for my key note presentation? What’s too much? What’s too little? What’s the best way to make this work for me?

Here’s some guidelines for using visuals. Sometimes less is definitely best. On a screen, try to avoid paragraphs. Try to avoid sentences. If you can, use single words. Single words can be very, very powerful. Just show one word or even just one number and then you can talk to the number, or you can talk to that word. Or use just a photograph or a simple visual and you talk to the visual. Bullet points are also minimalist and good.

By the way, you don’t have to crowd the screen with stuff that we can read fir ourselves. What you really want is for the audience to be focused on you, the presenter and not what’s on the screen. This is very critical. We don’t want the screen competing with us, so the less you have up there the better.

I believe that the two second rule is a key rule. If you are putting something up on screen and an audience cannot see that and understand that within two seconds, it’s probably too complicated. Strip it back until you can get the point immediately.

The six by six rule means less is best. Six words on a line. Six lines on a screen. Then six words across each line. Again, keeping it very minimalist.

With fonts, try to use 44 font size for the title, and 32 for the text. In terms of font types, sans serif fonts like Arial are very easy to read. Where as serif fonts like Times, Times Roman, which have got a lot of additional fancy work, can be distracting.

Be very, very, very sparing with using all uppercase. It’s actually screaming at your audience; it’s shouting at your audience when you use strong uppercase like that. You can use it. But use it strategically. For visibility, be careful about the overuse of underline. Yes, you can use underline but use it sparingly. Bold, yes you can use bold, but the same thing, use it occasionally. Italics, well very rarely use italics. It’s not so easy to read. You can use them, but use them modestly.

With transitions, sometimes it’s good to reveal one concept at a time. Because there is only one idea on the screen you can talk to that and you are not competing with a lot of words on the screen. Sometimes maybe have all the content up on the screen at one time, so people can read it for themselves as you go through it. Just be aware of the point of the difference in the usage.

Pictures are great. Pictures have a lot of visual appeal and as we say, a picture is worth a thousand words. And a nice photograph of something that’s relevant, of people, a book or picture or whatever. People can look at that and in two seconds they’ve got it. Now they’re ready for your explanation about the relevancy of this picture to your talk today.

Bar graphs make it easy to compare items. When you want to compare different variables, bar graphs are very good for that. Line charts are great to show change over time. You can compare two or three items over time and it is very easy to see that one’s up, that one’s down, that one is flat. Pie charts are fantastic for showing parts of a whole. What’s the share of something? As long as there’s not too many up on screen at once, then a pie chart works well. This is usually the big fail with a lot of presentations. They put up way too many pie charts at the same time. Avoid doing that.

Colors are tricky and you rarely see people using them well. Colors like black, blue, green - they work very well on a screen. They’re the best colors. Stay away from oranges and greys and particularly red. So for establishing some contrast, black and blue work together well as a contrast. Green and black also work well together as a contrast. They’re good colors to mix and match on the screen: black and blue, green and black. Red however can be hard to see, so use it sparingly.

Apply these simple guidelines when you use visuals and you will avoid the most common mistakes which we regularly see in presentations. When it comes to presenting very few get it right, so you can go straight to the top by just having a better understanding of what to do and what not to do.