Tuesday, February 12, 2008
And Your Point Was?
Many people use PowerPoint in their presentations. Most people use it badly. They’re the people who need Garr Reynolds’s book. But they’re unlikely to read it. More’s the shame.
Presentation Zen (Garr Reynolds, New Riders, © 2008) is a plea for better use of PowerPoint and other slideware. The fact that PowerPoint slides are often terrible—filled with small print that distracts from the speaker’s message—does not mean slideware is inherently evil. It just means it is misused—it is used the way the engineers and software companies want us to use it instead of the way audiences want us to use it. So quit doing that!
Remember that the slides are to illustrate your talk. They aren’t the talk. Nor are they the handout. They’re to complement your talk and help people understand the main points. So keep them simple. Keep them graphic. Keep them focused on what you really want to say. There is not even any need to use garish colors, animation, 3D, or other “hey look at me” razzle-dazzle. Just say it simply. Forcefully. Effectively.
Yes, he’s right. Spend time figuring out what you want to say to this audience and how best to say it, which may well include using slideware. If you want to say sheep are mammals, showing a lamb nursing is almost certainly more effective than showing a long scholarly definition of “mammal.” If you want to say Japan has a lower incidence of obesity than the United States does, showing side-by-side backsides probably makes the point more effectively than a sheet of small-print statistics does.
Unfortunately, I have two reservations about recommending this book—even though I unreservedly recommend his message. One is that he—and maybe this is his publisher’s fault?—spends a lot of time gee-whizing Japan and Japanese culture. Talk about the bento. Talk about judo. Talk about Zen. Talk about all of these other Japanesque things that help make his point but that are likely to grate on people who live here and don’t envision Japan as some exotic wonderland of design excellence. And my other reservation is that he does not take his own advice. He says to keep things simple and direct. He points out that people’s attention is in limited supply and you should not waste their time. And then he writes page after page of small print about this.
However, if you sometimes have to give presentations, or even if you just have influence with someone who has to give presentations, Presentation Zen is worth reading. Get a copy, read it, photocopy-enlarge the “in sum” page from the end of each substance chapter:
1. Presenting in Today’s World
2. Creativity, Limitations, and Constraints
3. Planning Analog
4. Crafting the Story
5. Simplicity: Why It Matters
6. Presentation Design: Principles and Techniques
7. Sample Slides: Images & Texts
8. The Art of Being Completely Present
9. Connecting with an Audience
And just put those sheets up on your wall.