More laws of presentations (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

 40. Second Law of Presentations: Audiences would rather see your face than your backside.

It is amazing how all the sins made by those using overhead transparencies have made the transition to electronic slides quite nicely.

Small illegible text and poorly reproduced cartoons are still popular in PowerPoint presentations.

But it is the overhead of solid text read in a drone by presenter who turns to face the screen that has really ported over well.

Unless you are Jennifer Lopez, your backside will probably not contribute to your message in a powerful way.

41. Third Law of Presentations: A misspelling in 48 point type is more noticeable than a misspelling in 12 point type.

The slide read:

Somebody trusted a spelling checker.

I am a terrible proofreader of my own work. Thank heavens for editors, secretaries and spouses. If you do make a grammatical error, adopt the Navajo blanket weavers’ philosophy that things perfect are an insult to the gods.

42. Fourth Law of Presentations: Be consistent.

This one is tough. Audiences will not understand on a conscious level why a presentation is bothersome, but it will be if elements within it are inconsistent.

Keep it simple. Throughout the presentation:

• Use the same fonts and colors for headings and text.
• Never use more than one sans serif font (headings) and one serif font (body).
• Use the same size font for each heading and vary the text size as little as possible.
• Start the heading and the text in the exact same place on every slide. (Use guides to help do this.)
• Left or right justify everything. Centering text is weak and hard to read.

Try this with one of your slide shows. You will be amazed at how much more professional you’ll look.

 43. Fifth Law of Presentations: Beware of some compliments.

I used to be pleased, but now I am worried when the questions from workshop attendees go like this:

• How did you make them there bullet points fly in?
• How’d ya get the program to make that funny noise?
• What fonts did you use?
• Do you like Macs or Wind’ers? 

These comments tell me the group did not get the message I intended about technology use. They were paying more attention to the slide show than to me. I’d created my own little digital Frankenstein. Don’t do it.

My most worrisome compliment, quite sincerely given, was: “Doug, just watching you set up was the best part of your presentation.”

It’s hard not to get a big head.

Comments

[Kenn Gorman]

I assume you have heard of Guy Kawasaki's 10-20-30 rule...

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Kenn,

I vaguely remember this rule. I always preached the 5 x 5 rule - only five lines of text with no more than five words per line. Not that anyone ever listened. I was (am) a fan of Presentation Zen, but I always used my slides as my notes, so I could never be a purist.

Enjoy spring!

Doug