Presentations to impress from the experts

This episode is called ‘Show, don’t tell’, stay tuned to find out why.

Our world is becoming more and more visual, as social feeds are full of pictures and videos, not pages of text. And who doesn’t love a good meme.

Let’s see what the experts have to say.

So when you’re creating your presentation, what you don’t want to do is have a page with lots and lots of dot points that people have to squint to even understand or read.
What you do want to be able to do is to illustrate every single one of your points with beautiful visuals, whether or not that’s a photo or a chart, whether or not that is a mock-up or a screen shot, whether or not that’s a video, try to find ways to engage the visual learners in your audience and make your presentation much more engaging.

So when you’re presenting your ideas don’t tell us, show us.
Make your presentation visual, try taking each point and reinforcing it with an image, an icon or an infographic.
Just be careful to steer clear of cliches. If you’re talking about partnerships for instance, it may be easy to fall back on a stock image of a handshake. But they’ve seen it a thousand times before.

Spend some time brainstorming new ways to show your message this will give you some keywords to start your search.

Your goal? Show, don’t tell, and you’ll have yourself a presentation to remember.

Use a big font.
A big font is easier to read and it also has a very very powerful effect which is, if you use a big font, by definition, you cannot put a lot of text. And if you cannot put a lot of text, you become a better storyteller.

So, size up your type to 30 or more. This will make your slides more readable and your content better too, because larger type will force you to leave only the most impactful text on your slides.

Choose a sans-serif font, it’s the easiest to read, but avoid Arial it’s overused. Instead, find a font that’s unique to you. Stick with one font, just change up the weight and size to emphasize your most important points, and keep this in mind what you want your audience to notice is not your font, but your message.

Think about it have you ever gone to a movie, at the end of the movie, when the credits are playing, have you ever, ever, seen black text on a white background? Never.

And there’s something to learn from that because obviously these people who make movies know what they’re doing.
You always see white on black so I think you should always have a dark background. Black is the new black.

So my number one tip for punchy slides, contrast your colors. Pair a dark background with light text or vice versa. Light slides once projected become the biggest brightest thing in the room, which can take the focus away from you, the presenter.
So, consider using dark slides for the meat of your presentation, and light ones to transition.

Keep your color palette simple. Stick with three or four colors max. Light, dark and one or two vibrant accents and consider this: different colors will evoke different emotions for your audience. So pick a color scheme that fits your theme.

So there’s two reasons why consistency is important in presentation design. When people create a presentation for the first time they often try out different fonts and every single page, different colors, on every single page, different styles, but actually it’s so much easier and more effective if you just use the same fonts throughout the entire presentation, the same background throughout the entire presentation, firstly it’s a lot easier for your audience to be able to understand what’s going on, it’ll look like you’re kind of keeping a consistent brand feel, but then it’s also way quicker so I have a certain font that I use all the time, I have a certain background and it means that I can whip up a presentation like 20 minutes flat.

Every element in your design should fit together as part of a whole. Every slide should feel like it’s part of the same story.

If your audience knows what to expect with each slide, they can focus on your message rather than noticing random design choices.

So decide on your fonts and sizes, your colors and graphic styles, even one photo filter for all of your images. Apply these same styles across all your slides, because consistency is cool!

In this episode we’re going to talk about a very important rule – one page one point.

You’ve planned out your content, and you’re ready to share everything you know!
But not so fast… First, we need to simplify.

Let’s hear from the experts.

So a lot of this is really second nature to you and you probably get it. You’re the expert. That’s why you’re on stage.

But this is all new information for your audience. So, take it easy on them. Just give them one idea per page and I think sometimes it’s helpful to think it’s one idea per minute.

You kind of want to pace yourself and having one central idea per page is a good way to do that.

Your audience can only take on so much info at once.

Just think about that last presentation you saw with endless pages of text. It put you to sleep, right?

So simplify your content. Present one page, one point.

Have you got a simple idea to communicate? Consider putting just one word on the slide.
Have you got an image that better expresses that idea? Scale it up to fill the slide.

If you do have a complex idea that really needs more detail, try splitting up your points across a few slides and stepping through them one by one. Use as many slides as you need to tell your story. Just be sure to keep them simple and remember – one page, one point.

You know your job really is sure to have the data but your job is kind of the analysis, it’s the sense making and that’s what people are looking to you for.

If you’ve got a whole bunch of graphs or charts or data, yeah sure, they have an impact when people see them but what they want is for you to say “this is why this matters”.

Your audience has to process what’s on screen as you speak, so your point should come across in a split second.

How? Dial down your data, simplify your information and show only what matters most to your audience.

Use icons to symbolize data points or big bold text to emphasize key stats. Show data with bar graphs or pie charts or everyone’s favorite, a Venn diagram.

Recreating your charts and diagrams in Canva will make your data more beautiful and impactful, too.

They are the supporting cast, they’re not the main show. They’re not the main show in the sense that you don’t want the audience to have to read your slide to get your point. The slides should just anchor them, quickly give you the point and then you are actually the main attraction.

With every presentation there’s a three-way relationship going on between your audience, your slides and you.

What’s important is that you think about your slides as scenery, they are there to help visualize what you’re saying, they are not there as your teleprompter, don’t read from them.

If you followed our previous episodes your slides will have one point per page with minimal text and meaningful visuals, any long sentences will be in your presenter notes or printed as handouts.

Your audience is there to hear from you, so go on, step away from your slides and connect with them eye to eye.

We’re going to tell you how to present with confidence.

Have you ever watched a presenter with admiration or maybe envy? They own the stage with confidence, they look so relaxed like they’ve never felt nerves in their life.

They seem more qualified on their subject than anyone, ever.

How do they do it?

I have about three or four main topics that I cover 50 to 75 times a year, so some of these speeches I’ve literally given hundreds of times. And after hundreds of times, I’m completely confident, but it took hundreds of times.

When it comes to presenting with confidence the secret sauce is practice, practice, present.

Practice until you’re sick of it and then practice some more. And don’t just read your notes over and over again. Practice by standing up projecting your slides on the wall holding a clicker in your hand and imagining that there are hundreds of people out there listening to you.

Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural speaker, but he worked really, really hard at it. He rehearsed his presentations with obsessive detail until eventually he got it down to a fine art.

So, don’t just wing it. Put in the time to prepare and you will present with confidence, too.

Speak about stuff you know, I’ve watched the most introverted, nerdy, awkward people once I’ve given them that tidbit, dominate speeches because they genuinely know color palettes. They unbelievably know Ruby on Rails code. They outrageously understand how to be a mother. You know I think what makes me capable of doing what I do up there is I only speak about things I know.

Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, it’s about finding your own authentic way to present.
Try telling a personal story or sharing a real-life experience, this will show your humanness and help the audience to connect with you.

Isn’t it comforting to hear from someone who’s learned life’s hard lessons?

Don’t be afraid to use emotion. It doesn’t mean you have to hand out boxes of tissues, it just means you get your audience to feel something.

If you can stir the emotions of your audience, help them to empathize, they’ll be more easily persuaded to adopt your point of view.