PowerPoint Revolution: 21st Century Design In a previous article, I reviewed several common PowerPoint designs used in corporate meeting rooms around the world today, and what you can do to improve on them. But now, let’s aim higher. After all, we’re professionals. We should look and act like them, even behind closed conference room doors. It’s time we dragged our presentations into the 21st century. What Are We Doing? Long ago in an office culture far, far away, people gave speeches. Today, we hold meetings: prep meetings, review meetings, status updates, team meetings, division meetings, All Hands! Slides are visual tools to support discussions. Slides for All Seasons Today, PowerPoint presentations are used for everything. This is a problem. PowerPoint is an effective tool for displaying visuals. Better Designs Where should we look for inspiration for our 21st century slides? Question: How are advertisements like slides? We can convince complete strangers to buy a product in 30 seconds. Design Rule #1: Less is More 1. 2. 3.
The "Lessig Method" of presentation The "Lessig Method" of presentation is not an official method per se, but many people who know about the work of Stanford law professor, Lawrence Lessig, have been inspired by his presentation style and informally refer to his approach as something unique indeed. Those who have seen Lessig present have been talking about his approach for a while. David Hornik at VentureBlog wrote a post entitled Putting the "Power" in Powerpoint over two years ago. In this post he heaps praise on the presentation style of Lessig. Hornik says Lessig's presentations "are a fantastic combination of content, art and brand...." James MacLennan may have been the first to put a label on Lessig's presentation style, calling it the "Lessig Method" which he likens to the Takahashi Method in Japan because Lessig's slides often contain just a single word, short quote, or a photo. Here is a good example of the "Lessig Method" of presentation. Hardt's presentation style is not applicable to every case, of course.
Correct dimensions for Power Point Import inShare0 Captivate 3 (and now 4) supports importing a Microsoft Power Point file. Captivate slide dimensions are defined in pixels, while Power Point defines slide size in inches. Many of you might have faced problems with stretched / shrunken objects because of a mismatch in the dimensions of the imported Power Point slides and your Captivate project. n future. You can create a new project “From MS Power Point” – Here you don’t have to worry about the dimensions, as Captivate creates a project of same dimension as your Power Point (yes it calculates correctly!). You might need to just consider whether this is the required dimension for your target audience. No problems so far ! You might also want to Import a Power Point presentation to an existing project. One option is to resize the original Power Point presentation, so that it matches your existing Captivate project dimensions. Now, how you do it … Firstly, you need to convert pixels to inches.
10 Tips for More Effective PowerPoint Presentations “Oh no! Not another boring PowerPoint presentation! My eyes, my eyes…!!!” How much does it suck to be in the audience for yet another drawn-out, boring, lifeless slideshow? The truth is, bad PowerPoint happens to good people, and quite often the person giving the presentation is just as much a victim as the poor sods listening to her or him. Here are ten tips to help you add a little zing! 1. A little planning goes a long way. That’s bass-ackwards. And make sure your script follows good storytelling conventions: give it a beginning, middle, and end; have a clear arc that builds towards some sort of climax; make your audience appreciate each slide but be anxious to find out what’s next; and when possible, always leave ‘em wanting more. 2. At any given moment, what should be on the screen is the thing you’re talking about. Plan your presentation so just one new point is displayed at any given moment. 3. Congratulations. 4. Use a sans serif font for body text. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. However, I have another theory. To prevent an epidemic of Ménière’s in the venture capital community, I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. Ten slides. So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.