Confession time. I do not get slide decks. You know, PowerPoint, or Google Slides, all that presentation stuff. When I have to make one, or many, for work, it's a bundle of emotions. I have to figure out how to jam all this information into slides. I'm not a designer, so I'm freaking out that it looks ugly.


I think we are intimately aware of what makes a bad presentation. You know, the horribly garbled visual metaphors, and the barbarically misaligned text and images. Oof. And we can all agree, the worst sin of all, reading exactly verbatim copy from the slide. Oh my goodness, their eyes aren't even leaving the screen. I'm going bananas. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.


All the information that we're asked to present, it could theoretically be in an email. But we are being asked to present it, not write and send it. So, in essence, I have to put on a good show. A presentation is a show. The question is, how do I transform just a slide deck into a great show?


I talked with Dan Zedek. He's a professor of journalism and media innovation at Northeastern University, and he's also been a design director for a lot of publications.


My biggest fear is that I see the blank, I know I have to do a presentation, I see the blank document, and I just feel like I'm filling in boxes, while also having this anxiety that what I'm doing is a waste of time and I'm just going to bore everyone.


As somebody from a design background, I frequently deal with this perception that people can't draw. They're not designers. They have a good eye, but they're not visual. And, really, the real sweet spot for designers is understanding content, and how to organize content, and how to organize information, and that's really most of it. A beautiful presentation, or one that has beauty to it, but isn't well-organized, is much worse than one that is relatively simple visually, but is well-organized.


So what other sins are there, common mistakes, that you see all the time?


Well, I think one of the common mistakes comes from people feeling insecure about their visual talent, and they tend to overload things. Too many photos. Irrelevant photos. Too many colors. Too many typefaces. Keeping it simple is always better, because it adds clarity. Another sin that I see frequently is a slide that's just up there for, like, five or six minutes. And, you know, your mind wanders, frankly.


How long is too long for anyone to expect to pay attention?


This is a scary answer, because there actually has been some research on this. People's patience is about six or seven minutes, actually, which is way shorter than your presentation is going to be. So then you get back to pacing. How far is it between big points? If I asked a question at the beginning of the presentation, how long before I answer it? Ideally, every slide should be up there for, ideally, 30 seconds, but no more than a minute. So, if you have a slide that takes four or five minutes to talk across, that's a sign that you probably have a big idea, which could be broken down into smaller pieces.


Am I supposed to bring some of myself into this presentation and have personality, or is it just stick to the facts, data, clear, organized, done?


Well, I think it should be all of you, in a way. There's many different parts of you. There's a part of you that is authoritative. There's a part of you that's organized. There's a part of you that's engaging. There's a part of you that's funny. Even if all you're transmitting is your passion for the subject, all those things are personal traits, also, and you can figure out the proportions based on your audience and what it is you're trying to get across.


How much does the audience and who's in the audience change or affect the way you design the visuals of the presentation, if any?


I think who's in the audience is maybe the key question, actually, because it's not just that you want to get some information across, but you want to get it across to specific people. So you need to understand why they're there, what they're hoping to get from it, and, also, some of their background and cultural background.


I just want to emphasize that. The audience is key. You want to make sure you know what the audience expects out of your presentation, and you want to read the room, or virtual room. If there's a key stakeholder there, and their style is they love to get to the point, you might want to get to the point.


OK. I just created a new presentation file, and I'm just looking at a blank slate. Where do I even start?


I often start with, literally, an outline, written in a text edit, or some other way, and then I start putting that into slides, without any visuals, just to see what I have, and how the pacing is working out, and what are my, sort of, key points.


Then how do you get from there to not just dumping in text?


So your top-level points, which are sort of the takeaways, those probably should be text in the slide, as well, because you want people to read those short phrases and remember them. But the secondary things, those are places where you don't want to put the text up there. You want to think about a visual or a graphic that echoes and amplifies, rather than just merely repeats it.


Let's dig into that a little more. The design. All right. I think I have good taste, but I definitely don't have visual vocabulary or a skill set. So we have a text outline. Then how do I just bring it to life?


Well, color and animation are incredibly powerful. And, you know, paradoxically, the less you use them, the more powerful they are. So I see a lot of slideshows where people have these really crazy animations between slides. They pivot. They spin. They twirl. They explode. All those sorts of things. Animations can be something really simple, like a red underline on an important concept, or it can be a chart that unfurls from left to right. It doesn't need to be really fancy or complex. It should always be driven by the content.


This is super important. So your animations, graphics, colors, they must be in service to your content. Otherwise, they're going to be irrelevant. I just want to verbally underline that. Actually, can we get that on the screen. There you go.


I do my presentations, typically, with one color, like, black and one more color, maybe two, sometimes, but that's a lot already. You know, if you're just using black and red, or black and yellow to highlight something, you're making a really strong impression. And I try to use color consistently. So if I'm using yellow, for example, to highlight an important word, I'll use it all the way through the presentation in the exact same way, so you're making a mental association for the viewer. Oh, when that little yellow thing comes on, that's something I should pay attention to.


OK. To recap, this is going to be a little meta, but I'm going to build a presentation, based on Dan's points, that will illustrate how to make a better presentation. It's going to be a show. BRB.


Don't be scared. Listen to your audience. You know them. You know this topic. You'll make it work.


OK. I'm so nervous now. All right. Here we go. From one friend to another, how to build a better presentation deck. And, yes, I just committed the first sin. Oh, I can't do this. I'm going to give you five really easy, practical tactics for making your already decent deck even better.


So, one is just get started. Don't worry about the images or anything. Just create a text outline. You can see what I did here. I just kind of wrote it out, the story, how I want to present my ideas, and just focus on them. Next, you want to think about pacing. So you don't want people to be staring at your slide for more than one minute. You want to aim for that sweet spot of maybe 30 seconds to a minute. If you find yourself going over, that's fine. Just either shorten your presentation or make more slides. That's easy.


Next, you want to think about your images and any visuals that you're using. Is it really serving and supporting the content and ideas that you're trying to build? If not, or if you're on the fence, less is more. You do not want reams and reams of copy on your slides. This is not about scripting. This is about putting words that will help guide your audience and create that impact. Everything else, leave it in the speaker's notes.


And then, lastly, think about who's in the audience. What's going through their minds? Why would they be interested in listening to you? So give them the answers that they need, giving it in a way that resonates with them and connects with them.


This is the most important thing to remember, at the end of the day, which is, they want you. Don't be scared. They're inviting you to bring your ideas, and expertise, and your voice to the stage, right? So what could be a friendlier invitation than that? Just let your ideas shine and be yourself.


OK. There you go. So I gave the presentation. I think I did a solid job, and I started with a template, but I modified it, and I tried my best. But, you know, I want to hear your thoughts. Was it clear? Did the visuals work? Was the pacing OK? How did I do? Let me know in the comments.


If you're still watching, one, thank you. But, two, I'm really curious. What do you want me to explore? What problems do you have at work? I'd love to solve them. Please leave a comment. I love to hear your thoughts. And if you have any other ideas, throw them my way. All right. Peace out.