
Designing Presentations - idan
http://gazit.me/2012/12/05/designing-presentations.html
======
vi4m
Maybe it's just me, but I don't like theese cool presentations filled with
expressive words 'DO IT!', 'NEVER DON'T DO THAT' "bitches" "programming
motherfuckers". It's funny, but not for 100th time.

Another example are pictures, or memes pasted into the presentation. Maybe
sometimes it is funny, when there is one funny picture, or the subject of
presentation is chalenging.

But very often amount of 'coolness' is too much to me to handle. I often find
presenters not knowing subject enough for answering questions(they just make
jokes, etc).

Maybe should we just go back to excellent but simple, polite, content(text)
rich presentations ?

~~~
takluyver
I agree, the 'one word slides' can be overused. But I don't think text-rich
slides are the answer - the audience always ends up focussing on the slides,
while the speaker says the same thing. It's like watching TV with subtitles:
you can't keep your eyes off the text, and it subtly subtracts from the
experience.

I also dislike presentations that have been written in Latex/Markdown and then
converted to slides. Slides aren't just a different format to render a
document into, they're there to support what a person's saying.

~~~
dagw
_like watching TV with subtitles_

Subtitles are great when the volume is way too low, it's in a language you
aren't proficient in or the person is talking in a language he isn't
proficient in.

For the sort of slides being suggested here to work requires a lot from the
topic being presented, the presenter and the audience. Only follow this advice
if you're confident that all three components will line up for you.

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CJefferson
As someone who sees a lot of students start to get into presenting, there is
one important thing (in my opinion) to remember.

You should certainly aim to present beautiful presentations, with informative
and colourful slides, with minimal bullet points and no text dumps. However,
make sure you design a presentation you can give. Everything you take off your
slides is more information you have to give your audience.

When starting out, there is nothing wrong with using slides as a crutch. Some
of the worst talks I have ever seen consisted of minimalist slides and a
speaker who was just not (yet) capable of presenting completely solo. At least
with info-dump slides, I can still follow the presentation by reading the
slides!

~~~
saraid216
I kind of disagree. I think that, once you start using a crutch, you're almost
certainly never going to stop, especially in a perceived-risk-high situation
like public speaking. "Info-dump slides worked last time. I'll go with what
works again, rather than adding risk by trying to be more minimal," repeat ad
infinitum.

It's better to recognize that you just didn't prepare enough (didn't practice
sufficiently; didn't know your subject well enough; didn't anticipate
questions and concerns; etc.) and prepare better next time.

It might be a little different in a teacher-student environment where direct
guidance is possible and disasters can be coddled and mitigated and explained
away as "this is a learning environment; screwing up is okay". Just... don't
grade it.

~~~
CJefferson
Well, it depends how much you care that your talk was a disaster.

For people who are not practised at speaking, there is almost no amount of
preparation which will get you to the point of needing no crutch. Not knowing
your subject well enough is not excusable, but many people who can happily
explain a topic in a one-on-one situation have great difficulties in front of
crowd.

Of course, there is only one way to get better a public speaking, which is to
do as much of it as you can.

I don't understand your 'teacher-student environment' comment. Are you
suggesting 'coddling' encourages, or discourages, giving talks with less
crutches?

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iamctodd
Hi,

I teach a presentation design class at a business school and have developed a
tool called the Lean Presenter's Canvas. It is v0.1 (literally released this
week) and is based off years of teaching this MBA class as well as working
with business professionals on their presentations. It is intended to be a
guide to map out a presentation in one page before spending too much time in
slideware.

Take a look: <http://ow.ly/fKxGB> [.pdf]

You can learn more and stay up-to-date at: <http://leanpresenter.com>

We'll post revisions based on usage and feedback as well as offering more
tools to help craft and design a presentation (all licensed under Creative
Commons).

Since we're following a lean approach - feedback is welcome!

Cheers, C Todd @iamctodd

~~~
iamctodd
To clarify - this is a tool meant for understanding your audience and
structuring your story before designing any supporting visuals. I have found
that when you have the story ironed out, any supporting visuals are much
easier to create.

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davidkatz
Excellent post. One thing which the OP alluded to but I think deserves
strengthening - 80% of the quality of your talk is in your talk, not in your
slides. The OP helps focus you on your talk by giving you rules of thumb like
'less content'. That's good advice.

Along the same lines, if you're just getting started, it's not a good idea to
attempt to make your slides beautiful. Plain old text on solid backgrounds
will do just fine. To drive this point home, go watch some TED talks. The
slides on those things can get positively ugly, but that hardly detracts from
the quality of the talk. That hinges almost solely on the speaker.

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drue
I agree with the premise that the author is challenging. However..

"Better to have something clean, typographical, and timeless than a powerpoint
cliché." -- the article

Two cute slides per minute of no actual content can also be just as cliché and
irritating as wall-of-text slides.

~~~
idan
If all of your content is in the slides and the slides are contentless, then
the presenter has deeper problems.

The point here is that slides are for illustration. It is fine to have brief
slides if they dont get in the way of the _presenting_.

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guiambros
While I agree with most of OP's comments _for live events_ , keep in mind
frequently presentations are _shared_ , and not really presented.

Within typical business scenarios, presentations are forwarded to other people
that were not present, so you don't have the benefit of the speaker explaining
what that beautiful minimalistic photo of a turtle-in-the-middle-of-the-desert
really meant. Even presentations from live events will be on slideshare,
frequently without the voice/video track. The examples included on OP's post
ratify my point; nice visually, but almost useless when shared without the
voice-over.

There's no debate that ugly or confusing slides can and should be avoided. But
bullet points don't ruin a presentation, you can tell a story one word at a
time, and sometimes even info-dump slides have a role to play. See Mary
Meeker's crowded presentations. See Steve Jobs's smart use of bullet points.
See Lessig's one-word-per-slide style.

Bottom line: presentation style is like programming languages: you have to
find the best one for the job, and do it beautifully. Understand the audience
and the appropriate style, rather than rely on canned rules like "bullets are
evil". Code as a craft.

------
japhyr
I attended both of Idan's talks at PyCon last year, and they were informative
and inspiring. [1-3]

As someone new to attending technical conferences, I appreciate the recent
focus on sharing good presentation techniques. It is easy to think that all of
these inspiring speakers are just good at public speaking. But it turns out
that most of these people just work really hard at getting everything right.

Posts like this inspire me to figure out exactly what my strengths are, and
begin building meaningful presentations around those strengths.

[1] Data, Design and Meaning: <http://pyvideo.org/video/637/data-design-
meaning>

[2] Sketching a Better Product: <http://pyvideo.org/video/957/sketching-a-
better-product>

[3] All PyCon 2012 talks: <http://pyvideo.org/category/17/pycon-us-2012>

~~~
assaflavie
+1 Idan is a terrific speaker. That, together with gorgeous slides, is just
unfair to the rest of us.

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timonv
Great post! I noticed that presentations which give actionable, discussable
points can give a but load of positive feedback and fun talks in the after
track. For instance, not just showing that x is cooler than y, but actually
showing how to use x more effectively than y. The difference is small, but I
think it's pretty major in its effect.

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saraid216
Something I tend to emphasize is the question of confidence. People always
complain about not being confident enough to do a good presentation. I've
responded to this by explaining that confidence is built: you know your
subject matter, you know where you got your results from, you know your
audience, and so on. Experience and chutzpah let you fill in holes, but all of
your actual confidence comes from knowing how the communication is going to
work.

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edandersen
Garr Reynolds has an excellent blog about giving great, bullet point free
Presentations: <http://www.presentationzen.com/>

His book, Presentation Zen, comes highly recommended (not a referral link):
[http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-
Editi...](http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-
Edition/dp/0321811984/)

~~~
samsolomon
Second. I own this book, and it is a must for anyone giving presentations.

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zoop
I agree with a lot in this post. It doesn't happen all the time, but if I can
I prefer to present without slides at all.

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Robdr
Awesome post! I absolutely agree to the fact that the quality of the
presentation is in the talk and not in the slides.

However, I still would like to make these beautiful looking slides. Does
anyone have pointers on how make your slides look beautiful without being a
trained designer?

~~~
apl

      > Does anyone have pointers on how make your slides look
      > beautiful without being a trained designer?
    

By keeping it simple. Pick _one_ good font. As little text as possible. No
templates[1]. Solid image material (sufficient resolution, used sparingly, do
not overcrowd the slide with superfluous visuals). Without much work, you've
outdone 90% of your competition.

[1] By that I mean: No fancy pre-made _visual_ templates. For the sake of
consistency, using the templating mechanism of your chosen tool (Keynote,
PowerPoint, Beamer[2]) is highly recommended. But you'll have to create your
own templates.

[2] Don't use Beamer.

~~~
taeric
What is the problem with beamer?

~~~
elisehein
I think Beamer is great for things like lecture slides and other presentation
where the aim is to pass on dense amounts of information. When using slides to
illustrate rather than summarise, however, it requires a series of hacks to
position, resize, add custom colours and images or fonts. It also gives you
standard elements that you probably don't want in these illustrative slides,
such as the slide number, author and subtitle on the footer of each slide.

~~~
taeric
Hmm.... I'm not sure I understand this thread, then. Do you view the
predominant advice of this article as really only relevant for somewhat
"informal" talks? Because, pretty much every presentation I've ever had to
give was fairly dense in information.

(Also, I think if you are just doing an image for the whole slide, that isn't
too tough in beamer. Just switch to the default theme and don't provide a
title for the slide. Right?)

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2468ben
I made a tutorial in grad school for people who give (mostly technical)
presentations: <http://www.rustyandfriends.com/powertothepoint>

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mhb
_inception some ideas into their heads_

Good god!

~~~
idan
Not sure if disgusted with creative grammar / neologisms.

~~~
mhb
I'll confirmation that.

