Of course, the challenge is in executing his simple principles. Reading this book reminded me that so often, the PowerPoint we see is just the second or third draft — not a final presentation. I’ve been guilty of this in the past myself. I get all my thoughts out in PowerPoint and then I tweak them a bit, and I act like I’m done.
But Reynolds [who authors a popular blog on the same topic, Presentation Zen] reminds us that PowerPoint [or Keynote, or any other slideware program] is meant to be a presentation aid — the presenter is supposed to share the information. If you can most effectively share your information via the slides, why would you do a presentation at all? Couldn’t you just forward the slides and save everyone from a needless meeting?
Instead, Reynolds wants your slides to augment the presentation you’re making. So, no more itsy-bitsy type, no more 10-bullet-point slides, no more boring images or poorly designed tables. Instead, he wants you to figure out what the essence of your presentation is, and put that on your slides. And that’s the work that many of us never do.
The real takeaway in this book is that you should be working harder on almost every presentation you make. If you can commit to doing that, Reynolds can give even non-designers some basic design principles to make your point more effective.
[Thanks to Michael Hyatt for this book recommendation. If you are in digital media or publishing and not reading his blog, well, fix that right now!]
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