4 Ways to Know If Your Presentation Is Well-Behaved

4 Ways to Know If Your Presentation Is
Well-Behaved

1. Add some color

Color is important and makes a boring slide much better.

Use your brand colors and be consistent with your design.

Avoid using overly dominant colors, too dark and depressing or too bright, and don’t use clashing colors.

Easy hack: Blink a few times and glance at the different slides. Are there any optical illusions popping out of the screen? Do things seem to be moving? Tone it down and use colors that play better together to avoid annoyance on your audience.

For more on colors and their optimal use read here

I can't read a thing. Can you?

2. A picture's worth

You know how the saying goes, but there’s a flip side to using pictures. They may work against you.

How?

If they’re not related to the theme or domain,

If they’re not aligned with your audience,

If they’re not in focus, not clear (“what do we see there?”)
If they’re too “loud”, showing too many details

Don’t integrate a picture just because it’s artistic, captivating, and unique as it might drive attention away from the topic and you.

Make sure it serves a purpose.

But do incorporate them as they tell a story well. Viewing a visual presentation leads to a more positive, captivating and memorable experience. And that’s what you should strive to achieve.

Easy hack: write on a piece of paper what images tell the story of your presentation. Keep in mind your audience as well as the purpose of this document. What do you wish to achieve and what do you want them to take away?

Visit Pexel for great realistic and free images (make sure to credit the photographers) or use an ai tool to generate the image you have in mind. Make sure the style aligns with the content and message

It's a beautiful photo but what does it have to do with the slide's message? Also, do avoid buzz words

Photo credit: Alexas Fotos

3. When was the last time you visited an optometrist?

Avoid straining your audience and use readable font size.

Minimize wording as much as possible, that way you could use larger fonts.

You need your audience to be at ease while viewing/listening to the presentation and not challenged by visual tasks.

Easy hack: present your slides in full screen mode and take 5 steps back from the screen. Can you read the wording easily?

In case you’ll present this on stage, double the distance of your test and make sure all is centered to avoid details cut

4. Who’s your competitor

When you present your deck on stage or online, to investors or an audience of potential customers, you have only one visible competitor.

It's your slides.

Make sure you work well together and don't step on each other's toes.

You're not there to only switch slides,

or to read the lines.

Add value,

compliment the text on the screen,

lead the way, set the tone.

Easy hack: go through each slide and ask yourself "am I adding something or just reading them?
am I really needed here?"

If you're not adding anything - you need to remove content from the slide.

Don't lose your audience for a bunch of slides

Final *truely aweful* slide to sign off with - too much text, tiny font size and boring background

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