I recently took part in a biggish group blog about what we – a group of us interested in making presentations – were looking/hoping for in presentations in 2009. As part of that conversation, Olivia Mitchell hosted a debate on whether design mattered in slides (or in presentations generally, for that matter). At the time, I’d not really had time to get my act together but I suggested that there was a law of diminishing returns in slide design…..
For me, it’s axiomatic that presentations are about making an impact on your audience. How you measure success in presentations I’m still not sure about, but however it’s done, I’m sure it has to include what the audience gets out of it. So… obviously then, whatever improves the audience’s experience is a good thing. Does design help, then?
I tried and experiment this week to see if I was close to the mark when I suggested that presentation design is useful up to a point…. so instead of “just” designing my presentation I really, really went to town: believe me, these slides weren’t just slides, they were works of art.
They ticked all the boxes for beautiful design and useful content. I was so proud of them I found myself running them through on a big, sexy, 50+ inch TV screen in the office just for fun. Pictures from the NASA site, the most beautiful transitions my Mac has to offer, hours spent agonising over the position of the couple of words on a screen….. oh! So wonderufl!
Was the impact any better on the audience for all this extra effort?
Not that I noticed.
Okay, one trial isn’t a scientific experiment but on the basis of this one run, slides need to be good enough to work but there’s not much point in making them ‘breathtaking’. Of course I’ve no way of recalling the long-term impact and recal as the presentation was only a week ago and there might be an issue about the particular audience. There may be (I hope there is!) an issue with the fact that my normal slide quality is already very high so any improvements can only be marginal… There may be any number of things…. but……
Interesting post. I’ve erred in over-designing, and I think it once cost me my job! For years I under-designed, but for years that was par for the course in my world of hi-tech.
I’ve had to sit through so many horrible, horrible presentations that are just rows of bullets (you’d like to use them to shoot the presenter …), and tiny-fonted copy-pasted text, with ne’er a picture, photo or color in sight – or worse – lots of reused cliparts.
Then there are the multicolored ones that assume that no-one in the room is colourblind, and that it’s actually possible to read red on blue from 15 yards. Or have loads of animated what-nots running all over the place ….
In my opinion, audiences are less tolerant than ever before. You just HAVE to design your presentation with your audience in mind, without going overboard. What works for a highly technical presentation isn’t going to work for the after-lunch slot at a conference, and vice versa.
Here’s another non-scientific experiment – I gave a business plan presentation to a group of serial start-up-ists last week. None of them liked my business model (oh well, back to the drawing board), but one really experienced gentleman said that my template was the best he had seen in years – he could actually “see” me in the colours and design of the template. Have a look at the logo of my blog, for an idea of what it looks like.