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Peeve of the Week: PowerPoint
September 19, 2008
Anyone who knows us (at Krysalis) knows we have a lot to say about PowerPoint. In fact, what PowerPoint has become is such a peeve of ours that we often speak at, or teach companies how to structure, design and deliver better presentations. The reason we are so hung up on PowerPoint's flaws is the same reason the rest of the world is. People hate it. Or more specifically, they hate being bored to tears. If you work, chances are you’ve probably had to endure a slideshow or two that is so poorly done, it hurts. But on the other hand, presenters love it. Why is that? How can there be such an inherent contradiction on both sides of the slides?
Well for starters, it’s not PowerPoint that is the problem. It’s the people using it. So to bring presenters and audiences closer together, we propose a few simple tricks to fix what’s wrong with the way presentations are delivered on screen today.
We call them "PowerPointers" and they encourage the use of:
Consistency in structure and patterns
Colors and Shapes
Graphs and Charts
Frameworks and Images
Motion and Sound
But most of all, we stress that every decision must be strategically linked to the message and purpose of the presentation. For example, it is not OK to splash colors all over the place in order to be “colorful.” Instead, they should be used in a conscious and deliberate way to communicate or highlight key points.
Needless to say, when I received this video, you can imagine the fun we had to see how things can turn out if you do exactly what we recommended without having a strategy behind it. In a word?... or three? It’s a mess.
Posted by Donna Flagg on September 19, 2008 | Comments (0)
