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How the best slideware equals poetry

November 8, 2015
Motivational Interviewing, Presentation Skills
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Honesty is the best poetry

I’ve written elsewhere about “PowerPoint Best Practices” and why slide design can make the world a happier place. Images are like poems: their economy is such that they immediately engage our affective (versus cognitive) domain – and affect is hugely influential in learning and knowledge retention. I was briefly obsessed with imagist poetry as a teenager: “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”.  (It left its mark.)

The same disciplined simplicity is at the heart of the best and most effective use of beautiful/disturbing/thought-provoking/unexpected visuals accompanying a presentation. (PS: Check out this anthology if you want to learn more about imagism)

“Sounds good, but how can I visually translate MY ideas?”  (especially an image that is compelling, novel and adds value)

It’s a fair question. Most academics are trained to frame our ideas and concepts in words, not pictures. Yet words and pictures are both just symbols. For example, this slide deck for a full day workshop on advanced practice in Motivational Interviewing is approximately 80% images – used as placeholders for each of the practice-based activities I facilitated throughout the day.

In short: think about how you would define or translate the one key idea behind what you are trying to communicate. It is more than an excercise in finding pretty pictures – ruthless simplification forces us to reflect on the essential. That which we intend to be most memorable. This can only be a good thing for both presenter and audience!

Major Caveat: Visual communication is especially critical in relation to numeric data. Twenty years ago I never thought of data visualization as a career path, yet these modern-day dowsers are crucial to our understanding of the digital ocean. And that’s a whole other conversation: check out Big Data Science on Twitter. I am a rank amateur compared to what these people do.

If I were presenting this article to you, here is my slide:

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(Honesty is the best poetry, Queen St West, Toronto, Canada )

PowerPoint Design Best Practice

May 15, 2014
Presentation Skills
4 Comments

Single gerbera on a white background

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making the world a happier place, one slide at a time

 

The vast majority of slideware is used as speakers’ notes. Probably because:

  1. It’s comforting to have what I’m going to say right there on a big screen, just in case I forget
  2. I’m inspired by images, but I frame my thinking in words. It’s easier to type a list of bullet points than it is to locate the one perfect picture that tells a story
  3. I’m not trained in graphic design or visual arts, so putting together clean and compelling slideware compositions doesn’t come naturally
  4. It can be hard to access high quality art and photography.

The work of Garr Reynolds and his Presentation Zen has been instrumental in my own PowerPoint makeovers (“The Good, Bad and Ugly of PowerPoint”).

In addition, tools like Haiku Deck offer a polished and visually compelling alternative to traditional slideware applications.

 

What’s the take-home message? What does it all boil down to? Here is my one-sentence “best practice” for slide design:

 

PPT Essential Design Principle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine if every slide in every presentation looked this way? The world would be a happier place.