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What’s your favourite doodle? The one you draw when your brain has decided that of all the incredible, intelligent things you could write down on that note pad in front of you, the best thing is a swirly thing in the margin of the paper.

Doodling can strike you at any time at work but it can take over large numbers of people at the same time by the mention of one simple word –PowerPoint. Yes, there you are - I can hear the groans now as you all reach for your favourite pen. It is the curse of the modern age along with pot noodles and microwave pizzas.

Far too often people worry about their PowerPoint presentation and devote a great deal of time to putting it together. The result of this approach is a poor presentation. The slides might be stunning, but they will not be of any use unless the presentation is also brilliant. If you devote so much time to producing wonderful slides you will not have time to plan and prepare everything else. So don’t even start thinking about your slides until you have written your talk.

With your finished talk - your script - in front of you, you can begin to go through it and consider which areas could benefit from illustration.

When deciding on audio-visual aids, think about points that need:

Emphasising

Explaining

Entertaining

These are the ‘Three Es’ of audio-visual aids.

If your slides merely repeat what you are saying, they are worthless. You may as well simply hand out copies of your talk to everyone and sit down, allowing them to read it for themselves. Good presentations treat audio-visual aids as an accompaniment, something that improves the talk with emphasis, explanation or entertainment. So as you go through your script look for areas that could benefit from any of the ‘Three Es’.

Wherever possible, use pictorial audio-visual aids. Photographs, charts, diagrams, cartoons etc are all good audio-visual aids. Poor audio-visual aids that will lull your audience into slumber are those that have lots of text on them or complicated scientific drawings.

There are some golden rules of slide making that good presenters stick to:

No more than four points per slide

No more than 20 characters per line

No more than 25 words on a slide

If you find you need more than this use more slides as it’s all about keeping it simple!

If you enjoyed this post why not check out the others under the Presentations Skills categories. We'd love to hear how these blogs are helping you or what your tips are so so please do get in touch.

James
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