Signal vs. Noise: Presentation Design
In an earlier post, I described the idea of Signal vs. Noise as a metaphor for your Inbox; today, I’d like to use it to address presentation design. By focusing as much as possible on the signal (your message), and cutting away the noise (everything else), we can make truly effective, attractive, interesting presentations. Here are three methods for increasing your signal-to-noise ratio:
(1) Animation
You may feel you’ve heard it all before about animation. When trying to create an effective presentation, it is important not to overanimate. This gets pushed by a lot of people to the point where they simply make the statement: ‘Don’t use animation.’ I won’t say that.
Animation can be a punctuation to your presentation that helps drive a point home. The most important thing you can remember regarding any kind of design is that you shouldn’t use a particular tool because you can. The tool should be used to its best effect. In the case of animation, too much animation just becomes noise. If everything is animated, you can’t tell what’s important.
So, what’s the right amount and type of animation?
The right amount: I’m not going to cop out and say ‘enough.’ There is a lot of ‘feel’ involved in using the right amount of animation, so try two things – first, try animating no more than two items in your entire presentation. One is better. If you do this, you’ll start to train yourself about what’s most important, and what can use the animation the most. Second, surf the internet. Look at the really professional websites out there – then write down ‘how much’ animation was used, and what was the ‘right use’. You’ll find the animation is still used very sparingly.
What is the right type of animation: the right type of animation is very simple.
Does your animation assist in telling your story? Communicating the information you need? If the answer is no, you’re using the wrong animation. Animations that build one idea on top of another, or that develop the relationship between two things, are good things.
One last pointer: speed up your animation. Do it now. Every person who is new to design creates animations that are interesting to them, but too slow. It’s because we like to watch the animation and make sure that it works the way we want. For the person watching the presentation, though, it comes off as ‘look what I can do!’ Every professional animation you see on TV happens faster than you’d think.
(2) Text Quantity Per Slide
Unfortunately, one of the most-asked questions in presentation classes is ‘how much text should I put on the slide?’ Everyone’s heard the ‘Seven bullet points with seven words’ or ‘No more than four bullet points’ or ‘no less than 32pt font’ rules. Immediately forget every one of them.
The problem with having a lot of text on your slide is that your audience reads your slide instead of listening to you. If they can’t hear your message because of other things distracting them – that is the definition of noise.
I recommend to every student to put no more than a single idea on a slide. That’s not a single word, or even a single phrase – a single idea. An idea can be the comparison between three things, but only that comparison should be on the slide. If you make the slide busier by trying to explain a second idea, your audience will lose the message.
The biggest complaint I hear after that recommendation is that the audience will be taking the slides away with them, and they need to contain all the content. To that I simply answer – put it in the notes field of the presentation. If it is on the slide and it detracts from your communication, find another way to provide that information.
(3) Design vs. Decoration
I know what a lot of readers are thinking after reading my request to reduce text on slides; you’re waiting for me to tell you to use a big, pretty picture on the slide. I’m not going to do that.
Sometimes, a big picture of something is exactly what the doctor ordered for your presentation. However, never, never put anything on your slide that conflicts with your message. If you’re telling people in your company that a new product will make a significant profit, a picture of a woman in a field smiling does not help the message. Either your slide communicates, or it detracts from your communication.
One of the easiest ways to keep yourself sane when designing is to ask the question: ‘Is this for decoration?’
If the only purpose of something in your slide show is to make it prettier or more interesting, remove it. If it helps communicate, then it is part of your design.
To hammer this point home, I couldn’t find a single reason to add a picture to this post. So I didn’t.
If you’d like to have a longer conversation about effective presenting, please check out our classes on PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2007, Presenting Data In PowerPoint, or Presentation Skills for the Professional.
