Volker may have a point...
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Volker has blogged about the 10/20/30 rule of using PowerPoint, I'd probably agree with the 30 but not the 10 and 20, and let's think about think about this, the advice is from a VC, which lets face it are typically right once or twice in ten attempts? It is important to remember that slides are basically reminders for the presenter and visual aids for the audience, they are not a replacement for a manual or help documentation.
Preparing my slides for Lotusphere (yes I'm still preparing them and they're due tomorrow arrgghhh) I have noticed a couple of obvious "mistakes" (well to me they are mistakes) in the template that will lead to a harder experience for the audience. The key ones I have are:
The title colour and the background colour, here's how it looks:
To many people this probably looks just fine, but now imagine this on a big screen, with poor lighting, and also colour blind people. Blue on Blue? For some the title is just going to vanish into the background. For others it's going to be an eye strain.
Second issue? A 20pt font for bulleted text is too small, if you're sitting in the front row no problem, but 20pt fonts will allow you to put about 11 lines on the slide, in my book and experience that is about 5 too many. If you need more then 5 lines, think about whether you can condense the text, or just start a new page.
It seems silly really, as Lotus had this figured out years ago. Freelance Graphics shipped with templates that were designed to look good and be easy to read, the background colour and the foreground colours were always setup for a good contrast, switch the template and the text still looked good. I just had a look and all the templates had a title text 46pt in size and bullet text of about 32pt , and if your bulleted text got to the bottom of the page, Freelance started a new bulleted page adding Cont... to the title rather than doing the crazy PowerPoint thing of just making the text smaller.
Well I better get back to finishing these slides...
Volker has blogged about the 10/20/30 rule of using PowerPoint, I'd probably agree with the 30 but not the 10 and 20, and let's think about think about this, the advice is from a VC, which lets face it are typically right once or twice in ten attempts? It is important to remember that slides are basically reminders for the presenter and visual aids for the audience, they are not a replacement for a manual or help documentation.
Preparing my slides for Lotusphere (yes I'm still preparing them and they're due tomorrow arrgghhh) I have noticed a couple of obvious "mistakes" (well to me they are mistakes) in the template that will lead to a harder experience for the audience. The key ones I have are:
The title colour and the background colour, here's how it looks:
To many people this probably looks just fine, but now imagine this on a big screen, with poor lighting, and also colour blind people. Blue on Blue? For some the title is just going to vanish into the background. For others it's going to be an eye strain.
Second issue? A 20pt font for bulleted text is too small, if you're sitting in the front row no problem, but 20pt fonts will allow you to put about 11 lines on the slide, in my book and experience that is about 5 too many. If you need more then 5 lines, think about whether you can condense the text, or just start a new page.
It seems silly really, as Lotus had this figured out years ago. Freelance Graphics shipped with templates that were designed to look good and be easy to read, the background colour and the foreground colours were always setup for a good contrast, switch the template and the text still looked good. I just had a look and all the templates had a title text 46pt in size and bullet text of about 32pt , and if your bulleted text got to the bottom of the page, Freelance started a new bulleted page adding Cont... to the title rather than doing the crazy PowerPoint thing of just making the text smaller.
Well I better get back to finishing these slides...
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Comments
Posted by Richard Schwartz At 07:13:09 AM On 01/03/2006 | - Website - |
Giant logo and graphic elements, bling bling around the sides, inconsistent text colors and sizes in the presenters' slides, wild variations in graphic sizes and legibilty, and so on.
Technical content should be presented as such, in a simple, high-density way.
Posted by jim sherrill At 12:07:47 PM On 01/03/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Michael At 03:11:36 PM On 01/03/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Bruce Elgort At 08:17:20 PM On 01/03/2006 | - Website - |