Recently, a new PowerPoint-blame article was published by the New York Times titled “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint” by Elisabeth Bumiller. The article outlines that after NASA and other organizations, now the US military has figured out that you cannot win a war with bullet-point style briefings. The story “PowerPoint of Afghan War Strategy” made it even onto Slashdot where it was widely discussed.
While Bumiller’s article notes in the one of the last paragraphs that “No one is suggesting that PowerPoint is to blame for mistakes in the current wars” it comes pretty close to that (and pretty close to the last PowerPoint-blame article the NYT published in 2003 called “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb“).
While PowerPoint is not a program which promotes or encourages good design, especially when default templates are used, I would caution to blame the current (mis)use of a program instead of addressing potential shortcomings in presentation skills. One should read “In Defense of PowerPoint” by Don Norman, the HCI guru and author of The Design of Everyday Things.

Infographics are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge (see Wikipedia). Pam Dyer, a Seattle-area marketing professional, has compiled 35 social media infographics ranging from the obvious to the obscure.
I like particularly “10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication” which shows variety in design while being consistent at the same time. Number 14, “The Journey of a Tweet” really helps if you need to explain how Twitter works. This one is matched by number 26, “The Life Cycle of a Blog Post.” And if you are really distracted by all this, then number 15, “The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions” will help you to gauge the level of distraction you currently encounter.

Video and other media usually enhance a presentation. But, they need to be designed well (no cheesy YouTube videos). In general, a video is much better than a live demo. I have yet to witness a live demo that worked perfectly and started without delay or setup during the presentation, which makes every audience restless.
Here are two very different examples of videos produced to showcase projects. The first one is a demo of an online community which we have created for a grant-funded project. The Digital|Vita system was designed by a team of masters students in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. It allows users to manage biographical information, output this information into several commonly used formats (e.g. NIH biosketches), and assemble research teams through expertise location and a social network. The system is currently in the prototype stage. It was put together in Adobe Premiere Pro and took quite a time to produce. Goto the project page and select a video based on your bandwidth.

A much more low-tech approach can be accomplished by using a video camera and a well-lit table and a few pieces of paper. I have seen this the first time on YouTube with a video about the “My Location” feature on Google Maps. We have reused this idea and you can produce a decent video with little effort.

“Complementary” in regards to fonts often refers to a combination of serif font and a sans serif font. But, the creative combination of both is often the tricky. See Figure 1 for an example of the combination of a serif with a non-serif font for a logo for an online community.

Figure 1: DIOC logo with serif and sans serif fonts

Note: If you use non-standard fonts install these fonts on presentation machine (or embed fonts in presentation). In general, nothing renders fonts as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader. Thus, consider displaying a full screen PDF show instead of PPT.

Color evokes feelings! There are two general categories of colors
• cool (blue and green)
• warm (orange and red)
Use cool for backgrounds because cool colors recede from us into the background and use warm colors for objects in the foreground, like text because warm colors move objects towards us.

While not strictly color related, you want to consider the following advice: If presenting in a dark room, use a dark background with white text; but if presenting with lights on, use a white background with black text.

You can learn more about colors at CreativePro.com which provides an introduction to color use for Website, but the information is good for presentations as well. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest you visit the Color Matters which even explains why school buses are yellow.

You should use one visual theme throughout your presentation because you want to surprise your audience with the content and not with the layout. Do NOT use a PowerPoint template—your audience expects a unique presentation, they can browse these templates on their own and don’t need you for that. One way to use PowerPoint templates without using the Microsoft provided ones, is to create your own PowerPoint file as a Design Template (.pot), or pay a professional to do it for you! The other option is obviously to use Photoshop to create your template and then use layer comps for each slide which will be exported as PDF. See this example of the visualization of research streams at the Center for Dental Informatics where I am working which uses a consistent theme. Research at CDI.

Here it comes to the question of how can you undermine your professionalism as a presenter most efficiently. There are three ways to do this well: (1) use many PowerPoint clip arts; (2) download logos and low resolution images from the Internet; and (3) integrate cartoonish line into every slide.
If you want to create good slides, take your own images of real people. Why of real people? People connect to your audience emotionally—a cartoon doesn’t. So, what can you do if you have no time to take pictures of your own? You can easily buy stock photography for $3 at iStockphoto.com in suitable resolution. If you do not want to spend $3, cancel the presentation. Compare below Figure 1 with Figure 2-5—no explanation necessary!

Figure 1: Text slide using a PPT template background which reduces readability

Figure 2: Visualizing progress in imaging

Figure 3: Visualizing progress in decision support systems

Figure 4: Visualizing progress in restorative dentistry

Figure 5: Visualizing progress in patient charts

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication (Leonardo da Vinci). The best slides may have no text at all. Show slides and NOT speaker notes! Slides are visual aids, not “text aids”! If your slides show what you say, the issue is: Why are you there? Here we come back to John Sweller and his Cognitive Load Theory: “If the information on the screen is the same as that which is verbalized, Power-point presentations can backfire because the audience’s attention will split between the speaker and the screen.”
Slides need to reinforce your words, not repeat them (adapted from Seth Godin).
You often here about the “3X4 rule” which says that you should have three bullets per visual and four words to a bullet. I actually do not like this rule since it enforces using bullets which is only in some instances a good idea, but in most it is not. Think about how to create a visual slide without text.

With that tip I refer to object builds or slide transitions. Animations should be a part of your presentation, but only to convey a meaning. If you cannot explain why you used an animation, delete it. See a demo of a useful PowerPoint animation (2 minute Flash video) which I have created to visualize the relationships captured in a software application using custom animations.

In the following eight installments of the blog, I will share a compilation of media tips which I have compiled a while ago for a presentation about effective presentation techniques. They often refer to Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) for practical reasons—reflecting that most users need to use PPT for a variety of reasons; however I advocate to replace PPT by either using Photoshop in combination with layer comps or Flash if you need more animation or interactivity. Anyway, the concepts and suggestions provided in the upcoming postings apply to presentation slides (and media) in general regardless of the program you use. So, here is the first installment.

If your talk is incomprehensible without the slides, this indicates that something is wrong! The slides are not the “star of the show” (your audience is!). The audience came to see you. You could have sent the PPT via email avoiding the hassle of a physical meeting. Visual communications guru, Edward Tufte, said: “…PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content. Thus, PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play—very loud, very slow, and very simple.”
“The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched.” said John Sweller, an Australian educational psychologist who is best known for formulating an influential theory of cognitive load. However, what he really means is the way PowerPoint is used should be ditched—presenting streams of information to slides with general titles, clip art, and bulleted list after bulleted list in hierarchical format. Read more about presentations from Garr Reynolds, author of the book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.