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MAKING PRESENTATIONS

By Damian Hunt and Christine Clarke

INTRODUCTION

The first problem of presentations is fear, and at least three quarters of that fear is fear of the

unknown.

You can never get rid of all your fear, but you can enormously reduce it by reducing the area

of the unknown. The small amount that is left is necessary and valuable - it concentrates your

mind and sharpens your performance. And even if you are one of those rare beings who feel

no fear at all, the technique for conquering fear is also the best technique for improving any

presentation.

PREPARATION

We can start by breaking the unknown down into five areas:

Why are you making this presentation?

What are you going to say?

Who are you saying it to?

Where will you be saying it?

How will you say it?

1 WHY?

Every presentation has an objective, and the objective is almost always some form of

persuasion. You want the audience to place an order, commission a survey, accept a

proposal, agree on a budget, develop a product, accept a reorganisation plan - the list is

endless. Two points are particularly important:

a) Make your objective as precise as you can - with fallback objectives as well - and put it into words. Write it down.

b) Keep referring back to the objective whenever you are wondering what to

include or where to cut.

2 WHAT?

Make a note of all the information; illustrations and arguments you could possibly need -

and jot them down. Do not bother too much about order at this stage.

3 WHO?

Find out all you can about the people you will be presenting to. Not just how many will be

there and their names and jobs, but why they are interested, what

method/equipment/supplier they are using at the moment, what bad or good experiences

they have had in the past with whatever you are trying to persuade them to do, what

objections they might raise to your proposals, how they might feel threatened by them,

and which of their worries your proposals might remove. This will probably suggest more

facts, arguments and visual aids to add to the list. And then if, on the day, you can

possibly arrange to chat to them informally, over coffee say, for a few minutes before the

presentation, do so. It is not only an invaluable extra research opportunity - it is also a

marvellous way to break the ice and create an early rapport.

4 WHERE?

Not as important as the others and you can’t always do it, but if “where” is unfamiliar

territory it helps on the day if you have been there before. And as you look round the

room you may spot something important: wrong kind of electric socket, or too distant for

your flex, windows that won’t black out, no table, excessive noise - you never know till

you look, if there’s nothing wrong it gives you a little more of what you need most;

confidence.

5 HOW?

Once you know what you want to say, whom you will be saying it to, where and why, you

can work out how. Now is the time to think yourself into the mind of your audience. What

anxieties can you relieve, what needs can you identify and satisfy? That will guide you to

an introduction, something to make them sit up and think “Yes, that would be a great

advantage if it really can be done at that price”.

Following from that you can start to arrange your facts and arguments into the best order

best for their understanding and best for persuasion. Then devise or select the illustrations

you are going to need. Then when all the material is assembled and marshalled, make

your notes -and make them clear and large enough. I personally prefer to write out the

whole presentation; after all, (and especially if time is limited) there is always a best way

of putting something -best argument, best order, best phrase - and you are more likely to

think it up and work it out by making yourself write it in advance than by thinking on

your feet. But even if you do not, you should always have at least the opening and closing

sentences committed to memory in their entirety.

And finally, in front of a colleague if possible, on your own if necessary, rehearse. It is

rare indeed to find an over-rehearsed presentation, and nothing is one quarter as effective

in removing nerves, or at least minimising their effect on your presentation, as a lot of

rehearsal. As we agreed (at least I hope we did), fear is largely fear of the unknown, and if

the unknown includes what you are going to say you have every reason for fear.

The Start

Almost every presentation requires some sort of preface. Exactly what elements it should

contain will obviously depend on circumstances - you do not have to explain who you are if

you are addressing your own department (or if you do have to, something is wrong that no

presentation will put right). The preface has a double value - it establishes certain important

facts, and it also helps to ease the presenter into their relationship with the audience by means

of “neutral” material that they can all accept and agree with. The longer you keep everyone

nodding the better, so long as they don’t nod off.

There are five elements to a full preface: a single sentence may be enough for each.

a) Welcoming courtesies - simply thanking people for giving up time and hoping they

will feel it is well spent etc.

b) Self-identification - your name and job, your background if relevant (“I worked in the

aircraft industry myself for two years, though not of course at your exalted level...”)

and any details about colleagues who are with you.

c) The intentions - What you are proposing to explain, suggest or demonstrate at this

presentation. This has to be angled towards the benefits they can expect from what

you are presenting - not “Tell you about our new GZ180”, but “Show you how our

GZ180 could provide you with a quicker and more economical...” Everything should

be presented in terms of their interest, not yours: not “What I am going to tell you” but

“What I thought you would like to know”.

d) The route map - how long the presentation will last, whether it will be in sections,

will it all be here or will we be moving to another part of the building, does it include

film, will there be a break for coffee?

e) The rules of the road - in particular, do you want people to interrupt if they have a

question, or wait till the end of the section, or hold all questions until the end? They

cannot know unless you tell them.

The Structure

1 Hold your breath and wait for a massive generalisation. Ready? Right.

All good presentations have the same structure.

It is a simple three-part structure, and the same as a symphony or a play. Exposition.

Development. Recapitulation. First movement. Second movement. Third movement. Act

I, Act II, Act III. Order demonstrated, order challenged, order re-established. You can

embroider it in all sorts of ways, but if you abandon it, - resorting, for example, to a string

of unstructured and unconnected assertions - you will not hold your audience’s attention

for long.

2 For the purposes of a presentation, you can call the structure “Situation, Complication,

Recommendation” and you will find that everything you have to say fits into one of those

three sections.

a) Situation. The audience at the start of a presentation is like the horses before the start of the race - scattered all over the place and facing in different directions. The starter

at a race meeting has to bring them all up to the line together so that they start level

and all go off in the right direction at the same time.

A presenter has to do much the same, and the way to do it is to outline the present

situation: describe the way overseas distribution is currently organised, or the way we

order stationery at the moment, or the way the pattern of home demand has been

changing - whatever the purpose of your presentation it is essential that everyone

should start with the same knowledge, and important that you should demonstrate to

them all that you know the situation and background. It also enables everyone to focus

on the specific part of the present situation to which you are addressing yourself. This

part of the presentation, establishing common ground, may take only a couple of

sentences, or it may need quite a long analysis of how things came to be the way they

are, but some statement of the present situation has to be made and agreed upon. By

all means ask them questions about the present situation and past history: it helps you

to angle the rest of your presentation more precisely to their needs, and a bit of two-

way communication in the early stages is a valuable icebreaker.

b) Complication. This is where you introduce the need for change by showing why the

present situation cannot continue or why it would be unwise to continue it. Demand is

shifting, technology is changing, staff are leaving, delays are lengthening, competitors

are gaining, costs are rising, profits are falling, buildings are leaking -there must be

some significant change or danger or worry or opportunity or you would not be

making the presentation. This is the stage at which you dig the hole in which you

intend to plant your idea.

c) Recommendation. The other two sections may be brief: this one forms the bulk of the

presentation, and it is also the one you are least likely to omit. It may include

evaluating alternatives, demonstrating products, describing services, meeting

objections, comparing prices, adducing evidence, quoting examples, and is in fact

what most people mean when they talk about “a presentation”. But its success may

well depend on how well you have prepared the ground in those first two sections

which it is all too easy to omit.

Very often, you will find that “evaluating alternatives” is important enough to deserve

a section on its own. You may also decide that your recommendation should itself be a

choice of alternatives rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it proposal. Because of the

importance of discussing alternatives, you may find it more helpful to think in terms

or a four-part structure, and if you add in your introduction and conclusion you can

create a 6P alliterative mnemonic:

Preface Possibilities

Position Proposal

Problem Postscript

3 A small but important part of structuring is paragraphing. It is an easy thing to

do, but it is also an easy thing to forget to do. The problem is that you know perfectly

well where you have got to in your presentation, and where you are going: the

audience does not, and they cannot see your notes, nor can they glance forward as they

can with a book or a report to see what is coming. It is therefore important to provide

them with the equivalent of a paragraph. This only needs a summarising sentence to

round off one section followed by an introductory statement or question to introduce

the next. “Right”. Therefore, we have seen that our present warehouse capacity will be

insufficient when we open our north region branches. So what do we do? Well, we

have narrowed the practical options down to three, and I´ll describe them briefly first

and then discuss them in turn. Option one is...” Good paragraphing is a great help to

retention, since you are supplying the audience not only with information but also

with a ready-made filing system to put it in.

The Technique

1 Delivery: a brief booklet cannot turn you into a good speaker. Only practice can do

that. You can go on a course, or a group of you can practise on each other and

comment, encouragingly and constructively, on each other’s performance. You can

learn quite a lot just by watching other people doing it wrong and discussing why.

The truth is that good delivery, apart from a few small (but important) points of

technique is not a question of acquiring skills but of removing obstacles. Most people

speak well enough round a table with a group of friends or colleagues: learning to

speak in public is little more than learning to retain that ability when standing up in

front of ten or twenty or five hundred people you do not know. This means learning to

remove the inhibitions that stop you being your normal, natural, friendly self once you

get up on your feet.

I have found that it helps enormously if you can get the audience on your side at the

beginning. This is why people say you should start with a joke. However, a joke that

fails is a major disaster, and if you have the confidence to know it will not fail, you

probably do not need it.

It is better, in my view, to start with some remark that makes it clear that you are not

setting yourself up above the audience, -for example to stress that you know much less

about their business than they do- and to enlist their sympathetic indulgence rather

than risk stimulating a critical resentment.

In terms of actual speaking technique, these are the chief technical faults to watch out

for:

a) Mumbling. Better to be too loud than too quiet.

b) Hesitancy. Excessive pauses, usually filled with “...er... Almost always a sign

of insufficient rehearsal.

c) Gabbling. Much rarer, and easily corrected once you know you are doing it.

d) Catch phrases. “The point is.” “...and all that sort of thing...” “...if you know

what I mean..." These phrases are harmless in themselves, but if they become a

frequent verbal mannerism they can distract the audience.

e) Poor eye contact. Do not move your gaze from the floor to the ceiling via the

back wall. Look at people - not aggressively or hypnotically - just look at

them as you do in normal conversation. And that means all of them, including

those at the sides.

f) Dropping the voice. The most common fault of amateur speakers is to drop

the voice at the end of each sentence. It becomes very tedious, since it makes it

seem that the talk has ended with each sentence, and it has to be started off

again each time. For most people keeping the pitch and volume of the voice up

at the end of the sentence is not natural; it has to be practised and developed.

But it is vital.

2 Language. There are hundreds of rules for good spoken English, but only a few vital

ones for most presenters. The most important one is to use short words and short

sentences: do not say “Circumstances occasionally arise involving a situation in which

one or more of the contributing personnel wishes to exercise the option of continuing

in employment beyond the normal retirement date as specified in their formal

contractual agreement, in which eventuality suitable arrangements can be concluded

for the further maintenance of contribution and consequent enhancement of eventual

benefit”; just say “Sometimes people want to stay on after they’re 60. If so they can

still stay in the Pension Scheme.”

Apart from that, use active verbs and concrete nouns rather than passive verbs and

abstract nouns; illustrate general statements with specific examples; avoid technical

terms unless you know the audience is familiar with them; and ruthlessly cut out

jargon. I have seen computer people quite unaware of the effect they had on lay

audiences by talking blithely about “redundancy” and “graceful degradation” in their

special data-processing meanings of which the listeners were wholly unaware. Make

your notes as full as you like, but never read a written presentation or memorise it

word for word and recite it (although key phrases should be memorised). Always use

your own words and phrases you actually use in conversation, not those you reserve

exclusively for formal writing.

3 Visuals: it is nearly always wise, even for the smallest presentation, to have a largish

plain white pad and a thick black pen in case you want to show the group some

illustration or calculation. Apart from that, think in advance if there is any picture,

diagram or object you can include. Think under two different headings:

a) Explanation: Many complicated verbal expositions can be enormously clarified,

simplified and shortened by a photograph, a drawing, a diagram a graph or an object.

Make a conscious effort to find opportunities. I remember a presenter taking quite a

time to describe a floppy disc. It had never occurred to him to bring one along in his

folder.

b) Persuasion: A picture is worth a thousand words, and the pictures you show will

remain in your audience’s mind long after your words have gone. So make a real

effort to find or create illustrations that have persuasion value -the images you want to

lodge in their memory.

If you want to know more about creating visuals, see section 2 of this booklet.

4 Detail: there is very often a problem about how much detail to include in a

presentation. The problem is at its most acute when the audience includes some

technical experts and some laymen. If you leave it out the experts will feel slighted,

and if you put it in the laymen will be baffled and bored.

Almost always the correct course is to leave the detail out of the presentation. You can

make up for this by having it all typed out and distributed afterwards (not before, or

they will be reading while you are talking). You will of course tell the experts that the

details are in the supporting documentation. Alternatively (or additionally) you can

bring an expert colleague with you to make a technical presentation just for the

experts, or answer technical questions when the main presentation is over.

5 Feedback: if you know your audience well this is less important, but if they are

people you know only slightly or not at all it can matter a lot. How do you know if

your assumptions about their current practice, past experiences and future needs are

correct? How do you know if they understand about random access or if you have to

explain it to them? Only by asking. Therefore, -especially with small Audiences and

especially in the early stages of the presentation- do not be afraid to ask them

“feedback” questions. Ask them about the way that they do this now. Ask them what

alternatives they have considered. Ask them what is their order of priorities. Not only

will this give you valuable information and guidance, it will also break the ice, involve

the audience and turn the presentation from a generalised hand-out style statement into

a private communication specifically and exclusively for them.

6 Concessions: however strong your case, it will have limitations and drawbacks. After

all, a Rolls Royce is thirstier than a Mini, harder to park and more expensive to insure,

quite apart from the price. These limitations will not be lost on your audience and it is

important that you should mention them because it strengthens your case; it is the salt,

which gives the savour of credibility to the whole presentation. The technique is

always to admit limitations in the first half of the sentence and reaffirm important

persuasive points in the second half -never the other way round.

Summary and Questions

1 the ending of a presentation, like the opening, is too important to be left to the mercy

of chance or the whim of the moment. True, you may think of an improvement on

your planned ending while you are speaking, but it is still vital to have a planned

ending to improve on. This does not mean that it has to be long or complicated, only

that it has to be worked out in advance and well rehearsed.

It is when working out your ending that you must go back to the original statement or

intention. It is the objective of the presentation that dictates the ending. The ending

will normally include:

a) A summary of the salient facts and arguments and a reprise of the key visuals.

b) A recommendation of a course of action.

c) A proposal for the next step, if the recommendation is accepted, with the target

dates.

d) A description of the supporting literature (if any) which you are now

distributing.

e) Thanks for patient attention, etc.

f) Invitation to ask questions.

2 Questions: with a large audience you do not have to have a question session. It is not

unreasonable to say that in view of the wide divergence of background and interest in

the audience you will take questions individually after the audience breaks up. But

with a small group, of the sort this booklet is concerned with, you will need and

usually welcome a question session. Some of the questions will be genuine requests

for further information, but many will be some other response in disguise. The

principle ones to look out for are:

a) The concealed objection. It may indeed be only thinly concealed -“Won’t this mean

weekend working?” “Why is the price so high?” but can be handled according to the

rules for objection handling - don’t get defensive, make the objection specific, put it in

perspective, give the compensating benefits.

b) The test question. Designed to probe your knowledge and experience. “What are the

stress characteristics of this new alloy?” The golden rule is not to bluff or try to excuse

your ignorance. If you don’t know, promise to find out for the questioner - and keep

the promise. In fact it can be a useful excuse for coming back to them later.

b) The defensive question. Something you are proposing may mean a loss in staff, budget, status, authority, patronage or perks for one or more of the audience. “What

makes you think we can trust area managers to do their own purchasing of technical

equipment?” may in fact mean “central purchasing is the part of my job I enjoy most

quite apart from those bottles of Scotch around Christmas, and I’m damned if I’m

going to let you take it away from me”. One way to deal with this is to question the

questioner and get him talking more, and then if you have difficulty dealing with the

point at the factual level try to throw it back to the rest of the group.

With any difficult question, your first action should be to quell any emotional response

you may feel rising in your breast, and your second to explore the question and ask the

questioner to elaborate and refine it. You then have the various options suggested in the

previous paragraph:

to answer the question

admit ignorance and promise to find out

defer it to deal with privately at greater length afterwards

refer it to an expert colleague if you have brought one

throw it back to the person who asked it

throw it back to another member of the audience

put it up for general discussion

Afterwards

Immediately after a presentation all you want is reassurance and, if possible, praise. But

emotional vulnerability fades fairly quickly, and after a week or so it is possible to review the

presentation with a certain detachment. That is why it is always a good idea to have a

colleague with you when you give a presentation, to give you a more detached appraisal of

what worked and what did not, quite apart from the possibility of your going down with “flu

and needing an understudy at short notice.

This post-mortem is an important part of the presentation: a book can offer tips and lay down

guidelines but it cannot on its own turn you into a presenter any more than a map and a copy

of the Highway Code can turn you into a driver. They can make you a better driver, and help

you get to your intended destination quicker, but they are not a substitute for the lessons that

come from experience.

Summary of the Twenty Principal Lessons

PREPARATION

1 Know the facts - the facts your audience will want, as well as the ones you want. 2 Find out about the people, including their past experiences, present situation and

future needs.

3 Always have notes, with key phrases as well as subject headings. 4 Write out the introduction and memorise it. 5 Rehearse, and rehearse, and rehearse.

STRUCTURE

6 Preface - opening courtesies, the purpose of the presentation, its duration and shape, and the “rules of the road”.

7 Position - a brief outline of the present situation. 8 Problem - a description of the audience’s need which can be met by accepting your

proposal.

9 Possibilities - a look at the principle alternatives your audience will want to consider. 10 Proposal - the recommended course of action. 11 Postscript - summary of proposal. The next step. Description of supporting

documents. Thanks. Invitation to ask questions.

TECHNIQUE

12 Convert statistics into charts and graphs wherever possible. 13 Relegate detail to supporting documents. 14 Use short words and short sentences. 15 Choose the active verb rather than the passive and the concrete noun rather than the

abstract.

16 Avoid or explain jargon. 17 Signpost and paragraph the presentation. 18 Never mumble or gabble. 19 Look at the audience - all of them. 20 Keep your voice up at the ends of sentences

A guide to the techniques of slide design and

presentation.

PLANNING

When planning a presentation, the first question is not "What slides do I require?” it is `Do I

need any slides at all? ´ The answer may well be "NO" There are, after all, many

disadvantages to visual aids: they take up a great deal of time and thought, they can divert

attention away from what is being presented on to how it is being presented, they diminish

flexibility, they cost money, and if they go wrong the result can vary from mild confusion to

the ultimate in catastrophe and humiliation. But having said that, it remains true that a picture

is worth a thousand words. Most presentations are improved, and many are transformed, by a

good use of slides. They portray instantly and vividly things that are impossible to convey

verbally, they save time, they create interest, they add impact, and - most important of all -

they remain in the memory long after the words have left it.

So if you decide to use slides, think about them from the very start. Do not finish your script

and then say, “Now what slides do I need”: start by asking yourself “What pictures do I want

to lodge in the minds of the audience?” and make sure that they are built into your

presentation from the beginning. And if you can manage it, space them out more widely at the

start when the audience in fresh and alert, and bring them in with a greater frequency towards

the end to keep interest alive.

There are four particular types of slide to concentrate on in the planning stage: the

unnecessary slide, the missing slide, the impact slide and the verbal slide.

1 The unnecessary slide

The first question to ask about any proposed slide is, “Can I manage just as well without it?”.

I sometimes suspect that up to one third of all visuals used in presentations would be excluded

by that question: I can hear the poor presenter being asked “Do you want any visual aids” and

being shamed into saying yes for fear of appearing casual or lazy or amateur, and then

dreaming up some slides he doesn’t want and which don’t really help.

The second question is “Is this really a visual, or just a visible verbal?”

If I could engrave a single sentence on every presenter’s heart, it would be this: WORDS

ARE NOT VISUALS. How many times have we sat at presentations and seen slide after

slide portraying nothing except abstract nouns: INTEGRITY: OBJECTIVES, OPERATIONS.

PREPARATION, PLANNING, PRODUCTIVITY, PROGRESS: RECONNAISANCE,

RECOGNITION, REPORTING: and so on in an endless and utterly unmemorable series.

Words are what the presenter is there for: he is provided with the complex and ingenious

equipment of tongue, lips, teeth, pharynx, larynx, and lungs in order to utter them; It is not

possible to make a rule banning all words from visual aids, because they are sometimes

necessary to help the audience identify pictures and, just occasionally, an expert finds ways of

using them effectively and dramatically; otherwise it would be an excellent rule.

Those then are the two basic rules, which are very obvious when you state them: a visual

must be necessary, and it must be visual.

2 The missing slide

A fault almost as common as the unnecessary slide (though far less obvious) is the missing

slide. We must all have witnessed presentations in which the speaker confused or lost us

completely by his failure to use a picture to communicate a concept that was very hard to take

in through the ears but could have been easily absorbed through the eyes. A reef knot or the

film loading path of a projector a statistical data are an outstanding example, where a

judicious use of charts and graphs can instantly clarify and emphasise trends, proportions and

relationships which are difficult to explain by words alone.

So having planned your presentation and your essential slides together, it is still a good idea

to go through it again looking out for the passages where a slide would help to clarify a

complex idea or communicate an involved process.

3 The impact slide

A good discipline for anyone planning a speech, lecture or presentation - whether he is using

slides or not - is to ask himself what single point he most wishes the audience to take away

with them. A good way to put this is to ask yourself “As I sit down, what remark do I most

want my target listener to turn and make to the person next to him?” When you have

identified that remark, you have identified the one slide that you must include in your

presentation, and what is more the slide you must take most care over to ensure that it is

striking enough to stay in the mind. It should ideally be the most visually memorable image of

your whole presentation, and one you come back to more than once; it is frequently a good

idea to leave it up as you finish.

4 The verbal slide

We have already looked at the fatuity of the Abstract Noun slide - INTEGRITY and the rest

of them - but the verbal slide is worse than fatuous, it is destructive. The verbal slide is a slide

consisting of whole statements; sometimes several of them numbered sequentially on a single

slide. It is a killer.

It is a killer because, as we have already agreed, words are what the presenter is there for, and

what he is uniquely equipped to utter. But it is a killer for other reasons as well. In the first

place, people all listen at the same speed - the speed of the speaker - but they all read at

different speeds, so you immediately split your audience into groups who are mentally out of

touch with you and each other. In the second place, what are you to say while the words are

on the screen? If you repeat the words verbatim, why have them on the slide? Are you trying

to teach your audience to read? If you shut up completely, some will finish and be bored

while others are still reading. If you say something different from the slide, you are making a

basic communications howler, since no one can take in different verbal information

simultaneously through eyes and ears. You cannot win. In fact most of the times I have seen

this done (and that is plenty) the only conclusion I could reasonably make was that the

speaker was projecting his lecture notes. I am all for lecture notes, but the speaker should

keep them on the table or the lectern or in his hand - he should never throw them up on the

screen.

DESIGN (1) Readability

Design is an emotive word, and to many presenters a frightening one. It suggests fancy young

men with bright clothes and long hair whose heads are too far in the clouds for their feet to be

on the ground. I suppose there are designers like that, but I have never met them. The

designers I have worked with have been professional craftsmen who only need to know what

you want to communicate, to whom, when, and how much you can spend on communicating

it. If your budget will run to a designer, meet a few and choose the one you seem to

communicate with best. But if you cannot afford a designer, do not worry. The foundations of

good slide design are common sense and clarity of intention. A sense of colour, line,

composition, proportion and harmony, the gifts of visual invention and manual dexterity,

knowledge of typefaces and colour psychology - these are fine if you can afford them - but

you can produce an excellent slide presentation without them. They are the icing on the cake

of communication. I have seen enormously effective slide presentations put together by

unaided groups in production engineering, computer applications and market development

departments, and I have seen disastrous ones concocted with the aid of a top design studio

who for all their skill were powerless to avert a catastrophe that was not of their making.

So if you know what you want the slides to do, go ahead and draw, paint or photograph them

yourself. There are just two main areas where you have to be careful: the legibility of words

and the comprehensibility of pictures. This section is about legibility.

Too many words

We have already agreed not to use slides that consist only of words. But even pictorial slides

can have too many words on them, and they often do. The words may be used to identify

pictures or describe stages in a process, but whatever their intended task they will fail in it if

there are too many of them. The audience is either deterred from reading them or fails to

listen to the speaker because it is following the eye-words at the expense of the ear-words.

Never put more words on the slide than you would put on a T-shirt is a good motto. If you are

still worried, there are two important points to bear in mind:

(I) A slide for use in a presentation does not have to be self-explanatory and is

often more effective if it cannot be properly understood until the speaker

identifies and explains the picture. It is a support for the presenter, not a

substitute for him. The effect of a slide is often increased if the speaker brings

it to life and breathes meaning into it as he takes his audience through it.

(ii) Some of the most intractable problems of slide design can be swiftly and easily

resolved by giving the visual information progressively, over a sequence of

slides, instead of trying to cram it all on to one.

Too small words

Another common word-fault is simply not making the words big enough. It sounds too

obvious to be worth mentioning, but it is one of the easiest traps in the world to fall into. The

trouble is that all the people responsible for the presentation know what the words are already,

so they can read them fine. Moreover they want the words to be big enough, because it is such

a bore drawing and shooting the slide all over again, so they kid themselves the words are

perfectly legible. And on top of that, they often forget how far away from the screen some of

the audience may be sitting. The only safe course is to make the words (if you must have

them) as big as possible, and to keep an active and lively suspicion, bring in a friend who

does not know the slides, sit him in the back row, and project the slides for him and make him

call out all the words. If possible, do this in time to redo the slides: if not, note the words he

has trouble with and make sure you say them out loud when giving the presentation.

Words at all angles

Words run in horizontal lines. It is the angle at which we are all taught to do our writing and

reading, and any other angle presents us with difficulty of the unfamiliar. The trouble is that

pictures and charts do not all follow those lines, and it would be very boring if they did. This

often tempts people to let lines on the picture dictate the angles of words. THIS NEVER

WORKS.

The pie chart is of course the most common temptation: if the presenter writes words or

numbers along the bicycle-spoke lines it becomes his custard pie chart. But it is still only one

temptation among many. The only safe rule is always to write words horizontally, and to

relate them to the object they identify by clear lines or arrows, perhaps aided by same-colour

coding.

Colour camouflage

Of all the easy aids to successful slide design, colour is the one most frequently ignored by

the non-professional, and in particular coloured backgrounds. It is not just that coloured

backgrounds are infinitely more interesting than plain white ones: the background colour can

also be used as a key to remind the audience where the speaker has got to - e.g. blue for

research, red for production, green for marketing, etc.; these can be introduced by chapter

heading slides in different colours, which usefully space and signpost the presentation.

There is however one special trap for those who graduate from black-on-white to colour-on-

colour, and that is camouflage. People do not often fall into this trap when they are simply

using one colour on one other colour: it is when they start to make colour-differentiation’s

between the foreground colours that they inadvertently put maroon on purple and deep pink

on light red. Even with white backgrounds you are not safe- a long throw to a large screen can

make yellow-on-white virtually invisible. This problem gets more acute as you need more and

more different colours on the same slide. This is one of those points where you should ask

yourself if a sequence of slides might not be better.

DESIGN (2) Comprehensibility

I honestly believe I have never seen a slide that had too little visual or verbal information on

it. By contrast, I have seen innumerable slides that tried to cram too much in. So when we are

talking about comprehensibility, we are talking first and foremost about overcrowding.

There is no doubt at all what is the greatest single cause of the overcrowded slide: it is taking

illustrations straight out of books, magazines or other printed sources. It is essential to realise

that print is not speech. People can read to themselves at their own pace and study a chart or a

diagram in their own time: a complex flow diagram that takes three minutes to work through

can be an excellent and invaluable adjunct to a book. It will be death on the screen.

But book illustrations, though certainly the chief culprit, are not the only one. There is the

permanent temptation to elaborate, augment and subdivide a visual illustration, which every

presenter has to learn to identify in himself before he can conquer it. Often he is afraid that

some expert in his audience will pick holes in his illustrations unless they are comprehensive

and correct to the last irrelevant detail. He need have no such fears; it is the simplest thing in

the world to say, “Here in broad outline/in general terms/in a very simplified form...” and he

is covered. So the general rule is redraw print illustrations in a greatly simplified form

(remembering you can often make up by adding colours much of what you lose by subtracting

lines) and have the courage of your own clarification when producing your own original

pictures. The words to engrave on your heart (and they are true of the whole presentation, not

just the slides) are KEEP IT SIMPLE.

There are four particular areas where slides are most often overcomplicated - charts,

engineering drawings, processes, and tables of figures.

Charts

Charts are a tremendous aid to communication. Pie charts are a marvellously simple way of

showing what share of a total resource goes to which of the different applications. Bar charts

and histograms convey relative sizes instantly. Graphs are unequalled for showing trends and

variable relationships. The intelligent use of charts is often the solution to the hardest

problems of communicating facts and figures.

But unfortunately charts, although they are inherently simple, are susceptible to endless

complication by people who do not know when to stop. Extra lines and shadings get added,

more and more facts and figures are put in, until the most beautiful and simple representation

of a process, a proportion or a relationship becomes so unintelligible that it baffles or bores

those whom it should interest and enlighten.

The rule with charts is to keep everything off them that you possible can. You can add

information verbally while you talk, and this often strengthens the chart as a communication

device: and you can always -usually with advantage- have a sequence of simple charts instead

of a single complex one.

Engineering drawings

The question that sorts the wheat from the chaff when considering an engineering drawing is

not “How does the machine/system/process work?” but “What aspect of the

machine/system/process must this slide illustrate?” The first question will land you with an

incomprehensible jumble: the second will enable you to exclude all unnecessary details and

concentrate on just those parts that matter for the point you are making.

If you are photographing machinery (or anything else for that matter) the same applies. You

can mask off on the photograph (or paint out on the slide) all those details that distract from

what you want to show: you can place coloured drapes or screens over inessentials before you

photograph: you use close up to frame only what you want to show, and not a wide angle that

includes its irrelevant environment: or use high key lighting to darken everything else, or fast

shutter speeds (and so wider aperture) to lessen the focal depth and thus defocus and exclude

background detail.

Interconnection

Procedures and processes can be a headache for the slide designer. It is often essential to

show the paths taken by data through a computer, chemicals through a plant, documents

through an office, or current through a circuit, but the resultant jumble of boxes, arrows and

lines can mean ten minutes hard concentration for the audience while the speaker shuts up and

watches them. If he tries to take them through it, half of them get ahead of him and half of

them don’t keep up with him. So what do you do?

The answer, almost always, is to break it down first and then build it up gradually. It is not

always easy, but a judicious use of colour codes can help, plus the device of masking down

the sequences, you have already been through as you bring up each new slide with the next

part of the process, until finally you show it complete. The two dangers to watch are the

temptation to take people through it too fast and in too few slides, and failing to stop and

remind them where you have got to and tell them where you are going to next.

Tables of figures

On the whole, tables of figures are to be avoided in slides. The information you want

extracted from them is usually better displayed by graphic representation on a chart or

diagram. It is not just that they can be confusing: they can also be too interesting, so that

people start finding all sorts of fascinating information that is nothing to do with what you are

using them to illustrate and competes with what you are saying. But if you have to use tables

of figures there are two devices that can get you over this difficulty. One is putting coloured

rings around the figures you want to draw attention to, which works if there are only a few

figures of significance on the chart. The other is to mask down all the vertical columns or

horizontal rows except the one (or ones) that matter for your purposes. And if you use this

second device, you can always use the first with it to ring round certain figures within the

highlighted row or column.

PREPARATION 1

(a) Unless you are a lunatic or a masochist, there are certain absolutely essential checks

you have to carry out before a slide presentation, and certain precautions you must

take. The reason is clear: once you introduce even the simplest technology into the

business of direct communication between people in the same room, there is a danger

that the technology will triumph over the communication. There is no need to make

too much of this danger, but it is fatal to ignore it. The only way to make sure that the

technology increases the effectiveness of the communication rather than diminishing it

is to have it firmly under your control and to know you have it there. That means

knowing that it is going to work which, in turn, means having carried out the

necessary checks and taken the necessary precautions.

The only way to do this is to think yourself through the whole presentation and,

having done that, to have a complete dress rehearsal - if possible in the actual place

where you will be giving the presentation.

(b) The rehearsal comes under precautions in the next section. The checks come under

these four headings:

(I) The slides.

(ii) The projector.

(iii)The hall.

(iv) The environment.

1 Checks

(I) The slides. Check that they are all the right way up, the right way round, and in the

right order (numbered by a finger-spot sticker in the corner), and carry out this check

after you have loaded them in the magazine or carousel.

(ii) The projector. Check its operation, power supply, length of flex, check its alignment

and focus, check that the light is bright enough but not too hot for the slides, and

check its loading mechanism.

(iii) The hall. Check the actual place where you are giving the presentation for the

audience’s angle of sight, for window closing and curtains, electric sockets, acoustics -

surprises you never think of until you see the place.

(iv) The environment. Are you on the flight landing to a major airport? Is there a potato-

peeling machine immediately above? Are you next to a school playground? When is

fire practice? You never think of all possible things that can go wrong but a visit to the

location and a stroll around and a chat to other people who have used the place for

presentations should take care of most of them. This list is by no means exhaustive or

definitive: no list ever could be. It is intended to illustrate the basic principle of pre-

presentation checking, which is for the people who will actually be using in the place

where they will actually be using them. If you leave out any of these elements you

may still get away with it, but you are increasing the risk.

PREPARATION 2

The one essential precaution is rehearsal. If you do not have a full-scale rehearsal for any

presentation that has more than half a dozen slides, you deserve everything that is coming to

you. Of all the failures that scupper presentations, failure to rehearse is the most frequent and

the most deadly. Do not confuse a rehearsal with practices, run-throughs and try-outs. You

will require all these if the presentation is at all complicated, to view the slides, check them

against the script, and time the various sections. What distinguishes a rehearsal is that it aims

to reproduce exactly what the audience will see on the day. That means above all that you run

it straight through from start to finish without any breaks; only this way will you show up

time problems, for instance insufficient time to reload a magazine.

Ideally you will hold the rehearsal in the actual place where you will be giving the

presentation. Anything else is second best, though sometimes you have to settle for second

best. And ideally you will give yourself a reasonable gap between the rehearsal and the

performance: if offered the choice of the morning of the presentation or the evening before,

go for the evening before. There are two reasons, one psychological and one practical: the

psychological one is that your brain has more time to assimilate the lessons, and the practical

one is that the extra hours may be vital to send off for a new projector, redesign a slide, get

hold of a neck microphone, change a loudspeaker, hire a new projection screen or carry out

any of a hundred different emergency actions that the rehearsal may show to be necessary.

However, although the rehearsal may reveal new actions to be taken or changes to be made,

you hope it will not. The need for changes ought to have been revealed earlier. The purpose of

the rehearsal is to `fix the presentation in the form in which it will be given. Changes made

after the final rehearsal add a major hazard to the performance, and you should resist all those

that are not absolutely essential.

Precautions

A full rehearsal is essential even if the presenter is operating the projector himself by remote

push-button. If he has a projectionist operating it, it is doubly or trebly important for them to

rehearse together. There is no doubt that the best person to operate the projector is the

presenters understudy, someone who knows the script slide sequence as well as the presenter

himself; but whoever does it, the two of them must practice and rehearse until they are

familiar with the whole operation and the presenter has confidence in the projectionist.

They must work out any codes they need to exchange information, and agree a cueing system.

The best cueing system is the script: the slides should come up on agreed word cues without

any hand signals or clickers or other distractions to the audience: the presenter, too, has

enough to think about without do-it-yourself telegraph, heliograph or semaphore. Even more

important they must ask themselves the `What if...? ´ questions, so that they have an agreed

procedure if, for example, the presenter leaves out a paragraph that had a slide in it or decides

to skip a complete section because the audience is getting restive. The

projectionist/understudy will do well to stuff his pockets with a technological first aid kit -

sellotape, fuses, spare bulbs, wire, screwdriver, razor blade, penknife, scissors, felt pen, thin

pliers, and all those small essentials that you never need except when you haven’t got them. A

torch is the most often forgotten, but it is no fun hunting for dropped slides under the

audience’s feet in the dark. And another useful precaution is not to try and lift slides out and

replace them further down the magazine if they are wanted again later in the presentation:

always have a second copy of the slide. And if you have any doubts at all about the projector,

have second standing by. But the most vital precaution is to expect the worst to happen.

Performance

If you have planned and designed your slides properly and rehearsed them sufficiently, then

three-quarters of the problems of using slides in a presentation have been taken care of. The

one remaining important question that affects the actual performance is lighting.

Beyond doubt the best answer is to have a spotlight on the speaker and no other light in the

room except for the slide projector. This however can look a bit silly if you only have one or

two slides in a 30-minute presentation. You may find the slides can be grouped into one or

two continuous sequences, so you can have someone put the lights on or off, or you may

prefer to have low general lighting and try to avoid too much light spill on the screen. There

are various compromises, and the main point is to think about them in advance, but if you are

going to have lighting changes during the presentation then make someone else responsible

for them, not the projectionist. Apart from that there are just six principal errors to watch out

for.

1 Ignoring the slide. It is quite astonishing how often presenters put a slide on and take it off again without referring to it or even apparently noticing it - even

if the slide is quite complex and needs explaining. Unless the slide is instantly

and totally intelligible, it must be referred to, perhaps explained and possibly

talked through, with sufficient pause for the audience to take it in.

2 Pointer trouble. The wandering pointer is a fruitful source of distraction. If you have to use one (and don’t unless you can’t reach places you have to indicate)

then place it straight on the spot you are referring to, or trace the line you want

to identify, and take it straight away when you have finished. When not using

it, resist all temptation to use it as a swagger stick, conductor’s baton, 7-iron,

backscratcher or toothpick.

3 Masking. Never stand between any member of the audience and the screen. Above all never stand between the projector and the screen, not just because of

the shadow you cast but also because the part of the slide projected on to your

face makes you look silly and completely distracts the audience.

4 The Hunted Look. Do not keep looking over your shoulder every slide change just to see if the right one has come up. You must know it has, which is what

rehearsal is all about. You will, of course, frequently look at the slide with the

audience when talking about some actual detail on it.

5 Talking to the screen. The moment you turn towards the screen you make it extremely hard for the audience to hear what you are saying. Better to stand

square to the audience with the screen beside you (on your right if you are

right-handed) and turn towards it with your head and shoulders only.

6 Holding the slide too long. Once you have finished with a slide, get rid of it. If you leave it up on the screen while you are talking about something else, it can

only be a diversion and a distraction. You may want to switch off the

projector; if not, then you can always make the next slide a blank. Better still,

you can have a symbol - a company logo for instance - and combine it with a

chapter-heading caption (e.g. International Division) to remind the audience

which part of your subject you are dealing with.

CONCLUSION

A booklet designed to help people with the practicalities of slide presentation is bound to

concentrate on those areas where people most commonly go wrong. It is therefore in danger

of making the use of slides appear to be fraught with difficulty and risk. In a sense this is very

proper, since there is less danger in taking a slide presentation too seriously than in taking it

too lightly. But it is also proper to end by emphasising the tremendous extra dimension of

communication that good slides add to talk. It is not only that they illustrate, explain and

persuade in ways not possible by speech alone: they are also a form of courtesy to the

audience, showing that you have taken time and trouble to increase the interest and enhance

the value of the half hour or so of their lives that they have put at your disposal.

And when you look at it in broad terms, it all comes down to two fundamental laws. The first

one is KEEP IT SIMPLE. Keep the technology as simple as possible, keep the operation

simple, and keep the slides themselves simple. Always choose the simple and safe in

preference to the ingenious and ambitious - at least until you have been awarded your Masters

certificate.

The second law is REHEARSE, REHEARSE, REHEARSE. This means, of course, giving

yourself enough time, and it involves all the checks and precautions we have talked about, but

if there is sufficient rehearsal then most of the problems crop up in advance and can be taken

care of in time. Simple, straightforward and well-rehearsed slide presentations very rarely fail.