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Keep it Simple Speaking
- By Alan Fairweather
- Published 12/26/2008
- Coaching , Personal Growth , Public Speaking
- Unrated
Alan Fairweather
Alan Fairweather, "The Motivation Doctor," is a professional speaker, author and business development expert. For the past twelve years, he's been turning "adequate" managers, sales and customer service people into consistent top performers.
View all articles by Alan Fairweather
6 tips for success
Don't you just love Microsoft PowerPoint when you're making a presentation? All the different templates you can use, the colours, the different text, the graphics, the photographs, the special effects, the flashing lights and the amazing sounds.
I've been to a few presentations in my time and been on the receiving end of some PowerPoint presentations that leave a lot to be desired. I think some of them were produced by Steven Spielberg as some new Hollywood extravaganza. And I think some of the others were put together by Basil Boring in order to cure my insomnia.
The message is KISS; Keep It Simple when putting together a PowerPoint presentation. It's so tempting to use all the special effects however they may just distract from the message you're trying to get across.
Did Winston Churchill use PowerPoint; did Martin Luther King, President Kennedy, or any other great speaker, who
moved their audience
to action? These people got the message across without all the flashing lights, bells and whistles.
Okay, so they didn't have PowerPoint back in the days of these great speakers. (I'm just trying to imagine Winston Churchill saying - "Can everyone hear me all right at the back?")
Okay so you still want to use PP; here are some tips:
Lose the logo. Don't have your logo on every page only the first and the last; and if you can use your customers logo, so much the better.
Minimise the amount of text; use photographs, cartoons or other graphics to make your point.
Use 20pt as a minimum text size and only have one line of text per slide
No more that three colours per slide.
Avoid unnecessary slides, there's no need for a slide when you can state something simply.
Tailor the presentation to the audience and strip out all unnecessary slides.
Remember, you're not the important person here - your audience are - so keep thinking of them and Keep It Simple
Speaking.
Don't you just love Microsoft PowerPoint when you're making a presentation? All the different templates you can use, the colours, the different text, the graphics, the photographs, the special effects, the flashing lights and the amazing sounds.
I've been to a few presentations in my time and been on the receiving end of some PowerPoint presentations that leave a lot to be desired. I think some of them were produced by Steven Spielberg as some new Hollywood extravaganza. And I think some of the others were put together by Basil Boring in order to cure my insomnia.
The message is KISS; Keep It Simple when putting together a PowerPoint presentation. It's so tempting to use all the special effects however they may just distract from the message you're trying to get across.
Did Winston Churchill use PowerPoint; did Martin Luther King, President Kennedy, or any other great speaker, who
moved their audience
Okay, so they didn't have PowerPoint back in the days of these great speakers. (I'm just trying to imagine Winston Churchill saying - "Can everyone hear me all right at the back?")
Okay so you still want to use PP; here are some tips:
Lose the logo. Don't have your logo on every page only the first and the last; and if you can use your customers logo, so much the better.
Minimise the amount of text; use photographs, cartoons or other graphics to make your point.
Use 20pt as a minimum text size and only have one line of text per slide
No more that three colours per slide.
Avoid unnecessary slides, there's no need for a slide when you can state something simply.
Tailor the presentation to the audience and strip out all unnecessary slides.
Remember, you're not the important person here - your audience are - so keep thinking of them and Keep It Simple
Speaking.
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