PowerPoint Tips Blog » Design

Discover 3 reasons most presentations fail and 3 easy ways to fix them

Ellen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:36:11 +0000

I did a webinar for Brainshark.com and mybrainshark.com, a presentation-sharing website. It was called “3 reasons most presentations fail and 3 ways to fix them.” Over 500 people attended!

The 1-hour webinar included makeovers of slides that attendees submitted. You can watch the presentation for free here. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment!

Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.

Review of a new e-book: Visual Presentations

Ellen — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:28:35 +0000

I recently received a free copy of a new e-book, Visual Presentations: Boring Slides to Visual Presentations in 3 Easy Steps, by M.S. Ramgopal.

The author owns a company, Metamorph Training, and has a website at www.Presentation-Process.com. He and his wife are experienced at helping people present more effectively and decided to write an e-book about their system. Yes, there is a system.

It’s the system that is so interesting. As you read through the book, the author guides you step-by-step through the process of converting boring slides to visual ones.

To give you a peek preview into the concept, here are the 3 steps:

Identifying the objects and their relationships in the bulleted slides
Capturing the relationship between the objects in a basic skeletal form
Visualizing the objects

Without an example, you might say “Huh?” Luckily, the author provides many clear examples.

I’ll show you one of the examples.

Here’s a bulleted slide which talks about a company’s “service proposition.” You’ll probably agree that it looks pretty uninteresting.

The first step is to identify the objects and their relationships. They do this with color coding. You can start to see some connections.

The next step is to capture the relationship between the objects. Here’s the slide that captures the concept of customers traveling long distances to visit various properties.

Finally, you visualize the objects. Here’s the result:

Nice, right?

The e-book is just over 100 pages long and explains the concepts clearly and in detail. There are numerous before-and-after examples.

Full disclosure: The above link is an affiliate link, so I get a percentage of each sale.

5 great tools for presenters

Ellen — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:45:48 +0000

Jon Thomas, in his blog, Presentation Advisors, has written a post, “My Five Favorite Free Presentation Design Tools,” and I thought I’d share them with you.

Compfight is a tool to search for images on Flikr. letting you easily find images that have Creative Commons or Commercial licenses.
DaFont is a site for free fonts. It always helps to include an original font (as long as it’s appropriate for the topic and legible).
KeepVid lets you download YouTube videos so you can insert them in your presentations, without requiring an active Internet connection. Update: I’ve been told that this program is against the YouTube Terms of Use, Section 4C. (Thanks, @bwasson.)
Note and Point is a site that contains top-quality presentations. It’s a great place to look for design inspiration.
SlideShare is a slide-sharing site. While I don’t think its tools are the best, it has the most traffic, so uploading your presentations there will get you the most traffic.

I just finished a training video on “Getting Your Presentation n the Web” and it included a review of all the major slide-sharing sites. If you’re interested, leave a comment and let me know.

Interview with Shai Schwartz of VisualBee, automatic PowerPoint design software

Ellen — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:56:30 +0000

VisualBee was a Gold Sponsor of my Outstanding Presentations Workshop last fall. To bring you more information about this unique product, I interviewed Shai Schwartz, VP Creative & Marketing, of VisualBee.

Question: Please describe briefly what VisualBee does.

Answer: VisualBee is a Free PowerPoint 2007/10 plug-in that automatically designs presentations. VisualBee uses the existing content and adds appropriate graphics to create an effective PowerPoint presentation. Using our software you won’t need to worry about the look anymore and can be completely focused on your content. Once your presentation messages are ready in simple slides, just let VisualBee to do the rest of the work for you, selecting your favorite design from its gallery. Once the presentation enhancement is done, you save it in PowerPoint format and can continue to edit your content as usual. Our Premium offer gives you even larger variety of professional designs, images, and features, such as automatically adding your own logo on every slide.

Question: Why did you decide to create software that does PowerPoint slide makeovers?

I’ve been working in the PowerPoint business for over 10 years now, helping people to create better presentation with better content and better design. I’ve noticed that although most people know what they want to say, they find many difficulties working with Microsoft PowerPoint. Some have technical difficulties, others don’t really have the talent to make slides look nice and clear–they end up with a presentation that is practically unreadable, and you can see how their audience is lost or just bored with it. I thought it could be a miracle if some simple software could take the burden off those people and take care of all the design of the presentation, setting them free to deal with the important messages and not the look.

Question: Can you provide some success stories—how customers have used your product?

We launched VisualBee 2.0 about 6 weeks ago and already have close to 10,000 users. People like the idea because they know the pain of creating PowerPoint for themselves. We have several hi-tech companies that are using our software on a day-to-day basis such as Alvarion, PwC, and many others. We feel VisualBee can help mainly that group called “the individual business user,” all those freelancers and self-employed people who are using PowerPoint and cannot afford to pay a design studio or graphic designer, yet still need to have a professional presentation in order to make the best impression on their clients.

You can download the free version here.

What makes a successful sales presentation?

Ellen — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:01:06 +0000

Do you give sales presentations? Perhaps you travel to prospective clients‘ offices and pitch a product or service. You may give webinars online to sell your wares. Another scenario: You invite people to your office and give them a presentation on what you offer.

Many products and services are sold via presentations. Your success depends on the effectiveness of your presentation. Sure, you also need to set up the presentation in advance and follow up afterwards, but the presentation is the pitch.

Here are some of my thoughts about what makes a successful sales presentation:

You have a solution that the potential customer needs

You can give the most stunning presentation ever, but if you don’t have a solution to a problem of the potential customer, you probably won’t make the sale. If you do, you’ve cheated him/her into thinking you do, and that isn’t ethical.

You explain how your solution will solve your potential customer’s problem

On the other hand, you may have a solution, but not explain it clearly and this is where presentation preparation comes in. As you prepare what you will say, check to make sure that your content is clear and organized.

Explicitly state the problem, based on prior discussions or on answers to your questions during the presentation. Then show how your product or service will solve the problem.

You provide supporting data to back up your solution

You may have a great solution, but how do you get people to believe you? This is the art of persuasion. (See my e-book, The Art of Persuasion.)

Lost Art of Persuasion

When you explain your solution, you need to connect everything you say to their problem and back it up with both hard and soft data. Hard data is facts and figures. Soft data is testimonials, your company’s experience, names of well-known customers, and conveying how your solution will make them feel.

Your visuals are clear

Slides that you create need to be crystal clear. Because people can’t read and listen at the same time, if you use slides with lots of text, they’ll read them and won’t hear much of what you’re saying—that isn’t being clear.

Your diagrams and charts need to be easy to understand and make your point without irrelevant content. If you need to provide highly detailed data such as a spreadsheet, use a handout so people can follow along the rows with their finger. Don’t provide data that isn’t necessary during the presentation. Leave it as a handout afterward, if people want to study it before making a decision.

All text should be legible and keep animation to a minimum, unless it shows a process. All visuals should be high-quality. Avoid distracting backgrounds.

Use the Tell ‘n’ Show Method, which puts one point on a slide and backs up that point with a photo, diagram, or chart. Watch my video about how to design slides with one point on a slide on YouTube.

For more detailed instructions, check out my webinar, Slide Design for Non-Designers.

High Impact Slide Design for Non-Designers

You connect with your audience

When you speak, think of your presentation as a conversation, especially in a small group. Interact with your audience, meet their eyes, ask and answer questions, be friendly and natural. Your potential customer wants to buy from a person not a presenter.

What has worked for you?

Create a changeable radial gradient background theme

Ellen — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:14:26 +0000

I’ve mentioned before (here) that you can create a theme in PowerPoint 2007 that changes as you change the theme colors. This gives you lots of flexibility to create a great background in many circumstances. For example, you can change the background to the branding colors of a potential client is you give sales presentations. If you create presentations for others, you can use this technique to quickly create a background that matches the branding of your clients.

So, create one background and use it many times. I usually use a plain white background, but I do like a radial gradient with its corner at the upper-left of the slide.

Changeable radial gradient background theme

Why do I like this background?

It’s subtle so it doesn’t compete with your content but has just enough interest so that it isn’t boring. (I would probably still use white backgrounds on many slides where I want to add photos.)
The lighter upper-left corner has an uplifting effect for me. The darker lower-right corner is grounding. Well, maybe that’s just my feeling about it.

Follow these steps:

Open the Slide Master (Shift+Normal view button or View> Slide Master.

Click the top, large thumbnail in the left panel of layouts. This thumbnail controls all the rest.

On the slide, insert a rectangle covering the entire slide. (Insert> Shapes)

With the rectangle selected, right-click and choose Format Shape. You’ll see the Format Shape dialog box.

Click the Gradient Fill option.

From the Type drop-down list, choose Radial.

From the Direction drop-down list, choose the rightmost option. The tooltip says From Corner.

Format Shape dialog box in PowerPoint 2007

I added an additional color stop. To do so, click Add in the Gradient Stops section, for a total of four.

Choose Stop 1 and use the Color drop-down list to specify a color. To get predictable results when you change your theme colors, you should choose from the existing theme colors, as you see below.

Gradient settings in PowerPoint 2007

Use the Stop Position slider to set the location of the stop. Repeat for each stop. Here are my position settings:

	Position
Stop 1	0%
Stop 2	18%
Stop 3	43%
Stop 4	98%

If you move the dialog box off the slide, you can see changes as you make them. When you’re done, click Close.

Click the Normal view icon or choose View> Normal.

Click the Design tab, then click the little More arrow in the Themes group to open the Themes gallery.

At the bottom of the gallery, choose Save Current Theme. Give the theme a name and click Save.

You’re done. You can now use the theme in any new presentation you create. When you open a new presentation, click the Design tab and look for your new theme in the Custom section of the Themes Gallery. (If you don’t see it, click Browse for Themes at the bottom. You’ll have to figure out where the themes are and that depends on your operating system. In Windows Vista, for example, they’re in C:\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes. Whew!)

To change the colors, on the Design tab, click the Colors drop-down list and pass your cursor over the various options to see the results. You can also create custom theme colors.

Go create a changeable theme!

Create a Visual Summary Slide

Ellen — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:09:03 +0000

When I do my webinars, I end with a summary slide to help the audience members remember what I’ve said. A slide with a list of bullet points won’t work very well, because text doesn’t jog the memory. So I use a visual summary slide. Here’s an example.

PowerPoint visual summary slide

Several people have asked me how to create this type of summary slide. Here are the steps:

Choose a slide that presents each of your main points. You probably shouldn’t have more than 5 or 6.

Take a screen shot of the slide that covers a square area. This means you’ll have to omit the edges of the slide. The reason for this is that PowerPoint will stretch or shrink the image to fit the circle; if you include the entire slide, the image will be distorted. You can press the Print Screen button, use Snip in Vista, or use a screen capture program like TechSmith’s SnagIt.

Save the screen capture as a JPG or PNG file in the same location as your presentation. If you use the Print Screen key, open Paint, which comes with Windows, paste, and then save.

Create your shapes. For this diagram, I used PowerPoint 2007′s SmartArt feature. I chose Insert tab> Illustrations group> Smart Art. In the Cycle category, I chose Radial Cycle.

PowerPoint visual summary slide with SmartArt

If you need to add a circle on the circumference, click an outside circle and go to SmartArt Tools Design tab> Create Graphic group> Add Shape. To delete a shape, select it and press the Delete key.

Drag the corner handle and enlarge the diagram to cover the entire slide.

Choose a style from the SmartArt Styles group.

PowerPoint visual summary slide using SmartArt

The diagram is meant for text, not images. (Some SmartArt types do take images.) To add flexibility, right-click the selected diagram and choose Group>Ungroup twice. That’s right, you need to do it twice.

PowerPoint visual summary slide, ungrouping SmartArt

Double-click the top circle to select it and display the Format tab. In the Shape Styles group, choose Shape Fill> Picture.

Navigate to your image and double-click it.

PowerPoint visual summary slide-filling a circle with an image

Continue with the rest of your circles until you’re done!

New webinar coming up; previous one available as a recording

Ellen — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:14:31 +0000

The next webinar is Slide Design for Non-Designers. I love this topic, because it’s close to my heart—I’m definitely not a designer. Yet I can create stunning slides (or so people tell me).

My story is that my slides used to look awful. After some painful feedback, I read books and studied slides that I thought looked great, noting the techniques and layouts they used. I’ve learned from some of the top designers in the country at the PowerPoint Live conference. This webinar will put everything together for you, giving you techniques that you can put to use right away.

The webinar comes with a crazy bonus. Thinking about it now, I can’t believe I did this. I’m offering a free slide makeover for everyone who submits a slide to me. Where will I find the time? But I decided not to back out on this one.

Everyone who has to design his or her own slides and who isn’t artistically inclined should take this course. How many people like that do you know? Share the news! Here’s the URL: http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/estore/training_webinar_slide_design_non-designers.html.

Meanwhile the last webinar, “Presenting to Teach & Inform: PowerPoint for Education & Training,” was a great success! The recording is now available.

Improve your slide design by trying layout variations

Ellen — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:47:57 +0000

In my “Create an Outstanding Presentation” workshops and self-study course, I teach four layouts that always look good. I taught them again recently in a presentation skills class for college students.

I find that many presenters who create their own slides struggle with slide design. Not being artists, their efforts are clunky. They usually know this, but don’t know what to do about it.

In March, I’ll be giving a training webinar, Slide Design for Non-Designers, that will provide many more solutions that anyone, even the artistically challenged (like me!), can use.

But until then, I thought I’d give you two layouts that always look good. They’re easy to create, too.

Many people use this layout, which I call “everything centered on top of everything else.” The default template seems to encourage centering everything. It’s certainly not horrible, but I think you’ll see that it can be improved.

Here’s an alternative. The heading is on the left, which I recommend for a couple of reasons. (See the Related Tips section below.) The image covers the slide from left to right. Part of the reason this slide looks better is that the image is larger. But it’s more than that; there’s a more pleasing balance. Your eye starts at the upper left and travels diagonally.

Garr Reynolds calls this an “asymmetrical design” in his book Presentationzen. He says, “symmetrical designs are more static than asymmetrical designs and evoke feelings of formality or stability.” If you have his book, look on p. 149 for an example of both types of designs.

A second look is what I call the vertical split. If you have Photoshop skills, you could make the transition more gradual with a transparency gradient, but this isn’t necessary.

Usually, I make the split even, but here the image takes up about 60% of the slide’s width.

You can watch me makeover a text slide into 4 slides in this YouTube video, One Point on a Slide. You’ll see how I create these two layouts.

Take some time to try out layout variations and I believe that you’ll see a vast improvement in the way your slides look and feel.

Related Tips

Create a better PowerPoint template

Put one point on a slide

Use PowerPoint as a graphics program

Ellen — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:02:34 +0000

If you don’t know or have other graphics software, you can use PowerPoint — and many people do. It’s not high end, but if your needs are simple, the fact that you know and have it is a great plus. PowerPoint 2007 improved the graphics engine and you can add many more effects, such as soft edges, beveled edges, and soft shadows.

You can insert photos (Insert> Picture> From File or Insert tab> Picture), then crop, resize, format, and move them. You can use AutoShapes/shapes as well.

When you have a look that you want, group everything. Go to the Drawing toolbar> Draw> Group. (In PowerPoint 2007, press Ctrl+G.)

Finally, right-click and choose Save as Picture. You can save in a variety of formats.

You can then use that image in another program, to upload to a Web site, or to reinsert into PowerPoint.

Here you see a Twitter background that I created in PowerPoint. Please follow me on Twitter for additional tips that I don’t publish on my site. Go to www.twitter.com/EFinkelstein.

Related tips: