Powerpoint

Powerpoint is celebrating its 25th birthday this month and the BBC has unearthed some rather amusing facts.

I have to admit since I've converted to Mac, Keynote offers a great way to present, especially when we were at uni. But occasionally even I have to sit through one of these and even had a creative brief to design one for the BBC, of which some of the slides can be found beneath. They were merely visual cues and each slide was a visual metaphor for her speech.

Here are the issues with most people's PPT presentations according to an 'expert' Max Atkinson.

Screens are magnets of everyone's eyes
More slides increase lack of focus on the presenter. Decide if they you want them watching you or the screen more.

Reading and listening distracts audiences
If there's nothing but text on the screen, people will try to read and listen at the same time - and won't succeed in doing either very well.

Slides shouldn't just be notes
Few speakers are willing to open their mouths until they have their first slide safely in place. But all too often the slides are verbal crutches for the speaker, not visual aids for the audience.

Information overload
You think bullet points make information more digestible? Think again. A dozen slides with five bullet points on each assumes that people are mentally capable of taking in a list of 60 points. If it's a 30-minute presentation, that's a rate of two-per-minute.

The bullet point problem
Audiences don't like wordy slides. Simple

The full article can be found here

Some of our PPT slides for the Beeb, slightly more interesting than bullet points!


On a side note, we started at Leith today :)