The document outlines strategies for delivering effective presentations, emphasizing the importance of clarity, audience engagement, and visual communication. It provides various techniques for planning, structuring, and rehearsing presentations to ensure the message achieves its objectives. Additionally, it advises on design elements, avoiding excessive text, and offers recommendations for using tools and templates effectively.

1. Better presentations
Les Johnson

2. How to give a bad presentation
 Have no clear point
 Do not identify benefits
 Have no clear flow
 Make the text too detailed
 Have too many slides
 Run over time, take too long

4. Plan your story
 Framing
Audience and Objective
Content and Flow
 Outlining
Opening gambit
Scaffold and Summary

5. Preview of this presentation
Story Planning
 Framing
 Outlining
Story Telling
 Visual communication
 Documentation

6. Preview
Story Planning
 Framing
 Outlining
Story Telling
 Visual communication
 Documentation

7. The art of persuasion: advocacy
 Carry them by their handles
 Pathos: Getting into the audience‟s mind
 Translate features into benefits
 “What‟s in it for me?”
 Your presentation their needs
 Don‟t rely on them making inferences

8. Know your audience
 The objective (to understand, believe, behave)
 Audience knowledge level/s
 Audience‟s wants/needs (benefits)
 Relevant external factors
 When, where, what
 questions allowed?

9. Brainstorm
 Brainstorm, use a technology, one of:
Different coloured Post-It notes
Whiteboards, coloured pens
Metal boards and magnetic „Hexies‟
Software products
 Expand then cluster

10. Decide on a sequence that flows
Some models:
 Opportunity – leverage
 Features – benefits
 Case study
 Rhetorical question …
 Spatial metaphor (e.g. pyramid)

11. Summary linked to objective

12. Preview
Story Planning
 Framing
 Outlining
Story Telling
 Visual communication
 Rehearsal and Documentation

13. Find an Opening Gambit
“How do you paint a picture of infinity? How
do you dance about death? How do you
draw a diagram explaining entropy?”
To seize attention
To ease you in
To launch your presentation

14. Link to the objective
 The Unique Selling Point
What you (or your unit) does
Couple of sentences only
 Validation [optional]
A significant achievement
An impressive endorsement
 Call for action
I know you will want to sign up
Clear explicit

15. Scaffold
Use an outliner ?
First level = title of slide
Second level = bullets points
Third level = sub bullets

16. Preview
 Tell them what‟s coming
 As if only one slide available
 Why not enlist the flow model?
 Link to objective
 Comes after opening gambit
 Say how long you will speak

17. Preview
Story Planning
 Framing
 Scaffolding
Story Telling
 Visual communication
 Documentation

18. A key concept
 Slides are not documents
 Do not send slides in advance
 If needed, send executive summary before
 Do not give slides as a handout
 A presentation serves only one purpose
 Notes Page View is a document

19. Psychology of perception
 Everything is „read‟
 Text: left to right, top to bottom
 Graphs: left to right, bottom to top
 Design for minimum eye sweeps
 Less is more

20. Design elements
 Everything is read
 Text: left to right, top to bottom
 Graphs: left to right, bottom to top
 Design for minimum eye sweeps
 Less is more
100_
75 _
50 _
25 _

21. Text graphics
 Minimize eye sweeps
6 lines, each 6 words
Only two levels
Large font: 24 point
 Bullets are headlines not sentences
 Exception: direct quote

22. Tables
Technological convergence: Communications
„phone Internet Mobile TV Music GPS Tickets others
Shop
Call
Web
Mobile

23. Numeric graphics
90 -
90
80
70
50 - 60
50 East
40 West
30 North
20 -
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 1st Qtr 2nd Qtr 3rd Qtr 4th Qtr

24. Pictorial graphics
 Pictures are memorable
 Don‟t decorate
 Create an individual style
 Avoid text on images
 Avoid overlapping images
 Show what you mean

25. Navigational aids
 Pictorial graphics can aid navigation
 Design your slides to connect
 Bumpers / Progressive agenda
 Flow model
 Indexing
 Animations to conceal/reveal

26. Slime mould
Fruiting body
Culmination
Vegetative
Slug Aggregation
Life Cycle
Mound Streaming

27. The storyboard view
 20 slides a view (or outline)
 Look for groups
 Do they reflect your flow structure?
 Shift around as needed
 Edit to show connections

28. Post view
 Recycle your preview slide
 Link to objective

29. Preview
Story Planning
 Framing
 Scaffolding
Story Telling
 Visual communication
 Rehearsal and Documentation

30. Rehearse !

31. Send To Word
Send to a table in Word
Edit in Word for Post Presentation Handouts

32. Story Planning
 Framing
 Outlining
Story Telling
 Visual communication
 Documentation

33. Appendix

34. Acknowledgements
You are free to use this template for your personal
and work related presentations
Don’t
 Make this template available on a website for
download. This includes file sharing networks like
Slideshare, Myspace, Facebook, bit torrent etc
 Pass off any of Presentation Helper‟s art work as
your own work
You can find this free template and many more
on the Presentation Helper website
www.presentationhelper.co.uk

35. Example of a table
Title Title
Data Data
Note: PowerPoint does not allow you
to have nice default tables - but you
can cut and paste this one