Make your chart’s point CRYSTAL clear – visually & verbally [Video]

When you share a chart, how do you help your audience instantly get your point?

Often, presenters and analysts make people work way too hard to get the point of a chart!

So, to help you convey your point with punch, you’ll find 3 specific tips in this post. They’re inspired by a great 10-minute video by Donabel Santos, which I’ll share in a pair of short clips below. (Plus, you’ll find the full-length video at the end of the post.)

 

What do you think of this chart?Scroll to Contents ↓

In this 10-second clip, you’ll see a very busy line chart, which the speaker will later do a makeover on. (She’s using Tableau, but you could do the same makeover in Excel, PowerPoint, or any other charting software.)

The chart shows how market share changed over time – for over 70 phone vendors:

To see more clearly, click the Full screen (⛶) button during playback.
(To exit full-screen mode, click the button again, or press Esc.)

In this post, we’ll step through the makeover shown in the full-length video. And when­ever you do a chart makeover, I recommend you follow these 3 steps that we’ll use:Top ↑

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Banish bullets – prove you’re a pro! [@NolanHaims video]

You’ve probably heard that if you base most slides on bullet points, you’ll bore people. (Making you and your message less effective.)

But what can you do instead?

Well, below is a great 45-second clip of ideas for you:

That’s from design expert and Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Nolan Haims. I love how he uses Morph transitions to walk you through 3 options to improve your bullet points:

Build your talk on messages, not topics – Secret #15 of star presenters [Video]

Have you heard of the “assertion-evidence approach” for making slides? It’s a simple, powerful, evidence-based approach to presenting your talk.

It was devised as a more effective way to share scientific findings. But you can also use its direct­ness and clarity in business – to great effect.

And that’s especially so when you present insights from analysing data. You know, like:

• customer touchpoints
• company financials
• employee survey results.

 

What’s in this post?

Revealed: How to make slide colours look great together [Video] ·

If you’re anything like me when you give a talk, most of the time you probably use slides rather than using a flipchart or white­board (or speaking without any visuals).

But how much thought do you put into the colours on your slides?

That’s really worth your time – according to Bruce Gabrielle, author of the book Speaking PowerPoint:

“One of the secrets to great-looking
PowerPoint slides is colour choice”
Bruce Gabrielle

And I agree with Bruce. As I wrote about a few years back:

Using colours well is one of the key ways to make
your presentation look modern and professional.

You might wonder how much choice you have in your use of colours though. After all, it’s likely you use a template or PowerPoint theme that comes with colours built in.

Even so, with well-matched colours of your own, you can:

• Gently innovate by just changing some of the template’s less-used colours (while still matching with its main ones).
• Overhaul the template’s colours to fit in with the colour scheme used by your client, or by the event you’re speaking at.

So in the 4-minute video below from Bruce Gabrielle, you’ll see a neat tip for choosing colours that look good together.

Note: The video’s sound quality is quite poor, so please bear with it.

Want cool PowerPoint slides? Add a “roadmap” to them [Video]

Have you seen Pat Flynn’s great video about making slides? Right now, it’s had almost 1½ million views, and it’s called:

How to Create an Awesome Slide Presentation
(for Keynote or PowerPoint)

In his video, Pat shares pro tips to make your slideshows more engaging. So I highly recommend you watch it. (You’ll find it at the bottom of this post.)

 

My how-to video

Meanwhile, in the 1^st of the videos below, you’ll see the precise steps you can use to implement one of Pat’s tips. That is, to add what he calls a “roadmap” to your slides.

So, watch my 6-minute, hands-on video to see what’s meant by a roadmap, and learn exactly how you can add one in PowerPoint:

Makeover (part 2) of a slide makeover – fewer photos please

Have you seen my previous post? Here’s just a few sentences as a really quick recap:

“Do you find slide makeovers helpful?
I love them!

…they’re a form of ‘working out loud’ that
I find really useful”

That post’s the 1^st part of the makeover shown below, and it explains changes I made to slides 1-2 from a presentation by Diane Windingland.

In this post, you’ll find details of the changes I made to slides 3-5 (of 5) from Diane’s deck:

Makeover (part 1) of a slide makeover – fewer photos please

(Short of time? Skip ahead to the Contents)

Do you find slide makeovers helpful? I love them!

That’s because they show – in concrete terms – how you could improve specific slide layouts and formatting. And they even give you insight into the thought process of the designer who did the makeover. So they’re a form of “working out loud” that I find really useful.

Last month, presentation coach Diane Windingland published a slide makeover by a company called PunchSlide Design. The makeover included 7 slides from a presentation of
Diane’s, and she posted a before-and-after comparison of each one.

Of the 7 slides, 6 of them had photos added during the makeover. To me, that seemed a very high proportion, which led me to leave a comment on Diane’s blog:

“…using too many photos (or too many of any type of
slide) can be about as boring as over-using bullet points”

I felt strongly that I could do a better makeover!

Still, I found the makeover inspiring – partly because Diane’s slides were a great foundation to build on. And partly because, frankly, I felt strongly that I could do a better makeover!

So in today’s post, you’ll find my own makeover of 5 of Diane’s slides. Then, in this post and my next, I’ll share with you my thinking behind each slide’s redesign.

If you want to jump to a specific topic in this post, you can click any of these links:

Why use diagrams on your slides, not bullets? [Video]

How much do you (or your colleagues) use bullet points on your slides?

Want to change that?

If so, I’ve a great resource for you. It’s a fascinating video by a design agency called M62 Vincis, showing how you can use very simple diagrams in place of bullet points.

Below, check out the 8-minute video, presented by their CEO, Nicci Take (formerly known as Nicholas Oulton).

It shows an example of how to transform a typical bullet-based slide into a simple diagram. And as Nicci shows, diagrams are far more engaging, memorable and effective than bullet points:

Make your slide explain “So what?” – Secret #13 of star presenters, by Jean-Luc Doumont [Video]

Check out this 1-minute video clip (from a 1-hour talk) by Jean-Luc Doumont. In the clip, the speaker critiques a shot of a sample slide (which is the white area on his own grey slide).

As you’ll see, the sample slide contains just its title and a simple chart:

Did you see how the sample slide’s title makes a classic (and very common) mistake? Namely, it simply “parrots” what’s on the slide, saying:

Evolution of the number of candidates 1989-2012

And sure enough, the chart on the slide offers no surprises: It’s a line graph labelled “Number of candidates” – with an x-axis from 1989 to 2012.

As the slide offers no surprises, and no insights, it’s of no interest to the audience. So, they’ll be turned off by it, and they’ll tune out.

Don’t make that mistake with your slides!

Don’t make that mistake with your slides!

As Jean-Luc pointedly asks:

3 quick tips for better slides, by @NancyDuarte [Video]

If you’d like 3 quick tips for making better slide presentations, here’s a 2-minute video inspired by Nancy Duarte, and made by HBR (Harvard Business Review):

See the video

The 3 tips are:

1. Outline your deck on sticky notes first [0:30].
2. Use diagrams to replace bullets [1:22].
3. Reduce animation [2:00].

And those tips give you these benefits: