Have you seen some awful presentations and sworn you don’t want yours to be the same? Do you want your presentations to look, sound and feel better? In this column, I will write about the accumulated impact of the poor use of slide projectors.
Poor use of overhead projectors and computer slide projectors are some of the most common pitfalls for presenters. Great content and delivery can become pale and average when the presenter uses bad slides or uses good slides badly.
Think about the accumulated association most business people have for projected slides and boredom. Just as Pavlov’s dogs learned to associate ringing bells with food, many business people have learned to expect to be bored by the use of projectors.
This accumulated association grows through time at universities (where the lecturer from hell usually has an overhead), business training meetings, industry conferences and community meetings. If you add up all the times people have suffered bad visuals, dim lights and low energy, it’s amazing they don’t carry pillows into presentations because they expect to be bored.
You need to overcome this automatic negative association to hold your audience’s attention and energy at productive levels. To help you do this, here are 27 easy-to-use success tips for using overhead and computer projectors:
Hardware
1) Only use them if you have to. Ask yourself “What value does the projection add?”
2) If you’re not going to use the projector, get it out of sight or promise your listeners you won’t use it. Lay the projector on its side as a humorous symbol of disuse.
3) Always pre-test your hardware so you know it’s working and is properly in focus.
4) If possible, keep the room lights on while projecting.
5) Have someone else change slides for you so you can concentrate on your listeners and your presentation.
6) Turn the projector off (or cover the light projection) and turn the room lights back on when the projector is not in use. Extended dark periods are for sleeping.
7) Walk about the available space when the projector is off to move attendees’ heads, necks and eyes.
8) Alternate with appropriate use of handouts and other visual stimulation.
9) Never stand in front of the projection as it visually distracts and distorts information.
10) Give people time to read and mentally process a new slide. Shut up, stand still and count to five after you put up a new slide. If you speak or move immediately, they won’t be listening completely.
11) When you must point to details on overheads, use a pen or pencil, place it on the slide and get your hand out of the picture.
12) When you must point to the screen, make like the television weather presenter and use big whole arm movements and always face your audience. For added authority, if appropriate, keep your palms facing down and the back of your hand towards your audience.
13) Never face the screen when talking or “talk to” to the screen. Always talk to your listeners.
14) Don’t use those little hand-held red light beams as pointers. They eliminate the color red from your slides. They might make you look pompous. Half of the attendees won’t easily see where you’re pointing and the other half will imagine where they would point the red beam if they were holding it.
About the slides
15) Again, only use them if you have to. Ask yourself “What value do the slides add? Could more value come from using flip-charts, posters, handouts, audio or video?”
16) If using slides, use a common background theme or scheme for associated slides and ideas.
17) Add interesting color, graphics, icons and movement wherever possible.
18) Use no more than seven points per slide and seven slides per hour. If you have more data, write the book and mail it to your listeners before your meeting.
19) Size your headings at least 60pt and your text at least 30pt.
20) Rehearse talking through your slides aloud. This is the ultimate test for cohesion. For best results, rehearse with live listeners and alter your sequence until it makes sense when spoken.
21) Don’t use exclamation marks because, even from a short distance, they look like the number 1.
22) Don’t underline or ALL CAPS to highlight text as it makes it harder to read. Instead, do what newspapers do and use bold, italic or color to highlight your text.
23) When using color, plan themes and schemes to flow throughout your presentations. Reliable and predictable color themes will help your audience focus where you want them to.
24) Have data accumulate slide after slide rather than be revealed by a sliding piece of paper. Computer-generated slides do this well. Concealing data is great for building suspense but it distracts from the data you are presenting.
25) Tell people what they might or might not like to note. If you’re going to distribute copies of your slides, let your listeners know early on so they can stop scribbling and listen more intently.
26) If possible, avoid writing on slides while they’re being projected on the screen. Especially avoid allowing your imperfect handwriting to dilute the authority of your content by being projected amid professional printed text.
27) If you must change your own overhead slides while presenting, you might like to write your notes in the borders of the slide or on the separation sheets. This reduces your shuffling without speaking and your notes are invisible to your audience. Also, place your used slides in a tidy stack to avoid visual distractions during your presentation or clumsy shuffling at the end of your presentation.
Lee Folds is an independent management consultant based in Encino.
