Slides

How to use slides effectively in online meetings

by Phil Waknell

It’s no secret that most slide presentations are boring, ineffective wastes of time. PowerPoint isn’t the problem - it’s how people (mis)use it. In fact most business meetings would do well to avoid slides - and presentations - altogether. Meetings should be for discussion, connection, decisions… not for information-sharing. Using a wonderfully-crafted PowerPoint deck to share information is like using an iPad Pro as a frisbee: sure, it’s well-designed and better than most other tablets, but it’s still the wrong tool for the job.

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Three most annoying problems with business presentations, according to PowerPoint expert Dave Paradi

by Pierre Morsa

Dave Paradi, an expert on PowerPoint presentations, has published the results of the annoying PowerPoint survey. We are not going to discuss the full results here, but what is clear is that the top 3 hasn’t changed much in many years. You could probably guess them just by asking yourself “what do I hate about PowerPoint presentations?” The top three problems are: The speaker reads the slides to us The text is too small

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Cliché slides

by Pierre Morsa

You’ve probably all seen these slides: they use a picture which is “cliché,” like two shaking hands. Using a few of these clichés is fine, because they are often the clearest way to illustrate the idea of the slide; it’s nice to be creative, but clarity of the message comes first. But some presentations seem to overflow with these clichés, using them on every slide. So I asked myself the question: why are some presentations nearly cliché-free, while other presentations are full of them?

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How to Check If Your Presentation Remote Works Without Anyone Noticing

by Pierre Morsa

It’s your turn to present. You’ve launched your presentation and enter the stage. But how do you know if your presentation remote is working? If you start clicking back and forth between your first and second slide to see if it is working, everyone will notice what you’re doing, and you will not make a great first impression. Luckily, someone shared a simple tip on twitter. Just duplicate your first slide.

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Why Prezi failed at revolutionizing presentations

by Pierre Morsa

In 2009, the year when TED decided to launch its TEDx license program, Prezi was born out of the desire to overcome the limitations of tools like PowerPoint and Keynote. With its dramatic zooming and panning effects, it certainly did catch the eye of audiences worldwide when it was introduced. But its over-reliance on movement effects quickly became a visual nuisance, making the audience feel as if they had been on a boat caught in a category 10 hurricane.

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The 7 deadly sins of slide design

by Pierre Morsa

This is a quick list of seven common problems that we see with slides created by non specialists. However they are relatively easy to spot, and you don’t have to be a graphic designer to avoid them. Read on and your next slides will look much better! Too much content. The goal is not to cover every single inch with content. It’s not because you have some space left at the bottom of the slide that you should put something there.

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