Your PowerPoint is Terrible: 15-steps to improve your briefings.

I have been witness to a countless number of horrible presentations. Some so mind-numbingly boring that only a sadist could have put it together. Deriving pure pleasure from my agony as they read every single bullet point on the slide verbatim. And you know they filled that slide to the brim with bullets written out in full sentences. Dreams of Calibri original still haunt me to this day. Text flying at me like I’m being sucked into a Twilight Zone space-time continuum wormhole. Oh, they decided to go with the default theme of Office 2007? Good for them! For the love of all that is holy, why is it in 4:3 aspect ratio?! What sin did I commit in my past life to be subjected to this? AND THANK YOU FOR PRINTING ONE SLIDE PER PAGE HARD COPIES!!! I’ll get a little exercise carrying them directly to the trash after this torture session is over. And maybe burn a few extra calories weeping myself to sleep tonight.
Has this ever been you? Have you inadvertently given a presentation like this? Do you want to get better? Please, for all business folk everywhere, please get better. Here’s a quick guide to get you started.
PowerPoint isn’t the problem. Your PowerPoint is the problem.
There is a lot of hate on PPT. Did you know that Amazon doesn’t use PPTs? Amazon is the best company in the world and they have fantastic meetings because everyone reads a 6-page white paper before attending. Okay, great. That is a solid approach for internal meetings of a product company. But many of us still need to brief clients or be prepared to have a meeting on the fly. PPTs still reign supreme. But it’s time for you to get out of the mid-2000s and modernize your briefings.
1. One point per slide
If you don’t take anything else away, take this. Only have one point per slide. And it should be short. Don’t make it a huge descriptive sentence with all of the details. PowerPoints are for briefing others in person. You’re there to talk and use the slide as a foundation. If you need your audience to have written details, then write a white paper.

2. Augment the single point with a graphic
Graphics are totally cool y’all. I heard all of the kids are doing them nowadays. Seriously though, the vast majority of information on the slides should be in the form of graphics. And they take a long time to do well. Do you suck at making graphics? Use some from the Internet to prove your point. Or download some icon packages from http://www.flaticon.com and draw a few lines between them. You don’t have to make the most interesting graphic ever, but you do need to visually depict your point. Trust me, graphics are way more memorable and informative than bullet points.

3. Augment the graphics with images
Images do more than spice up your PowerPoint. They convey feelings to your audience: happiness, frustration, awe, grand, powerful, confused, etc. There are so many sites out there where you can download ridiculously great images. My favorite is The Stocks where you can search a whole lot of different sites from a single portal.

4. Fonts are your friends
Go to dafont and install your favorites. That’s it. It’s ridiculously easy take your briefing to the next level using custom fonts. Some suggestions on proper font etiquette:
- Don’t use more than 2 or 3 fonts. I like to use a font for headers, text and call outs. Bebas Neue and Lobster are two of my favorites.
- Play with the size. HUGE text is effective.
- Be careful when sharing PowerPoints with coworkers if you’ve used custom fonts. If they aren’t installed, it will default to something else and make your spacing look terrible. You can embed fonts in your file.

5. Vary the background color
A solid black background with white text catches the eye. Don’t be afraid to switch it up. And please don’t keep everything with the plain white background and black text. I usually have a few standard backgrounds in a row and then use a solid color background as a transition slide if I’m changing topics. It’s worth noting, that you don’t want to print out slides that have solid backgrounds! There’s no options to automatically remove the colored backgrounds using the print settings.

6. Widescreen aspect ratio
Please use 16:9. I don’t know why they even have 4:3 as an option since all monitors and screens are widescreen. They’ve been widescreen since 1994. If you are a technology company and your presentations are in 4:3, you have failed. Full stop.

7. Stop with the branding banners
A small logo in the corner, or a name is okay. Put it on the bottom, out of the way. But a huge colored header at the top of every page is overkill. What all UX designers will tell you — it’s all about screen real estate. Anything that is “just there” without a function needs to go. White space is your friend. Why would you want to reduce your screen space by 10% on each page? Additionally, the banner locks you into using the same background and layout on every page. Be brave and ditch the logo.

8. No transitions
They were, and continue to be a novelty. They are not professional. If you want to show changes, show them incrementally on each slide (see next point). You’ve been in that presentation where someone asks a question and the presenter needs to click back through all of the flying pictures to get to the slide. You don’t work at Nickelodeon. You’re not trying to keep preteen children entertained with flashing lights and spiralling text. (Note: if you do work at Nickelodeon and you’re reading this, let me know if you need a snarky Tech. PM to join your team.) Gifs are okay though. Gifs rock.

9. Seek professional help
I like to think of myself as having a good eye for design. But I’m not a graphics artist. That’s why you should go and buy yourself some templates to help out. Professional graphic artist making it super easy for you to make a kickass brief.

10. Share as a PDF
You’ve spent all of this time making a sick briefing, and you email it to your colleagues as a PPT and then they screw with it. They don’t have the design skills you have. How dare they add a point to slide 14!? That slide was perfect and their impure, grubby hands dare mess with perfection? In all seriousness, the reason to share as a PDF is every place you’re going to do a brief will be able to show a PDF. And it will look the way you want it to look. I learned this lesson the hard way. Where it takes you 15 minutes to load your PPT up because the conference room computer still runs on punch cards. Come prepared. Use PDFs. And if someone prints it, it will look the way it should. And since you made your incremental transitions accordingly, the audience won’t be confused. Congrats, you’re awesome.

11. Content is king
You can have the most excellent slide show ever created, but it’s crap without content. Think of your briefing as telling a story. Stories are cool! They intrigue and get the attention of your audience. They have a beginning, middle and end. A story arch to make your point. Watch some TED shows to see good storytelling. Apply that to your ppt. Add hard facts and statistics. This gives you gravitas. People will listen to you when you spout some numbers at them. They will all be like, “Yo, that person is sooooo smart! Let’s give them all of the fame, money and pizza!”
12. Know your audience
This is self explanatory. Craft your content and graphics to your audience. I once made a brief with a cat meme on each page. It was an internal company presentation on the tools my team used. I’ll tell ya, people still talk about those cats to this day, over a year latter. It grabbed their attention and they remembered it.

13. Tell a story
When you are giving a presentation, don’t try to memorize or read from the bullets. The way you lay out each slide should be similar to a story arch; ideally having three acts. There’s a reason books and movies do this — because it’s engaging. We’ve all told stories to our friends and coworkers. Just take your natural storytelling ability and translate it to your briefing. And then, when you actually need to give the presentation, it will come much more natural. (And personal anecdotes are the bees knees! See all TED talks.)

14. Update that beast
Requirements and missions change. Don’t give the same briefing for 6 months straight. Your brief is like your stand up comedy routine. See what works. See what falls flat and remove it. See where the most questions are and add more details. See where the most interest is and add more details. Refine this beautiful creation of yours that you brought to life and nurtured into existence. Take care of it. Water, feed, shelter and love your PowerPoint until it grows big and strong. When you’re worn out, this little guy will take care of you. It’s you and the PowerPoint against the world!
15. Break the rules
Just like jazz, you need to have a solid understanding of the fundamentals before you can improvise. If you make a slide deck following all of these rules, it will be a great deck. But it’s okay to break the rules if you understand why you are doing so. Do you want your slide to jump out at the audience? Are you trying to make a point? Have fun with it.
That should give you a good start to making a kickass presentation. Next, if you don’t do many in front of people, practice. Your presentation should be a cross between storytelling and a conversation with your audience. Have confidence. But don’t bullshit. If you don’t know every answer, that’s okay. Just tell them you’ll look into it and get back. It’s pretty straightforward stuff. Good luck and godspeed.
