Iconic Slides: 7 rules Apple’s slide decks teach us about creating insanely great presentations

Slides, the unsung hero of Apple keynotes

We hear presentation experts talk quite a bit about the story, structure, and speakers’ performances of Apple keynote events, but we rarely hear about the slide decks that support these reality-distorting presentations.

What makes an Apple presentation insanely great is not just the amazing products, the well-structured story, and the performances rehearsed with so much discipline, but also the beautiful, simple, and, dare I say, iconic slides.

I’m here to tell you more about the unsung hero of Apple presentations, the iconic slides. Why is this important?

Because these slides are the final piece of the puzzle to create insanely great presentations like Steve Jobs and Apple.

Tearing down the original iPhone presentation deck

Heralded by some as one of if not the best presentation of the century, the presentation that introduced us to the phone that changed the world is packed with lessons to help us revolutionize our presentations.

I’ve decided to do a tear down of these presentation slides. I rewatched the presentation many times paying close attention to the slides.

What I’ve discovered are seven golden rules that will one-up your slides and make your presentations more engaging and persuasive. These rules are timeless and very much still in play in presentations Apple makes today if you look for it.

These seven rules will help you accomplish three things:

1. Make your slides look great.
2. Make your presentations easier to understand.
3. Make your presentations more engaging.

Ok, let’s get to it. Rule number one.

Rule 1: Use colors with intent, use colors with consistency.

Before showing us the iPhone and all its glory, in the beginning of the presentation Steve Jobs first gives us some context about the current smartphone category (devices with plastic little keyboards that could access the baby Internet) at the time.

Jobs explains:

The problem is that the [smart phones on the market] aren’t so smart and they’re not so easy to use.

To illustrate the point he showed us a business 101 graph with a smart axis and easy to use axis. Here’s what the slide looks like:

The Cell Phones category are represented by a red circle. While specific smartphones like Moto Q, E62, and Treo are presented by blue circles. The leapfrog product iPhone is represented by a green circle.

This is where we introduce the first rule: use color with intent.

Each color has a purpose. In this slide, blue is for smartphones, red is for the cell phones category, and green is for iPhone.

Next, let’s talk about the second part of the first rule.

Notice the iPhone is a green circle. Hmm… how come?

Well, it turns out if we rewind back when Jobs talks about the iPhone as a iPod, Phone, and Internet communicator, notice the color the phone icon. It’s green.

In this slide it has associated green with phone in the minds of audience. To leverage this understanding, I suspect the slide designers at Apple decided to represent the iPhone as a green circle.

And hence, the second part of the rule: use color with consistency.

To recap, the colors you use should have a specific purpose. And if you do use the color, make sure it’s consistent throughout the entire presentation.

(Fun exercise. Now is the time to take out your iPhone and check what color the Phone icon is. Talk about consistency!)

Rule 2: Animate things in when you talk about them

In 1984 we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry.

You can watch this part where Steve Jobs opens the iPhone introduction over here at YouTube.

Notice how the elements in the slides are faded in as Jobs mentions them.

“In 1984…” The 1984 text fades in on the slide.

“We introduced the Macintosh…” The Macintosh image fades in.

He could have easily not used animation, but that would be like a spoiler for what you are about to say. Your slide deck should support you not undermine you!

So the rule we learn here is animate things into your slide when you talk about them.

We see the same applied when Jobs continues to talk about the iPod.

“In 2001…” The 2001 text fades in.

“We introduced the first iPod…” The iPod image fades in.

You can also apply this rule to a list of bullet points. Instead of showing a list all at once, animate them in one by one as you talk about them. It keeps you audience focused on what you’re talking about at the moment.

Rule 3: Drop the bullets.

When we create a list in word-processing or presentation apps, the list by default comes with bullets. Thus, we’re kind of trained to employ bullets for lists.

However, when looking at the Apple’s slides we rarely see bullets in lists.

Here’s the slide which Jobs uses to summarize the marquee features of the iPod functionality of the iPhone.

That’s right. No bullets.

Instead of using bullets to guide the viewer’s attention to each point, Apple employs spacing between each line item. This spacing gives the items room to breath allowing the viewer to easily identify each item.

Rule #3: when it comes to lists, drop the bullets and use ample spacing between each item.

Drop the bullets in those bullet points. You get the point.

Rule 4: Make it symmetrical.

Symmetry is a fundamental concept when it comes to layout and design. Apple nails this one down as well.

Here are two examples from Apple’s presentation deck. Not only do they demonstrate the idea of symmetry, but they also show Apple’s attention to detail.

The first example is from a graph I mentioned in rule 1 (near the beginning of the iPhone presentation). Pay attention to the horizontal axis labels, “hard to use” and “easy to use.” Notice how they are both broken down into three lines. (It also happens that each line contains the exact same character count!) The left label (hard to use) are right-justified while the right label (easy to use) is left-justified to create symmetry.

The second example of symmetry is in the slide where Jobs talks about what kind of contents and data are synced with iTunes and the iPhone. On the slide are two lists: one list for the media contents and another list for data types such as contacts and calendars. The lists are placed side by side. Notice how the right list has a similar bell shape as the left list. Isn’t that neat?

So the lesson here is to always be on the lookout for opportunities to create symmetry on your slides.

Rule 5: Make a Mad Lib and use it twice!

I want to take a quick detour and show you the first two verses of Imagine by John Lennon, a hero of Steve Jobs.

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

See the similarities of the lyrical structure (the bolded parts) between the two verses.

Let’s look at the lead-in to the iPhone introduction again.

In 1984 we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry.

In 2001 we introduced the first iPod. It didn’t just change the way we all listen to music. It changed the entire music industry.

I think you know where I’m going with this.

The trick here is to take a part of your presentation as if they were a stanza in a song. Take that stanza, make it into a Mad Lib, and use it with different contents.

The repeat of the structure creates a rhythm and, more importantly, creates familiarity among the audience, which ultimately brings them closer to what you have to say.

So a recap: Make a Mad Lib and use it twice!

Rule 6: Bring your audience into the presentation.

After Steve Jobs announces that Apple was dropping the Computer from its name, he talks about the revolutionary products Apple has made, Mac in 1984 followed with iPod in 2001, and how they changed everything. To wrap things up he speaks of the iPhone:

We’re going to do it again with the iPhone in 2007. We’re very excited about this.

Spanning these two short sentences, three slides were shown.

1. A slide with the iPhone showing the lock screen.
2. A slide with the iPhone showing the home screen.
3. The same slide above with a hand holding it.

They could’ve shown us just one slide of the iPhone, but instead they showed us this series of three slides. The one I’d like to bring your attention to is the third one with the hand holding the iPhone.

Similar to how movies put us in the shoes of the protagonist, this slide is helping the audience imagine holding the iPhone. Great films invite us to be in the story and this concept can also be applied to presentations to help us connect with them.

Connect with your audience by bringing them into the presentation. If your presentation was a film, we have to transform the audience into the hero in the story.

And finally, rule number seven.

Rule 7: There are actually 19 more rules.

I have a confession to make. I started out saying 7 rules, but there are actually 19 more rules bringing the total to 25 rules.

Since cramming all these rules here would make this post extremely long, I’m compiling all these rules into a book called Iconic Slides. The book is still very much a work in progress, but it’s coming along bit by bit.

If you’d like to find out about the remaining 19 rules, and get a free beautiful PDF of this article, be sure to sign up to get updates for the book here.

You’ll be the first to know when the book will be ready.

The idea of this book has been brewing for quite some years now. As a business consultant making countless slide decks for the past two decades, presentations from Apple has taught me the foundation of crafting presentations. I’m excited to codify them into timeless rules to share with you.

If you love all things Apple and you want to give persuasive presentations, I think you’re going to find this book fun and helpful. Make sure you sign up for updates here.

Thanks for reading.

One Last Thing…

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It’s about what we can learn from Disney movies to create truly captivating and (dare I say) magical presentations. If you are a presentation Jedi in training and a fan of Disney and Pixar movies, this fun little ebook is made for you.

With references to tons of Disney and Pixar movies, this little ebook introduces you to a simple framework inspired by Disney storytellers that helps you create an engaging presentation your audience cares about. You can find it here.