When less means more: Four steps to simplifying slides

1 slide = 1 idea = 1 minute. This formula of a captivating presentation sounds easy but is almost unattainable in practice. And I think I know why.

Let’s take a closer look at the four simple rules for creating efficient presentations.

Step 1. Understand your goal

The first step to efficient slides is realizing why we are making them.

The main problem most people have with slides is not knowing what the goals of the slides are. Presentation is just a visual aid for your speech. It’s not an essay, not a place to export your spreadsheets, or a collection of pictures to amuse your audience. It’s a short visual summary of ideas that can help your audience stay focused and understand you better.

Fully understanding what you want to achieve with your presentation is half of your success. Each slide should have a specific function. So, when you clearly know what these functions are, it’s way easier to decide what to put on those slides and what to remove. For example, if this is a business proposal, there is no need to present your corporate culture or employee benefits. Your goal in this case is to explain the details of your offer so you can delete all slides that don’t help your prospective client understand it.

Thus, to complete this step:

1. Write down the presentation goals.

2. Write down the idea of each slide that you have.

3. Check if it corresponds to what your audience needs to hear.

Step 2. Delete as much as possible

When you are working on a topic for a long time, you analyze and structure a lot of information and get really engaged in it. That can make you lose focus and perceive almost every piece of information as essential for your audience. However, it’s not true most of the time. But the good news is that the skill of separating essential information from non-essential can be trained.

To do so:

1. Assess literally each slide element and determine if it corresponds with the main idea of the slide and helps to understand it.

2. Practice deleting all filler words and structuring the text in short and to-the-point sentences. Maybe even replace full sentences with bulleted lists. The main task is to remove everything that can make a slide more confusing and reduce the mental load for your listener.

Don’t worry that there is not enough information on the slides. You can still comment on them and give more context to the short phrases that are written there.

Step 3. Visualize at most

A presentation is only a visual aid, so let’s shift our focus to the visuals. They make your ideas easier to comprehend and ensure you and your audience are on the same page. Moreover, if your goal is to convince your audience, a proper visual can play a great part in it.

There are plenty of ways of visualizing content:

• Pictures and photos
• Graphs (charts, workflows, timelines)
• Screenshots (read more about screenshots in our article)
• Highlights of the most important numbers or phrases

It varies from case to case, so you should always think of the optimal ways to visualize your presentation and look for inspiration online. Check out Behance, Pitch, or Slides Carnival to find design ideas. Just make sure that visuals aid in your story, are instantly clear, and aren’t placed as pure decoration.

Step 4. Make readable what can’t be visualized

Realistically, we will never be able to fully get rid of the dreaded bullet points or tables on slides. Sometimes, they are the most fitting ways to showcase what we mean. That’s why the last step is adjusting such slide elements:

1. Choose readable fonts. The rule of thumb is to keep it simple, so avoid script and decorative fonts. In this related article, you can find examples of the recommended font styles.

2. Check your text for duplications and delete everything that seems redundant.

3. Arrange the bullet points in logical groups.

4. Highlight the most important messages. Write the key points in bold or use a contrasting color. Also, you can write out numbers or essential messages in separate text boxes that would grab audience attention first. Make the important information really stand out.

Sounds simple, right? Now, let’s take a look at practical examples.

Example A. Lots of numbers

In this case, imagine that you need to give a yearly report presentation. Let’s see what you can do to improve this huge table.

Step 1. Understand your goal

During a yearly report, you want to share the success of your team with your colleagues. This goal and the data presented can tell you that the main idea of the slide is to highlight the increase in team productivity during this year.

Step 2. Delete as much as possible

1. Delete the type of tasks done — it doesn’t show productivity and isn’t relevant to the slide.

2. Sum up all monthly results by years — you don’t need a monthly breakdown to show year-over-year growth.

Step 3. Visualize at most

For such type of data, a proper visual would be a chart. Charts are great for a visual representation of comparison.

1. Delete all unnecessary text and default chart axes, leaving only relevant data — year, number of tasks, and growth percentage.

2. Write a supporting sentence to give the context for the chart.

Success! Now you can grasp the idea at first glance, and your audience will appreciate the relevance of the information. In this case, step 4 was not necessary because almost all information was visualized.

Example B. Lots of text

This example is part of the same yearly report presentation, which also needs some improvement.

Step 1. Understand your goal

After reading the text, you can see that its idea is to explain the main types of tasks that the team have been doing. So, the goal of this is to highlight three top-priority tasks that the team focused on.

Step 2. Delete as much as possible

1. Delete all filler words — they don’t convey any meaning.

2. Delete the details of the tasks — you can transfer them to notes and talk about them during your presentation.

3. Formulate what’s left in a few short sentences.

Step 3. Visualize at most

Here, you don’t have much data. So, just add screenshots or self-explanatory illustrations to support your idea.

Step 4. Make readable what can’t be visualized

1. Align the text properly.

2. Create a visual hierarchy of headings and main text.

3. Make sure the text is readable (the font size and color).

Bonus points if you add animation, allowing the audience to focus on one idea at a time.

And here it is — a slide that supports your main idea and takes 1 minute to read.

Summary

Making captivating slides isn’t rocket science if you truly know your audience and recognize the goals of your presentation. This is the key to making your presentations rock.

And, of course, remember that each situation is different. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t understand what’s important at first glance or can’t come up with creative visuals. Write everything down, look for some inspiration online, and just do your best to help your audience understand you!