Relational Presentation Blog - Flexible PowerPoint

By Robert Lane www.aspirecommunications.com

Just about every day I hear presenters express doubts about their abilities to visually communicate. They don’t have graphic design skills, don’t know where to find pictures, don’t know how to replace bullet points with pictures, or otherwise feel insecure about applying visual expression. One bit of advice that comes to mind immediately is: Use more homemade pictures taken with your own camera.

OK, so such pictures don’t always look as professional as those perfectly lit, visually framed stock photos available for download. You know what? Who cares?

Your pictures may be a little crooked or blurry perhaps, and probably they are not shot from the best angle or at the right time of day. In a visual-expression context, such criteria are trivial. Self-shot pictures are exactly what you need in your network—and lots of them, regardless of whether they ever will appear in a New York gallery.

Realistic, everyday imagery helps viewers better understand your world, what you see regularly, or have seen in the past. They explain your working environment, give context to complex, abstract concepts in your talks, help people solve problems, show successes and milestones accomplished, and perform a host of other roles. Take pictures of products and equipment from different angles, and in a variety of situations. Visually document everything you do and be able to show it at a moment’s notice. That’s what people need to experience. True visual communication is helping people see the little details that give depth and understanding to your words.

And if your speaking topics are abstract to the point where illustrating the ideas directly with homemade pictures is impossible or impractical, think of allegories that can help bring the abstraction down to earth in practical ways—and then take pictures of those situations.

During one of the workshop sessions, I have fun visually describing where I live, in a desert, and then go on to show my yard. The contrast between what the viewer is expecting, compared to what actually exists, provokes curiosity.

Filed under: Cognitive Strategy, Pictures, Visual Language on September 7th, 2008 | No Comments »

By Robert Lane www.aspirecommunications.com

The new Visual Selling guide is almost ready for distribution. Its seventeen pages apply Relational Presentation techniques to corporate sales. Sales professionals often hate using PowerPoint when calling on customers because of its rigid design. They need more flexibility to answer questions, deal with objections, highlight specific features, and jump to the close when appropriate.

The Visual Selling process outlined in this guide provides that flexibility by applying topical-style navigation to the selling process. We recommend having 12 categories of slides arranged for quick, random display. Then you can choose when to display various kinds of content, and to what level of detail.

The guide is a precursor for an upcoming book on the subject and should be a available by request around mid-September.

Filed under: General Presentation, Interactive, Visual Selling on August 27th, 2008 | No Comments »

by Robert Lane www.aspirecommunications.com

I’ve never quite understood why people do what they do with pictures in PowerPoint. You’ve seen it a million times probably. The picture is just a small rectangle off to the side of text, tables, or whatever. Sometimes I think the UN surely must have passed a world law recently mandating that pictures be a scrawny afterthought, stuck onto slides at the last minute to fill space.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Consider occasionally having pictures fill the entire slide pane, without text or other distractions whatsoever.

Why not? Such a strategy is especially important if the picture provides content, rather than serving in a purely decorative role. Content pictures should be big and bold so that their message impacts the audience, while you fill in details verbally.

The big caveat, though, is to make sure your pictures are high enough quality for large display. If they look blurry when expanded to cover the full slide pane, either replace the image with a higher-quality example or leave it small. Nothing looks worse than a small, Web-quality picture expanded to dramatic proportions.

 

Filed under: Design of Slides, Pictures on August 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

By Robert Lane

It’s the age-old PowerPoint question: Should I use a light or dark background on slides? I’m going to solve the issue once and for all by giving you a definitive answer—it depends. That’s another way of saying there is no absolute right or wrong in this area. Let’s look at some of the factors that argue one way or the other, and then you can make up your own mind.

A presenter told me once that she sometimes receives guidelines at conferences claiming women prefer light pastel-colored slides and men prefer dark colors. I’ve never seen any research to that effect and think it’s bologna. However, if you happen to know of such studies, I will be most grateful for the references.

In the past, I used to recommend dark backgrounds primarily because projector lights were weak, requiring speakers to project in a darkened or semi-darkened room. In that kind of environment, looking at a light-colored slide was like looking into car headlights at night. A white slide background in a darkened room is brutal on audience members’ eyes. Don’t do it.

Today, however, projectors are stronger and performances usually occur in a fully lit or slightly dimmed room. In that case, light backgrounds are fine, and maybe are superior. A brightly lit room tends to make dark backgrounds appear faded, especially if an ambient light source (such as window) strikes the screen at an angle. Florescent lights also tend to wash out dark displays, particularly when elements on the slides do not contrast sharply with the background.

On the other hand, I still recommend using a dark or pure black background if your slide prominently features a picture that does not cover the entire slide pane, such as a vertically oriented photograph. In that case, a light background showing around the picture only distracts from the image’s visual impact.

Another argument in favor of dark backgrounds is the opportunity for creating attractive lighting effects on slides, as well as decorative text effects. Gradation of colors, bevels, and glows just look better on dark backgrounds. Shadows and reflections, of course, are more appropriate on light backgrounds. It kind of depends on which effects you wish to display.

One final consideration is text use. If slides contain very few words, light or dark surroundings are fine, so long as the text and back contrast sharply (light text on dark background, or vice versa) and the words are large. If slides contain a lot of text, which in a perfect world NEVER should be the case, definitely use a light background. Light text on a dark background is hard to read, requiring even more mental exertion than normal.

Filed under: Design of Slides, General Presentation, PowerPoint on July 22nd, 2008 | 1 Comment »