How to make a great presentation
Stressed about an upcoming presentation? These talks are full of helpful tips on how to get up in front of an audience and make a lasting impression.
Nancy Duarte
The secret structure of great talks
David McCandless
The beauty of data visualization
Chris Anderson
TED's secret to great public speaking
Julian Treasure
How to speak so that people want to listen
Simon Sinek
How great leaders inspire action
6 dos and don’ts for next-level slides, from a TED presentation expert
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Want to prevent yawns and glazed-over eyes? Before you deliver your next speech, pitch or address, learn how to create exceptional slides by following these rules (with real before-and-afters).
Slides are an expected and crucial part of most speeches, presentations, pitches and addresses. They can simplify complex information or messages, showcase relevant images, and help hold an audience’s attention. But quite often, the best slides aren’t those that make people sit up and comment on how good they are; instead, they’re the ones that people take in without really noticing because the content is effortlessly conveyed and matches the speaker’s words so well.
These days, showing high-quality slides is more important than ever. “We’re living in a visual culture,” says Paul Jurczynski , the cofounder of Improve Presentation and one of the people who works with TED speakers to overhaul their slides. “Everything is visual. Instagram is on fire, and you don’t often see bad images on there. The same trend has come to presentations.”
He says there is no “right” number of slides. However, it’s important that every single one shown — even the blank ones (more on those later) — be, as Jurczynski puts it, “connected with the story you’re telling.” Here, he shares 6 specific tips for creating the most effective slides. ( Note: All of the examples below were taken from the actual slides of TED speakers. )
1. Do keep your slides simple and succinct
“The most common mistake I see is slides that are overcrowded. People tend to want to spell everything out and cover too much information,” says Jurczynski. Not only are these everything-but-the-kitchen-sink slides unattractive and amateurish, they also divert your audience’s attention away from what you’re saying. You want them to listen to the words that you slaved over, not get distracted by unscrambling a jam-packed slide.
“The golden rule is to have one claim or idea per slide. If you have more to say, put it on the next slide,” says Jurczynski. Another hallmark of a successful slide: The words and images are placed in a way that begins where the audience’s eyes naturally go and then follows their gaze. Use the position, size, shape and color of your visuals to make it clear what should come first, second and so on. “You don’t just control what the audience sees; you have to control how they see it,” says Jurczynski.
BEFORE: Too crowded
After: easy to absorb.
2. Do choose colors and fonts with care
Colors and fonts are like the herbs and spices of your presentation. When used wisely and with intention, they’ll enhance your slides; but when tossed in haphazardly, they’ll make it an unappealing mess.
Let’s start with color. “Color is a key way to communicate visually and to evoke emotion,” says Jurczynski. “It can be a game changer.” Your impulse might be to pick your favorite hue and start from there, but he advises, “it’s important to use color with a purpose.” For example, if you’re giving a presentation about a positive topic, you’ll want to use bright, playful colors. But if you’re speaking about a serious subject such as gun violence or lung cancer, you’d probably go for darker or neutral colors.
While it’s fine to use a variety of colors in your presentation, overall you should adhere to a consistent color scheme, or palette. “The good news is you don’t need a degree in color theory to build a palette,” says Jurczynski. Check out one of the many free sites — such as Coolors or Color Hunt — that can help you assemble color schemes.
With fonts, settle on just one or two, and make sure they match the tone of your presentation. “You don’t have to stick to the fonts that you have in PowerPoint,” or whatever program you’re using, says Jurczynski. “People are now designing and sharing fonts that are easy to install in different programs. It’s been an amazing breakthrough.” Experiment. Try swapping a commonly used font like Arial for Lato or Bebas , two of many lesser known fonts available online. Most important: “Use a big enough font, which people often forget to do,” advises Jurczynski. Your text has to be both legible and large enough to read from the back of the room, he recommends — about 30 points or so.
BEFORE: Weak and hard-to-read font, muddy colors
AFTER: Strong font, color that’s striking but not jarring
3. Don’t settle for visual cliches
When you’re attempting to illustrate concepts, go beyond the first idea that comes to your mind. Why? The reason it appears so readily may be because it’s a cliché. For example, “a light bulb as a symbol for innovation has gotten really tired,” says Jurczynski. Other oft-used metaphors include a bull’s-eye target or shaking hands. After you’ve come up with your symbol or idea, he advises people to resist the lure of Google images (where there are too many low-quality and clichéd choices) and browse other free image sites such as Unsplash to find more unique visuals. One trick: If you do use stock, amp it up with a color overlay (as in the pic at the top of this article) or tweak it in some other way to counteract — or at least muffle — its stock-i-ness.
One potential source of pictures is much closer at hand. “If it fits the storyline, I encourage people to use their own images,” says Jurczynski. “Like one TED Talk where the speaker, a doctor, used photos of his experience treating people in Africa. That was all he needed. They were very powerful.” Major caveat: Any personal photos must support your speech or presentation. Do not squander your audience’s precious time by showing them a gratuitous picture of your children or grandparents — beautiful as they may be.
BEFORE: Fake-looking stock photo to illustrate teamwork
After: eye-catching photo of nature to illustrate teamwork.
4. Don’t get bogged down by charts and graphs
Less is also more when it comes to data visualization. Keep any charts or graphs streamlined. When building them, ask yourself these questions:
What do I want the audience to take away from my infographic?
Why is it important for them to know this?
How does it tie into my overall story or message?
You may need to highlight key numbers or data points by using color, bolding, enlarging or some other visual treatment that makes them pop.
Maps are another commonly used infographic. Again, exercise restraint and use them only if they enhance your talk. “Sometimes, people put a map because they don’t know what else to show,” says Jurczynski. He suggests employing labels, color schemes or highlighting to direct your audience where to look. He adds, if you have the skill or know an artist, “you may even consider a hand-drawn map.”
BEFORE: Yikes! What’s important?!? AFTER: The takeaway is clear
5. don’t be scared of blank slides.
It may seem counterintuitive, but at certain points in your speech or pitch, the best visual is … no visual at all. “At the beginning, I was not a fan of blank slides,” says Jurczynski. “But the more talks I’ve seen, the more a fan I am of them, because sometimes you want all the attention on yourself and you don’t want people distracted by what they see in the slides. Or, you might use them to give the audience a visual break from a series of slides. Or maybe you want to shift the mood or tempo of the presentation.”
The blank slide is the visual equivalent of a pause, and most stories could use at least one. And with blank slides, Jurczynski has one main “don’t”: “You cannot use white blank slides, because if you do, people will see it and think something is broken.”
6. Do remember to practice
The easiest way to figure out if your slides really work? Recruit a colleague, friend or family member, and run through your entire presentation with them. Sometimes, people can get so carried away with rehearsing their delivery and memorizing their words that they forget to make sure their slides complement and synch up with what they’re saying.
“Even if you have the best visual s in the world, you need to practice in front of someone else. Once you start practicing, you may see, ‘I’m talking about a sad story, but on the slide behind me, I have something funny and that doesn’t make sense,'” says Jurczynski. “Or, ‘Oh, this could be a good place for a blank slide.’”
About the author
Amanda Miller manages curation for partner events at TED.
- business advice
- data visualization
- idea visualization
- presentation literacy
- public speaking
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How to build a TED Talk-worthy presentation
If you’ve experienced the challenge of developing and/or delivering an important presentation to a good-sized audience, there’s a chance you hoped it would go as well as a TED Talk—those incredibly well regarded presentations first popularized by the TED Foundation in the mid 2000s. TED Talks are often considered the “Everest” of engaging, informative presentations. Killing it on the TED stage is significant.
So with the intention of acting as your presentation sherpa, this article offers 8 steps to give you the best chance of building and delivering a TED Talk-worthy presentation.
TED Talks. People listen.
TED is a nonprofit with a mission to “spread ideas.” It began as a one-off conference (on technology, entertainment and design) in 1984—eventually evolving to a point where it launched an audio and podcast series called TED Talks .
From the history page on their site:
“ The first six TED Talks were posted online on June 27, 2006. By September, they had reached more than one million views. TED Talks proved so popular that in 2007, the TED website was relaunched around them, giving a global audience free access to some of the world’s greatest thinkers, leaders and teachers.”
As a result of their success and popularity, TED Talks have inspired many other presentation-centric activities and events—such as conference keynotes and investor fundraising “demo days.”
What makes a TED Talk?
TED presenters arrive from all walks of life, and although their TED Talks span a wide range of topics, they all share a few characteristics:
- 18 minutes or less. This is a TED rule, initiated by their founder, Chris Anderson, and also backed by scientific research . The basic premise is 18 minutes is long enough to do the job, but short enough to avoid having your audience begin to lose interest.
- A big idea, worth sharing. Again, straight from TED. But expecting to deliver a compelling presentation that relays several meaty ideas in under 20 minutes is wishful thinking. By focusing on a single, compelling concept—you ensure maximum impact and can more successfully communicate key points.
- Large audience, sizable venue. One-to-one, or one-to-few presentations delivered in a meeting or conference room play by different rules. We’re not addressing those here.
8 steps to the TED Talk mountain top
TED Talks are so well done they can almost seem magical. But it isn’t wizardry that makes them so compelling. In fact, there’s a formula you can follow—8 steps that will allow your presentations to deliver similar impact:
Step 1: Know your audience
This is fundamental for maximizing the success of any communication. In order to relay your “big idea” in the most effective way, you need to understand what your audience knows and cares about. Then tailor your presentation appropriately.
If you’re presenting to a new or relatively unknown audience, there are some quick ways to gather intel—such as researching and reading an applicable Reddit thread, or having a quick conversation with someone who’s more familiar.
Step 2. Scout your venue
As a general rule, the background of your slides should match the room in which you’re presenting. It’s not uncommon for large venues to be darkened so the visual focus is on what’s on stage. In some instances, however, stage environments can be illuminated or even a specific color or color theme. Matching slide backgrounds to the specifics of your venue can be very effective—allowing eyes to be drawn to the presentation’s content, not the full outline of the slides themselves.
Keep audience viewing angles and distance in mind as well. You want them on the edge of their seats, but not because they’re leaning forward and squinting to try and make out your tiny words.
Step 3. Think about your presentation as a whole
Your presentation is a story. It should flow from start to finish, and you should understand the primary points you want to make along the way. Look for the “big opportunities” and use your slides to truly highlight them. Not every slide should “Wow!” Some should be supportive and lead up to your key points—just like scenes in a movie plot. If every slide (or every scene) is intense, nothing will stand out. Outlines, index cards or sticky notes can be helpful at the early stages when you’re planning the arc of your story.
Step 4. One concept per slide (okay, maybe two)
To successfully make a point, you need your audience to be able to focus in and “get it.” So instead of asking a single slide to carry the load of relaying multiple concepts, put the second (or third or fourth) on their own slides. It can even make sense to relay a single concept across multiple slides. This allows the speaker to spend more time on it without losing momentum.
In some instances, you may be starting with a recycled slide your presenter happens to love—although you can see it’s relaying too many things. In such a case, ask the presenter to literally present the slide to you, and listen for the one (or maybe two) key messaging concepts they’re trying to relate. Build the new slide content to support those, and put everything else in the speaker notes.
Working with a client to distill a keynote’s story down to a few big, clarified points can be difficult work. But if we’re successful, the result is truly transformative. David Mack Co-founder, SketchDeck
Step 5. Minimalize
The slides are there to support your presenter—not to steal the show. The focus should be on speaker. Think single graphics and/or few words over phrase. Think phrase over sentence. Sentence over… (don’t even THINK about multiple sentences). You don’t want the audience to start reading, and stop listening.
The slide content is supporting the message, not relaying it. Everything on your slides should be meaningful. No placeholders, watermarks, headers or footers. If you haven’t determined this already, using your standard company presentation template probably isn’t a good idea. (Looking for an event or presentation specific presentation template? SketchDeck can help with that!)
Step 6. Maintain top quality
This is a premium presentation, and it needs to look and feel that way. No grainy photos, watermarked stock images, family snapshots, placeholder text or clip art. Just. Don’t. Do it. This is a day for Tiffany’s, not Target.
Step 7. Consider motion
Videos and animation can add a different and engaging dimension to your presentation. If done well, they offer a level of cinematic drama that can enhance the magic of a live performance. But keep the previous steps in mind if you go this route. Every visual element needs a reason to be there. Everything must help tell the story.
Step 8. Get a great presenter
The reality is a speaker can make or break a presentation. A bad presenter can ruin a perfect presentation. And as much as it pains us to write this, a great presenter doesn’t really need slides (see Step 5 above). Therefore, if you’re presenting, practice—ideally in front of someone who will be brutally honest. You should also consider hiring a coach.
SketchDeck recommends taking the presentation to a small, controlled audience a week or so before the event to see how it delivers. Not only is it a great practice opportunity, it allows time for last minute adjustments.
And most importantly, hear feedback and adapt accordingly. If you’re not the presenter, ask whoever is to do the same. Great presenters are not born. It takes work, and the vast majority of that work is done before a speaker steps on stage.
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Mark Twain
The big day
The audience is rapt… pin drop silent. Elegant slides flip in perfect timing behind your delivery. You pause—at just the right point—confidently adjusting the cuffs of your black turtleneck.
“They’re mine,” you think. And you’re right.
Fired up to blow away your next audience? So are we. SketchDeck would love to partner with you to help make your next presentation TED Talk-worthy.
Additional resources
https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks
https://synapsiscreative.com/5-best-slide-decks-tedx/
https://blog.ted.com/10-tips-for-better-slide-decks/
Rob Lewczyk
- Originally published on January 30, 2020
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