Less is More for Effective Slides

Packing slides with information does not necessarily make them more effective. In fact, it often achieves the opposite effect, producing confusing slides that take away from, rather than add value to, a PowerPoint presentation.

Well-designed slides assist the speaker in emphasizing his or her point and the audience in understanding the key takeaways from a presentation. Using the design principle of economy, one of the most important rules of effective PowerPoint slideshows is to edit your slides ruthlessly.

Condense Information
Wherever possible, turn paragraphs or sentences into a good bullet point. Sometimes, to make your point clear, you just need to condense your content to remove visual clutter.

Too often, slideshows are stuffed with information, but offer very low amounts of visual value, which mean audiences miss the point. These overcrowded slides often feature long, hard-to-read blocks of grey text, which are not only uninteresting, but very difficult to read – and difficult to present.

The visual value can be improved by editing out repetitive content and unnecessary prepositions. Then, you should rewrite paragraphs as shorter bullet points, keeping only the most essential information. Often text can be shortened by simply rephrasing the content.

Add Graphic Elements
In addition to condensing text, consider using visuals to illustrate data or complex information. A simple bar chart, paired with several bullet points, is often a much clearer and cleaner way to present information than a detailed table of numbers. This can also free up room to add something helpful like a highlight box to emphasize the key points.

Remember, because the presenter will be explaining his or her message, you don’t need to put every word in the speech into the slideshow. Instead, edit the slides into bullets that explain the big picture and let the presenter fill in the details.

You will often find that the editing process helps develop the presentation’s ideas, clarifies the message, and can even help the presenter become more comfortable with the content – making delivery smoother.

Break Up the Presentation
It’s better to have more slides with less content on each than to have one dense slide onscreen for fifteen minutes while you explain hard-to-see information to your audience.

If you have a particularly dense slide, try splitting it into two or three separate, easy-to-understand pieces. There are more benefits to this than just clarity. The motion created by changing slides is a good way to keep your audience’s attention and keep the energy in the room high. It will also keep the PowerPoint presentation moving forward.

Your audience is smart, but it’s not their job to decipher raw data. It is your job to help them interpret the data that you are presenting. Clear, visually valuable slides are one of the best ways to accomplish this.

Looking to learn how to do more in your presentation with less? Watch video #5 above.