The Point of PowerPoint (1 of 5): Thinking before Inking.

“Think before you ink” is an old expression I picked up in my comic book days, speaking to the fact that a good comic book inker had to be a strong artist, not just a “tracer of pencil lines.” A good inker thinks before he inks, and knows the marks he needs to make in order to make an effective product. And like so many things in comics, that’s an analogy for almost anything. Before a presenter starts building a presentation, essentially putting ink to paper, the thinking needs to be there.

And that thinking needs to answer 2 core questions.

What is the Point?
The “point” of a PowerPoint show is to communicate information. To do this you need to follow some simple rules for visual presentation. You need to build your show with:
• Clear readability
• Clear communication
• Ease of use (and not over-use)


What is the Focus?
The “focus” of a PowerPoint is different from the point, for our purposes. For this, we’ll define the focus as “what do you want the participant to walk away from this with?” There is a specific point to each slide, and to the presentation as a whole. To keep the focus clear, you need to be sure that you:

• Keep the viewers attention. It’s inevitable that in a presentation attention will wander. Viewers of all ages look to understand what the point is, but if the feel they’ve gotten it, their attention will wander. If you hand out a printout of all the slides in a presentation, inevitably there will come a point in each and every slide when the audience member with this in hand, will look to see what the next slide is, even though the speaker hasn’t finished speaking on the current slide. This is a signal that the participant feels he or she has gleaned the point, and is anxious to move on to the next point. This is an area where (when not overdone) animation and imagery can help—in keeping the participant focussed on the slide, and thereby glean more from the content.

• Don’t overwrite the slide. If a slide has several bullets, consider making it two slides. According to a study by the US Navy, the average adults attention span is 18 minutes. Ideally for a PowerPoint presentation, that would be broken down into chunks of about 2-4 minutes per slide. If a slide is overwritten or takes longer than 5 minutes, you can count on having lost your audience’s attention at some point in there.

• Plan the content as more than what is read. Content should introduce the idea, and allow the speaker to extrapolate, or you lose the participant’s attention. The participant can read faster than the presenter can talk. If the speaker is merely reading what is on the screen, and adding nothing, you're going to have a room full of bored participants. You'd have been better served emailing the presentation.

•Give the audience something to look at. I'm not talking about extra bells and whistles, or distracting images, or useless clip art. Give the audience images with impact, that point to, emphasize, and work with the content. A picture really is worth a thousand words, and in an environment where you don't want a thousand words, they are especially valuable. This is where my own area of experience comes in—in creating visuals that highlight the content in a dramatic way, and thereby creates an environment where the participant is more likely to get the point, and walk away with the point securely in pocket.

With those overarching goals, getting into the specifics of “how” can provide some shortcuts to making a PowerPoint presentation simple. effective, and attractive.