Presentation Design Culture

A design is a plan to produce a vision or document actions. Presentations are designed to relate the speaker and the audience to the discussion. Per the readings this week, one principle in graphic design of presentations I believe is lacking in most professional presentations is Proximity. Too much information, too close together that is not relevant. At work, presentations are mostly used to communicate a problem. More conversation and time spend on one slide occurs due to the fact the problem is not well understood even though it's displayed.

Captions are rarely used on images because they may or may not relate to the existing text. Visuals are nice to have but not necessary all the time when it comes to a presentation. Other principles on presentation noted by Garr Reynolds (2008) were alignment, repetition, and contrast (pp 155-157). 

Alignment is good to thing for those not familiar to comprehend the presentation and give it an appealing look. Going for a more sophisticated look does not mean apply Times New Romans font everywhere but to think on the elements to make visual connection. 

One of the “20 great examples of Powerpoint”, the powerpoint titled “ You don’t suck at Powerpoint,”  by Jesse Desjardins, talked about two shortcuts for great powerpoint design emphasizing use of “beautiful fonts” and dumping others. Most being the default fonts, such as Comic sans, Courier new, Times new roman, Arial, Tahoma, etc (slide 33). I’ve been meaning to draft a presentation soon, and will ignore some of these fonts.  It appears as though Desjardin's powerpoint didn't need a speaker, it spoke the the audience with the use of graphics and words. Sometimes the little things are just important as the major things like the content of the presentation. 

I believe if I have a conversation with the current leadership at work, giving them tips on designing a good powerpoint, they would say “You’re kidding right, it's not that big of a deal”. A lot of what they already know about presentations has been communicated through properly marking documents (export/import) not how to visually organize or present them. There are official templates which already have too much information on the slides, something that would have to be discussed with the group that designs it. I wonder if they can all just read organizational & preparation tips to start with the end in mind and scratching ideas doesn't mean to spend money and time on making real life graphics distracting the audience from the speakers content already. 

When delivering information to the audience ,its is always, as described by Reynolds (2008) good to make eye contact (p.4), a good tip even in daily conversations. Reynolds (2008) had great tips on organization & preparation, powerpoint slides and delivery tips, after highlighting the current state of powerpoint presentation culture and effective use of multimedia (p. 1). Reynolds (2008) highlighted important features of human information processing system relevant for powerpoint users, dual-channels (visual and verbal), limited capacity (storing information), and active processing (people understand the presented material, organize it in coherent mental structure, and integrate it with prior knowledge (p.1)

It easy to dismiss things due to the fact that speakers believe they are already bad at like for me, I’m not a good storyteller. For example, when someone asked me about an incident and to describe what happens, depending on how much I seemed to be impacted by it, if I remember only a portion I try to tell a portion and give my opinion. I do notice when I do this I lose the interest of folks, you can see it in the body language, they start looking around or mention its okay I will ask such and such. I get discouraged when I did see that good presentations include stories in the readings but the best way to turn it around is to use my strengths of relating to people. After viewing a webinar on “Writing Effective Emails, Reports and Messages”, my confidence was stroked to embrace some of the tips in from the reading such as, its about your audience, reducing text on your slide, and I’m already good about not reading the text on the slide only when I’m caught off guard or forget something. From the webinar, my notes were to tell’em, tell’em what your going to tell and tell’em what you told them. 

We are in a presentation culture,were many believe a presentation is a direct reflection of the presenter.  Most don't remember the presentation but what the presenter was doing and complement them.  How we break away from that culture is to put emphasizes on tips and things to do, much like writing an effective resume. As an individual, I can try to apply these tips along with delivery tips to spark a small movement within my scope of influence. I plan to avoid staying in one place, take things slow and try to use a remote for the presentation.  I hope for some of my future presentation to be sophisticated using these tools to blend images with the content to make a good presentation similar to the example from the reading. And sometimes it's not about knowing all the features in tool to contrast, it goes back to putting ideas on paper and knowing how to organize them wisely for the audience to understand and enjoy. Presentations should be developed for enjoyment. 

Make, Dr. J  (2016, May 12). Writing Effective Emails, 

Reports and Messages [Webinar]. Emery Riddle Webinar Series. Retrieved 

from http://www.worldwide.erau.edu/index.html

Reynolds, G. (n.d.). Presentation Zen. How to Design & Deliver Presentations Like a Pro. Retrieved from http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/pdf/presentation_tips.pdf

Reynolds, G (2008). The Big Four: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. Retrieved from http://www.presentationzen.com/chapter6_spread.pdf