The Art & Science Of A Great Presentation
Updated: I love presentations. I love making them. I love giving them. I love helping teams build them. I love watching other presentations: I love when they are slick and well done and I can gawp with awe, and I love when they are train wrecks and I can pick them apart.
I originally wrote this blog post over a year ago. Since then, I’ve come across a few more resources (and hey - even written one of my own!). At some point I’ll turn this into a presentation: a presentation on presentations.
Until then you get a blog post. Enjoy.
I’ve spent a lot of time working with some different teams over the past year on how to get better at creating better presentations for clients.
Here are a few of my favourite resources:
Cloudberry’s Presentation Design Cheat Sheet gives you the basics of how to write and structure a presentation. It’s the type of thing we should be referring to regularly in our own work.
Mark Pollard wrote an excellent essay called How To Make A Presentation Have A Point, and it's an excellent place to go once you’ve got a solid understanding of the basics, and want to start to explore how to tell more of a story with your work.
Aisha Hakim’s “The Art of Deck Making” is probably more so for the creatives among us, but it makes some great points around just how important choosing the right
“Everything I Know I Learned From Powerpoint” by Russell Davies is probably the best book I’ve read this year. As one reviewer describes it, “it’s a love letter to language.” You’ll have fun reading it, and I guarantee it will make you better at whatever job you do at Major Tom. I have a copy if you want to borrow it, and I’ve also ordered one for the office.
Giles Turnbull has a beautiful and no-nonsense site on How To Write Good Presentations And Present Them Well.
If you’re doing more pitching then you might like (I stress might) a blog post I wrote on the importance of Narrative and Pitching. Come for the feedback you always get (like “this needs more storytelling!”) and stay for Dune and David Mamet references.
Chances are you’ve got a chart or data in your presentation. Do you know what you’re saying with it? Are you being honest? Do you need to stretch the truth a bit to make a point? (Don’t answer that last question under oath). Then you need to read Flowing Data’s post on Dishonest Charts. It’s interactive!
Lastly, here’s a link to “Storyteller Tactics For Presentations”, which is a set of cards that outlines different types of story structures or arcs that can be used to make a better point and a more effective presentation.
Double-lastly, I think that Ben Evans does an incredible job of turning rather dry data into a series of slides that deliver a good punch and keep you clicking. I say that without having actually WATCHED him present, so maybe he’s boring as toast.