The Myths of Presentation Slides
I’m writing this from the foggy hills of Humboldt, California where Sasquatch is rumored to roam. It’s not surprising that this mysterious ethereal place, home to coastal redwoods and a fairy-looking forest floor — where Jurassic Park was filmed — has perpetuated the tales of Bigfoot.
Even though I wasn’t expecting to see Sasquatch, I still found myself peering around the giant trees as I hiked yesterday, looking for him among the sun-dappled forest. This is the power of the mythical. It holds sway over us, even when logic would suggest otherwise.
I’ve also found myths woven through my daily work with technical professionals and their slides. Though less beguiling than Bigfoot, these myths still pervade our presentation culture. From having a limit on the number of slides to not showing a visual more than once in a talk, there is slide lore that people live by when creating slides. But very little logic exists behind these tall slide tales. Today I am going to debunk seven of the most common myths I hear about presentation slides.
Myth #1: Use as few slides as possible in your presentation.
Myth #2: Don’t show the same visual twice in a presentation.
Myth #4: Don’t change the presentation template.
Myth #5: The company logo should be on every slide.
Myth #6: A title slide must be the first slide in your presentation.
Myth #7: Always have a slide up during the presentation.
Myth #1: Use as few slides as possible in your presentation.
Presenters believe fewer slides equals a shorter — and therefore better — presentation. But they often end up cramming loads of information into those very few slides, making it challenging for the audience to process the information.
Most times, an audience won’t even know how many slides you have. But they will know if you’ve put too much information on a single slide.
The truth is you should use as many slides as you need to communicate each one of your points clearly. Don’t base your presentation length on your slide count, but rather on the content you plan to say on each slide. Use this rule instead: one main message per slide.
Myth #2: Don’t show the same visual twice in a presentation.
Why not? Returning to something we’ve seen previously can be comforting and familiar. This is a clever strategy if you need to explain a challenging new concept, but can do so by returning to a picture, a screenshot, a graph, or another visual that you’ve given some background on already. Also, use your conclusion slide to feature something you’ve already explained or that’s familiar to the audience.* We don’t want to end with a totally new concept, or the audience will be left feeling unfulfilled.
*Interested in learning more on the best practices of creating conclusion slides? Watch our video here.
Myth #3: The slides used to present should be exactly the same as the slides shared before or after the presentation.
This is one of the most challenging and troubling myths I’ve encountered. Because when we think we need slides to serve two functions — as our support for the presentation and to stand in our stead after the presentation — we run into problems. A piece of communication can’t effectively serve so many purposes.
Then why do we keep trying to make our slides do both?
Part of the issue is that over the years, we’ve used our slide design programs — PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote and others — to design more than just presentation slides. Often, we use these programs to create documents or Reading Slides. You’ve likely encountered Reading Slides if anyone has ever sent you a slide deck prior to a meeting and asked you to read in advance. These are slides designed to be read quietly to yourself and stand alone without the presenter.
These Reading Slides serve a different purpose than slides designed to guide an audience while they listen to a presenter’s spoken content. Presentation slides, or Listening Slides, should be designed to enhance the presenter’s spoken content, not replicate it.
However, over time, we have allowed our Reading Slides to influence how we design Listening Slides.
To create better slides, we need to identify the purpose of the slide and design accordingly. Reading Slides should have more words and stand on their own as a supplemental handout, while Listening Slides need to be highly visual and designed to enhance the presenter’s spoken content.
Here’s one suggestion for how to have one deck be both a Reading deck, and Listening deck. Include all the notes you’d like to accompany the slide into the notes section of PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote. When you’d like to share your deck before or after a talk, save it in Notes View and share it as a PDF. This way you’ll have a highly visual slide to present with, but also a stand alone handout.
Myth #4: Don’t change the presentation template.
Part of the pickle we’ve gotten into with slides is that we follow the default options on PowerPoint. It’s easy to follow the font type, size and placement, without even giving it a second thought. However, the prescribed template is not the best way to maintain the audience’s attention.
I’d encourage you to question this myth even with company templates. I worked in marketing for years, creating beautiful slide templates for my team that focused entirely on form, not function. I imagine I’m not alone in this mistake.
For example, one of my clients uses a brand template that contains a line across the top of their slide. It provides little brand presence, yet takes up valuable real estate on the slide. I encouraged them to place a white box over this to give themselves more space and allow the audience’s eye to begin by seeing the important information on the slide.
Myth #5: The company logo should be on every slide.
Most company templates put the logo on every slide, taking up valuable space and drawing the eye to the logo first, rather than the slide content. Instead, put the logo on the title slide and conclusion slide in your talk. No one is going to think you’ve switched affiliations in the middle of your presentation. If you absolutely need the logo on the slide (legal reasons, strict brand guidelines, etc.), aim for a logo that’s as unobtrusive as possible. At the very least, make sure it’s not the first item that attracts attention when you look at the slide.
Myth #6: A title slide must be the first slide in your deck.
Most presentations that we see start with a title slide directly from PowerPoint’s template. As a result, the presenter begins by stating the title of their talk, name, and background. However, the opening of a talk sets the tone for the entire presentation. Consider beginning with a hook, such as some background on the topic, an analogy, or an example that helps connect the audience to why they should care about the topic. Having visuals to support this hook, or no slide at all to let the audience focus on your words only, will strengthen the opening. Once you’ve hooked the audience, then you can move to a title slide.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to start a presentation, watch our video on title slides here.
Myth #7: Always have a slide up during the presentation.
Slides have become our security blankets. To not have slides is so inconceivable that slideless presenters often offer an apologetic-sounding explanation prior to beginning their talks. However, some of the best talks I’ve seen have no slides at all. Instead, the presenter puts tremendous thought and practice into the story of their topic and lets that story hold the audience’s attention.
I realize this might be challenging, especially for more technical topics that require visual support. So if you’re keen to try this, but a whole talk without slides feels too much, find moments where you can’t find the right visual to express your point, and instead use your language to guide your audience. Either take the slides down, or insert a black slide to allow the audience to focus on you. Most audiences rejoice at a break from the cognitive load necessary to process a slide and a presenter speaking simultaneously. If you do have any concerned audience members, reassure them that you know your slides are missing, and you’re not in a tremendous hurry to find them.
With the way we communicate evolving rapidly, now is the time to rethink the myths we’ve built around slide design. Let’s begin questioning our inherent assumptions when designing slides. Perhaps this will result in better presentations — an objective far more attainable than catching a glimpse of Sasquatch in the woods.
