PowerPoint is Not a Game of “Let’s See Who Can Put More onto a Slide.”

Yesterday, Robert Scoble over at Scobleizer wrote a post about a new product called SlideRocket. According to the SlideRocket website,

SlideRocket is a rich internet application that provides for every part of the presentation lifecycle. It integrates authoring, asset management, delivery and analytics tools into a single hosted environment that allows you to quickly create stunning presentations, intelligently manage your assets, securely share your slides, and measure the results.

SlideRocket looks like a neat program- I just signed up for it and am anxiously awaiting my invitation to use it. Anyway, Scoble briefly touched upon a principle very near and dear to me, which basically states that when you’re designing a PowerPoint presentation, tell a story. Don’t let the slides tell the story- let the presenter tell the story… those slides are your backup- your outline of that story. You be Sonny Crockett, the slideware will be your Tubbs.

…I bet you’ve never seen the PowerPoint/Miami Vice comparison, before, huh?

After designing countless PowerPoint presentations throughout college and my current career, it kills me each time I start out with a minimalistic slide and I’m forced to butcher it into a novel by the end of the day. Believe me, I’ve begged and pleaded my case, each time to no avail.

In my experience, I see the rift in the age groups of the users. Those who haven’t “grown up” with PowerPoint still see it as a digital version of transparencies on an overhead projector. Though they may have accepted the technology, they really haven’t used it to its true full potential… they think cramming 20 lines of text onto a slide is doing so. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking older generations- there are plenty of people older than me who are perfectly aware of the dos-and-don’ts.

So how can we fix this? How can we educate those using slideware inappropriately? Well, Presentation Zen has some good ideas, and blog author Garr Reynolds shares a few visual tips of his own. I’ve had very moderate success with trying to reform those I’ve come in contact with, but I’ve found that it all boils down to preaching the same basic principle two different ways:

Generation X & Y will understand “Less is more.”

Baby boomers will remember the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

Scoble quoted SlideRocket investor Mitchell Kurtzman, and I’m going to re-quote because this is important (here’s Scoble’s video-interview):

“There’s nothing deadlier in a presentation… than having a lot of text on a slide and reading every word…”