One Idea Per Slide

Want to drive me up a wall?

Make me sit in on a presentation in which the presenter packs enough verbiage into one slide to make an eye chart. I’ve seen and heard presenters boast or apologize for the number of slides they have; boast if they have “only” 20 slides or apologize if they have some arbitrary number, say 40.

Ironically, I’m for MORE slides. First because they’re free and second, anything to get away from posting up those eye charts.

Duarte has this incredible post on their blog from February that I just love! Of the five lessons, the one dearest to my heart is number four, One Idea per Slide:

4. One idea per slide

This was a key improvement we made to this presentation. Presenters often include many ideas on one slide, doing their best to be efficient with their slide real estate. An honorable gesture, but totally unnecessary in a digital world.

During a live presentation, visuals exist in time as well as space. The audience doesn’t need to stare at the same four points while the speaker weaves his story around each of them. So we turned this single bullet slide into four different slides, letting the audience absorb them one at a time and (once again) highlighting the speaker’s voice as the most important part of the experience.

KISS!