167 - How to Design a Presentation — with Ashley Smithers

If somebody is staring at the screen trying to figure out what you're saying, then they're not going to be listening to you. And remember, the slides are a visual aid. You are the presentation. You're performing. This is performance with visual aids. And so when you're talking about this one idea per slide, I have some general guidelines for you here. The overarching idea is less, but better. Don't try to cram it and just make it better, design it better, strip up everything that's unnecessary to leave what is essential. Hey everybody. Welcome to this room. Hello beautiful people. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Today we're doing something a little different. A little different today. We're going to be talking about five presentation tips to step up your pitch game. You got a pitch coming up. You might want to tune into this. And I got my good friend Ashley. She's here with me and she's going to bring a whole different perspective because she's used to working on decks that really deliver at the highest level like former vice president's kind of level, right? And big time, big time people, yeah, big conversations, big conversations, big, huge keynotes. Yes. But also little keynotes. You talk about me? I'm raising. No. We'll talk about you. No, you know, your keynotes, and this is, this is one of the good reasons why we sort of blend well on this is that you come from the perspective on stage. And that is a completely different perspective than I come from where I'm the person that is preparing and getting everything ready and designing and writing that so that you look your best when you're on there. Okay. So some differences ready and just to make this very clear, we're not talking about tools. You can use PowerPoint industry standard. You can use keynotte the designer's favorite tool. You forbid you to use Google slides, but that's another story. That's our common enemy right now. Apologies to Google, I just lost a sponsor. Okay. What we're talking about is actually helps people to write, to design, to prepare for their moment on stage for a TED talk for a big keynotte address. We're talking about powerful people in powerful positions or to raise money, to raise millions of dollars for their idea. I use it very differently. I write for myself. I use these tools for myself and I'm going to be the person who's going to be on stage or on camera presenting these ideas. So these are two very different worlds. I think we're both very passionate about it. And I believe no matter who you are, you've got to pitch a presentation that you have to do. You're going to get value from two perspectives, sometimes overlapping. So what we've prepared today, it's kind of a dual of like two people who are in the pitch game, Ashley and myself. So what we're going to do today in this format is we're going to go one at a time and kind of ping pong back and forth. She's going to share a tip and then I will share a tip and we'll do this and then maybe if there's time, we'll bring you up on stage. But I have 60 minutes to do this and I think that's plenty of time for us to get really deep. So sit back, relax, take some notes and let's do this. So before we get into your first point or first tip, Ashley, can you introduce yourself to our audience in case they don't know who you are? Yes. I can. Hi, audience. I have no idea how many people there are here, but I'm not looking. My name is Ashley Smithers and I run 1821 Design Studio and we specialize in presentation design and keynote direction for companies from the first pitch deck all the way up to post IPO when you are doing a large keynote like CES. Yeah, that's me. What is your background? So I am a recovering industrial designer. I started out learning how to be an industrial designer and then I moved into graphic designer art direction and that led me into this amazing specialty where I realized that taking really complex information and pushing it into a digestible presentation for people was something that I was super passionate about and quite good at. So that is how I came to be here. I specialized. And yes, you have. You specialize in presentation design now a couple years ago. I didn't even know what that meant. I thought a presentation designer is a graphic designer who makes someone's PowerPoint or keynote presentation look good to format it, but there's so, so much more at the level which you're working. Okay. But in case you don't know who I'm, my name is Christo. I'm a lot of introvert. My mission is to teach a billion people how to make a living doing what they love. And today's mission or today's topic is really to help you make a living doing what you love because you have to convince people you have to sell your idea through. You have to win them over whether it's your design or some piece of copyright or campaign. You're going to present it. So let's just dive in. Ashley, do you want to go first or should we flip a coin? Let's flip a coin, flip a coin. You want to call heads or tell okay, 20 coins have been tossed. Okay. What do you call heads? Heads it is. You want to go first or second? Other first. Beautiful. The floor is yours. Okay. So first things first. This presentation, whatever presentation you're about to give is not about you. It's about your audience and it's about the information that you want to display. So you really need to be considerate about engaging with your audience and making them feel really seen and really heard. And one of the ways that you can do that is to be prepared, to be clear, and to be driven by your story, right, versus your slides. Is that a pregnant pause? It's a nice pause. But you know what, I think this goes into yours as well. It does. It works first. It does. Yes. I just wanted to make sure you were done and not just breathing. No good. Okay. Well, we just introduced one concept, the pregnant pause. It actually creates drama intention for the next thing. So you can use that in your speaking when you're on stage. So yes, I have something very similar. So there's an overlapping idea here, which is to check in with the audience that it's not just a presentation. It is a performance and you are key part to that performance. So whether you're in the boardroom or on the stage, in front of 10 people or in front of 5,000 people, you need to bring them in. You got to draw them into the conversation. And I love to do this. This is my favorite part of public speaking, which is to engage with audience. I don't want to just go over my slides. I could do that from home via Zoom. From participation is something I think about a lot. How can I use the entirety of the stage? Maybe not always, but if I want to speak to one specific area, I will physically move to that side of the room and speak to them. And I try to be aware of where I'm at, the city that I'm in, the venue that I'm in, and speak to that. So I'll look up to the rafters and there's the blinding lights. And I was like, I see you up there being a gallery. I don't forget about you and the cheap seats way, way up there. And then I get a chuckle. And I'm drawing the audience in and I've asked people who have attended talks and I said in the audience, I'm like, well, why would you do this? Why wouldn't you just watch this on a screen? They're because there's always that edge that you ride, like you don't know what's going to happen next. So sometimes these ultra smooth and polished presentations remove that, that what might happen factor the car accident, if you will. And I like bringing in that tension. So storytelling is about developing tension and releasing tension. So think about the entirety of the performance, the slides are just your visual aids. And you want to use the power of rhetoric. You want to ask rhetorical questions that get the audience to start thinking about what the answer might be. There've been many examples of this. You start with what questions, how you ask why questions. And from there, it plants a seed in the audience's mind. I never wonder why this happens or how these other companies were able to do this and what made them so different and special, they start thinking like that. Okay, back to you. So what you're saying really resonates with what I am saying too because it's also that think about the time of day that you're meeting. So when you're looking at when you're presenting, don't just look at, okay, I have a group of 30 people in front of me. Think about who they are. Think about what time it is, what their experience was before they saw you so that you can figure out if there's anything that you really need to plan for. So for example, if you're somebody who's giving a giant keynote and you are giving it to 4,000 people and it's the first keynote of the day, they're tired, they're, you know, they don't know what to expect, give them something, surprise them, give them something that they're not going to expect, let them interact with you, give them something to hold. If you have the opportunity to give them something, give them something to hold. If you have the opportunity to give them something to hold. something to people, use that, and don't just put them. So this is another part pacing is so important. If you have all these things, and you have a toolbox of things that you want to expose your audience to, and you want to interact with them, don't put them all in the same place. Sprinkle it throughout your presentation, okay? Because that keeps people engaged, and it keeps people wanting to know what's next. And if you can get somebody to wonder, what is he going to say next? Or what's going to happen next? Am I going to get something? Something gonna happen? They're gonna stick with, they're gonna ride with you the whole way. Was that point two or just a recap or I'm a little lost here? I know you got me, you got me like, you got me all looking at everything just going point two. Yes, point two. Okay, so point two as a presentation designer, I should be able to strip every piece of aesthetic out of your deck and still see your story. So to me, this goes to clarity of offer, clarity of story, clarity of information and clarity of design, so that you're not relying on, you're not relying on on extra animations or extra, extra imagery, you know, you're really relying on the message that you're saying. And I say that to my clients, I need to be able to strip everything out of these decks and still have that story that you have able to speak. Does that make sense? It does. You're saying once I remove the icing off this cupcake, is it still a delicious cupcake? Because you can't just spread that frosty sugar over everything, right? Exactly. Is it nutritious? Or is it just an empty empty hostess sad little wrinkled thing? Okay, there goes our second sponsor out the door. Okay, sorry, hostess. Okay. Okay, okay, I guess I will kind of go out of order on my list here, but just to kind of match it up with yours, since you talk about clarity, clarity of purpose, clarity of message, clarity of offer, my tip number two for presentation tips for your next big pitch is one idea, one idea per slide. And this is probably the Cardinal Sin, the death by PowerPoint that we always hear about when our eyes glaze over because there's 36 points on a slide. But quite literally, and what's happening there is you're telling the person to read the slide while you read it with them. And how interesting is that? Not one idea per slide. And the reason why this happens in PowerPoint presentations is because people are told you can only have 10 slides and they have a lot to say. So don't be afraid to have hundreds of slides. Many of my presentations are over 200 slides long. And they move at a pretty fast clip. You want to tell, sorry? A lot of people get confused with the 10, the 10 points of information rule, the 10 slide rule. Right. What they, what they see is, oh, I need 10 slides. I'm only allowed to have 10 slides. And then our overarching theme of 10 slides is the idea that in a meeting, you can only digest 10 individual concepts of information. So when I'm working with clients, if it takes me three slides to convey that one piece of information in a way that is clear, and in a way that is honest and shows what they need to, to project, I would rather use the three slides than have somebody go, well, this is a make any sense. Yeah, if somebody's staring at the screen, trying to figure out what you're saying, then they're not going to be listening to you. And remember, the slides are visual aid. You are the presentation you were performing. And so when you're talking about this one idea per slide, I have some general guidelines for you here, the overarching ideas less but better. Don't try to cram it and just make it better, design it better, strip out everything that's unnecessary to leave what is essential. And I like to tell stories that are visual or very graphic, meaning not like crime and those kind of graphic, but like icons, very simple bold graphics. And you want to use the slides as cues for you to talk. And so a lot of times we get stuck in like, oh my God, I got to read all the points or if I don't tell the story in the exact right order, if you're pulling a lot of stats and quotes, you get stuck reading versus feeling and living the story and expressing and communicating and sharing that energy with your audience. So a long time ago, when I struggle with making presentations and sticking to a quote unquote script, it caused a lot of anxiety and stress in me. But I watched this professor speaking at Stanford, talking about how to make public speaking easier. So he said, ask yourself a question. So the slide can be a question that serves as a prompt that gets you to speak. So it could ask you like, what is the top two tips for film the blank? And it could be a visual. So it just, it's a reminder for you to speak about that. And then you can tell that story. You can deliver that answer. So tip number two for me is one idea per slide uses many slides as you want. Less is better. Make it visual. These are memory aids for you and visually designed to draw an audience back to you, Ashley. Okay, so this ties directly into my next one is know your presentation. Know what deck you're building. So your idea of one concept, one point per slide does not work for a pharma company. It doesn't work for a biotech company. When we have to talk about four different clinical trials and three different pipelines and things that, but that's okay. So as a designer, I want you to take a look when you first get a deck in and say, what kind of document is this? Okay, because the words pitch deck have become synonymous with many different things. So we have a pitch deck that is a Silicon Valley investor presentation. We have a pitch deck that is for a show runner who's doing, they're launching a show and they want to get funding. We have a fundraising deck for an offer profit. We have investor presentations for public companies and we have the keynotes like Christa's, right? So really take a look at what exactly what exactly you're building and build their first, okay? Because if you give, it's, it's, it's just as much of a disservice to strip as much information out of a presentation as humanly possible with it and give somebody something that has no meat on their bones as it is to give an overloaded presentation. So it is reading the client, reading the audience, and then working from there. Okay, so if you're listening to me and you're like, yes, we hear you, Chris, keep it really simple. One idea per slide. But I get a big farmer presentation coming up where I have them connect four different ideas on a single slide. I have some good news for you. What you do is you design the slide first to communicate the things that you wanted to say. And then using a metaphor here of like a spotlight, you shine a light on just the part that you want people to see. You can use color, opacity and contrast to help you. And you or you can just animate the different parts on an animation is a great way to move someone's eye to the area in which you want them to see. I don't, I'm not talking about those crazy anvil exploding comment animations. A simple fade up or right on or a very gentle slide in is all you need to draw someone's attention movement is what attracts the eye. And so if you have a like a grid of four things, a quadrant one, two, and three, four, you can have the grid, the quadrant thing up, but nothing in those four quadrants. And then as you speak, it animates on one at a time so that they know what to look at so they can follow along in your presentation and use very short, truncated sentences. It's just key words because they're not going to want to read all of it. But it's more for you than it is for them. It'll prevent you from reading your own presentation. So just have key words, bullet point fashion, busted sentences, it doesn't matter. And then animate them on change the color, change the opacity and change the contrast so we know what to look at. Beautiful. Okay. So now we can live happily together, right? Ashley? Yes. Now it's time for something. Yes. What is that? It is time for a PowerPoint and keynote pro tip. Oh, pro tip time. Yeah, pro tip time. Okay. Beautiful. Go ahead. Super simple. If you really quickly need, if you are running through a deck and all of a sudden, there's a picture up that shouldn't be there, push B for black or W for white. And that will take, it'll turn your screen instantly black or instantly Wait. That's it. is a power tip. I think we need a stronger sound effect than magic fairy dust flying across the internet. Wow, so okay, so you goof. You didn't really run through the thing. It just happens to all of us to the best of us. Something weird has happened and a weird slide is there and you're not quite sure or you change your mind. You don't want to talk about it anymore. Hit B for black, W for white and it'll just black out the screen. Fumble, be covering beautiful job. I didn't know that. See, so Ashley is flexing her PowerPoint keynote muscles right now and she's like Arnold prime Arnold right now. Oh, I am I am prime prime sissagar smoking camouflage vest wearing Arnold. You don't like a commando. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll say more Ellen Ripley. All right, we'll go. Okay. Okay, hold on. I think I'm on tip number three. You've done three tips, right? Okay, my third tip and this I learned from my friend Jose Cabillet and he said Chris, you know, it's stressful to like try to design the whole presentation at once. He's like try an emotional graph. I'm like, what is it? So yeah, just take a marker and draw the emotional graph. The higher it is on the Y coordinate, the more exciting and dramatic it's going to be. And so do you want it to start with a bang like a big car crash. So then the graph would be high on the left. And then it's going to have a moment where it goes into the valley. And there might be a couple of bumps and jiggles because you're going to rebuild the audience back up again. And it's going to have one big rise and it's going to fall and you're going to give them one little bump. So design the shape of the conversation of the presentation and makes you really think before you commit to words and images that shape of the conversation. And it can move up like a roller coaster imagine like a slow, slow build. And you know, it's coming. It's building up to this highlight this climatic point, the crescendo. And then it's going to be amazing drop. And maybe it's got a couple of loops or some things like that, some bumps along the way. But design the arc and shape of the conversation and emotional graph. It sounds silly, surprisingly effective. Okay. Back to you for tip number four, Ashley. Tip number four, if you are a graphic designer and you are looking to start a presentation and you open up in design, turn around and walk away, blah, blah, blah, blah, no in design people. We're looking for PowerPoint and we're looking for keynote. And this is why Chris, I knew that coming in, I would be able to trust that you were going to tell people amazing ways to prepare a story and to talk to that, right? Game recognizes game. So I started looking at what are the things that when I have a client come to me, I can see that mistakes have been made. And this is a large one. Okay. Your clients need to be able to update and iterate and access these files. So this is the other one of it's not about you. It's about them. So if they love keynote, if they're all Mac based, awesome. Run with it. If they want PowerPoint, they're all run with it. Go for those, but those two should be where where you work. I know that I'm going to lose, I'm going to lose sponsors to because I'm like, no canva, no pretzzy, no Google slides stick to the basics because those files are going to grow with your client. That is something I don't have to consider because I'm building my presentations for myself, except for when I'm building from someone else. And then then we have to like make sure it works for them. And if they're PC based, you better do an PowerPoint. If they're Mac based keynote, it makes a lot of sense. So design for the end user in mind, that's just a good UX principle there. Okay. And it applies to this. It applies here. He's a really important documents, guys. Okay. Next up, number four for me is to tell stories. Stories is what brings people in. It's the hook. It's what makes things memorable. It's one of the three ways in which people learn, right? So stories draw people in. And so now we have to learn how to tell a better story. So a story has a couple of components. It has a character. It has a wand and it has an obstacle. So somebody has to want something and they can't get it. An obstacle stands in their way. So to be able to tell a good story, you're looking for those components because the conflict is where the story happens. I couldn't save my grandfather from passing away due to a rare blood disease. Hence, you know, that one fake blood company. But there's a story there. The thing that drives us that compels us and the stories need to be rich with sensory detail and rich in dialogue and stories in combination with data points are the most powerful and effective ways to communicate to people. We love stories. We love to consume them. We love to make them. And that's why stories have endured. That's why stories dominate entertainment from video games to comic books to feature films and everything in between. So novels, stories is what hooks us. So learn how to tell a great story back to you, Ashley, for the fifth tip. This one, I like how this is going. Your stories, stories are what drives us, right? And the story that you have, especially as a startup founder, is probably the most important piece of information in you because it goes to your why. But we're going to break down an investor meeting for a second. An investor meeting can be as short as a 60 second elevator pitch, or it can be a full hour. But the first two minutes of those presentations, the first 20 seconds of your elevator pitch, if that's where you're going to start telling your story and why. So make it as concise as humanly possible. Make sure that if write it down, write your story down, sit there and talk about it. I know that you have, if if if you saw a dog in the street and then this led you to this, that led you to this, that is now why we have this vacuum in front of us, take a look at that story and find the most important parts, pull them out and use those. Okay? Make that first piece as clear and concise as humanly possible so that you can show your problem. A lot of investors, sometimes they think this way, they look at the story and they think, okay, why do I care about this story? What's in this for me? And why should I believe you? Right? Those are the three things that sometimes they're looking for. Right? Why do I care about why you're here? And so it goes back to yes, make sure that that story is there and it is wonderful, but make sure that it's clear and that the end results are are selling you. All right. Tip number five for me. This is it. This is the last tip I have. I mean, I have more ideas, but here's how we have organized it, right? So start at the end. And this ties into what Ashley just said, which is if you know where the story ends, you can go back and edit everything that builds up to this. And more often than not, people don't have a problem putting things in. They have a problem taking things out like, oh, I need this. But if you know how the story ends, if you know how the hero saves the day or how the guy gets the girl out then the story, then you know how to edit out all the other parts that are superfluous, you can get rid of that. So start at the end. You want to start strong, but you need to finish stronger. And so if you have three clear takeaways or one big idea, then now you know these other stories don't line up to that. And that's what Ashley is talking about. Make sure the story pays off. All the build up the setup, the context leads to the conclusion. And I as an educator, as a person who does keynote presentations to teach people, I want to make it as valuable for my audience as possible. So usually at the end, I'm going to have like one big summary idea. I'm going to include a resources and possibly a challenge of 72 hour ask something. I want them to do because it's nice to learn, but it's better for us to take action. So start at the end and build your presentation to pay off at the end. Okay. Ashley, I think we've done what we needed to do in terms of the big five, right? Well, technically, people got 10. Yes. Five each. So we over-delivered. We over-delivered. We under-promised and we over-delivered. That's probably tip number six. Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. Next on Naughty Atta Island. I knew I deserved so much more. So I left. I finally switched to Metro and got what I was looking for. Get one line for only $25 a month without OK. Just bring your phone to Metro and experience all the data you want on the largest 5G network. That's Naughty Atta. Only at Metro by T-Mobile. First month is $30. Bring your number and ID. 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Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience and their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads. Go to Libsynads.com. Welcome back to our conversation. Here's a keynote tip. Just for keynote people. Powerpoint? Sorry. Is this another power user move here? This is a power user move. Play this sound, please. Keynote only. Okay. When you're zoomed into a slide on keynote, if you and you're not selecting anything else, you can use your space bar the same way that you use it in Adobe products as your hand tool to drag and zoom around your slide. I did not know that. I think I tried this the other day and didn't work, so I have to try again. Something did not work for me. It's great. Yes. But I bet between the two of us, we could probably write several chapters on the tactical keynote powerpoint tips. We're not going to go there just yet. I have another tip, a loose one here, and it relates to something that Ashley had said before, which is to be aware of the time, the context. Are you opening up a big keynote, I mean, a multi-day event? Are you closing? Are you the closing speaker? And there's this thing called a callback, which is you reference what was said before or potentially your excitement for what's going to happen after. You can do this, right? So if you refer to other people that have spoken before you, this is what Ted speakers do all the time. And you weave that into this. It makes the presentation feel alive and fresh. It's like adding some fresh herbs on top of a dish that's gone a little stale. Just do that, sprinkle that in. And that's awesome because it also recognizes the other speakers. And it just shows like, "Hey, man, this is not so rehearsed that I can't be a little spontaneous and improvised." Do you have another tip, Ashley? I was also going to say when you're on stage and you're presenting, there are many different ways to do it. I like to sort of apply the same theory that I applied to when I was running. Is that imagine you each have a chipping your hand, a potato chip in each hand, so that you're not clenching, right? You're not opening up loosely, you're not waving. Just imagine that you have a very gentle potato chip sat in each hand, okay? It'll keep you not too, you're not grasping on, but you're aware of yourself, you're aware of your limbs because then you don't necessarily look like an airline host. This is how we do this, right? Be mindful of your whole body. All right. I have another tip for you. And I didn't realize this is pretty sad considering I've been building presentations now for six, seven years, maybe a little bit longer. Is that some of the magic move auto key framing functions inside of keynote are just really, really beautiful. What I'm talking about is if you take one object and you duplicate that slide across, I guess the object across two slides, the computer will automatically interpolate the animation between those two moments, which can create for beautiful parallax animations that would make people think, oh my God, you're doing this in After Effects when in fact or not, which is a real benefit because there, you can update and change those up to the last minute. What I'm talking about is if you break the assets that you use on screen into many different individual components and you, you change their position on the following slide, the magic move tool inside of keynote will just figure out like, oh, this has to start here and it ends there and it adds a lot of production value. So it can look like an infinite scroll up and down or you can, you can almost make it feel like it's swiping left and right as you're moving from slide to slide. And I, it whenever possible, I try to add those in because it just adds a lot of production value to create that sense of parallax. And as a super power tip, if you have characters like people on your slide and if you break up the components of what's in the foreground and the mid ground and you do a little parallax animation and you slip some type in between someone's hand reaching out towards the audience and their body. When that thing moves, people are like, oh, it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Expand your Photoshop files, guys. If you're making a beautiful title slide, if we're talking in the future pro group, then I expect graphic designers to be on top of their game. And so I think that when you are making a title slide and you're doing a Photoshop file, expand that Photoshop file out and treat each individual item as a separate transparent layer and interacts within that. Give them more than just a standard title slide, a standard presentation. I don't want to see things downloaded off of them battle elements because that's not presentation design. That's the whole make it pop thing. Make it pop. You made it pop. You're there. It popped. These popped our roads. Yeah, something had just happened there. Yes. There's another tip here that I picked up from reading Nancy Doritz book, Slideology, which is to use illustrations that are isometric isometric illustrations. You can't tell the perspective and everything feels like it's living on the same ground plane. It's a weird illusion. It's a weird, really weird. So if you are using a stock illustration library, which I am, I'm using something like shutter stock. All I do is look for and I search for isometric illustrations that are vector base and I could deconstruct them. I can move something in the foreground and background and it all works together. So it's really nice. It's a nice way to introduce illustration and keep the perspective consistent between different assets back to you Ashley. It's interesting that you brought her up. She is one of the women that I admire the most in my field just for the amount that she has been able to convey and communicate to people about the importance of what we do. So I have a lot of lofty goals when it comes to how I'm doing this. So yeah, that's a fantastic book. And speaking of which, if you don't know who I'm talking about, look up Nancy Duarte or Duarte on Ted and you will see her presentation and it's amazing. It really is. And she breaks it down like she is probably the best known person as far as I know in the presentation design space. I think last time I checked she had a hundred people probably more and now working for her full time doing presentation designs and what? Yeah, she's amazing. So I just yeah. All right, Ashley. I'm out of tips for right now. Do you think it's safe to bring some people up on stage? I think so. I think it's safe. Okay, we have a couple of friends there. I'll just bring them up right now. Akima and Eric, let yourself be known. Come up on stage with us and either give us a tip or ask a question. Either way, you're good. So Eric, you have the mic first. Go ahead. Well, Ashley, you know how to jump up here. I am like her Robin to her Batman. Hello, Eric. How's it going? Good to hear from you both. Thank you. Thank you. Ashley and I have ran in some similar circles building decks for well, you've used my decks before. Yes. Yeah. I tried to whip accenture and shaping you use my decks. Yep. Okay. Okay. Enough with a love festival. Let's get to it. You have a tip or a question? Yes. Chris, I have a tip. You both equally spoke about clarity and Ashley, you also brought a point up that different audiences are going to require a different heft of PowerPoint presentation. And one tip that I've come to learn is that you can actually present a very small deck, but give them a takeaway. And that takeaway might be the loftier, heftier deck. My name is Eric and I'm done speaking to the appendix, the power of the appendix. Wait, what does that mean? You guys lost me. So Chris, when, you know, you had made a point that sometimes the decks should sort of be short and punchy, albeit that you can expand it and have lots of decks. But there are those are great for keynotes. But when you got to get up and pitch and do it quick, sometimes 10 slides is all you get. But what happens in those 10 slides is the individual who takes it offline has no context. They can't read it unless the presenter is there with them. So what I'm offering or what I'm suggesting is that you have two decks, one for which you present and one that's a leave behind, but that leave behind has a lot more slides in it to explain the story. I see. You're talking about that was the trailer. Now here's the director's cut of the movie. The Peter Jackson three hour epic with 14 endings. I get it. Okay, that's very good. That's a very good tip. And I think that ties into what Ashley you had said before, which is to know your audience to know the context and design for them. So if it's intimate presentations, you're looking to raise a lot of money. You probably don't have a few minutes to get your idea across. So don't go crazy. Right. Yep, exactly. Think about it like an annual report. An annual report always has about 10 pages in the front where they talk about the goals, where they talk about the things that they've achieved and they do it really beautifully. And then the back you get all the meat. So if you can treat, if you have a, you can treat them that way. That's a thing. Yes, now I want to say something because Akima actually accidentally but dialed somehow and raised her hand, which she was typing furiously saying, man, I need to transcript to this because I'm taking notes so fast. So many gems being dropped. I just want to say this and Ashley, if you're okay with this, I will provide you guys the my five plus points, my tips as well, it's actually inside the future pro group. So you guys don't have to sweat all your future pro people just relax, put your pens down unless you just want to take it for notes. Okay. We'll take care of you. Don't sweat it. Okay. Rachel, you now have the mic. Do you have a tip or a question for us? Hi guys. I have a question. So thank you so much for this wonderful room. First of all, I love all the tips that have been shared. And I love that Eric brought up a second death because it actually has a lot of relevance to my question. So it's regarding a preliminary part of the design process. And I'd love to know how involved in a copywriting are you and also if you have any guidance or suggestions for other designers for how to be involved or how to oversee this part of preparing the presentation. Yes. So I'm involved from the start. I'm involved from content creation on the way through to design and that definitely includes copywriting. It's a large part of this job. It's an important part of this job. And so I think that that is there's a lot of tips that I can give for this. This feels like a second. This is this could be a whole different room on itself, Chris. Okay. So we'll just say that's the teaser for the next call. Is that okay? But can you give us? Can you give us a high level like here's what it's going to be about me? Yeah, you. Or did you already do that? Sure. It's about how to so the things that we'll cover is how to write copy for title slides. How to write copy for titles that hook. Right. How do you how to write copy to make really complicated topics on human. How to write copy that accompanies data right there are so many different ways to write this. Okay. I'll give you one tip right now. Let's say you can't make that call and or you can't find us about for whatever reason. But you have a presentation you need to design and put together really soon. Here's what I'm going to tell you to do. Get away from the computer. Get on a blank piece of paper and write down the one thing you want people to know when they walk away from from your presentation, whether it's an investor deck, whether you're selling a logo or whatever what is the outcome that you want. Start there and write that thing down and then draw a big black boxer on that and start to write whatever you think you need to say about this. And there's reasons why I would prefer you to do this with good old fashioned good old fashioned pen and paper is because you're going to be less likely to write a whole chapter on it. You're just going to write key words. You might do a little icon or diagrams and and as you're doing this, you're kind of just mind mapping. Then draw little arrows like, okay, begin here. Go to that. It's much more fluid. And if you feel like you don't have enough ideas, you have to sit here and think on this a little bit longer. But you will quickly know where the gaps are and how it flows and it's not a lot of commitment for you at this point. I've done it many different ways. I've literally worked on a deck before from the first slide to the last slide and it's a mess. I get caught up in the weeds and then I bring in an image. I'm like, oh, there's a terrible image. I need to cut it out so you get distracted from what really matters. And oftentimes, I will throw away 30% of the slides when I do it that way and it's a mess because there's this thing. I think it's called the Ikea effect. The more you work on something, the more you fall in love with what you work on. Like when you build a piece of furniture, it's a piece of garbage furniture sometimes, you know, and it's like, well, I love it so much. I have an emotional connection to it. I just lost an sponsor. Okay, however, you know, with your slides, if you sit there and you just sit there and polish that third that one frame and then later on, you're like, it's not serving the story. It's distracting and it's just too much. You're not going to delete it. So the best way is to use a very non-committal process to be very fluid to limit what you can actually do. So it forces your brain to only write down what's important and necessary. That's my tip there. Hey, and I can be safe. Ikea real quick. We got a sponsorship in here that we can we can we can get Chris. Hostets. Yes. Hostets. Guys, three by five sticky top post it's work like a slide. So go out, go to Costco or wherever and buy a giant pack of the three by five sticky top post it's because they become slides. And they're color coded to. Okay, so that's 3M. We're going to bring 3M in. I've tried the posted thing before. You know what happens to me. I write with Sharpie and and I get 55 post it's into it. I'm like, where am I going with this? For me, it works better. If I'm contained within an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper and everything I ever want to say about this one topic is it's got to fit in here. And I could literally do the threads and I can do drawings and it just flows for me. I've tried many different techniques, including index cards, post it. And I found like now the most efficient way for me is just break out a piece of paper and draw it. And if it's messy and it's nonsensical, put the paper aside and do it again. Each time you do this, you're going to you're going to cut away the fact. It's an interview technique. Many years ago, I used to work as a director. And when when you would ask your subject a question and they would give you a long-winded answer. And this is a tip I learned, which is you just pretend like you didn't hear or there's a problem with the audio. You're like, yeah, that didn't come in cleanly. Can you say it again? And you keep doing that until they give you this really great amazing juicy sound bite. So that's the process. It's like boiling it down to its essence. And I wanted to make sure Eric had something to say Eric. Did you want to add something? No, I was going to help you save face on Ikea. The thing that you're talking about is actually called the time love continuum. The more time you spend with something, the more in love you become with it. And the less likely you're going to take any criticism about it. So Ikea, you have good furniture. That's the time love continuum. Oh my God. Prince album. We need a little Prince guitar riff right there. Okay. That's not quite right. But yes. Like from when doves cry. Okay. And next up we have, let's see Anusha. Is that how you say your name? Yeah. Yeah. You correctly pronounce my name. Thank you. And I agree with Eric. Time. Yeah. Love continuum. Yeah. Absolutely. You didn't lose your sponsor day if you mentioned. Ikea. I do have a question. When were I make my presentations a lot of making to and the reason I make two different types or one is what I have been requested for where I have ample time to present. And there have been so many occasions where I have been told when I just enter and I have to present and they're like, Oh, we have to wrap this up soon. And it's literally less than half the time that they have given me. So I most of the time made two different present two separate presentations, one which is which covers the actual time. And the other one is mostly a 60, 90 second pitch. So my question is, how do you still keep the enthusiasm that you regularly have in your normal presentations from a storyline, you know, from start with a bang and with a boom. That kind of thing in a 90 minute presentation. Thank you. Ashley, you want to take that one. So I was going to start talking about the breakdown of the initial hour, because when you said, you know, you get to the end and you run out of time. I've a really good way to work with that is to plan in advance. So what I do is when I'm looking at, okay, they say they have an hour, they have three hour long presentations next week. In reality, you have 20 minutes. So when you look at an hour or you look at, you know, 90 minutes, it's never, it's never that take a look at the time frame, look out for a Q&A, look out for introductions, look out for time for people to pause. and I'm going to go back to the next video. Ask questions or respond. So take whatever amount of time you've been given and usually divide it by a third. - Great tip. Did you want to say something, Anusha? - I don't think so I articulated the question properly. So let me try again. So usually my presentations I've been given about a 15, 20 minutes slot, right? And I pretty much leave ample time for the audience. My question was, and the reason why I said I prepared two decks all the time is, one is for the actual presentation, whether it's a 20 minute presentation and stuff, but I always make a 16, 90 or a 90 second pitch presentation. How to keep the enthusiasm in that's more and a half, two minutes where my executive does not have that much time and I have to just give the entire idea out in those two minutes, but still keep the enthusiasm. So I'm able to deliver the idea and stuff, but the enthusiasm off, you know. - Yeah, your question is a little counterintuitive to me because it's hard to keep your enthusiasm for long periods of time, but much easier to keep your enthusiasm for two minutes. And I'm not sure what to challenge it. Ashley, are you hearing something different? - So I initially thought and I apologized because I initially thought you said 16 and 90 minutes. So the 16 and 90 second pitch, you can get things in there, but that's the one where you really need to pull back everything and hone in into what exactly it is that you are doing, right? That's that, it has to be super concise. You're not, when it's a 16 and 90 second pitch, you're not going in there asking. You don't, I usually don't suggest that people do an ask, right? Because that opens it up to longer, a 16 and 90 second pitch. I want to know like your XYZ, I want to know why you're there, what is that problem that you're going to solve and make it really, really concise. You're never going to be able to effectively convey a 10 slide investor presentation in 16 and 90 seconds. And so that really, that really is that moment. That 16 and 90 seconds is where you're really concentrating and relying on the power of copywriting. - Yes, okay. We have a couple more people and we don't have that much time left. And I do just want to remind people here, if you do a really long presentation and that you have to keep in mind that someone's attention span is fairly finite. So for a two year old child, it's about five minutes and for an adult around 20 minutes, somewhere between a child and an adult is where your audience is going to be. I don't think it's any coincidence that Ted talks max out at 18 minutes unless something has changed, 18 minutes. And some people love to hear the sound of their voice. And he's just keep talking. But the better thing to do is ask the audience of rhetorical question, get them to engage and think. As otherwise, you need to interrupt whatever it is that they're doing because otherwise you're going to fall asleep. Okay, I have one quick tip to share with you from many years doing this, which is you save as, and I was like, what? So you work on a deck and you're reluctant to make the changes because guess what? You are in that time, love, continuum thing. You don't want to delete anything. The way that you free yourself from doing that is safe and then save as, so then you can work on the next one knowing very well, you can save all that work that you put into the other slides. And then you could be more free to edit judiciously just cut stuff wholesale, like that's not working, that's dumb, that's confusing, that's too much. And more often than not, you'll be left with a better presentation, but you won't have the fear of throwing away work. Okay, we have time for two more questions here. One from Carlson and one from Dave. It can be a tip or a question. If it's a question, just start with a question. Carlson, you're up. - Hi, Miss Ashley. How long do you usually take to practice on the presentation tips to make it natural and not make it appear like it's scripted? How long do my clients usually, how long do I recommend that my clients rehearse? - Yeah, yes. - Okay, so it depends, once again, it depends on the presentation. I have clients right now that are rehearsing in between fundraising pitches right now. They're iterating every single time, right? And Dave had about a week to prepare. I also have clients who, if you're doing a giant keynote in front of a huge ton of people, we usually start rehearsing four months in advance and then we'll ramp up a month in advance and then we'll do on-site rehearsals. So it really does depend. - Well, what's for the quick presentation tips? - Quick presentation. Quick presentation, just get going. Don't sit in rehearsing it too much, okay? - Yeah. - I can help with this one. - Yes, please. - 'Cause all I do are last minute presentations. (laughing) People are like, "Hey, Chris, will you see "you at the after part?" I'm like, "Nah, nah, nah, I can't." I'm literally working on the deck all the time up into the minute which I'm stepping up on stage and even till then, right? Which annoys everybody. I'm usually in my hotel room to four in the morning. I go to sleep and I wake up again and I just sit there and cycle through all the slides over and over again. I'm like, and then I'm just mouthing or miming what it is I'm gonna say and I just keep doing that so that I know exactly how it's gonna flow. My problem isn't so much what I'm gonna say in the slide but how it transitions to the next slide and on a different call, we'll talk about flow and transitions 'cause that's very important to me as a speaker, how one story, one data, or one idea flows to the next thing. It's gotta move and it's gonna be slippery versus like, "Oh my God, that was a non-sequitor." And I see this happening a lot of presentations. I'll tell you a story and they'll switch and it seems like this is a whole different presentation. And so that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for points where this doesn't make sense. I need to change the order 'cause it's not flowing. So I'm working more like an editor on a film moving the storyboard around really quickly. All right, we don't have that much more time. I'm gonna move to Dave. Dave, what's your question or comment? - Yeah, I just had a quick tip. I do use the deck mechanism to do creative updates and I'll put in like a small creative brief high level considerations, assumptions, some style guide info, what to do and what not to do. And also if I can capture KPIs and I usually do this a few days after I do a first round of creative for the clients. And they usually really love this because it shows the thought process in kind of that book format and that slide format. And it was actually inspired by Ben Burns video from the future on how to present a logo 'cause he goes into the retrospective idea of how they got to that place. And the last bonus tip on this is that it's fodder for case studies, like if you stay on this and you keep using it and you just update the clients with okay, now we're gonna look at slides 15 to 20 'cause this is how far we got. Once you're complete, if your project is successful, you could totally use this for case studies. So that's just my quick tip for that. So it's just such a flexible, powerful format for telling stories. Yeah, this is David, I'm done speaking. - Thank you very much, that was great. You just reminded me something about how Guy Kawasaki talks about how to do presentations 'cause he's well known in the space to do presentation design or at least give presentations, right? He's like if you do a top 10 or seven points or five things you need to know, it's helpful for the audience because they know and they can track along where you are in the presentation. So like earlier today, I'm like tip number one and you know what's five, so you know okay, we have four more, so if we like this, hang out. But if it's dreadful, you're like oh my God, four more lame tips, I'm outta here. But it allows the audience 10, I know. But then they can follow along. So that helps out a lot and that's why I've started to adopt something like this so that they know where they're at. Okay, I'm gonna give you one more power tip and then I'm gonna give Ashley the last word before you get outta here. Another tip I'm gonna share with you is this. I made this mistake before as a person who just knew that I have 30 minutes to give a presentation and I'm just cramming as much information and value as I can. What I didn't realize was a lot of people at these conferences, they have no idea who you are, what the topic is about, whether they should listen to you or trust you. So by the time I'm halfway through, if I've done my job, they're like oh, I guess I could listen to this person. But now they've missed half the presentation. So now I've adopted a different process which is to present the problem first, to make it painful for them, to want to know the answer and to hook them with a couple of rhetorical questions and tell them why it matters to me and why I'm talking about this. And then I tell them the answer. And I'm gonna use about a third of the time, just to bring them up to speed. That means I have to cut out a lot of things that probably at the end of the day probably don't need to be there. But I find this to be much more helpful 'cause they're gonna walk away knowing this, all right? My friend Joel Pildzer, he did this thing where he gave like a 35 minute talk on one idea. And I was sitting there in the audience like how much more can he stretch this piece of taffy 'cause it's getting real thin. It's getting real thin right now. But you know what? The women that were sitting around me, they're like, oh my God, he's the best speaker. I'm like, what the fudge? I'm trying to give you 35 ideas. Joe just gave you one. So I learned, you know what? Parabact the 35 ideas 'cause they're not gonna remember any of those, give them one and the love you for it. Ashley, last word to you. - Last word. Yeah, don't just think about it guys as the presentation on your screen. Think about it as the words that are coming out of your mouth, the body language that you're using. There are so many different layers on this. And if you take the time to consider how they all come together, then that's when you're going to get a presentation that starts to just move people, okay. If you're going to do, I've done 90, 90 minute present, I've done one, two hour presentation. And in that presentation, I released an exoskeleton robot and had like all sorts of crazy stuff. And not everybody gets to do that, right? But the base framework is the same, engaging your audience, being consistent, taking them on a journey, using story, and being prepared. So I hope that somebody in this audience gets to up their level and I really hope that this helps somebody gain awareness or raise some funds because this is a fun, important little niche of the design industry. I'm happy we did this. Did you just give a quick recap without me? Did I? You just threw me under a bus on that one. Yeah, I know what that monkey's talking about, but I'm going to give you a quick recap. So here are my five tips, Ashley. Yeah? Okay. Yeah. What the contours of the conversation, where the emotion's going to be, where the excitement and energy is going to be, and where the lulls are for them to process what they just heard, have one idea per slide. Just remember less is better, less but better, okay? And make the slides visual because that's really what it should be about. Focus on storytelling and data points. Story and data is a deadly one to punch combination. That's really what you want to do. And stories are about the rich sensory details and dialogue. Looking with the audience, this is a performance. You are part of that performance. It's not just a slide. So engage with them, use the entirety of the room and the experience to draw the audience in. And last but not least, start at the end, figure out what the one thing you want them to know and to walk away with and design the entire conversation and the presentation around that. And you're going to do a wonderful job. I hope you guys found our 10 tips on presentation design to be helpful. I think Ashley and I are going to do another room at some point in the near future. So be sure you give her a follow. She needs a few more followers here. Come on, 670. Come on, guys. Give her some follow. Come on. Come on. God. I can't hold this stage with someone with less than 1K. Come on. Thanks for joining us this time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new and insightful episode from us every week. The future podcast is hosted by Christo and produced by me. Greg Gunn, thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sandborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reading and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. Have a question for Chris or me. Head over to thefeature.com/HeyChris and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit the future.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. You love the host. You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lib Sin ads. Go to Libsynads.com. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N. Ads.com today.