Shady Characters

April 24, 2009 by Jerry 

The default for building text in Microsoft PowerPoint—and the universal practice in presentations—is to dim the outbound bullet by turning it gray, making it almost disappear into the background, as if to say, “I’m done with that item.”

Small problem: you’re not quite done with it; for it is still partially visible to your audience. If they should want to refer back to a prior bullet, they would have to squint to see it. A slight discomfort, but a discomfort nonetheless for your audience.

Please click below and see the effect in animation:


If instead, you were to change the default so that you highlight the inbound bullet with a brighter color and leave the outbound bullets in their original visible contrasting color, your audience would easily be able to refer back to an earlier bullet and then return to the current bullet.

Please click below and see the effect in animation:


Get rid of those shady characters. Presentations are not ghost stories or film noir. Build your case with crystal clarity. Make it easy for your audiences and they will make it easy for you; the alternative is not a pretty picture.

Next week: The role of the presenter in displaying presentation graphics.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Shady Characters”

  1. Rowan Manahan on April 27th, 2009 9:13 am

    Hi Jerry,

    I agree, dimming ‘used’ bullets is a bad idea and I like your solution, but I wonder – does that still not leave too many elements onscreen for the audience?

    I’ve been killing ‘listy’ slides as much as possible for my clients and giving each point its own slide. When the points are linked to a theme or heading, we keep the heading and insert a clean simple visual. Then we can bring the points up one by one – each on a new slide.

    If the client needs to back-reference something they said earlier, we introduce a unique transition which that client then uses for all their back-references in all their presentations. ‘Flip’ and ‘Cube’ both work well for this.

    As a rule of thumb now, we don’t use more than three bullety-listy items on a slide unless there is a very compelling reason to subject the audience to more than three on any one slide.

    I’d be interested in your thoughts.

    Rowan

  2. Jerry on May 11th, 2009 10:53 am

    Hi Rowan,

    Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

    You are absolutely correct that “listy” slides make for poor presentations, and I encourage my clients (and readers of Presenting to Win) to use graphical images in their pitches. Unfortunately, many business people are either unwilling to try or they revert to standard corporate text slides. That’s where highlighting vs. dimming of the text helps.

    As to back referencing via flips or cubes or any other devices, I fear that adds complexity and might hinder the presenter.

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