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Case study: Creating a presentation? Don’t make these 5 common mistakes
Simple tips to help your slides shine
Overview
As a seasoned presentation designer with over 20 years experience, I’ve seen it all — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Plenty of ugly. Here are the top five things to avoid when creating presentations, along with some pro tips:
#1: Don’t cram too much stuff onto your slides.
More is not better. The most common mistake is a slide jam-packed with content. There’s so much text on the slide it would take your audience five minutes just to read it. You have to squint, even from the front row, because the font size is too small. There are bullets and more bullets and even sub-bullets. There are tiny logos, clip art, a company name in the upper right corner, and a footer across the bottom. It’s a presentation within a presentation.
As a presenter, you want your audience to be listening to what you’re saying — not reading your slides.
Unfortunately, many presenters mistakenly treat their slides like notes. Every single word they plan to say is physically on the slide. It’s an easy mistake for a novice speaker to make. It saves hours of prep time. (Why rehearse, when you can just read what’s on the…
