A Simple Way to Improve Text-Heavy Slides
In business, there’s a universal hatred of bullet points. Mostly it comes from being forced to endure the painful process of listening to a presenter work through each word, long after you’ve skimmed through and ‘got it’. Painful.
Through the briefing process with clients, one of the most common requests we receive is to reduce the amount of text on screen for their presentations. To achieve this we’d apply the process of creative visualisation and use images, diagrams, artwork and icons to replace text
However in this new normal of Covid most presenters are faced with a difficult challenge of not knowing if their presentation will be in person, online or sending a deck through without a presentation. This gives rise to the Hybrid deck that needs to be either read or presented.
So when you need to have a hybrid deck, what can you do with keeping all the text on the slide and still make an impact?
The answer is to improve the layout to give some space and create a better hierarchy. By doing this, your slide can better guide your audience through the levels of importance of what you are trying to say.
Let’s look at this a slide from the CVS annual report.
Using this layout, what stands out when you read through? How does this slide make you feel?
If you spend a bit more time with it, they are big, positive numbers but it’s hard to see what’s important and the plain mood doesn’t match the strong numbers.
Let’s improve it in 4 steps.
Step 1. Bold out what’s important
Amongst all the text there are 6 important statements / facts on the screen. Let’s make them stand out. It’s a technique that takes no time at all but can help draw attention to what’s important.
Step 2. Separate the Heading
Size and location will help separate the heading from the content. Let’s plan to use all of the room we have on the slide. This also gives a sense of balance.
Step 3. Arrange in boxes
Another simple technique to transform sentences into separate pieces of information. This way each sentence has a different word count and spacing, this helps them appear crisper and more professional.
Step 4. Make it pop.
Using a contrast in the heading in the content suggest to the audience to read the red box first before the content. This helps make it feel ‘on brand’ and visually appealing.
Step 5 - Optional Animation
If you are using this as a live presentation, you will lose your audience for the first 6-9 seconds of the slide appearing on screen as they will be busy reading. Instead, keep the heading and fade in each box ‘on-click’.
Here’s start to finish as a time-lapse
No text has changed but how different would you rate this as to the original?
Great design doesn’t change the text but it does help support what you are trying to communicate.
Even simple presentation design techniques can be applied quickly and easily to help make what you are trying to communicate stand out whilst making your presentation more modern and professional.
Like to learn more?
Our award winning team shares the expert techniques, tips and tricks used to transform text heavy slides in our PowerPoint for Business short course. You can get started with the first modules for free
