Presentation standards and formats – nothing is canon or iconic

 

A painter at his easel. Florent Willems

Working on online presentations is a creative process. Ideally, each of them should be unique and inimitable. However, among presenters, one can often meet those who take specific recommendations too literally and elevate them to an absolute. For example, you might hear something like:

– It is a pity that there was not enough space for two or three more slides.

In doing so, they will refer to the selected presentation format. For example, the famous “Kawasaki formula,”, according to which there should be 10 slides for 20 minutes of presentation.

Many more examples like this are given, but we will not waste time and space discussing them. We think you get the gist. Literally taking advice from experts, many presenters fetter their creative initiative and act to the detriment of the tasks they face. Moreover, this approach leads to the appearance of thousands of presentations of the same type, as if they had come off an assembly line.

In fact, rarely is a particular presentation format ideally suited for a particular situation. Having settled on one of them, it is always worth remembering that the authority whose advice you are are guided by will not make the presentation for you, is not familiar with your task, and, more importantly, is not your target audience. And the opinion of the audience may not coincide, and often does not coincide, with the opinion of authorities.

Since we mentioned the “Guy Kawasaki formula”, we note that according to various statistical studies, about 80% of presentation visitors consider most of them boring, about the same number lose interest in them after the first 10 minutes of viewing, and 60% believe that there should be as many visual effects as possible. You must agree that these data do not fit very well into the formula: “10 slides for 20 minutes”.

Let us give you a simple piece of advice: all formulas, standards, advice, and solutions are nothing more than a guideline and starting points. They are designed to help the presenter in their work. This is not as canon or that failure to follow is a gross mistake. If during creating it turns out that an artist needs a different frame they will most likely not cut the masterpiece but that a different frame must be chosen.

Good luck to everyone, successful presentations, and high income!

Use ROI4Presenter – the best service and application for presentations and webinars.

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Source ROI4Presenter Blog