I know presenters who worry about every aspect of their presentation, but one: design.
Content. Delivery. Story. Structure. Transitions. Stage Presence. All impeccably executed. Design? Utterly ignored. I think there are many reasons this happens. A lack of understanding, even fear of design, leads some presenters to defer to Arial fonts, black and white slides, and a bullet point riddled approach. The sad thing is that this forces the entire success of the presentation to rely on content and delivery. Others may believe that design is nothing more than window dressing and peripheral to the success of a presentation. Design is a frill and nothing they need to worry about. But that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Follow the Design Leader: Apple
Take Apple for example. Apple owes much of its success to its attention to design. Apple delivers hardware and software with the highest standards for functionality and user interfaces, but it is the design that sets Apple products apart. Steve Jobs famously said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” The same can be said about a presentation. If your presentation lacks design, it has no look, it has no feel and it doesn’t work.
It’s smart to consider the design of your presentation. You ignore it at your peril. Your audience is watching.
