How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

One of the main themes in Garr Reynolds’ book Presentation Zen, are the concepts of restraint, simplicity and naturalness. Garr does a great job in his book to explain these concepts and I want to try and explain how we can use these concepts when we present in English as a second language.

RESTRAINT:

Essentially, this means holding back. Keeping your slides and words to their core meaning and not using too much, whether that is a slide with too much information, or a presenter who is rambling with too many words, when fewer words and slides with less information are used, you message becomes clearer and your audience’s understanding is greater.

Sadly, in today’s business world, the pressure to pack in as much information as possible is high, and we often try to use far too much information, whether that is too much text on a slide or too many words spoken. We need to ‘restrain’ ourselves and use less. When presenting, less really does mean more.

This concept can really help us when presenting in a foreign language. It means we do not need to worry too much about how many English words we use, we just need to focus on the words that really matter. When we isolate the words that really matter, we can then ensure that these are incorporated into our slides to help the effectiveness of our presentation.

Above, you can see that the same message can be given by using less words, and by doing so you can create a more powerful slide.

SIMPLICITY

Simplicity does not mean simple – as in a lack of intelligence. It means simple to understand. One of the biggest mistakes presenters make is they quite often assume that their audience has the same level of intelligence as they do, that they understand everything the presenter does. This is not true. A presenter must remember that there will quite likely be a number of people in their audience who do not understand the technicalities of the topic.

A good way to manage this is to prepare your presentation as if you were preparing to give your message to your grandmother. If your grandmother can understand your message then your audience will. (unless you grandmother was a nuclear physicist – use your judgment)

The same applies to your slides. Do not over complicate them.

The slide on the left is much more complicated than the slide on the right. WHile the left slide does have a strong meaning, the one on the right is ‘cleaner’ and ‘simpler’

The language you use is also important. Simple words and short simple sentences have a clearer message than long sentences and long words. Trying to show off your level of English is a pointless exercise. You over-complicate your message and many in your audience (who also may be non-English speakers) will not understand. Aim your level of language to a person with an intermediate standard of English and remember to speak slowly.

NATURALNESS

Be natural in your delivery. This means be yourself and do not try to be something you are not.

When we deliver a presentation, it is important to be natural. If we read our slides we lose naturalness, we sound robotic and we lose character and personality. It is so important for you to actually learn your presentation in a way that you deliver your presentation naturally. Reading and reading and reading your presentation and learning it by heart will lose its emotional value. You need to learn it in a way that preserves its naturalness. For me the way to do this is to learn notes, not sentences. Learning notes means that I use the link words like “and”, “then”, “but” etc, naturally. And that is the way for any non-native English speaker should be learning their presentation.

For more information on the concepts of restraint, simplicity and naturalness, I highly recommend you buy a copy of Presentation Zen. THe book is available in many languages, so I am sure you will find a copy in your native language.

I love the typeface “Helvetica” I love its simplicity, its clarity and the way it always looks modern. Anyone who has been a member of any of my audiences will know that most of my presentations are filled with slides using Helvetica.

One of the problems you may experience when you present in English is that you are probably not aware of of the many different fonts out there. I wrote recently on the different fonts I use and why and in what circumstances I use them, but when it comes to a straight forward presentation, where the goal is to present information in a simple, memorable way, then Helvetica wins all the time.

Helvetica, in my opinion, looks best black on white (as in the image above), but it also looks great white on black.

Helvetica is such an iconic font, that they even made a movie about it. Here’s the trailer for the movie

Here are some tips when using Helvetica:

• Keep words to a minimum (Helvetica looks great with only a few words)

• Combine big letters with small ones (see above illustration)

• Use simple colours with simple backgrounds

• Spread letters out in your big sized words

• Use the whole Helvetica family

So next time you are thinking about your presentation. I say … go with Helvetica

One of the many questions I am asked is where to get inspiration for your slide designs. And the answer I always give is “look around you”

We are surrounded by billboards. posters and designs. Cities are awash with colour and ideas and inspiration are all around us. We can use these amazing surroundings for ideas for colour, design styles and so much more.

Below are a few examples I have captured on my travels around Seoul in the last few months:

From these examples, I have found simplicity, colour and text design style ideas. I often use these ideas in my own presentation files.

If it is possible, get in the habit of carrying a camera around with you, or if your mobile phone has a camera use that. You never know when a poster might be the missing link for a presentation you are about to do.

Here’s a favourite subject of mine. Fonts – I love them. I love the way you can use different fonts to show differing levels of formality.

If you read many of the books out there, there are often lists of fonts and when and how to use them. I personally use different fonts depending on the mood I am in. I have my email font set to lucida Grande. My main word processing font is this one (Helvetica) and my favourite presentation font depends on the type of presentation I am delivering. If my presentation is using a lot of ‘impact’ words then I am likely to use the impact font. If my presentation is more low key then I would more likely use Helvetica.

The problem with most presentational software is that they are set up to give you a default font. These fonts are likely to be either Times New Roman or Arial. Don’t use these fonts!

If there was one piece of advice I can give you that would make the biggest visual change to your standard presentation it would be change your font. Moving away from the standard fonts and using fonts that you like, can really make your presentation look completely different and also gives your audience something different to look at.

Below is a list of my favourite fonts and when I use them.

So before you make your next slideshow, take some time out to look through your font library and play with different designs. If can make a real difference to your presentation.

One word of advice when using different fonts. Try not to use too many different fonts in one presentation. Too many fonts, like too many colours can destroy the aesthetic of your presentation. So stick to one font for your headlines and one font for any text you are writing. This helps to maintain your theme and balances your presentation.

For a great place to get free fonts go to www.1001freefonts.com

There is a right way and a wrong way to present using images. The first thing to know is randomly taking images from the internet is not only unprofessional, but in most cases illegal. Most images that you find on the internet are copyright protected and if your presentation is recorded or published online anywhere you could find yourself owing the owner of those images a lot of money. Best advise; don’t do it.

Secondly, most images from he internet are of poor quality and really do not help to make your presentation look professional.

There are many places where you can obtain good quality images, legally, that are free. The best place is Flickr. Flickr has a category called “creative commons” and what this essentially means is that the images are made available by the owner for you to use for non-profit purposes. Non-profit purposes means they cannot be used in product materials where the intention is to sell something, or in a book or magazine article where your direct purpose is to make a profit. However, if you want to use the images in your presentation, then generally this will be OK as long as you make sure that you credit the owner for the image in your presentation.

How To Use Images

Once you have selected your images, just randomly placing the images in your slide is unlikely to have the impact you desire. As will all things design there is a right way and a wrong way to make your point. Let’s look at an example:

In this example, the image has a white background, but the slide has a graduated black to grey background. This is a common error many presenters make. To give this image more impact you could change the background to white and resize the image to fit the slide.

There is also another problem with this image. The main speaker is facing away from the words so your eyes are drawn away from the words. Try to make sure that the main person in the image is facing the words to give them greater impact.

Now the image takes centre stage and the impact of the slide is greater. “a picture paints a thousand words” and it our job as presenters to make those pictures paint those words.

A word of warning here…. If you have a low quality image, then resizing to fit your slide could distort the image and this looks very bad. So when it comes to using images, search for good quality images that will allow for some resizing.

In his blog, Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds shows some excellent sample slides on other ways you can or cannot use images. Click here to view

Personally, I like images where there is a lot of white space for text. Here is a sample slide where there is plenty of space for text.

In this slide you can see there is a lot of free space on the right side of the image to place some text or words. The slide is not busy, or cluttered and it makes for a nice, clean, calm image.

So, next time you set about creating your presentation, remember, the images you use will make a huge difference to the professionalism of your presentation.