How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

One of the best things I have seen over the last twelve months is the increasing use of images and the decreasing use of text in presentation slides.

Unfortunately, this has led to considerable misuse of images and in particular images that are simply not relevant to the subject of the words. Often presenters use images of their favourite sports star to illustrate the fighting spirit needed to increase sales. Sadly, the audience have no idea who the sports star is or how being like him or her will help increase sales.

Other times I have seen images of cute animals with the words “teamwork” plastered over the top of it. To most people cute animals are just not associated with ‘teamwork’

When using images in your presentation slides they really need to be relevant to the topic you are talking about. They also need to be easily understood by your audience. Yuna Kim is a famous figure skater in Korea. But figure skating is not a famous sport on a global scale. So using an image of Yuna Kim in a presentation to a group of business people from Australia, for example, is not going to work. Your Australian audience will not know who she is. Likewise, JiSung Park may be famous in Korea and certain parts of Manchester. But as football is not a big sport in the US or Canada, images of him are not going to resonate in a presentation to a US or Canadian audience.

You also need to avoid the use of ‘cliched’ images. These are images that have been used over and over again and have become boring. An image of two businessmen shaking hands for example to show partnership, or one of a group of people from different ethnic backgrounds to show that your company is a global company. These have been used too many times and are very boring.

So, choose your images carefully. Make sure they are relevant to the subject you are trying to illustrate, try to use only one image per slide and make sure that whatever images you do use, your audience are going to know what it is about.

One of the best places to get ideas for presentation themes and designs is slideshare.net. It literally has thousands of presentations that you can view and in many cases download.

Many of these presentations have been designed by professional designers and these presentations can give you a lot of inspiration for your next presentation project. Many of the presentations can actually convey a simple message just by the images and few words that are contained in the slides.

So, below I have listed my top five favorite presentations on slideshare.net.

프레젠테이션 테마와 디자인에 대한 아이디어를 얻을 수 있는 최적의 리소스 중 하나가 바로 slideshare.net 입니다. 이 웹싸이트는 글자 그대로 여러분들이 볼 수 있는 프레젠테이션이 수 천개에 달하고 다운로드도 받으실 수 있는 곳입니다.

이 곳의 프레젠테이션들은 전문 디자이너에 의해 제작된 것들이 많아, 다음에 있을 여러분의 프레젠테이션 프로젝트에 많은 영감과 아이디어를 제공해 줄 것입니다. 또, 이 곳에서는 이미지와 몇 몇 단어들로 구성된 슬라이드 만으로 간단한 메시지를 전달해 줄 수 있는 프레젠테이션들이 꽤 많이 있습니다.

이 곳의 프레젠테이션들은 전문 디자이너에 의해 제작된 것들이 많아, 다음에 있을 여러분의 프레젠테이션 프로젝트에 많은 영감과 아이디어를 제공해 줄 것입니다. 또, 이 곳에서는 이미지와 몇 몇 단어들로 구성된 슬라이드 만으로 간단한 메시지를 전달해 줄 수 있는 프레젠테이션들이 꽤 많이 있습니다.

Lead By Example by Ryan Fashing

Over the last few days, there has been much comment of the slide that was featured in the New York Times newspaper regarding the slide that Gen. Stanley A McChrystal, leader of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan was shown when took over the leadership in Afghanistan.

Gen. McChrystal was heard to comment “when we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war”.

There are far too many problems with this slide to go in to here, but here is my take on the whole debate:

PowerPoint and Keynote are tools that can be used to enhance our presentations, and can both be useful in conveying our message in a stronger and more friendly manner than by words alone. However, over the years our presentation software has become the main focus of our presentation, and that is where we are going wrong. PowerPoint and Keynote were never developed to be the main focus of the presentation. They were developed to help the presenter.

The above slide is creating news now, but I have sat through hundreds of presentation with slides similar to this one. Presentations where the text was too small and there was far too much detail in the slides. This never enhances our message, this always confuses our message and our audience will just turn off.

During the Battle of Britain in World War II, there was no PowerPoint or Keynote software, and so the British airforce used a table, with models for aircraft and a map to follow the war. This not only simplified a very complex battle, it also enabled the leaders of the war to fully understand what was happening in a clear and accurate way.

While today we may not have access to tables with maps and models, we do have access to white boards and flip charts. When we are faced with describing a very complex situation, the use of flip charts and white boards can make the explanation much easier for our audience. We must always remember, that when it comes to presenting, PowerPoint and Keynote are just one kind of tool from many different kinds. The key to a good presentation is simplicity, not detail.

There is a lot of comment on this article. For more insights and opinions please see:

Nancy Duarte of the Slide:ology blog

Guy Kawasaki on the Holy Kaw blog

Last Friday afternoon I went out to take some pictures of the wonderful cherry blossom in my local park (Olympic Park, SE Seoul). While I was taking these pictures, I had in my mind how I could use these images as slides in future presentations. This thinking changed the way I took the photographs as I had to think about leaving space in the images for text.

And that is a very important point. If you do presentations regularly, collecting a file of photos can really help you to create some amazing slides, that have a real feel to them. As you can see from the above slide, the cherry blossom is placed on the right side of the image leaving plenty of space on the left for text. This image is now placed in my “Stock Photos” file on my computer, so in future, I have a great image, with no worries about copyright or usage.

In a previous post I mentioned about creating a “Stock Photo” folder, and the creation of this folder can really help you when your creative juices are not flowing particularly fast. These images can give you inspiration, as well as some amazing images for your files.

As a postscript to this. Professional photographer Thomas Hawke, has an amazing photo stream over at Flickr.com. Thomas is an unusual photographer as most of the images he has made available on his Flickr stream are on the “Creative Commons” licence, so you are free to use these images for your presentations (subject to certain limitations)

Planning ahead by creating a stock photo album on your computer can not only save you some time, it can also give you some amazing inspiration. So start creating today.

대부분의 프레젠테이션을 살펴보면, 슬라이드 텍스트를 수평으로 정형하는것이 발표자들 사이에서 일종의 불문율처럼 보여집니다. 저도 언제 어디서부터 이런 규칙이 생겼는지는 잘 모르지만, 만약 여러분이 텍스트 디자인을 항상 수평으로만 생각하신다면, 무언가 재미있고 흥미로운 슬라이드를 디자인하기가 어렵다고 느끼시게 될 겁니다.

모든 슬라이드 텍스트를 반드시 수평으로 정렬해야 한다는 규칙은 세상 어디에도 없습니다. 여러분 모두, 세상에 있지도 않은 그런 규칙에서 벗어나, 텍스트를 기울여도 보고 비스듬하게도 만들어 보면서 슬라이드 디자인을 즐겨보시기 바랍니다.

슬라이드에 이미지를 삽입하실 때, 텍스트를 비스듬하게 놓으시면 여러분의 슬라이드를 더욱 더 생동감 넘치게 만들 수 있습니다. 하지만 기울인 텍스트와 이미지가 서로 조화를 이루는지 확인 해 보셔야 합니다. 이미지와 함께 텍스트를 이곳 저곳 놓아보시면서 슬라이드에 가장 잘 어울리는 부분을 찾아보시기 바랍니다.

위의 그림 중간에 보이는 수평선을 응용해, 그 수평선을 따라 메인 텍스트를 자연스럽게 기울여 이미지와 퍼펙트하게 어울리는 슬라이드를 만들어 보았습니다.

슬라이드의 주인은 바로 여러분 자신입니다. 슬라이드 안의 텍스트는 여러분이 원하시는 곳 어디에든 넣을 수 있다는 것을 항상 기억하시기 바랍니다. 한가지 여러분이 따라 주셔야 할 점은, 여러분 자신의 시각으로 텍스트와 이미지 사이의 조화를 찾아보시고, 이 둘이 서로 발란스를 이루도록 해야 한다는 것입니다.

그러므로 기억하세요! 텍스트를 꼭 수평으로 유지해야할 필요가 없습니다. 텍스트를 기울일 수도 있고, 수직으로 만들수도 있는 것입니다. 가장 중요한 것은 텍스트와 이미지의 발란스를 유지하고, 텍스트를 이곳 저곳 놓아보면서 디자인을 마음껏 즐기는 것입니다.