A presentation isn’t about the slides, it’s about the presenter and her story, but having great, fantastic and supportive slides has never hurt once they’re up there. However, proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast and other graphic design concepts are only one side of the story. Presentation design has as much to do about information design – the capability to transform and organize data, text, messages into meaningful communication that support a presentation. That takes another 10 000 hours of transforming information into something meaningful.
Presentation design doesn’t start in front of the screen, it should start at the drawing table, in a notebook, on Post-Its, mindmapped or as a storyboard. The more time spent thinking, contemplating, about a presentation and what the essential messages are before opening any presentation software will result in a outstandingly better presentation.
