PRESENTATION DESIGN BEST PRACTICES: STORY

We create presentations whenever we want to communicate our idea to the world. Creating a presentation is a combination of both creativity and logic. The main goal is to influence your audience. To create an effective presentation, what is the best approach? In this post, you’ll discover best practices for story building in your presentation design.

Welcome to my blog where you will learn a thing or two about Presentation Design. Read on…

Don’t start in PowerPoint. Yep. I just said that. That may seem odd, but a little planning goes a long way in slide design. Planning your presentation is the best place to start. I am not talking about gathering imagery, icons, and deciding layouts. Think about the content outline—how much text goes on each slide and where to place imagery. We must also consider the audience—this is about people. Figuring out what your audience needs is an important step in the initial stages. Make sure they understand. Make them feel smart, not puzzled. Speak to your audience in words they understand. What is the main concept or idea you want them to walk away with?

After considering the audience and deciding how to best connect with them, begin putting the story together by establishing Context, Characters, Conflict, and the Solution. Start your presentation with the setting or context, next insert the characters, then conflict and resolution. You’ll organize a pattern of ideas. How do we do this in a business presentation?.

ESTABLISHING CONTEXT

The setting should be immediately recognizable to the audience. In business, this is a current situation, like the market environment or a company’s overall health and habits. Familiarize them with a scenario. Perhaps data and trends can create the context to which an audience can relate. You must convey a setting that kind of gets everyone on the same page.

THE CHARACTERS

Transitioning from the context, we add characters to the story. The way in which the audience can relate to the current business climate is through people. To help them connect emotionally with your presentation, they need characters. Characters establish an emotional element. How do we create characters in a business presentation? We already have them—they are customers, consumers, employees, a stakeholder, a supplier, or a partner. Perhaps your character could experience a business condition or a market drop. Characters in your presentation can be named or unnamed it depends on your style or preference. To create an even better presentation, add conflict or a problem.

THE CONFLICT

It’s the problem that generates interest and involvement. The audience is kind of expecting a problem of some sort. Conflict motivates your audience to care and gives the story momentum. You want some sort of disruption big or small. With this approach, you are creating tension. Tension generates curiosity. This is how you capture the attention of your audience. The conflict creates the potential for growth. Without conflict and you’ll have one big boring presentation. To introduce the problem or conflict you can do it incrementally. Build your case piece by piece, then escalate the problem further as if making things even worse. But you have to know when to back off and move on with problem-solving. Give your audience enough conflict to secure their attention. You will decide how far to push the conflict aspect of the story, just the right amount is ideal. At this point, the audience is hungry for the solution. The opportunity for you to be the hero and solve the problem awaits.

BREAKING FROM THE CONFLICT BEFORE THE SOLUTION

The big idea is the one thing you want your audience to remember––the thing they will walk away with. By giving them your big idea, it’s a consolation or a break from the conflict. The big idea helps the audience land softly after the conflict resolution. Use the big idea as a mental bridge to guide your audience through the conflict and accept a solution.

Context, characters, and conflict are interchangeable, but the solution is always at the end of your presentation.

THE SOLUTION

The resolution, now the audience is ready to see and hear success over the conflict. You may now unveil the new opportunity or thing that will take the organization to the win. In a business presentation, this is the meat and potatoes. It’s the benefits of the solution to the problem—it brings the characters through the conflict. It can be a strategy to reach new customers, an app, or simplifying a checkout sequence. This is the time to simplify and clarify the company offerings.

THE BIG IDEA LOOKS LIKE THIS

It’s a brief sentence of one point. Not too wordy. Simple. Try not to combine two ideas; this will become unmemorable. Give your audience something to remember by keeping it short and sweet.

Big Ideas are concise.

SUMMARY OF STORY ARCHITECTURE

The elements that make up a well-built story are setting, characters, conflict, and resolution. The first three can be in any order and their purpose is to explain why the audience should care. Have a Big Idea. This is the one thing you want your audience to take with them. Remember the Big Idea is the preview or bridge to your resolution. And last but not least, your resolution—one simple sentence that brings the whole presentation purpose under one umbrella.

IMPORTANT PRESENTATION TIP #1

Never start your presentation with the Solution. You don’t want to know the end of a movie before you watch it, right? The solution always goes after the setting/context, characters, and conflict. However, the setting, characters, and conflict and go in any order. Maybe start with the conflict first, as you can see there are many ways you can build the foundation to the story before the solution.

IMPORTANT PRESENTATION TIP #2

It’s a good idea not to overbuild your credibility at the very beginning of your presentation. This is the quickest way to lose your audience’s interest. Talking about yourself too much is not what the audience wants to hear. The best time to bring in credibility is much later towards the end of your deck. Now that your audience has heard your ideas. They tend to care more about you at the end of the presentation rather than at the beginning. When the credibility part comes at the end of your presentation, it complements the overall structure.

To create an effective deck of slides, it takes a special mixture of skills. Those skills include understanding business, skills in graphic design & communication, typography, writing, layout and data design. Designing is a complex job that requires multiple roles, so get back to your daily tasks and delegate your presentation design to a professional, like me!