In today’s Professional Communication and Presentation class, we discussed some visual design basics. We focused a bit of time on why we create bullet-driven visuals that make use of overused, cliche templates. The discussion today included discussing alternatives to the “slideument” approach as well as whether or not the visually-driven approach can work in more “heady” subjects like math. My answer is always a resounding yes. A visual aid is only one portion of a presentation, only one way to engage, convey, connect, and educate. If a visual aid is really a teleprompter, then it becomes a superfluous, unnecessary element at best and a detraction at worst. To close out our discussion, Alex challenged us to take a slide similar to the one below and display the information contained in a visual way.
She gave the class 10 minutes. I went right to work using Duarte’s Reduce, Record, Repeat method. I honed in on the main idea of each slide, and paired each one with a strong image. So is born the slide slam.
Try a slide slam 10-minute tweak challenge with your visual aid. While a strong deck takes much longer than 10 minutes, this exercise can help reinforce the importance of making vision king!
Call for decks: Don’t believe this can work for your business/discipline? Send your slides my way for a quick slide slam!
[...] Each month Alex teaches, she challenges students to take a bulleted slide and revise it to a set of bullet-free visual stories. I previously blogged about that here. [...]
[...] out Chiara Ojeda’s 20-minute “slide slam” from class last month and again this month. *Note: Yes, she participated along with my students. Yes, my students [...]
[...] One Idea per Slide (From Slide:ology) [...]