Here’s a really nice alternative to bullet points (and sub-bullets!) on slides, courtesy of presentation consultant Gavin McMahon over at Make a Powerful Point.
Use shapes (arrows work nicely) as your 3-4 topics. This gives the audience a quick overview of what you’ll be talking about for the next few minutes. This is especially important in instructional presentations, to help the audience develop a schema for learning.
Highlight each shape with a dark or warm color as you elaborate on it. Emphasize the text with bold or a larger font size. Place any additional text to the right.
Here’s what it looks like.
And here’s Gavin’s original example. Skip ahead to slides 14-18.
The local business publication here in Seattle uses the same method on their website. Check out the news headlines in the right column.
About the author: Bruce Gabrielle is author of Speaking PowerPoint: the New Language of Business, showing a 12-step method for creating clearer and more persuasive PowerPoint slides for boardroom presentations. Subscribe to this blog or join my LinkedIn group to get new posts sent to your inbox.
