How to prepare a Presentation the Fast Way
creating a descend presentation usually takes a lot of effort and time. A couple of years ago I had the "standard" approach as everyone else. I had an rough idea how the slides should look like, so I opened the software and directly started creating the pages one by one.
if you had the same approach I have two questions for you:
did you ever find yourself distracted cause you started moving things around on the page?
did you ever rearrange details on the first pages cause their style is not fitting to the last pages?
if you never asked yourself the above questions, just skip this article, you won't need it. If not, continue reading cause I have a game changer for you!
5 Steps for preparing a Presentation the Fast Way
to avoid the moving of boxes and the distraction I only use a paper. This gives me a draft version of the presentation where I can see if it works in general. Here is my approach:
I draw a line from the top to the bottom in the middle of the paper.
then I draw three lines from left to right equally distributed throughout the page. (You should have 8 boxes once done.)
I start with the box in the upper left corner by filling in the task for this presentation.
after that I use the lower right box to note down the goals I want to achieve with the slides.
with those two boxes in mind I start then drafting the pages until I'm done.
by using these steps, changes can be done very fast by pen. Therefore, I can visualize the whole presentation before I start creating it with a software.
image by the author; feel free to use it!
Three main Benefits of drafting a Presentation
drafting the pages gives me the following advantages:
I know how the pages should look like, so I know where the boxes should go. There is no tryout phase for the layout. No huge adjustment of the pages by the end of the creation process. Therefore, no waste of time.
because I filled out the first and last box with the task and the goals I always remember why I am creating this page. After every single page I ask myself “Is this page fulfilling the task? Is this page bringing me closer to the goal?”.
once this method is applied in a department, it can be the standard way of creating pages for presentations. I can easily hand over the task of digitizing to someone else. (this is something I haven't achieved yet).
of course I start to move a few boxes around once I start creating but these are minimal adjustments. I am not getting distracted by some tryouts of layouts or boxes or something else.
the most challenging thing for me is the task and goal writing. It is sometimes hard to really get to the “why”.
another topic I have always in mind and is somehow ignored in bigger company's:
the presentation has to serve the needs of the audience. This means, a presentation in front of managers is different then in front of a customer or a project team. I will cover the different “styles” of presentations and layouts to choose in a future article! Sign up if you are interested.
[Update 29.03.2022]and here we go with the article I was just talking about:
thank you for your time,
daniel
you can download the template from above here:
Questions raised so far
But what if I have to do a big presentation? Those few boxes are not enough.
I found that one sheet of paper can cover a 15-20 minute presentation. This is a rough time frame of course and is highly depended on the speed the presenter is talking. If I need more space for the draft, I use more pieces of paper but I always keep the first and last box of the page filled with the task and goals, so they are visible to me all the time.
