Match Your Slide Design to the Presentation Situation

Are you getting ready for a presentation? Do you know the right kind of slides to create? There are three types of slides we can use in corporate communication. I call these the Cinematic slide, the Docuslide and a newer formulation, the Virtual-Visual slide. The key to creating great slides is to match the right slide design to your purpose, audience and setting.  

Slide Types in Corporate Communication 

A Cinematic slide is like a billboard. It’s built around a powerful visual, such as a photograph, a well-constructed chart or a simple diagram. It has minimal text and plenty of white space. It has a catchy and creative title, which may not necessarily be found at the top of the slide. Cinematic slides support the speaker: without a speaker, the audience could get the gist of the story, but a Cinematic slide requires the speaker to elaborate and take the audience deeper into the content verbally. Cinematic slides, as the name suggests, are predominantly visually oriented. Here is an example of a Cinematic slide.  

A Docuslide or Slideument is a document created in PowerPoint. It has both text (such as headlines, subheadings and paragraphs) and visual elements (such as graphs, charts, icons and tables). A Docuslide is designed to be read and understood without a speaker. Here’s an example.  

A Virtual-Visual slide is designed to be shown in a virtual meeting or presentation. Each slide covers one idea. It has a more even mix of visual and text elements. It has a strong headline and uses thoughtful animation. Here are some examples: 

Matching Slide Type with the Setting 

Cinematic Style 

If you’re giving a live, in-person presentation in a large venue – think TED Talks, or a boardroom or classroom where the audience is at least 20 feet away from the screen – you’ll want to create big, bold Cinematic slides. In this setting, you are the focal point. Your slides are truly visual aids that supplement what you’re saying. As Jean-Luc Doumont notes in Trees, maps and theorems, “Slides are for conveying messages – the same ones as the spoken text conveys.” 

Cinematic slides convey emotion. They communicate a big idea to help us recognize a comparison. They help make the complex simple. You would not use a Cinematic slide deck as a leave-behind after a presentation. It can’t get the job done without the speaker. It’s like giving someone a flashlight without batteries. If necessary, you can provide a separate handout that provides more detail and supporting information.  

Docuslide Style 

If you are presenting to a small audience in an in-person setting and need to carefully walk them through specifics such as research findings, financial analysis or large-scale project plans, a Docuslide is a good choice. Give each audience member a copy of the deck, project the slides, and guide them through the material by calling attention to specific, salient points. You’ll need to use verbal cues such as, “on the right side of page 3…”, or “the chart on page 5 shows…” 

Docuslides are appropriate for board meetings, scientific briefings or project status reports. Good slide design is still critical on a Docuslide.  

Virtual-Visual 

The Virtual-Visual slide is designed specifically for delivery in an online presentation on Zoom or Teams. In these settings, the shared screen takes up most of what the audience sees – they see you in a small box with the other meeting participants. Presentations given in virtual meetings rely heavily on what the audience sees. Audiences looking at screens these days are conditioned to see something visually interesting, like the human face or something in motion.  

Onscreen a human face is very captivating. Just look at the proliferation of talking head videos on YouTube. Here’s a tip: when you’re presenting on Zoom, periodically stop your screen share or spotlight yourself so the audience sees you as they would in a YouTube talking head video. You are more interesting than a slide.  

Another thing audiences find eye-catching is motion: the change from one screen image to another. If you’re speaking for five minutes and the audience is viewing the same slide for the entire time, they’re going to get bored or confused. Often, a single slide stays onscreen too long because the presenter has put too much information on the slide and feels the need to cover all of it. The audience can’t listen to you and read the slide at the same time. 

You can keep things moving in your presentation by using more slides. More slides don’t mean a longer presentation. It means less time on each slide and more movement from one slide to the next. Done well, the audience won’t even realize they’ve just seen 10 different slides in two minutes.  

Another way to increase movement is to use animation. Animation gets a bad reputation because many presenters misuse it – but when used properly, it can help produce a flow of information, both visual and auditory, that audiences can process without becoming overloaded.  

Here are few guidelines for using animation in PowerPoint: 

• Use animation to walk the audience through a sequence or process. 
• Animate with purpose. You don’t want any “noise” on the screen, and unnecessary animation is just noise.  
• Bullet points are boring. They don’t convey a relationship or meaning – but sometimes they are unavoidable. Animate bullet points with an Appear or Fade effect. Try to avoid too many Fly-In or Wipe animations.  
• Grey out or hide points you’ve covered. You can always bring them back. 
• Use animations to reveal time sequences like project timelines. 
• Use animations to show connections between ideas or how components are interrelated.  

Another way to add motion to your presentation is to use slide transitions. Transitions provide different effects when moving from one slide to the next, which creates a great sense of continuity in a presentation. But keep them simple. No need to add the glitter transition in a business presentation. 

Final Thoughts 

When it comes to creating great slides, there is no one-size-fits-all.  It’s best to match the style of your slides to the setting in which you’ll present. Work with text, images, and movement to keep the audience engaged – and to avoid overloading or confusing them. Pick the right style slide for the setting and the audience will thank you.