What has worked best for me in the past is to approach the presentation as a narrative. I would first think about what I want to say, write it down, try out how it works time-wise, and only make slides to support the narrative (the key idea being that the slides don’t need to stand on their own; an exception might be if you’re preparing a university lecture).

Then, practise. A lot. Unless you are a proficient improvisator, I’d recommend learning the narrative down to the order of your sentences. It is usually easier to improvize the wording within the sentences, and if you’re comfortable with that, it’s not necessary to memorize them exactly. But you might find yourself inserting excess filler phrases that degrade the impactfulness of your speech. On the other hand, speaking off-the-cuff might make for a more confident impression.

During practice, speak aloud – get comfortable hearing yourself talk. If you usually present with headphones, put them on so your practice is as realistic as possible.

Needless to say, all this takes a bunch of time; making a high-quality presentation quickly is still an unsolved problem for me. Somewhat counter-intuitively, very short presentations (≤ 7 min) seem to take a disproportionate amount of time. It’s not trivial to distill a complex topic enough to fit a lightning talk.

Structure

It should be logical, and gradually build up to the pinnacle of the presentation – the main point that you are driving. If you have the urge to jump back and forth between slides, you got the order wrong.

Here is one example of a good structure (when appropriate for the topic at hand):

  1. background
  2. the problem
  3. the obvious solution
  4. why the obvious solution doesn’t work
  5. our innovation to solve it
  6. (elaboration on the solution)
  7. summary/conclusion

This will not work for everyone. Elon Musk is known to want to hear the solution first, and if you don’t have a solution, why the hell are you wasting time talking for him instead of solving the problem?!

Some questions to guide the design

  • What is the target audience?
  • What is the time slot?
  • What is my objective (teach, persuade, show off …)?

Visual style

…of the slideshow is secondary to content, but can of course have an effect on the overall impression and often also understandability and navigation.

Layout

(TBD). Illustrate the narrative with plenty of pictures, drawings, diagrams…

Typefaces

When using non-default fonts in PowerPoint, make sure to try the presentation out on the target machine. PDF should be safe always.

Some recommended typefaces:

  • Helvetica (not free)
  • Roboto (free)
  • Arial is a reasonable fallback

Title slide

Often I try to make the title slide more appealing with an appropriate stock image. Unsplash is an invaluable source for these.

Some examples and references