By Charmayne Gien-Rule
 
Back in the early ’90s when computers were first becoming mainstream and I was a budding graphic designer, I was tasked by my then employer to create a slide presentation using a relatively new software called PowerPoint. The process was clunky and frustrating, and the choices were minimal. But I remember being excited about the possibilities this new tool afforded and have been working in PowerPoint ever since.
 
PowerPoint has come a long way since its inception, yet, despite its persistence as the number one choice for slide presentations, its best practices remain elusive. As a member of the creative team at ECi Software Solutions, I work on most of our presentations, ranging from a few, simple slides to lengthy and detailed charts and graphs. Following are my top 6 recommendations for conducting optimum presentations.

1. Keep it Simple
   Your audience has assembled to hear you speak, not to read your slides and if they’re reading, they aren’t paying attention. Your slides are there to support you as a supplement to your presentation so they need to be easy-to-digest yet visually appealing as a backdrop to your story. Keep your slides free of clutter, use “white space” as much as possible, and develop each slide to convey your thoughts at a glance. Only add the most pertinent information to each slide and use carefully selected color and imagery to convey your message.
   
   
2. Limit Text and Bullets
   Hear me out. I know that many of you build slides with the intention of printing them as a take-away document. I get it, but boring your audience with bullet point after bullet point won’t help you get your message across. The rule of thumb, as contradictory as this may sound, is to create slides that will be of little benefit to the audience without you there to expound. Better to prepare a separate document as a hand-out that outlines what you discussed in the presentation, after your talk, or record your narration and save the entire package as a .wmv file. The idea is to keep your audience focused. Not only will they absorb more of what you’re saying, they will feel more connected to you. In addition, you will become a better presenter by not having slides to read from.

 

1. Limit Animation
   I know it’s fun to use bells and whistles. That’s why they’re there, right? Well, yes, but they are meant to be used judiciously to highlight specific points of interest and to keep your audience captivated. Using too many transitions can actually slow down your presentation and hinder your flow of thought, thereby having the opposite effect. Stick to simple animations, such as “wipe left-to-right” to usher in bullets (remember, to keep these to a minimum). And if you want to transition from slide to slide, save the animation for main sections, so the audience knows something new is coming.

 

1. Make it Visual and Use Quality Imagery
   Use images, charts, videos and graphic elements to visually break up the monotony of words, and choose your images wisely. I know it’s tempting to do a Google search and download cartoons. Please don’t, for a number of reasons. Not only are there legal ramifications, cartoon-y images, while cute, are often not seen as professional. This includes PowerPoint clip art, which your audience has more than likely already seen.

Nowadays, stock photography is relatively inexpensive and sites such as istockphoto.com allow you to purchase photography and illustrations for a relatively nominal fee. Trust me, it’s worth the added expense, as good art and photos make your slides far more emotionally engaging. Of course, you’ll need to be cognizant of how to best use imagery so text that is overlaid is still readable, and so that images aren’t stretched or squashed. If you’re going to overlay text and aren’t versed at manipulating images, choose a simple image that will allow your type to “pop,” so light against dark and vice-verse.

 

1. Choose the Right Fonts and Colors
   Fonts: Fonts come in two basic categories, serif (e.g. Times New Roman) and sans serif (e.g. Arial). Serif fonts, the kinds with the small stroke attached to each end, have historically been used to increase the readability of long passages of text, primarily in print. Once projected on a screen, your text will be huge, so I suggest using a sans serif font. This type style is cleaner in appearance and considered more modern. Remember, we’re looking at keeping our slides simple and this letterform embodies simplicity. When selecting a font, make sure to use the same font set throughout your deck.

 

• Like fonts, color can be divided into two general categories, warm (such as red, orange, yellow) and cool (such as green, blue, purple). For presentation purposes—and this is simplified as color theory is complex—cool colors tend to recede so they work best for backgrounds while warm colors tend to “pop” so they work well in the foreground. My recommendation is to stick with cools or warms, because, without going into too much detail, crossing cools and warms if not done correctly will make your audience’s eyes scream, for example, red on a blue background or green on a red background. The good news is PowerPoint has built-in themes with colors that are pre-selected to be complementary.
  
  Note: For both fonts and colors, I’m offering general guidelines. Your brand may dictate your approach.

 

1. Keep Your Slides Consistent
   Lastly, and this one is important, please make sure your slides have one, cohesive, look and feel. I personally prefer to start with a blank slide as I find the templates that PowerPoint provides to be very busy and outdated. That said, if you’re new to PowerPoint, using one of their templates will help you to maintain visual consistency. If you are going to start from scratch, as it were, it helps to build a stylized and branded template using Master slides, so you aren’t reinventing each time you need a presentation. Using one set of fonts, colors that work well together, and even the same feel in your imagery will look more professional and will give your presentation a better flow.

 
Take-away? Create simple slides that complement your presentation. Keep the bells and whistles to a minimum and use lengthy written explanations and bullets sparingly. Use colors and fonts consistently, and choose images that help tell your story and allow your type to “pop.” Most importantly, remember that Your audience will thank you.
 

Original posted June 5, 2013 (revised April 8, 2018)

Facebook, that is. Why, you ask? Well, so did 90% of my friends on Facebook. Why in the world would someone who has 900+ friends and a decent "following" deactivate their account? Their FREE account, mind you. What about family connections, high school connections, political connections, work connections? What about the umpteen photo uploads and tags, the clever postings, the ubiquitous "Likes," the ever constant stream of "news?" What about all of the missed birthdays and events and announcements and cat videos and Cheezburger quotes and memes?

OK, they have a point, all these naysayers. For all of these reasons, Facebook and its cousins for that matter (Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc.) are truly a wonder of our modern age. Social Media has allowed connections that might not have otherwise occurred, and established a social outlet for many. In my case, my family is thousands of miles away. I've missed births, deaths, birthdays, graduations, marriages, divorces, and while I may not have been there in person, thanks to Facebook, I've often been kept in the proverbial loop.

So, you would think that I'd want to keep my account, my profile, my claim to my nine-years-in-the-making cybersquat. And you would think that a person like me who enjoys writing and sharing my opinion—hence this blog—would want to maintain and, in fact, cultivate a following in the Social Media stratosphere. After all, what are opinions without sharing, and what is a blog without a following? In fact, in this day and age, some would go so far as to ask what is a life without logging into Facebook morning, noon, and night?

Perhaps the answer lies within that very question: What IS a life without logging into Facebook morning, noon, and night? Well, I'm about to find out, and while this was a surprisingly difficult decision, I actually feel refreshed and free. The truth is that while I think Facebook has many wonderful qualities, for me, at least, there are many I find disturbing, both within the structure of Facebook itself and the way in which it is utilized. In other words, my reasons for quitting are as vast and varied as my proliferation of friends. This all boiled down to the following.

1) With 900 "friends" and counting, how personal is "staying in touch?"
Facebook essentially decides whose Newsfeeds you see, based on your repeated patterns of navigation and whether or not you're willing to periodically update your preferences each time they change their layout. So, there's no guarantee as to who sees your posts and vice verse, unless you make a concerted effort to either keep your friends to a minimum or check in on certain people, while at the same time, commenting or "liking" their activities so as to generate an automatic Newsfeed.

Isn't email easier?

2) Of these 900 "friends" how many really are friends?
I have about a million family members, so that's a good portion of my pie, but if I'm being honest, I'd say maybe 100 of those 900 are people I actually know. Sure, I may have gone to school with some, or worked with some, but that doesn't mean I know them the way we used to actually know people we called friends. Just because I went to elementary school with Sally doesn't mean Sally is someone I’d want to know today, or, well, isn't a serial killer. I'll put this another way, my real friends have my contact information.

3) The constant barrage...
While keepin g in touch is great, I'm not so sure I need to know every single thing every single one of my "friends" is doing at every single moment of every single day. I think it's too much. This perpetual chatter is overwhelming while, ironically, a good percentage of the time the content is actually underwhelming. Mine included. I mean, do I really want to know when your husband is going in for his colonoscopy?

I realize that I may indeed be hypersensitive, but I honestly think that most of the time, social media content is either vitriolic, depressing, or frankly, so "Kumbaya" that it's kind of nauseating.

Let's explore...

a) Vitriol. When did it become OK to be an arse? I think of computers as vehicles and the Internet as a highway. When you're in your car and an idiot cuts you off, it is somehow perfectly acceptable to curse them to hell and back. Why? Because you're safe within the confines of your seemingly distant space. The Internet is no different. You can be who you want and act how you want, behind the comfort and safety of a computer screen. And you can bet on it that people do.

There is a divide brewing in our country and culture, which is propagated by social media. People's religious and political preferences are public in a way never before seen. The landscape of privacy has changed inextricably and the old adage of "never discuss politics or religion" no longer exists. So, G-d help the person who disagrees. And G-d help where we're headed, because freedom of speech is one thing (and something I wholeheartedly support), while righteousness and bullying are something entirely different.

b) Depressing shit. I know that the whales, rhinos, and rain forests need saving. I know that there are countless homeless dogs and people. I know that breast cancer affects 1 in 8, and that human trafficking is alive and well and coming to a town near you. I know what happens to animals going to slaughter and how many toxins are in our air, water, soil and food. I know that our planet is dying, that our politicians are corrupt, that Iran has nuclear weapons, and that Kristen Stewart is gay. This week. At what point does all of this leave us so desensitized that none of it is ultimately important?

c) Kumbaya. Used to be you actually needed to do something to be considered wise and a suitable mentor, like, you know, get an advanced degree, write a book, cure a disease, head a country. Nowadays, we have unlimited access to all kinds of feel goods. In fact, there are companies dedicated to doing this, and for some reason, we all believe that pilfering and redistributing enlightening quotes somehow makes us Gandhi. So, while I think that this is probably a response to all of the aforementioned depressing shit and vitriol, and I do admittedly enjoy most of it most of the time, sometimes it's just enough already. As in, who in the hell is really THAT happy?

4) How safe is it?
Aaaaaaaaah.... I can talk for days on this topic. Yes, you can change your privacy settings on Facebook, but, again, when they add new gimmicks, most of the time this requires a re-review of your preferences. At this very moment, Timelines are NOT private, not in the way pages used to be. Our main photos and even some of our posts are public fodder, something many of us don't even realize, and something that cannot be changed. In fact, you may think that your settings are keeping you safe from public view, but when you comment on a page that is public e.g. a news channel, or on the page of a friend who has not updated their privacy settings, your comments are out there in Googleland. For. Ev. Errrr. This may not seem like a big deal, until you apply for a job and your comments about whatever (religion, politics, sexual orientation, sports) show up in a search and offend the person doing the hiring. 

There has also been a lot of chatter about using smartphones to upload to social media, because of built-in GPS functions and the ease at which our every move is readily available to those who want it.  This may appear über-cool until it is your child who is uploading photos of herself... at the beach... in a bikini. So, not only are you now a target for the gazillion ads that grace Facebook's pages (have ya noticed how many are targeted toward your likes and dislikes?), any wacko in mom's basement has access to your whereabouts! And your child's whereabouts. At the beach. In a bikini.

Which leads me to the sharing of countless photos of your most precious cargo, your children. I'll qualify this by saying that I don't have kids so I'm not here to judge those of you who do, and I do understand that sharing is indeed what we do in this ever shrinking world. But, I will ask that you please consider the risks and take precautionary measures. Because as vulnerable as you are, your babies are all the more so. Really, whatever you put out there—and trust me, I'm guilty of this myself—makes you a sitting duck for any loon who gets a feather up his bedonkadonk. Even if the loon isn't a pedophile or rapist, he may be an identity thief. I cannot reiterate enough about persistent vigilance as far as privacy settings go, because I promise you, Facebook isn't doing it for you and there's a reason why PleaseRobMe.com exists. 

Here's where it gets really fun, folks. What if you "like" or comment on a page that is being scrutinized by the government? Yes, this really does happen, probably more often than we'd care to know. Let's pretend that the person you're "liking" is stockpiling weapons unbeknownst to you, or secretly plotting a coup. Now, you're on a list to watch simply because you follow this putz. Not to mention that some of the time, the person whose page you "like" isn't even the person you think it is, because it's pretty stinking easy to fake a profile. Just ask anyone who has ever tried online dating.

5) Facebook has effed up.
Lastly, we all know what's happened to Facebook of late. Zuckerberg is in the hot seat, and so he should be, and time will tell what will happen once he’s testified before Congress. Honestly, all I care about is that my data is out there, and besides the potential legal ramifications, it’s just plain icky to know that our personal information is for sale.
 
Look, maybe I'm onto something and maybe I'm just an old fart. At the end of the day, this is a personal decision and one that I've made with clarity and at the same time, trepidation. As an art director, I know the value of targeted marketing and social networking as well as the expectation that I remain attuned to the latest and greatest technological advances. As a military spouse, I know how lonely it can be to not have connections as we move from state to state and country to country. As a daughter, sister, aunt, niece, friend, I know that there are those that will miss my presence online as I will theirs. But I also know that keeping my ego in check is part and parcel of being a yoga instructor (my side passion) and living a yogic lifestyle. As is uncluttering and removing myself from the negativity and potential dangers, both the kind I perpetuate and the kind I'm drawn to in my Newsfeeds. Mostly, I know that vulnerability and metaphorically putting ourselves out there, is not the same as oversharing and actually putting ourselves out there, as discussed here by Dr. Brené Brown.

As I wrap this up, I am well aware of the irony of writing a blog I'll have a hard time promoting, not to mention that writing a blog is, in and of itself, a form of egotism. Hey, I’m a work in progress and I’m navigating new territory despite the fact that a decade ago this particular topic would not have even been on the radar.

So, what IS a life without Facebook? I'll let you know, if, that is, I can get you to follow me.

Namaste.

Charmayne

p.s. Full disclosure... I did deactivate my account for 9 months and I didn't miss Facebook at all. In fact, I felt less tormented about stupid stuff, and I read actual books, the kind with real pages and a smell. I went back on because part of being a Creative Director in today's world means staying abreast of the digital sphere, which includes social media. So, as of April 2018, I am once again (still)l on Facebook. Sigh.