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Good slides have nothing to do with knowing how to use PowerPoint (or Keynote or SlideRocket or Prezi).

In fact, if you become a good slide designer, it will almost be despite knowing how to use PowerPoint.

Slideware is simply a means to an end. The tool that enables you to create slides cannot tell you what they should look like. Sure, it can remind you of your options. Like an over-worked attendant at Baskin-Robbins trying to help an indecisive child make up her mind, all it can do is rattle off its 31 flavors.

Strawberry? Vanilla? Rocky Road?

Bullet point? Pie chart? Clip-art?

And so we browse. We click and we drag and fiddle with fonts and colors. We look at everything twice, and finally pick our favorites and the things that have worked before. We walk away with comfortable slides. Easy slides. Slides that are the digital manifestation of whatever came to our mind as we stood in front of the giant, glass sneeze guard and pressed our noses to the glass. Slides that don’t offend, but that certainly don’t inspire.

What is your favorite dessert?

Go ahead think about it.

Can you describe it to me? What does it look like? Smell like? Taste like? Where does it come from? I’m guessing you can answer all of these questions in great detail and with considerable passion. You may even be salivating just thinking about it.

Creating slides is like preparing someone else’s favorite dessert. If you want them to be moved by what you’re about to give them, you have to find out what it is that makes them salivate. And if you can’t decide what YOU want in a Sundae, how can you ever hope to be able to give them what they want?