A recent episode of 99% Invisible mentioned that basketball existed for 10 years before someone decided to cut the bottom out of the net so the game didn’t have to stop every time a basket was scored.

In a blog post this past week, Jon Acuff shared that even though dipping sauce containers have been around since the early 1980s it wasn’t until a year or so ago that they did the same for ketchup.

And right now KFC is advertising boneless original recipe chicken. Colonel Sanders opened his first restaurant in 1952. Did no one think of this until now?

All those ideas seem so obvious. Of course they have that. Why wouldn’t they have that.

Great design feels like that. Like it was inevitable.

And yet, as examples like these illustrate, great design — great, innovative ideas of any kind really — are elusive. It’s really, really hard to step back from what we already know to come up with ideas that are truly revolutionary.

In her book “Practical Charting Techniques,” Mary Eleanor Spear wrote in 1969 that creating excellent presentation visuals required three highly-skilled professionals: the Communicator, the Graphic Analyst, and the Draftsman.

Microsoft changed all that in 1990 by releasing PowerPoint. The implication was that now the average business-person could do what it once took three highly-trained people to do.

Unfortunately, even though business people now had the tools to create incredible visuals, they lacked the training and experience of professional graphics analysts and draftsmen. Which brings us to the current state of presentation visuals, which are really more like projected Word documents and speech outlines.

So, should we retreat to the old ways of having teams of highly trained people build slides for us? I think for some this is a good answer, but this can be expensive.

Should we instead help business people learn some of the basic design skills they lack? Should we teach design to new business students? This is certainly a less expensive route, but many business people may simply lack the desire to learn these skills.

I wonder if there’s maybe a third option. One that relies neither on completely outsourcing your slide building, nor relying completely on non-designers to do the work.

And so I sit here thinking about what that new role is. It’s a search for the next presentation design revolution. Like the basketball net, ketchup packet, or boneless original recipe, the answer’s probably so obvious it’s embarassing.

What do you think? Any slide designers out there found a niche in some third kind of arrangement? Or how about business people. Do you have an idea of how you wish things worked but no one offers it? If so, leave a comment. I’m all ears.

With your next presentation you might be trying to get listeners to invest in your start-up. Or maybe try a new product. You might want them to consider a new philosophy or maybe just a new brownie recipe. No matter the specific goals, though, there’s really only one general reason to give a presentation and it’s a simple one. You have to want to help people. Presentations for any other reason are where we run into trouble.

In my opinion, failure to think of our audience’s needs and desires is the main reason we give so many boring presentations. When was the last time you enjoyed a movie in which you identified with none of the characters? There’s nothing there for you to grab hold of. You can’t relate. The same thing is true of presentations. Too often presenters focus only on what’s important to them. They talk about who they are. What they do. What their goals are. What they want their audience to do. It’s as if they expect their audiences to act out of a sense of awe for the presenter. You can probably imagine how well this works.

Giving a presentation is ultimately an act of humility and empathy. The presenter sets aside her goals and considers things from their audience’s perspective. In her book, Resonate, Nancy Duarte says it this way: “You need to defer to your audience because if they don’t engage and believe in your message, you are the one who loses. Without their help, your idea will fail.”

Helping people with your presentation doesn’t mean that you can’t ask them to do things that will benefit you or your cause in some way, too. But you must show them how doing what you ask will have some positive benefit for them.

Ask yourself why you’re giving your next presentation. There are tons of potential reasons, but really only one of them leads to success. Go to great lengths to make sure that you’re acting in your audience’s best interest and your likelihood of success will increase dramatically.

Image courtesy of Flickr – Matthew Boyle

You can spend weeks, and months, and years reading and re-reading books and blog posts and articles on presentation design. But when it comes time to create your next presentation, how do you keep all that great information in your head all at once?

Michael Pollan simplified the incredibly complex answer to the question “What should I eat?” in his book, In Defense of Food:

1. Eat Food
2. Not Too Much
3. Mostly Plants

Dave Ramsey helps people become wealthy with his 7 Baby Steps:

1. $1,000 in Emergency Fund
2. Debt Free Except the House (Debt Snowball)
3. 3-6 Months of Expenses in Emergency Fund
4. 15% of Income to Retirement
5. College Funding for Children
6. Pay Off Home Early
7. Build Wealth and Give

So what would a list of presentation design rules look like?

Here’s are some I came up with for the design phase. (Maybe I’ll do content development and delivery in another post.)

1. One Idea Per Slide
2. Eliminate Text
3. Avoid Cliches (Templates, Clipart, Etc.)
4. Show (Not Tell)
5. Choose Harmonious Images
6. Choose Colors Well
7. At Most 2 Fonts (Maybe 3)
8. Fight For Whitespace

One of the biggest arguments I hear against creating better presentations is that it takes so much longer. And it’s true. It does take longer to create a better presentation. Much, much longer in fact. But as is the case in so many different disciplines, the extra work is worth it.

So, here’s my challenge to you: Spend twice as long on your next presentation. If you would normally spend thirty minutes, spend an hour instead. If you normally spend an hour, spend two. Just humor me and budget for the extra time. Spend that time doing the same things you normally do, just do them for longer.

Ideate longer. Develop content longer. Edit, organize, design, and build longer. Double the time spend on each step.

My guess is the presentation will be more than twice as good.

Beautiful new deck by Donny Epp.

via Note & Point