(I hope the folks at Duarte don’t sue me for copyright infringement or something.)

Having too many slide elements distracts from your message and annoys your audience.

I know that I obsess over Powerpoint design much more than most, but today I saw such egregious, flagrant disregard for layout and animation ettiquette that I just have to mention it.

It was really close to being perfect when the slide initially appeared. A simple, full-bleed, long-shutter-speed image of a rocket being fired into the night sky. Dynamic, simple, eye-catching.

I can remember thinking, “now that’s a good sligh.”

I said ‘sligh’ because that’s as far as I got before the slide’s other elements started appearing.

First, a huge, gaudy, silly-looking, sci-fi spaceship thingy slides from the lower left to the upper right and stops.

Then another picture of a rocket, complete with trailing cloud of smoke, rises straight up on the left side.

Then another rocket, rises right next to that one.

Then a Word Art bubble appears off-center near the middle of the screen.

One by one, more elements appeared (with poorly chosen transitions) until every single inch of white space is completely gone.

Eventually the slide was so cluttered, there was really no telling what it’s message was. It did more harm than good to the company’s image when the logo finally appeared in the lower left.

The Point

They say a good designer knows not only what to include, but what to leave out.

This slide was perfect when all it contained was one image. A well-chosen image gives your audience one idea to consider. An image can complement well typeset text by visually reinforcing the meaning of the text.

I have no doubt in my mind that the designer of this slide was well-intentioned, thinking he was making the most effective use of all the space that was there. These slides were at a huge conference. The right to have a slide in that slideshow between speakers no doubt cost a pretty penny and the slide would be seen by hundreds of potential clients. He was really getting his money’s worth out of every inch of that slide, he thought.

But by trying too hard and placing too many elements on the slide, all of the elements lost significance and ultimately meaning, and the slide failed to communicate anything. All that money wasted.

Have you ever seen something like this? Have you ever created something like this? I have. I promise to stop. And you should, too.