I love these new AT&T commercials with the businessman talking to a bunch of kids. I still can’t decide whether I think they’re scripted or not. If they are, those kids are great little actors. If they aren’t, well, those kids are hilarious. But that’s beside the point.

Those commercials made me wonder if presentation design isn’t just as “not complicated.” If you sat some kids down and asked them the following questions about designing slides, how do you think they’d answer?

“Which is better? Words or pictures?”

“Larger pictures or smaller?”

“Facts or stories?”

“Crowded or not crowded?”

“Boring or exciting?”

It’s funny how when you say things that way, it’s obvious what’s wrong with most presentations.

Maybe next time you build an important sales deck, ask a six-year-old for help.

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

I really love the simplicity of these infographics by Yang Liu illustrating the differences between the cultures of China and Germany. They really drive home the point that images can help us instantly see complicated things.

See more over at Brain Pickings

Check out this amazing new photo set by photographer, Melissa Munding. The look of the wedding was inspired by the film, Amelie.

I loved Amelie for its visual style, and this wedding captured that remarkably well. I love the simplicity and balance of the bright vivid colors and vintage-y feel. And Melissa’s capturing of the event is exquisite, too.

For more inspiration in this style you might also check out the movie itself, or the lesser known TV series, Pushing Daisies, whose producer, Bryan Fuller, said plainly that the look of the show was heavily inspired by Amelie. I would love to see some presentations that looked like this. Maybe I’ll have to make one.

Excellent work, Melissa!

How much can you eliminate from your presentation? Rather than adding more bullets or text or pictures or stories or illustrations, instead see how much you can get rid of.

Which points are most important?

What information is essential for your audience to make a decision/take action?

Rather than telling a story for each point, is there one story that says it all?

Do you have to show all the data or can you just present the conclusions drawn from that data? Perhaps put the data itself in a handout or online?

Does your slide need text or can it function with just pictures?

Do you need a background or can you just use full-bleed (take up the whole screen) images?

Do the animations add anything or could they be removed? Instead of multiple transitions, could you just set them all to “Appear”?

Could you get away with just using one font? Maybe just vary the size?

Do you need lots of color? What about black and white images, with one other color to highlight the important parts?

The answers to these questions run counter to our gut feelings about things. We want people see how knowledgeable we are so we try to tell them everything we know in one shot. In reality, no presentation could ever cover everything you know about a topic, particularly if you’re knowledgeable enough to have been asked to speak. Instead, take things out. How much? As much as you can.

In the words of Albert Einsten, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Including too much is actually a form of laziness. It’s easy to just dump all the information in our heads on an audience. That’s why it happens so often.

Eliminating content takes longer, but like so many things in life the extra work is worth it in the end. Your audience will thank you for giving them only the information they require. And the simplicity will make your message more like to be understood and remembered.