10 tips for better slide decks from TED

presentation slide on laptop; working on a presentation

Today we’re sharing advice from TED’s Aaron Weyenberg, who creates such amazing slide decks that people ask for his autograph. Though all of the presentation tips are great, his first and last tips are especially useful:

  1. Think about your slides last when developing a presentation. Until you clarify your message and structure the narrative, it is not a good use of anyone’s time to work on individual slides. (How often do we start working on a presentation by looking for slides from other/old decks?)
  2. Reproduce simple charts and graphs. By recreating the chart in your own template (color theme, font) you can control where the audience focuses their attention.  Use design to create a headline to the information presented by the chart or graph and make it easy for them to understand the data. For more tips, read the full post.