- If you get stressed out when it's time
to make a presentation
and you're always scrambling to finish on time
then you need a new workflow.
Watch this video to learn my super easy
four step presentation design workflow.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Presentations are a part of life
and if you're always stressed and scrambling
then that's a lot of wasted time, effort,
and stress that you don't need in your life.
So I'm going to share my four step
presentation design workflow
so you can stay in control, stay calm,
and get that slide deck out of the way.
Step one:
(bell rings)
create your presentation goals and create your storyboard.
Okay, be real with me, when it's time to work
on your presentation how often do you
just jump straight into your presenter notes
and start drafting the design of your slides?
No wonder you're scrambling and wasting time,
you skipped the most important part,
setting your presentation goals.
Specifically, what should your audience
remember when you're done?
What I mean by that is,
what should your audience walk away with?
Imagine if they walked out of your conference or lecture
and their friend asked them, "what'd you learn?"
What do you want them to say?
Once you know that, then you can decide
on what your storyboard is going to be
for your whole presentation.
Storyboarding is how you organize, outline,
and structure your presentation.
You're probably used to doing something similar to that
when you break up your presentation
into things like intro, method, results and discussion
but storyboarding pushes you to think beyond that
into how you're walking your audience
through you entire presentation to make your key points.
Oh, and don't worry about taking notes
because I've created a handy checklist for you
that you can download for free
and the link is in the description below.
Moving on to step two.
(bell rings)
Now that you know your goals and your storyline
you can start working on your content
or your presenter notes.
The key thing here is to focus on what you're going to say,
as in your actual presenter's speech.
The reason you want to start here
is because good design cannot make up for bad content,
so you need good content.
I recommend you just start with white slides,
type out your bullet points and practice that instead.
Yes, you need to practice your presentations,
I cannot emphasize that enough.
You need to know how long it is, what the flow is like,
and how often you engage your audience
because you should never be talking at people
for more that a few minutes at a time.
So you want to check that while
you're practicing your presentation.
Once you feel like you have your speech almost finalized
then you're ready for step three.
Step three:
(bell rings)
design your slides.
Now we're at the fun part.
Once you know what you're going to say
now we can design the slides and add visuals
and make them great.
The first thing to do is copy
all those bullet points that you wrote
and paste them into the presenter notes.
And now you're ready for the design final touches.
Reduce the amount of text on your slides,
break up your slides so you only cover
one to three points per slide,
and add in great visuals so that your slides are engaging.
Then, when you think you're done
do a visual audit on your entire presentation.
Change the view, and you can do
this in PowerPoint or Keynote,
and look at all of your slides at a bird's eye view.
In this view ask yourself, "can I read the text easily?"
If not, your font size is too small.
You also want to ask yourself,
"Does this look like a giant wall of text?"
If it does, then you're gonna want to mix it up,
add in some good photos, add in some icons,
or even some illustrations.
Make it interesting for your audience.
Step four:
(bell rings)
practice your presentation
and make your presentation package.
The last step is to practice some more
and make all of your final edits,
and then create your final presentation package.
That includes lots of backups of your presentations
just in case something goes wrong.
Email it to yourself, have it on a flash drive,
just make sure that you have a backup.
You also want to create a custom handout
of your presentation, because if you made effective,
highly visual, engaging slides
then they're not going to be good handouts.
So take a few minutes to create your own custom handout.
So there you have it, a four step
stress free presentation design workflow.
Make sure you grab this checklist
and other goodies in my free starter kit,
the link is in the description below.
And if you enjoyed this video make sure
that you share it with your friends or colleagues,
hit the thumbs up, or subscribe
so you never miss another video.
I'll see you next time. Bye!