Use Great Visuals In Your Presentations

One thing that stands out when watching many of Steve Jobs talks is his use of visuals, especially the way he uses presentation slides.

A normal business presentation would look something like this:

image: Dermot Greene

 

Think about it, in a standard business presentation, when someone shows a standard business slide like this, what do you do? You look at it, and then you read it. Your attention is focused on the slide and not on the speaker. You’re not listening properly anymore.

Steve Jobs avoided this problem. He kept his slides simple, with minimal text:

 

image: BENM.AT (Flickr)

 

Or he used images:

 

Image: BENM.AT (Flickr)

 

With this technique the audience would quickly glance at the screen take in the new information and then focus back again on Steve, he always had their attention.

What can we learn from this?

  1. Remove the distraction
  2. Keep the slides simple, a few words or an image
  3. Only use slides to add extra impact, remember you are the presenter, you want people to be paying attention to you, not PowerPoint.

 

 

10 STEPS TO SPEAKING LIKE STEVE JOBS

  1. Practice Until You’re a Natural
  2. Be Audience-Centric
  3. Why Should They Listen To You?
  4. Why Should the Audience be Excited by Your Idea or Product?
  5. Why This Is The Best Thing That You’ve Ever Done
  6. Use a Tagline
  7. Show Your Passion
  8. Use Theatre and Magic to Captivate Your Audience
  9. Use Great Visuals
  10. What Would Steve Do? (Coming Soon)