Five Ways to Transform Your Overloaded Text Slides

The most common complaint of audiences about PowerPoint presentations is that the slides are loaded with text and the presenter simply reads their slides to the audience. In the presentations I review, I see this all the time. I am not suggesting that you should never use text, because I think text is essential to many messages. What I am suggesting is that by adding more visual impact, your audience will better understand and remember your message. If your slides are text heavy, consider these five ways to transform some of your text slides into more graphical and meaningful slides.

Transform Tables of Numbers into Graphs
If your slide contains a dense table of numbers, consider if a graph would better highlight the point you are trying to make. Too often I see presenters attempt to point out the important figures in a data table with a laser pointer – and the audience gets lost along the way. Instead, figure out what the data is supposed to be saying – is it a trend, a comparison between two data sets or a comparison of data within one set. All of these can be better illustrated with a graph. Make sure that your graph still includes text highlighting the key point so that the audience has no doubt about the message of the slide.

To read the other four ways to transform your overloaded text slides, click here.