So, Oracle and a company called Autonomy are having a dust-up, a legal imbroglio if you will. And  to make a point, some point I’m not interested in taking the time to understand, Oracle released a slide deck that they had at one point sent to the people at Autonomy.

Here is one of the Oracle slides:

I mean, really. Let’s ignore the egregious use of “addressable” as an adjective and focus on the curious, yet common, practice, of cramming way too much ‘information” into one slide. Why would you do that? This one slide is addressing at least four points. There is no shortage of blank PowerPoint slides.

Here’s a rule of thumb. Use one slide for each point you are trying to make, or for each chunk of information you are trying to share. The only exception is when you have two ideas (or data) that have a causal (or other type of) relationship that must be seen in tandem to be understood.

Let me sum up, in Oracle-speak: under-utilization of additional slides and insistence on robotic jargon create a large and meaningful addressable opportunity to communicate more like actual human beings trying to create mutual understanding.

Also, this is my favorite slide in the deck:

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Pie charts get their share of abuse, and for good reason. They’re used too often and are too often used incorrectly. In this before-and-after set, you can see how I cleaned up a client’s slides, creating a much cleaner look that’s easier on the eyes.

Good design takes everything into account, beginning with the background, which in the original slide has a gradient color that’s neither attractive nor helpful. So we clean that up, and then use type size to prioritize the information for the viewer. Easy as pie.

I’ve just created a media pitch at PitchEngine with information about my slide design business. I’m interested to see how well PitchEngine works as a tool for reaching out to media about my work.

Meanwhile, please feel free to email a PowerPoint or Keynote slide in need of help. I’m going to resume posting before-and-after slides to share tips of the trade. Just email an image in any format (tiff, jpeg, whatever), tell me what your slide deck is about, and we’ll see what we can do.

I saw this car wash when I went to Winnipeg last summer on a video shoot. It’s a car wash, see, where you can also buy chicken. I know, right?

I enjoy some tasty chicken from time to time, and I do like a clean car. It’s just that, well, it feels a little strange to think of buying chicken at a car wash. They’re totally different things.

People do this all the time in PowerPoint. You see two different ideas jockeying for space on one slide. The result is confusion. It’s too much for the brain to process (just as your brain is still trying to reconcile the concepts “chicken” and “car wash.”)

I think it’s a good reminder when you’re creating your slide deck. Focus. Have each slide say one thing. One idea. Go wild. Make as many slides as you need to.

Say no to the chicken car wash.

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After reading Garr on Presentation Zen, a lot of people are convinced that using images is where it’s at. And that’s true – when they’re used well.

The first slide shows a low-resolution image that has been scaled to the point of pixelation. Not very attractive. What’s more, the Comic Sans font clashes with the image, and the words are hard to read.

I’ve read, by the way, that the designer of Comic Sans has made a public apology. It is surely a typeface that ought to be retired from your repertoire.

This client sends his slide deck to prospective clients. That means it should be a file size small enough to email, and the presentation ought to be easy to print out. So I used a clean white, look, a typewriter typeface, and small images.

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My pal Mark Romney has a lot to say about marketing. I’ve just remade some slides for him, and you can see that I completely changed this one. It’s a cool project, the rest of the slides have a sort of retro look, so I wanted this one to give people a sense that they are about to embark on something fun and exciting. No need to use a bullet point list when there’s a better way to make a visual impact.

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Here’s a very typical slide which, typically, has a number of ways it can be made better.

Let’s lose the capital letters, for one thing; they’re too hard to read. And the clip art. And most of the words. Add an image that gets at the speaker’s main point. Change the typeface to something easier on the eye. As always, the speaker can have his own notes handy, but he doesn’t need to share them with his audience.

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A good map is what? As clean and simple as possible. No extraneous information, just to the point.

These maps are from a presentation about agriculture in western Canada. So we don’t really need to show Texas, do we? A map at the proper scale – in this case of four provinces – and we’re ready to go. Clean and simple, easy to understand. As long as you know that “ha” is an abbreviation for hectares.

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Do you know Vook? You will. Vooks take the ebook idea to its logical conclusion by combining text with video and the ‘net to provide a full media experience.

A product so cool ought to be presented with some flair. The first slide lets loose with all the cool features of vooks. But think about it: did Steve Jobs describe all the innovations of the iPhone in one slide? Nope.

The reworked slide would be part of a set that would make the case for the vook more slowly, with a bit more drama and elegance.

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The original slide is selling the company’s expertise, but the slide is too busy. And since they have “many testimonials” from happy customers, wouldn’t it be much more effective to let them sell the company for you?