'All About Presentations' by Jazz Factory

How to Change the Default Font for New Text Boxes in PowerPoint on Mac (The Quick Fix That Works)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:19:00 +0000

If you've ever set up a branded PowerPoint deck, picked your custom font, and then watched every new text box stubbornly revert to Aptos or Calibri this post is for you.

There's a lesser-known trick that fixes this in under 10 seconds. No need to touch the Slide Master. No theme gymnastics. Just a one-time setup per file.

Why PowerPoint Keeps Ignoring Your Font Choice?

PowerPoint has two separate systems for text:

Placeholders - controlled by the Slide Master and theme fonts

Text boxes - inserted on the fly, and they follow their own default, which is almost always the Office theme font (currently Aptos)

When you use Replace Fonts, you're only swapping fonts already in use. It doesn't touch the default for new text boxes. That's why the problem keeps coming back.

The Fix: Set a Default Text Box

Here's how to make PowerPoint remember your font for every new text box in the file:

Insert a text box on any slide
Type something inside, select the text, and change the font to your preferred font (e.g., Inter, Helvetica Neue, or whatever
Click the text box border so the box itself is selected (not the text inside)
Right-click → Set as Default Text Box

That's it. Every new text box you insert in this file will now use your chosen font.

Important Caveats to Know

It's file-specific. This setting lives inside the PPTX. It won't apply to other files or new blank presentations - you'll need to repeat it, or save the file as a template (.potx).

It doesn't affect placeholders. Slide Master placeholders have their own font settings. This fix is purely for manually inserted text boxes.

Font must be installed to render correctly. If you share the file, recipients need the same font installed. If they don't have it, PowerPoint will substitute a fallback font.

Your PowerPoint slide needs a strong title

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 07:06:00 +0000

Here is a simple slide design tip. Look at this slide:

The design looks a little odd. Look closely and you notice that the title (header) is weak. The lines 'One-stop destination..' is bigger than the title text. This is a mistake. On every slide, the title should always be the biggest.

Not every slide needs a title, but if it has one.. it should be the biggest. Because, that tells the audience what is more important. What should they see first. This is a design principle.

The slide above also looks weak because of the same issue. The header text should be sizeably bigger. Let us do that and see how the new slide looks:

A bigger and bolder headline text, makes your slide look great. Here is one more example. Notice the big and bold title. Does it not feel eye-catchy and confident?

Source: Individual slides have been taken from their company's website. They are publicly available, as part of their investor presentation.

Best storytelling template for B2B sales and fundraising

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 11:14:00 +0000

If I am making a sales presentation, this is my favourite storytelling template. If I am making an investor pitch, I still prefer this many times. This template works.

What is the 'customer story' template?

A real customer story is the base of this template. Pick a customer who has purchased your service. Build the story (and the pitch) around that company.

Here is an example. Let us assume your company makes apps for schools. App which helps the school with its ERP and Accounts. This is how you can start your presentation:

Elantris International is a school in Chennai which has 3,000 students across 2 campuses.
They were having lots of problems when it came to ERP and Accounts. Fees reconciliation was a huge pain point. Collection, tally and reminders were manual. Even salary payments to teachers, drivers, staff and vendors was being handled manually.
Overall, the school was wasting a lot of time and resources and was worried about wrong payments and delayed tuition fee receipts.
Elantris tried our app.
We installed the ERP and accounts solution within 4 weeks by tweaking our existing application to suit their needs. This installation is super quick because any other competitor would have taken 8-12 weeks!
We did not even charge the client for the installation. We only take money on actual usage.
We provided the finance team with a desktop version with dashboard and notifications
Every stakeholder now has an app access too
The time taken to handle fee collection, reconciliation and reminder is down 80% as the app highlights all discrepancies and sends auto alerts to the finance team and auto reminders to parents.
We are able to offer benefits of time and cost saving through automation because we have a lean software in the cloud which can be easily tweaked for each school
We charge the school on a software as a service model (SaaS). They pay INR 100 per student per month.

Using just one example, of a good client where you have delivered a lot of value, you can build an effective presentation. You can use this 'customer story' template for a B2B sales pitch and an investor pitch.

Why does this storytelling template work?

Because, it makes your pitch easy to understand and credible. The two things that you need the most when 'selling' anything to a stranger - comprehension and trust.

Instead of saying, 'you sell ERP software to schools' and talking about the features, you 'show' what exactly you do. You help the audience visualise the customer, their problem, your solution and the benefit. Everything becomes easy to understand. And because you use a real name, you also build trust.

Have you tried this template before? What has been your experience? If you want to use this template, what concerns and doubts do you foresee?

What is a serif font? What is sans serif? Why care?

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 09:17:00 +0000

Serif fonts are fonts which have 'serifs', the ticks on their ends. Sans serif fonts are sans (without) the ticks.

Serif fonts like Garamond and Times New Roman are used in printing. Books, reports, leaflets and brochures are printed in serif fonts. Because it is easier to read serif fonts on paper. In my book, For Brand's Sake I had used Merriweather from Google.

Sans serif fonts are easier to read on screens. That's why apps, websites and presentations use or should use sans serif fonts. This rule applies when there is a lot of text. When you have just a few words, the readability of both font types do not differ a lot.

If you are making a presentation, do use sans serif fonts. You can download a good font from Google fonts. Try fonts like Rubik, Nunito Sans, Poppins or Roboto.

This is how you showcase competence in a sales pitch (ft. Physics Wallah)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 05:12:00 +0000

In the first episode of Physics Wallah on Amazon miniTV, Alakh Pandey goes to interview at an institute. He wants to teach Physics there. The interviewer asks him ten questions. Alakh looks startled. He does not answer immediately. We begin pondering, "Does he even know the answer to one of the ten questions?"

Once the interviewer finishes reading his questions and assumes Alakh knows nothing, the scene gets dramatic. Alakh not only knows all the answers, he remembers each and every question. He gives correct answers, with explanation, to all the questions.

The interviewer is stunned. He recognises that Alakh is a physics wizard. The audience is also impressed. This scene is amazing at establishing Alakh as a champion, a genius. That's why this scene comes in the first episode itself.

One instance is enough to prove that Alakh is a Physics wizard.

One example is enough to prove that your company is an expert at what it does. Instead of talking about too many client examples, find out the best one. Focus on that. Talk about that in detail.

You can find out this one example through these questions:

Which project are you most proud of?
Which is the most complex work you have ever done?
Which project got the best out of you?

Spend a lot of time covering this example in your sales pitch. Because, if you can do this you can do anything.

What to focus in your B2B sales presentation?

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 05:25:00 +0000

You are on a call, with a new prospect

You introduce yourself, but they look suspect

Are you the right vendor, they have a doubt

Go ahead and build trust, that’s all this is about

First tell them who you are

What you do, not what makes you a star

Before diving deep, let’s be clear

Explain your products and services, my dear

Focus on the benefits of working with you

Show them proof, tangible and true

What makes you special, what stands you out

Let them know, without boast and shout

Think about the pitch from their point of view

Focus more on the prospect, less on you

"When you say three things, you say nothing."

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 04:43:00 +0000

In communication, we have an urge to tell our audience everything. If you are a management trainee and you have worked on a project for 2 months, you would want to say each and everything to your mentor in the final presentation.

Even when we make presentations to our senior management, we have the urge to say a lot. We want to say, "Look we have worked hard on this and we know so much."

But the problem - the senior manager does not have time for all this. Look at this print ad for example. It came in the Times of India.

What is this ad trying to communicate to us?

The tea has 7 refreshing spices. So, it is tasty.
There is a celebrity who endorses this tea.
There is a container free with this tea.

At the end of it all, nothing 'remains' with us. The brand has tried to say three things in one single ad.

In the book Made to Stick, the authors Chip and Dan Heath say, "When you say three things, you say nothing." If we apply that here, the ad should have said ONE thing to us.

Talk about the refreshing spices or talk about why the chef loves this tea or promote the container offer.

What happens when you focus on one claim? You can amplify it. You can give all the design space to it. You can remove all the clutter and put the spotlight one thing. Your audience will understand it, get excited about it and remember it.

This applies to all kinds of communications. Imagine you are making a presentation. While you can say 3 or 5 things in a presentation of 30 minutes, you must focus on one thing in one slide.

Give one message in one slide.

Doing this will help you overcome one of the biggest problems of communication - information overload. And it will make you a 5x better presenter.

How to deliver a presentation like a pro? [Excellent example inside]

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

There are three pillars of any presentation.

Content,
Slide design, and
Delivery

Most books and articles talk about developing the content and designing professional slides. Delivery is often the most ignored topic in almost all of them. But how we 'deliver' a presentation is very crucial. You might have a good story and slides but your delivery might fall flat. You might fail to excite and engage your audience.

I came across one presentation which stands out because of its delivery. It is a short demo day investor presentation by Ralph Garvin Jr., a start-up founder. Ralph's slides are okay and his story is okay, but his delivery captures our attention. His delivery stands out. You remember it long after you have forgotten his data. You start to care about the problem that Ralph is trying to solve as a startup founder.

It is a 2 minutes 46 seconds video. Watch it here:

His hand gestures are very powerful. His gestures are natural too, and they come out of his involvement and passion.
He 'snaps' his fingers at around the 18-second mark. This gets the audience excited and involved. It is a high point.
He does not speak monotonously. He slows down sometimes. He pauses often. His delivery style is dramatic and it works.
He even 'sighs' at 0:38 when there has been an accident.
He stresses on important words and phrases to enhance their meaning. The way he says, "What could I have done? And the answer.. is.. NOTHING!"

Overall, he speaks like he is talking. His speed is normal. He stresses important words. He pauses to let you feel the emotion. He speaks slowly and it becomes easier to understand. Overall, a phenomenal delivery.

Presentation Masala Book is out now!

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sun, 19 Jul 2020 12:03:00 +0000

The book Presentation Masala is out now! You can check out the book here.

Amazon.com

Amazon.in

Presentation Masala is a step-by-step guide to help you prepare your message, design your slides and deliver your presentation with confidence. Ideal for anyone who makes business presentations and wants to grow in their career.

In this book you will learn how to:

Start a presentation
Grab audience’s attention
Tell a story
Design great slides
Use images and charts
Overcome nervousness
Engage your audience

Do check out the book and let me know your feedback.

Presentation Masala is coming soon! (Sign up to get it first)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 14:07:00 +0000

Dear friends.
My book is getting published very soon.

Start-up Investor Pitch Guide (Free E-book)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sun, 14 Jul 2019 06:53:00 +0000

If you are a start-up founder looking to pitch to investors, here is a great resource for you. Download this free e-book. It will help you develop, design and deliver a great pitch to investors.

Download by clicking here

Present a keynote like Satya Nadella

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 13:17:00 +0000

Satya Nadella delivered a keynote at the Mobile World Congress 2019.

How to present a keynote like Satya Nadella?

Tell your story and use slides only as visual aids. Your story is more important.
Keep your slides clean and use very few words per slide
Use large visuals which help you tell your story
Use 3 icons instead of 3 bullet points
Avoid using too many colours. Notice the simplicity of the slides.

What slides does Sundar Pichai use? Here are 7 from his Stadia Launch

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sat, 13 Apr 2019 06:34:00 +0000

If you are organising a sales conference or a press conference, here is something worth replicating. Google launched Stadia recently and Sundar Pichai started the event with a good presentation. His slides were bold, clean and powerful. Completely devoid of clutter and supported what he talked about.

His slides were similar to slides used by other CEOs like Tim Cook and Elon Musk. They all use a similar slide design style. Look at the screen behind too. A large screen which mesmerises the audience and gives a larger-than-life feel to the event.

Here are 7 slides Sundar Pichai used.

Takeaways:

Big fonts
Very less text on slides (you should do all the talking)
Lots of white space (empty space enhances the power of what is there on the slide)
Few colours, but consistent use of the same colours. You only see white, black and pinkish-red in this entire presentation
Use lots of images

Liked what you read? Here are some more articles like this:

10 slides that Tim Cook used in his keynote address
17 Impressive Slides from 'Google for India' Keynote 2017
5 Tips to use Colours in presentations [Design secret #1]

How crucial is the start of your presentation? [Sequoia's graph inside] (Post 4 of 30)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 07:26:00 +0000

We have all heard the adage, "Well begun is half done". While it may be true, does it apply to PowerPoint presentations? How crucial is the start to any presentation?

It turns out, the start is a make or break opportunity. Let me show you a graph from Sequoia's blog. For those of you who might not know Sequoia, it is one of the biggest venture capital firms in the world and it has made significant investments in some of the biggest start-ups.

In his blog post 'How to present to investors' Aaref Hilaly (of Sequoia) shares an attention graph.

The above attention graph is for a 60-minute long presentation. The graph indicates how the attention of the audience changes during your presentation. There are a few important implications:

Everyone pays attention to you at the start
Attention falls sharply after about a minute or two (because the start was bad and not exciting)
Attention rises at the end (we usually focus back on the presenter when the talk is ending)

What does this mean for you as a presenter?

The start of your presentation is a huge opportunity. You start well and you earn the interest (and attention) of your audience. You start with generic stuff (which bores) and you lose everyone.

Start with something which is critical to the entire presentation
Start with something remarkable or shocking
Start with a story, example or anecdote (or whatever helps you grab attention quickly)

How to end a presentation? Tips from Daniel Kahneman (Post 3 of 30)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 13:15:00 +0000

Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Laureate and a renowned figure in the field of behavioural psychology. In his classic book, Thinking Fast and Slow he has shared insights about how humans think and act and the predictable mistakes we tend to make. He has one great tip to offer to you as a presenter.

Your audience, as per Daniel Kahneman, has two selves

The Experiencing Self, and
The Remembering Self

The experiencing self lives in the moment and answers the question, "How is the presentation now?" Whereas the remembering self answers the question, "How was the presentation, overall?"

Now the psychological insight is - Our memory is controlled by our remembering self. The duration of the presentation is neglected. What matters is how we remember the overall experience of your presentation.

The two things that affect this are:

How did the presentation end?
How were the peak moments in the presentation?

As per Daniel Kahneman, the way your presentation ends matters a lot. A great presentation which ends badly will forever remain a 'bad presentation' for your audience. Think about bad movies for a moment. If a movie ends badly, even if the rest of it was good, will be treated by you as a bad movie. The reality is, not everything was that bad. Or think about a vacation. It might have ended very badly but the entire vacation was great. How do you feel about the vacation today?

As a presenter, it is important to start well but it is more important to end well. A presentation which ends badly will always be remembered as a totally bad presentation by your audience. So plan your ending. End on a high.

Building a presentation? Know your audience first (Part 2 of 30)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sat, 09 Feb 2019 15:49:00 +0000

You are building a presentation from scratch. The first step in doing that is to decide on the objective of your presentation (read about it here How to start working on a presentation?). The next step is audience analysis. Unless you have followed both these steps, do not start building your content.

How to analyse your audience?

Answer all these questions:

Who is my audience?
Why are they coming? What is their objective?
What do they expect from my presentation?
What do they already know about my topic?
What is their designation (if pitching to a company/organisation)?
Have you met them before? Do you know their likes/dislikes?
What are they most likely to ask me?

Here are a few examples where analysing the audience helps deliver a much better presentation.

Designation: CEO or Junior Manager

You cannot deliver the same presentation to your CEO and your peers, can you? Your CEO will give you 10 minutes whereas you can speak to your peers for an hour. Imaging you are pitching to the CTO of a tech company (client). Now imagine, pitching to a junior manager in the same company. The content, the duration, the approach will be completely different.

Talking to clients vs. investors

You are a cloud ERP software company and you are pitching to the CTO of your client. You can comfortably use a lot of jargon and industry terms because both of you understand that. Now switch to the investor. During this pitch, you will have to lose all your jargon because you know that (if you have researched his background or know him well) the investor is an MBA with no background in your sector.

What does your audience expect?

We focus a lot on what we want from the presentation. We want to make a good impression and make a case for sales or investor funds. But what does the audience expect? We seem to miss this question. I remember attending a sales pitch where the person pitching to me (and my company) was told why we had called him there. We had a specific need. The sales guy did not prepare accordingly and came and delivered his standard sales pitch (it was not customised to our needs at all).

What do they already know about your topic?

Very critical to understand this from your audience or from someone who knows your audience well. The level of knowledge your audience has about the topic will help you speed things up or slow things down.

When you start building your presentation, ask yourself these questions and take time to understand your audience. Now tune your presentation to suit your audience. Understand your objective (read more here How to start working on a presentation), understand your audience and then start building your message.

How to start working on a presentation? (Tip 1 of 30)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 08:32:00 +0000

You have to make a presentation from scratch.

What do you do first?

You have to think of your objective.

What do you want the audience to do at the end of the presentation?

It is not easy as you think. Let me illustrate.

Example: B2B sales presentation

You are selling cloud ERP software to large companies. What is the objective of your B2B sales presentation?

Sell the software!

No. The only objective of your first presentation to the prospect is to secure the second meeting. It will need much more than one meeting and one PowerPoint presentation to close the deal.

If your 'new' objective is to secure a second meeting with the same client, you would now focus on creating a good first impression and answering the few basic questions which will help you reach round two of the discussions.

You are not under any pressure to 'sell' the software in the first meeting with the prospect. This takes away a lot of pressure and a lot of needless and extra content out of this presentation to the next one.

You can now make a small presentation which shares your company's capability and credibility.

2 simple hacks to jazz up your next presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 10:11:00 +0000

Fonts have a huge role to play in making a presentation look great. Take a look at these two slides. The first slide is your default. When you open a new presentation in MS PowerPoint, the default font is Calibri.

Such a slide is run of the mill and boring. Everyone is doing this all the time. Now look at the second slide. With a little bit of effort, you can enhance the look and feel of your presentation. You can even own this style by constantly using this special font for all your presentations.

Using a 'new' font does make you and your presentation stand out. But which font should you use?

Use what you like
You browse a lot of websites. Do you like the fonts you see on those sites? Did you know you could use most of those fonts in your presentation too. Here is how to do it using 2 simple hacks.

Hack #1: Install 'WhatFont' Chrome extension

Install this extension. Visit any website. Say, you like its fonts. Simply click on the f? icon on the top right of chrome browser. Now place the cursor over the text and find out the name of the font used. It is that simple. The font that EIC has used on their website is LATO. Similarly, there is a startup called Dunzo. The font they are using on their home page is ROBOTO.

Hack #2: Download this font from 'Google Font' website

Not all the fonts would be available on Google Fonts website but you will get most of the fonts. The most popular fonts now-a-days are Montserrat, Open Sans, Roboto, Lato, Muli etc. Download the fonts from Google website, install the fonts, close MS PowerPoint and open it again. You can now start using the new font in your presentation.

To read more visit:
7 Secrets of designing beautiful PowerPoint Presentations

8 Common Writing Errors That Make You Look Unprofessional (Infographic)

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 05:08:00 +0000

This is a guest post by Walkerstone.com

How A Simple Error Can Ruin your Presentation

If you are getting cold feet due to an upcoming presentation, you would be glad to learn that it is pretty common. Especially if it is your first presentation and you want to impress your audience, it can make you really anxious. Well, it is a common feeling, and it is better that you relax and let your anxiety pass. There are many ways you can make your presentation perfect. One of the common mistakes that people find in a presentation is a mistake in spellings. A simple change in an alphabet can change the entire meaning of the sentence. Sometimes it can make you look ignorant. Hence proper revision and editing are extremely important after you finish writing something.

It is often observed that words that sound similar are misspelled interchangeably. For instance, the words steak and stake sound similar but the two words have completely different meanings. Another common example is the difference between effect and affect or bear and bare.

In this detailed infographic from Walkerstone, some of the common mistakes that people make when writing have been mentioned. This will help you check if you are making any of these common mistakes and also solutions for these issues have been provided. If you want to take the pressure off your presentation, you can always go in for professional help. You can go for presentation training or get assistance for a visual makeover of slides or get any other help you need.

Death by PowerPoint: What 90% presenters fail to do?

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 08:42:00 +0000

I was an Area Sales Manager (ASM) in a leading consumer goods company where I sold cooking oil and hair oil. Every quarter all ASMs had to make a presentation to the head of sales. We were supposed to talk about what we had achieved in the last quarter and our objectives for the next. These presentations were long but very important.

The night before the presentation every ASM used to stay back in the regional office. Our boss (Regional Sales Manager) was kind enough to provide free pizzas and we used to work till midnight tweaking our decks. Our review would start 9 in the morning. We somehow survived and scraped through those meetings. Those were difficult times.

Today when I conduct presentation skill workshops across the country I always ask the participants, “How many of you rehearse before delivering an important presentation?” Guess how many hands go up?

Under 10%. Less than 10 presenters out of 100 actually rehearse their presentations! No wonder they have stage fright, they are nervous and do not enjoy the process of delivering the presentation.

They have worked very hard in their jobs, they know what they are talking about but the inability to rehearse and fine-tune their presentation affects the overall audience experience. They fail to make a great impression.

All you need to do before every important presentation is to complete your slides a few days ahead of schedule and then use the last few days to rehearse your presentation 5 to 10 times. The higher the stakes the more you rehearse.

What’s the best way to rehearse? Press F5 (put your slides in slideshow mode), stand out and start talking. Move about the room as you would do eventually in the board room (venue).

Back in 2012 I saw a good presentation at a press conference. This CEO was confident, composed and well-prepared. I asked him how many times had he rehearsed his presentation and he replied, “Ten. I have presented this 10-minute deck ten times in my office board room.” When you have presented ten times already, the final presentation becomes your eleventh.

Brian Miller is a magician. He was invited to give a TEDx talk in 2015. He delivered a superb talk and it has since been watched by over 3 million people on YouTube. I interviewed Brian and asked him, "How many times did you rehearse?" His reply stunned me. He said, "150 times." Read his fill interview here: Interview with Brian Miller: How to prepare a TEDx talk? For him it was an opportunity of a lifetime. If you too have something very important, make sure you atleast rehearse 5-10 times.

Mark Twain once said,” There are only two types of speakers in the world – The nervous and the liars.” Everyone is nervous before an important presentation. You might be presenting to get hired by a prospective employer or you might be presenting to a big client to win their business. You ought to be nervous. It is natural. You are worried if you will do a good job. You are worried if you will remember everything you should be speaking about.

The only cure for stage fear is practice. Practice your presentation a few times and you will become comfortable with your content. You will stop looking back the slides and start looking more at the audience (this will help you engage better with the audience). When you know your content, you will start to improvise. You will not worry about overshooting the duration because you have rehearsed already and you know that you did not cross the time limit in the last three rehearsals.

TAKEAWAYS

Good message + good slides + good delivery = Good presentation. It is important how you deliver your message.
Finish your slides a few days ahead of deadline so that you free up time for rehearsals.
The higher the stakes, the more you rehearse. 5-10 times is good enough for any presentation.

What makes your slide look good? {Examples inside}

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 05:16:00 +0000

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, in his book ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ writes, “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”

Design should not draw too much attention towards itself. And design is not to impress. Our slides help us communicate the message quickly and powerfully. Garr Reynolds, the author of Presentation Zen says, “Projected slides should be as visual as possible and support your points quickly, efficiently and powerfully.” Let us look some slides sourced from the internet (public sources).

Don’t you think there is too much going on in this slide. There is too much ‘design’ that is actually hurting the audience experience. I have improved this slide. Below is the new improved slide.

Suddenly it feels clean and nice. What did we remove? We removed all design elements which add no value. The blue oval for each bullet point, the orange arrow, the box for each bullet and the abundance of colours. We also added a strong and stable header to the slide. A good header is like a good foundation. The blue header along with the blue line at the bottom hold the slide together.

Here is my improvement 2.0. This slide looks even better because it is visual. We have very few words on the slide, and this creates lots of empty space (designers call it white space). The more the empty space, the better the slide becomes. Empty space increases the visual power of what’s there on the slide (images and words).

Let us look at Rajan Anandan's slide from Google for India event in 2017. Rajan Anandan is the Vice President, South East Asia and India. Notice the empty space, less words and a visual cue (the phone icon). To see more of this awesome slides read 17 Impressive Slides from 'Google for India' Keynote 2017.

Now look at the slides of a very famous entrepreneur of our times, Elon Musk. He was presenting at an event where SolarCity was launching its solar tiles for roofs.

This is a good clean slide. The text and the image support the main message that Elon Musk is talking about (Global warming is a serious crisis and global carbon dioxide is reaching record levels). He follows this up with another slide.

This provides the proof that the audience wants. No extra words, just a simple chart which has shot up I recent decades (notice the jump in carbon dioxide levels between 1950 and today).

Elon Musk also launched Tesla Powerwall 2 in this event. The Powerwall stores solar energy generated from your solar panels to be used at night. This slide is quite neat too. Click here to read more his style: Elon Musk starts every Product Launch presentation this way

Here is Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, giving a keynote address at the Google I/O 2018. His slides are simple, clean and devoid of clutter and excess colours. Look at one more slide from Sundar Pichai’s keynote.

He has a headline, a sub-headline and four icons (instead of four bullet points). He has used just one font, four simple icons for visual cues and a light grey background. This is what makes a slide simple and clean.

Slides are not meant to impress the audience. They are meant to help you simplify your message and create impact. Design clean and simple slides.

10 slides that Tim Cook used in his keynote address

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 13:49:00 +0000

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, opened the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2018 with an energetic nine-minute keynote address. His presentation was very short, crisp and visual. Here are 10 slides from his keynote address. Notice the amount of words on each slide and the visual appeal.

Takeaways for your Presentations

Make your important NUMBERS big and bold so they grab attention and are remembered by your audience.
Use full-slide IMAGES for visual appeal.
Choose a simple sans-serif FONT. You do not need fancy fonts.
Do not use too many WORDS on your slides. Your slides are your visual aids, not your crutches to help you remember your message.
Think DIFFERENT. Instead of writing $100 billion, Tim Cook's slide has a cheque. A cheque gets the message across better. The message being - The money that app developers have earned through the app store will top $100 billion!

Is there anything else that you felt was good in these slides? Share it with us on the blog. Leave a comment.

3 Questions that will dramatically improve your next presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 03:00:00 +0000

When I was in IIM (MBA institute) lots of companies used to arrive on campus and make presentations to students. It was an opportunity for them to talk about their companies and the roles they wanted to offer. It was also a chance to create a good impression among the students so that more candidates applied for these companies. These presentations mattered more for the new recruiters on the campus.

If a company came on campus you would expect lots of students to attend its presentation. But it was never the case. Left on their own, students were just too lazy and would never attend more than a few presentations. That’s why the placement committee members would tip the company folks. “Offer pizzas because the students like it” they would say.

This trick always worked. Hungry folks like me would attend any placement presentation from any god-forsaken company as long as there was free pizza. As our happiness with normal-crust pizzas started fading, the companies started ordering thin-crust pizzas too. They sure were changing with changing market realities.

Marico Limited was one such new recruiter which arrived for a presentation before the final placement season began in late 2005. I had never heard of Marico before and so did many of my batch mates. So, when they came on campus there was not much enthusiasm. All the students interested in marketing wanted jobs in top names like HLL (the name changed to HUL much later) and P&G. These companies were the regular ones.

Imagine you are the HR manager of Marico. You have hired MBAs from many institutes but never from IIM Ahmedabad. You arrive on campus. WHAT will you say to these students? How do you decide on your message?

You will talk about the company, its history and milestones. It’s vision and mission may be. And the roles you offer. But is that enough? What makes this situation different? Would you have given the same presentation to another institute where you have been hiring for the last 7 years? What are the external influences on your message?

There are three things to think about while deciding on WHAT to say:

How much time do you have?
Who are you presenting to, what do they know about you and what do they expect from you?
What is the objective of your presentation?

I call these three aspects the CONTEXT of your presentation.

Time
Audience
Objective

Let us answer these contextual questions for Marico.

How much TIME do you have?

Companies were usually allotted 30 minutes and they used to present for 20 minutes keeping 10 minutes for questions and answers. What if the time allotted was 5 minutes? It would force you to cut down on your message. You would say the more important things and leave out the less important ones. So, knowing what is more important and what is less important is crucial when you plan a presentation. While planning your message, you will always want to say more. One good way to know how to cut it down is to mark messages as more and less important. If you cannot fit your presentation within the allotted time, you know what to chop off – the less important stuff.

Who are you presenting to, what do they know about you and what do they expect from your presentation? [Audience]

Who are you presenting to? You are presenting to second year students.
How much do they know about your company? Not much. How do you know? You will need to do some research. Guessing never works. You could ask the placement committee members. They are students too. While doing research you company also discover that students have some negative biases about your organization or your culture. Maybe there was some bad news in the press few months back. This could be addressed during your session.

What do the students expect from your presentation? Pizza! While that is true what is also true is that students expect to be educated about your company, your operations and the roles you have to offer along with the salary package. Above all, why consider applying to your company? Why you?

In the example we just discussed a recruiter (Marico) was presenting to students. Let us take a very different example. Let us say you work in a company and you have to propose a new strategy for the company. Your company sells milk and you propose to launch ice creams and yogurts. WHAT you say (message) will change depending on whether you present to your peers (other managers) versus whether you present to your CEO.

With your CEO, you will start with the executive summary and make all the recommendations right on slide one. That’s because you have very less time and even less attention of the CEO.
With your peers, you will actually deep dive and talk about every nitty-gritty. You have more time and you are expected to spell out all the details of the strategy.

What is the OBJECTIVE of your presentation?

Let us come back to the campus. You are the HR manager at Marico. Your objective is to recruit students! What else?

But can you do that right after the presentation? No. You are presenting in October and the actual interviews will happen only next month. Then recruitment is NOT the objective of your campus placement presentation.

What is the objective of your presentation? The answer is some variant of this: To generate enough interest among the student community so that suitable candidates apply for a job when you visit next month.

While we are at the topic of objective of a presentation let me ask you this. Assume your company makes software for banks. You go on a sales call and you are sitting in front of the Chief Technology Officer of Goliath National Bank. What is your objective?

To sell! No. No B2B sale closes after the first call. You will meet them many times and the process might drag for months. The only objective you have in the first call is to get a second call. Communicate just enough so that you make a favourable first impression, project that you are a suitable vendor and get called again. You will go into more depth in the second meeting.

The one question that will reveal the real answer is: What do you want your audience to do at the end of your presentation? This will tell you what the real objective of your presentation is.

So, what? So, what if the purpose of the presentation is not to hire students or close the sale. How does it impact your message? It has a huge impact on what you say and how much you say. If your sales presentation had to make a sale, then you had to tell the client EVERYTHING about your company and its services. But if your objective is only to get the next meeting, you will not worry about saying everything. You will only talk about the important stuff and not dive too deep (something you will surely do later).

Do you want to know how did Marico present to us? The HR manager of Marico delivered the best campus placement presentation I saw that year. They had done their homework. They knew that students do not know much about the company so they started out by comparing their revenues with that of the more-known names on campus (Colgate, Dabur, etc.). The moment we found out that they were a big company (revenues) and as big as Colgate and some other big FMCG names we were hooked on. They had got our attention right from the start.

Next, they talked about career paths, something I have never seen in a campus placement presentation. They showed us real examples of managers who had grown extremely fast within the company. They also talked about giving great responsibility right from the start of our careers. This was the second six of the over!

These two slides were enough for us to take this company seriously. I went back to my dorm room and looked up Marico on Google. I really wanted to join them and finally I did so in 2006.

Takeaways

While preparing your message, analyse the context of your presentation.
Time: How much time do you have? The lesser the time the crisper you need to be.
Audience: Spend enough time analysing your audience. Who are these people? What do they know about your topic and about yourself? Why are they listening to you? What do they expect to hear?
Objective: What is the real objective of your presentation? What do you want your audience to do at the end of your presentation?

A successful presentation is one that meets its objectives. Nothing else matters.

IPL or the Indian Presentation League

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 03:00:00 +0000

We are in the age of convenience and speed. We want everything right now. Swiggy brings you food and BigBasket brings you groceries immediately. Cricket also reflects this trend. Indians in the 1980s and the 1990s were very comfortable watching a seven-hour one day cricket match. Not today. We live in the T-20 generation. The match duration has shrunk from seven hours to 3 hours!

It reflects how our attention spans have shrunk too. Getting attention is a huge challenge for any marketer. It is the same for you when you present.

I was attending a demo day event in Mumbai in 2015. A famous Indian start-up incubator and accelerator had mentored and trained a group of start-ups (called a cohort). At the end of the six-week acceleration programme these start-ups were being showcased to a group of investors. The hall was full of investors and one-by-one start-up founders were climbing the stage, making a 5-minute presentation (known as a demo day pitch), and stepping down.

If you were one of those start-up founders, would you say you had the complete attention of your audience for those five minutes? After all you would only speak for 5 minutes.

Do you pay complete attention to all the presentations you attend in your office or workplace? Is it compulsory to pay complete attention as an audience? The investors in that hall on that winter morning were people like you and me. They had their workplace worries and they too were glued to their smartphones. Many investors were checking their emails and WhatsApp even while a start-up founder was presenting. Who loses if they do not pay attention?

Attention has to be earned and cannot be assumed. Make your content crisp, exciting and plan the flow properly. Remember we live in the T-20 era. Do not prepare for a five-day test match or a seven-hour one-day match.

How to choose COLOURS for your presentation?

noreply@blogger.com (Vivek Singh) — Sun, 27 May 2018 10:41:00 +0000

Good choice of colours and great colour combinations make your presentation more likable and catchy. But how do you go about choosing colours for your presentations?

If you are working for a company or an organization with a fixed colour scheme (palette) you do not have much of a choice. In a way, it saves your time. Isn't it? Your job has been made easier. But what if you are creating a new presentation from scratch?

CHOOSE YOUR OWN PALETTE OF COLOURS

A palette is a set of colours that go well together. When you create a new presentation and have the liberty of picking your own colours, you should pick atleast 3 colours. This excludes the colours of your fonts and background. The most common background colours are white, light grey and black. I recommend light grey or white.

Look at these palettes from Adobe. Each one has 5 colours. You can pick any of these standard templates and start your slide design. Remember we only need 3 colours from this palette. Let the other two colours remain unused.

STEP 1: VISIT COLOR. ADOBE.COM

Color.adobe.com is a website where you will find these ready made palettes. You can EXPLORE the website and pick and choose what you like.

STEP 2: PICK A PALETTE

Let us assume you pick a palette called Aspirin C. Now take your mouse over the palette and click on EDIT COPY. You will see this. These are colour codes. We need these numbers to create these colours in PowerPoint.

STEP 3: FIND OUT COLOUR CODES

Click on the arrow near CMYK to find out the RGB code of the colour. Every colour in MS PowerPoint is made of 3 colours; Red, Green and Blue. That's why it is called RGB. The dark blue on the extreme left has the code: 34, 83, 120.

STEP 4: CREATE YOUR CUSTOM THEME IN POWER POINT

Suppose you chose 3 colours from this theme - Dark blue, light blue and orange. You simply have to add these colours to PowerPoint and create a custom theme of your own. Watch this video to know the entire procedure.

The colours have been added under Accent 1, Accent 2 and Accent 3.

STEP 5: START USING THESE COLOURS

You can now start using these 3 colours. Imagine you have a slide with 3 circles. This is how you change their colours within a few seconds. Watch this video.

If you have any questions, leave a comment.