Nancy Duarte's Blog, page 18

7 Tips From SXSW That Will Make You a Better Presenter

It’s that time of the year again: South by Southwest (SXSW). We here in the Silicon Valley can always tell when this annual event rolls around, because the Valley just seems a little less crowded. SXSW is one of the largest professional gatherings in the world, with 421,900 attendees in 2017. So if you’re an [...] continue reading

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Podcast: Using Storytelling Structure To Create Motivating Presentations

Our CEO and Chief Presentation Guru, Nancy Duarte, was recently interviewed on The Narrative: A Podcast About Building Business Stories by Prezi. In the podcast episode, “Using Storytelling Structure To Create Motivating Presentations,” Nancy discusses how our culture is searching for meaning and how stories are our way of trying to find it. Nancy talks about [...] continue reading

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To Become A Powerful Public Speaker Master These Qualities

Once you have a compelling story and breathtaking visual design, presentation preparation eventually comes down to one final thing: you. You stepping up, taking the stage, and communicating with your audience. But before anyone can become a powerful public speaker, there are several qualities they must master. Picture in your mind the most powerful public [...] continue reading

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4 Principles To Live By When You Design Presentations

Today, more than ever, presentations hold the world’s most critical messages. Whether you’re presenting a groundbreaking technology, a new business idea, or raising awareness of a social issue, if the design isn’t carefully thought through, your message could get lost. To make sure that your message resonates with listeners, follow these four basic presentation design [...] continue reading

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How to Move Your Presentation Audience With This Powerful Story Technique

You can probably recall the last story you heard, but you likely don’t remember the last presentation you sat through. A big part of this is because you physically react to story: your heart races, your eyes dilate, you get a chill down your spine, you laugh, you clap, you lean forward, you jump back. [...] continue reading

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16 Rhetorical Devices That Will Make You Sound Like Steve Jobs

Ask anyone who the best contemporary speakers are, and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll rank Steve Jobs in the top five. The late, great mind behind Apple didn’t just dream up a company that changed the way humans interact. He was also a visionary and an unparalleled communicator. He knew exactly how to deliver [...] continue reading

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Presentation Industry Trends to Watch in 2018

Confucius once said: study the past if you would define the future.

So, before everyone headed out on holiday vacations, we asked a few Duartians to tell us what they saw in the presentation industry during 2017, so that we all could better understand what 2018 holds. From an inclusion of more personal stories, to leveraging art installations, to utilizing VR and AR to create more immersive experiences, 2018 is sure to be a year filled with compelling and persuasive presentations…

Data alone will not be enough. All roles will require understanding data and how to communicate the data in a way people will act on the findings. In 2018 people will realize the necessity of communicating data clearly and effectively through a combination of data and story. – Nancy Duarte, Chief Executive Officer

Non-traditional presentations are taking off, leveraging more installation art vs. projection. Digital arrays and projection mapping onto stunning 3D objects is attracting a ton of attention. – Dan Durller, Senior Art Director

One of the emerging trends we’re seeing in presentations has to do with using VR and AR to create immersive experiences for the audience. Beyond some of the amazing projection-mapping and room-scale projection that we’re seeing on-stage, some companies are starting to explore creating apps that are built around the event theme or the main stage presentations. – Steve Wishman, Art Director

We’re seeing more high-profile leaders use stories as a framing device to explain their strategies and win support for big initiatives. Whether your audience consists of your customers, readers, team members, or a group of strangers, leaders will learn they must narrate the audience journey with clarity, conviction, and most of all empathy in order to create reliable and profound connections and ignite a desired action. – Patti Sanchez, Chief Strategy Officer

As the workforce becomes more distributed, and time is more scarce, communication is critical at every level – intern to manager to executive. Arming every team member with the skills necessary to communicate your message is no longer a choice, but a necessity. Those that master effective communications, both internally and externally, will outperform competition. – Deborah Eastman, Chief Client Officer

When we do our workshops, one of the biggest things we see is people realizing what they call presentations shouldn’t really be presentations at all; they’re more like discussions using a Slidedoc. So, no more standing in front of the room with a clicker. Instead they should just prepare a movie trailer-length content summary, followed by discussing a printed version of the slides. – Mike Pacchione, Senior Corporate Trainer

The bar is getting higher for presentations across the board. On the higher-end, events are becoming more interactive and awe-inspiring and are thus more likely to be given a larger budget. At the same time, the average professional is giving more visual and story-driven presentations to their own peers. We have so many inconsequential digital interactions that people and brands are really taking advantage of in-person interactions to connect viscerally and create memories.– Catrinel Bartolomeu, Head of Editorial

There’s now a greater tendency for speakers to challenge themselves by incorporating personal stories—not just a stronger narrative flow, but actual stories—into their speeches and presentations. These stories are used to build the speaker’s case, communicate product users’ journeys, and help build empathy in audiences. It’s not easy to tell a story—and deliver it well—but the speakers who step out and challenge themselves to bring emotion into otherwise logic-filled talks will be rewarded with audience appreciation and buy-in. – Jeff Davenport, Speaker Coach and Content Developer

Great presentations stand firmly at the intersection of data and cinema. One without the other will either be dull or feel hollow. In 2018, the speakers that not only embrace that space but innovate on the way the two elements interplay, will be our next great persuaders. – Ryan Orcutt, Associate Creative Director

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8 Presentation Industry Trends To Watch In 2018

Confucius once said: study the past if you would define the future. So, before everyone headed out on holiday vacations, we asked a few Duartians to tell us what they saw in the presentation industry during 2017, so that we all could better understand what 2018 holds. From an inclusion of more personal stories, to [...] continue reading

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Communicate Like MLK and Change the World

This post was updated January 15, 2018.

Thanks to the proliferation and growth of social media and live video today, nearly everyone has a public platform that they can use to convey a message to a large audience. It’s possible to see more clearly than ever who can give a talk that moves people and changes minds.

But in a completely different category are speakers who pass the test of time, and one of them is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today marks what would be Dr. King’s 89th birthday, and to celebrate the too-short life of this oratory genius, we thought we’d take a look at one of his most historic speeches: “I Have a Dream” – observing what makes it so spectacular and powerful. MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is not only literarily brilliant, its structure follows the presentation form perfectly, by traversing back and forth between what is and what could be, and ending by describing what the new bliss of equality looks like. In addition, MLK carefully chooses phrases and metaphors that resonate deeply with his audience.

If you’re struggling to create your next big presentation or even just crafting the message for your next staff meeting, take a few minutes to be inspired by the brilliance of one of America’s most beloved orators.

Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is one of the most famous in history – and when looking at it closely, it’s clear why. He crafted a speech that helped people see the potential ahead of them, and he employed tools that aided them in seeing what the future could be like if they were willing to take action. (Check out another post we published on the power of metaphors in “I Have a Dream” a few year back).

Thank You to Dr. King for standing up and speaking out to change the world.

While Dr. King was an undoubtedly naturally skilled orator whose talks changed the world, anyone can take a page out of his book and learn how to employ the same effective speaking techniques by keeping in mind the delivery and structural strategies Dr. King employed. When you deliver your next speech, you too can deliver a talk that stirs audiences and has a major impact.

 

Happy Birthday, Dr. King.

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How My Wife Created A Powerful Professional Poster

In 2017 I took 131 flights to lead 58 workshops. I spent close to 100 nights in hotels. Yes, it was exhausting, but also worth it because of the success stories I heard from clients. People don’t get smarter as the result of our workshops. They simply become better communicators.  I see our workshop attendees use what they’ve learned to get promoted, close million dollar deals, and (a personal favorite) receive standing ovations at internal presentations.

My favorite success story of 2017, doesn’t come from one of our clients. It comes from my wife.

Jess graduated nursing school on December 8th. One of her final big assignments was a poster project: fit the contents of an entire research paper onto one poster.

The temptation with projects like this is to cram everything in. Write in bullet points. Play with the margins. Shrink the font size.

Of course, when you have a Duarte workshop facilitator as your husband well, perhaps he makes some tactful suggestions…  We went the other way with this project. Jess ditched the bullets, represented ideas visually and made the most of white space—by leaving it white!

By applying visual principles to her poster, she was able to better communicate what her group was trying to say. Translation: people understood what they were talking about.

The result? Best-in-class poster. Her instructors asked her to present at a conference.

The best part is, the poster was created in PowerPoint. So even if you, dear reader, are not entering a poster contest, you will be able to apply this strategy to your slides. Here are the steps she followed that you can apply to your own work.

First, figure out the story you’re trying to tell. Most people skip this step. In this case, the story was that, while dental health services were being provided, they weren’t being fully taken advantage of. There were still several problems in the community. Jess and her partner had ideas on how to fix them.

Once you have figured out the story you’re trying to tell, then you can start editing accordingly. Example: on the “after” version, you’ll see in the top left there is text basically arranged in columns with the word “yet” in the middle. That’s to highlight the story mentioned above (they have access to dental services but weren’t taking full advantage of them).

Importantly because she understood her story, she was able to delete extraneous information – stuff that, while interesting, did not directly tie back to the story she was telling.

Once we had edited her information to tell a story, we wanted to make the story more digestible. In this case, that meant looking at all of her bullet points and splitting them into groups. Seven bullet points are too many; turning them into three groups was about right.

You know what’s even better than having three groups? Using visuals to represent those groups. Anytime you can use visuals instead of words, that is a huge win. People notice visuals before they notice words. People remember visuals better than they remember words. You’ll see where the bottom left goes from six bullet points to three icons.

Here’s the before and after:

Similarly, in the bottom right, she simplified the information into three groups: Coordinate, Increase, Improve. It would be nice to use pictures to represent those words visually. We couldn’t figure out how to do that*. Instead, we used simple diagrams and added color.

*If anyone knows a simple, self-explanatory visual to represent “coordinate” this is a good time to email mike@duarte.com or leave a note in the comments.

Once we re-organized everything, we took a step back to objectively answer an important question: if we were in the audience, would we want to look at this poster? It’s easy to answer “yes” to this because your poster will always make sense to you. Also because you just want the project to be over with. Objectively speaking, we realized there wasn’t enough white space. We re-sized the banner and Big Blue icon accordingly.

Here’s the finished poster compared to the original one

Let’s summarize so you can apply this to your work, whether it’s a poster, slides or something else:

Figure out the story you’re trying to tell. You need to be able to do that in a short sentence, two at most.
Write down everything you know about the topic, then remove anything that does not directly help tell the story you’re trying to tell.
Group your content together.
Use visuals to express those groups
Make sure there’s enough white space

Same information. More visuals. Less clutter.

How long did it take to fix all of this clutter? About an hour.

One hour. That’s it.

That’s all it took to go from “poster that would have been completely forgettable” to “poster that everyone stopped to look at.” You would think that everyone would be willing to spend that extra hour. Truth is, most people aren’t. But if you are…well, you might just be the next great Duarte success story. Do you have any success stories of your own? Tell us about them in the comments.

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