Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes - The Goodman ...

Design outside the (white) box.
Most presentations I see use PowerPoint’s default white background for each slide.
This projects the familiar white box on the screen, causing so many presentations to
look essentially the same. Even when presenters discover color backgrounds (or, heaven
forefend, built-in templates), their images and text remain trapped inside a box.
When you design slides with a black background, however, the
LCD projector puts nothing on the screen except the images
and text you choose. This allows you to create slides with
no apparent borders while focusing the viewer’s attention
precisely where you want it.
Consider the slide “Goals” (figure 4) at right, which appeared
in a presentation for the Nurse-Family Partnership
(a nationwide program that sends registered nurses into the
homes of low-income, first-time mothers). In many ways,
this is your typical, garden variety public interest slide:
bland title, three bullet points, an image that screams “Stock
photography!”, the organization’s logo in the corner – and
all of it packaged in the numbingly familiar white box. No,
it won’t send anyone screaming from the room, but it is not
exactly eye-catching either.
Now consider this redesigned version, “Three Goals”
(figure 5). The title, while still on the bland side, conveys more
information. The Hallmark card photo has been replaced by
a larger black-and-white image that has a more authentic,
documentary quality. Since the logo consumes space without
adding any new information, it has been deleted. (If the
audience does not know what organization is presenting to
them, you are already in a deeper hole than any logo can fill).
Most dramatic of all, by switching to a black background,
the text and image become the only items on the screen, and
eyes will naturally gravitate to them.
• Improve Pregnancy
Outcomes
• Improve Child Health
and Development
• Improve Parents’
Economic Self-
Sufficiency
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 5
Goals
THREE GOALS
1. Improve
pregnancy
outcomes
2. Improve child
health and
development
3. Improve parents’
economic selfsufficiency
pg. 53