Editorial Team

1987 – Do you remember anything great about this year? You may or may not! To me, this was the year which changed the way people made presentations! Till then, creating a presentation was a combination of art and science (it is still the same, but the users have forgotten it). Mary Eleanor Spear, author of Practical Charting Techniques (1969) shares with us how presentations were created. You had three major players – the Communicator (the one who will deliver the presentation), the Graphic Analyst (who decided on the type of visual to use – charts, photos, layout etc) and the Draftsman (who focused on the materials, content, format etc). So a final presentation was a product, put together by these expert individuals and their teams.

But in 1987, all this changed – one bit at a time! Robert Gaskins launched the product called PowerPoint and Apple helped by venturing capital to this unique product. So Apple Mac got the first PowerPoint application. Now the big boss was watching and very soon, Microsoft acquired the product and Robert Gaskins began to spearhead the growth of PowerPoint in Microsoft.

I know it is all pretty exciting to hear that one can create presentations so easily! You had the layout, the visual designs, the chart types, the clipart, and of yeah, the never ending bullet points – yes, Microsoft created templatesfor its revolutionary product but the result was disaster to the audience!

Suddenly, people found that their boss can create presentations on his own (or with his secretary’s help); they had the same tool used by even the top communicators; they were now at par in putting together presentations – isn’t that good? Yes and No. For suddenly the whole corporate world and every institution that embraced technology (read ‘windows’) began to output a phenomenon called ‘death-by-PowerPoint’. The no-option available audiences sat through, or died through dull, boring, read-aloud, bullet-after-bullet, non-impacting-clipart pasted stuff that filled a big white screen – sometimes to the extent that lights were switched off, so the audience can see this sleep-inducing stuff titled “Presentation’. The only good thing was audiences could catch some shut-eye! But even that was not to be, as questions were asked at the end and the sleepy nod, was most-often, mistaken for understanding. So much for PowerPoint, that some people began to call this evil!

The fact is PowerPoint failed to address a simple truth – that it is a supporting tool which is meant to show slides which connect, impact and tell a story. That is exactly what Presentations were! A visual storytelling experience which connected with the audience and led them by visual imagery and imagination to understand the message of the presenter (Spelled ‘Communicator’)

I am not here to blame anybody, because even today, PowerPoint calls its projected slides as a slide-show. And that is exactly what it is – a slide show; (Remember the 35mm slide projector which presented movies) one that tells a story; one that connects you to the story through meaningful visuals; one that takes you one slide at a time on a journey of understanding the message of the presenter.

Thankfully through the work of some design people, we have found the freedom from this wrong usage of PowerPoint. Credits must be given to all those who understood that PowerPoint is a visual storytelling tool.

What about you?
Are you still sitting through the ‘death-by-PowerPoint’ in your meetings or trainings?
Are you still using PowerPoint to make dull, bulleted stuff that hinders understanding?

Then, welcome to the art of Visual Storytelling. The real reason why PowerPoint was created!

If you want to learn how to tell a Visual Story which impacts meetings, sales, trainings, keynotes, launches, tech-stuff or just want to know more - then just connect to www.storypreso.com