Today Matt and Alper go into visual design, not just generally, but including its role in furthering communication. Alper discusses the need for prioritization, and the point at which one can confidently say, “That’s enough, time for other things now.”

Episode transcript:

Matt Krause
Alper on a recent episode, I was talking about my desire to buff up my visual design skills and that kicked off that kicked off some thoughts on your part about various visual design topics. So tell me more what’s what’s on your mind?

Alper Rozanes
Let me let me go back when in that episode, we had talked about, yes, brushing up your design skills so that you end up with better slides, right? Do I remember correctly?

Matt Krause
Yeah, that’s correct. Better slides or better visual design skills in general, but for me specifically…

Alper Rozanes
In general. Okay. Well, first of all, to set the frame, I completely agree with improving visual design in any sense, not only because I mean, I make a living out of it. But at the same time, I’m, I fully believe in the idea that you should do your best and try to come up with the best that you can.

Alper Rozanes
What I try to tell people at the same time is making priorities, because I personally believe, and I’m going to focus this topic on on presentations. So I believe that good slide design is very conducive to making not only a good impression on the audience, but at the same time, communicating well and connecting well with them.

Alper Rozanes
But the problem for me is when the idea of a better design starts interfering with the way you put attention to other parts of the presentation, such as deciding on what to say, deciding on how to say it, making enough practice, so that you both feel comfortable, and you can maybe turn the whole presentation into an interactive experience, rather than just you standing on the stage and speaking to them. And I say that because in most of the trainings, I receive questions, such as where should the title be, what should the font be? What color should I use? Like, what size should it be? or things like that?

Alper Rozanes
I’m not saying that these are not important. They can be very important, especially, especially if you use anything below, I don’t know, 15, 16 size, I think the audience would have a difficult time trying to see what’s on the slide. I’m not saying that they’re not important.

Alper Rozanes
But what I’m trying to say is that it should be given enough importance and care, but not to the point of making them perfect. I mean, I personally believe that, slide design is an art. I completely agree with that. But it should not interfere with the other parts of the presentation, which you should also be prepared.

Alper Rozanes
After all, you’re going to make a presentation. This is not a design job, you will be submitting to the what was it? You had mentioned some magazines at the time, like this is not going to be submitted to

Matt Krause
Graphic Designers’ Monthly, something like that. Yeah.

Alper Rozanes
Yeah. Yeah, no one is going to call you and say. That was a fantastic presentation, Matt, beautiful slides, we want to put you on the cover. Neither you will be featured in a year we’ll be running for a design awards contest or anything like that.

Alper Rozanes
So yes, I think they should be as good as possible, but not to the point of trying to make them so perfect, that it hinders your ability to focus on the other sides. And luckily, there are so many ways of doing that without spending so much time. I mean, you can do it within PowerPoint, you can do it with Canva, you can do it with other tools, etc.

Alper Rozanes
But I think the most important thing would be in terms of thinking on slide design would be is this helping me to convey my message clearer to the audience? Is it helping me or is it helping them to follow me easier? And do I have an overall nice quality in the way that my slides look, rather than just just some garbled text thrown on some white white slides? White background?

Matt Krause
So let me see if I if I’m following correctly, so you’re basically saying, prioritize your work on your presentation. And when you are, have spent so much time on the visual design end of it, that you’re de-prioritizing other things that need attention, stop and pay attention to those things. Is that what you’re saying?

Alper Rozanes
Exactly. Exactly, yep. Yep. Actually, I may change that order, because I would recommend the slide design is the design part of the slides to take place after everything else is in place. After you have your flow, after you have your arguments, after you have your core message, resistance points, etc, etc. Maybe even after going through that flow several times to decide whether it sticks with you, or it feels it resonates with you or not.

Alper Rozanes
Only then I would recommend to go back to the software and spend time on designing because you don’t know what to do, you’re going to keep everything you have initially. And the problem is, if you don’t, you will end up eliminating slides that you may have spent, you may have spent hours on designing and which is which is a waste of time.

Matt Krause
Okay. Okay, good advice. So what else is on your mind?

Alper Rozanes
Well, I, I also had mentioned about interaction during the presentation. And since we’re talking about the design and the software, one thing that I have become a huge fan of lately is the possibility of turning every single presentation from a linear delivery, where you talk about slide 1, 2, 3, and then and then at the end, ask your audience for questions or comments, to turn it away from that into a more interactive experience where you can start your presentation again, from slide one, but incorporate some, some interactive aspects to the presentation where you can ask the audience, well, these are the topics I have on my mind that I have planned to speak to you about. And rather than just hitting you, hitting you with them one by one, I’m going to ask you, where would you like to start? Which you can you can list the topics that you’re going to talk about, and then you can ask them? What would you like to begin with?

Alper Rozanes
Now, the benefit of that the benefit of being able to do that, I think, is is twofold. One, it’s increases the interaction by by giving, giving the mic, let’s say to the audience and have them direct the way you talk to them.

Alper Rozanes
And two, I believe it would show so much preparation on your site, that you will be able to say not word by word, but you will be able to give the impression that I came so prepared to this presentation today that I can also let go of the control. And have you direct the flow of the presentation, I want to talk about Topic number three first, okay, you pay more attention to that is more important for you. Great, let’s start with let’s start with Topic number three, then.

Alper Rozanes
And by doing small adjustments into your presentation file, you can actually click on let’s say, an image on the on the presentation, go go go to that section and talk about that, and come back. And I am not talking about, you know, exiting the presentation view, scrolling slides with like we did before, jumping into the future slide. There are there are beautiful tools, especially in the latest versions of the PowerPoint, that are beautiful tools integrated into the software, which allow you…

Alper Rozanes
I’m going to go into a little bit of technicality here. It allows you to divide your presentation into sections. Let’s say you have five sections, one section for each topic that you will be talking about. And there are features of the software which actually allow you to put the first slide of each section, let’s say in the beginning of your presentation, as live images.

Alper Rozanes
So to give you an example, let’s say you have these five sections in the presentation, and you put the cover image for all of them on the first slide and show five images to the audience and ask, Okay, on the agenda today, we’re going to talk about, for example, the quarterly results, the executive summary, the employee engagement situation, give me two more topics…

Matt Krause
Uh, employee parking and air conditioning.

Alper Rozanes
I would never come up with them. But okay, so let’s say these are the let’s say these topics on the agenda. And instead of going from Topic number one, I can see that you’re really enjoying yourself…

Matt Krause
I really want to talk about air conditioning.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, so we’ll start with that one. Okay, my dear manager, since you want to talk about that one. So I’ll go ahead and click on the slide with the air conditioning. And the presentation elegantly zooms in to the part with air conditioning, and we talk about that.

Alper Rozanes
And when we’re done talking about that, the software zooms out, and we come back to the first slide. And this is done smoothly, you don’t have to exit anything, you don’t have to do a lot of moving in between slides.

Alper Rozanes
So what you can do is start the presentation from slide 30, for example, where the air conditioning is, and then come back, continue with slide 10, and then come back, continue with slide 50, or whatever, and then come back. So it turns the whole experience from a linear delivery where for 30 minutes, you talk and talk and talk and they listen to you, it turns it from that into an experience where there is continuous audience engagement, or the audience engagement between the listeners and and the speaker, in this case, you. I think it makes it much more memorable and and fantastic, than a regular presentation.

Matt Krause
This, this is an awesome skill to have. If somebody presented me with a presentation, no pun intended, but if somebody presented me with a presentation like this, I would totally listen to him. So I want to hear how to do this. So we need to give our listeners the technical skills that they need to make this happen.

Matt Krause
And we don’t have time for that today. But we should definitely give an entire episode to this. And it would require giving our listeners using an audio format… a podcast, in other words, putting it putting those instructions just in audio what you would normally do in, you know, an in person, you know, visual format, is that doable?

Alper Rozanes
I believe it’s doable. And I’m also thinking that at the same time we can create a screencast for that episode, and put it on the podcast website.

Matt Krause
Yeah.

Alper Rozanes
So that people can follow step by step.

Matt Krause
Sounds good. So we will tackle that in the next episode. And it will include a screencast for you. That’s a it’s a this is a great topic. I’m totally looking forward to learning more about this. Alright, well…

Alper Rozanes
I will definitely tackle the issue of air conditioners.

Matt Krause
Yeah, well, you know, those air conditioners are really important to me. I totally want to know about air conditioners in section number five. I want to jump to that right at the beginning.

Alper Rozanes
We’ll talk about that.

Matt Krause
I’m sure we will. Alright, so thank you very much, Alper. I’ll talk to you next time.

Alper Rozanes
Thank you. I’ll talk to you take care.

Matt Krause
Okay. Bye. Bye.