Philosophy of visual support

You are the protagonist, not the PowerPoint

A common misconception when designing presentations is to assume that the slides are the central element of the presentation.

It is essential to understand that the visual material functions exclusively as a peripheral support, designed for the audience and not for the speaker.

The undisputed protagonist is the speaker; if the presentation contains the entirety of the information, written paragraph by paragraph, the presence of the speaker becomes irrelevant and dispensable, since the audience could simply receive the file by e-mail and read it on their own.

The speaker should never compete for attention against his own screen. If dense blocks of text are projected, the viewer's brain will try to read them, failing to hear what is being said, which breaks the communicative connection.

A critical performance flaw is to constantly turn around to read literally what is on the projection, with your back to the audience.

This not only denotes a lack of preparation, but also interrupts eye contact, which is the main channel of empathy and authority.

The screen should serve to illustrate, not to replace the speaker's memory.

Less is more" rule in text

The efficiency of a slide is inversely proportional to the amount of text it contains. The guiding premise should be absolute simplicity: "less is more".

Instead of transcribing complete sentences or dictionary definitions, synthesized concepts should be used, ideally limited to one, two or three key words that act as visual anchors. The purpose of the slide is to reinforce an idea, not to explain it completely.

If the speaker needs scripts so as not to forget his speech, these should be on private notes or cards, never projected on the giant screen.

A clean design, stripped of visual noise and superfluous text, allows the audience to grasp the concept at a glance and immediately return their attention to the narrator.

Saturation