Comment by jfindper
1 day ago
>Those are not benefits. Do not do those things.
>The best speakers really do just never bother with it in the first place.
This person has a preference which is not universal despite them stating it like a universal truth. I have also watched hundreds of presentations (and presented dozens), so I'm at least as equally qualified to say:
A fade between slides, fading-in bullet points or a picture on a slide as they become relevant, underlining/bolding/changing the color of a word to draw emphasis to it after the fact, etc. All of these can be perfectly fine. In fact, I think these small details can turn an okay slide deck into a well polished one.
>[...] had to wait fifteen seconds or so for his dumb, contentless transitions to play out, each slide he advanced, [...]
But yes, don't make your transitions 15 seconds. And if you're going backwards or skipping ahead, you can skip animations. You don't need to let it play out.
Also important to keep in mind that a good (or bad) slide deck alone does not make a good (or bad) presentation. The speaker and their knowledge + passion for the topic is what is important. A good slide deck is just a bonus.
I agree with that. I do experiment with different slide styles and may use a quick fade-out/in but I don't use Powerpoint any longer and keep things pretty simple. Sometimes slides are more graphically heavy than other times. But rarely use much of the Powerpointish slide chrome. And I'm not really a designer and will mostly mess things up if I try to get too cute.
Instead of making animations to do bolding/underlining, simply copy the slide and then bold/underline it. It will look like an animation, but it isn't, it's just the next slide.