SlideMagic Blog

High-quality pictures of signs are great raw material for a presentation. They stand out by themselves, people are used to take a moment to read them and they could add some humor to your story:

• Typos, or unusual text as an ice breaker for your audience
• A correct message that is put out of context in a funny way in your presentation

The downside, they are very hard to find, but with a bit of creativity you can re-create them either by using a blank sign from a stock photography site, use a generator like AddLetters, or - even better - creating one of your own using PowerPoint shapes.

Here is a diffrent take on the credit crunch found on Noisy Decent Graphics:

It’s always difficult to leave the audience with a good punch line (chart). Things I prefer not to do:

• Explicitly ask for questions - there could be none (anymore)
• Read out “summarizing” bullet points from a slide that re-run the entire presentation in a very boring fashion

Instead, I often put a page-filling “uplifting” picture on the page (or repeat a key image from the presentation) and repeating one key message of the presentation, maybe spiced up with a bit of humor.

As an example, I found the above image of a man sky diving off a sky scraper in Bejing on iStockPhoto.

There is no need to preach to the converted. Obvious points do not need your time, energy and PowerPoint slides. If you have to spend 1 slide, do it almost as a place holder, and add a bit of humor if you can to “pooh pooh” the cliche point you are just making. Next slide! I often use the above image for this using Addletters that allows you to put in any text you want.