Throughout meeting rooms and auditoriums across the country, a battle waged over two similar yet different presentation styles. The followers who preferred the Takahashi Method, which uses only text and those who liked the Godin Method, which uses only pictures, clashed at every opportunity. That is until Larry Lessig swooped in to settle things once and for all. Using both images and text, Lessig created a style all of his own that sticks to the minimalist principals that the Takahashi and Godin’s methods promote.
Lessig is More
The Lessig Method is not an official method of presentation style per se. The name was coined by the people who have had the opportunity to witness a slideshow presented by Stanford law professor Larry Lessig. Lessig is famous for using several slides, sometimes exceeding two-hundred, but keeping each slide stripped down to the bare bones. Each contains just one word, phrase, quote or picture. By keeping the slides uncomplicated, Lessig was able to pump them out rapidly and allow his audience to absorb the information the way they normally learn something new; one concept at a time.
Like a Movie
Since each slide in a Lessig-esque represents just one thought or idea, the pace at which the slides will come is much more rapid. Likewise, the amount of slides necessary for a presentation will be much greater than most. When putting together a presentation, consider the slides to be frames of animation. While most cartoons run at a pace of 24 frames per second, your presentation might be close to 24 slides per minute. The point is that in the end, all of your combined slides have told a complete story, much in the way animation frames show a complete motion. It’s not about looking at everything individually, but putting it together in a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A Bit of Lessig in All of Us
Giving a presentation in this manner can be very tricky and nearly impossible if you have to speak for a long period of time such as an hour or more. However, there is still much to be learned from Lessig’s style that can still be applied to any slideshow. By cutting back the clutter in slides, you can help the audience to follow along and can control which concepts you want them to focus on. Instead of bullets, try new slides with one phrase, word or image to represent each new idea. If you have a series of similar ideas you want to present, you can try to represent them as sequential pictures that tell a story. The idea is to make your slides secondary to your speech; they should be the accessory, not the ensemble. Lessig reminds us that a slideshow is meant to be a tool, not a teleprompter. If the audience is too busy reading the paragraphs of text you’ve put on the screen, they won’t be paying any attention to what you have to say about it. Experiment with the less is more principle and you will be surprised at how well your presentation is received.
