Presentation Design Tips From “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”
For weeks, I have been hearing about Marie “KonMari” Kondo’s bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
If you have yet to hear about this book, here is the book summary: This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.
After hearing an abundance of positive reviews, I decided to take a closer look at the life-changing lessons shared in the book. At the heart of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is the lesson to discard anything and everything that does not spark joy. Through my research I quickly realized that people were applying this principle to all areas of their lives – not just their homes. After some consideration I concluded that the Magic of Tidying Up can also help presenters create more effective and pleasing presentation designs.
Here’s how you can take inspiration from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to design beautiful presentations that will deliver the results you desire:
1. Tidy Up Your Content
When you’re preparing a presentation to communicate a message that is meaningful to you, you will likely have an abundance of points you want to include, all of which spark joy for you. Thus, to tidy up your content you should ask yourself, Will this spark joy for my audience? If the word joy is difficult for you to associate with your material, ask yourself, will this help, inspire, or inform my audience in a special way?
If any of your points will not bring joy to the audience or help them lead a more joyful life, delete those points; they are just cluttering your message and will decrease the impact of your presentation.
For example, if you’re delivering a presentation about a new product, and in your outline you have listed a point about an award your company recently received, you should carefully consider if that point will spark joy for the audience or if it will only spark joy for you. Most likely the audience only wants to know about the product – how it works, why it was created, where it will be sold, and upgrades that will be coming soon. If the award your company received is not directly related to the product, your audience probably does not want to hear about it during your presentation. In fact, you will probably reduce the joy they feel simply because you wasted their time by patting yourself on the back instead of focusing on the points that interest the attendees.
When it comes to organizing your content, outline your points so that you include only one main idea for each slide. Avoid bullet points at all costs; they are scientifically proven to be an ineffective way to present information. In addition, just like physical containers, which Kondo insists promote hoarding, not organization, bullet points are an easy place to stuff information that is not essential enough to warrant a more prominent placement. To effectively declutter your content, list each point individually so you can review the merits of each point instead of simply glancing over a list of points, some of which are presentation junk.
2. Tidy Up Your Slides
Your presentation slides should also spark joy for the audience. The color scheme, fonts, photography, icons, and layout should all be pleasing for the audience to view.
A good rule of thumb when selecting the items you will include on your slides is less is more. Some elements of your presentation design will spark more joy than others; to let those joy inducing elements shine you will need to discard other design elements. For example, you might find that the photographs you have selected for your slides bring you and your audience a lot of joy because they tell a story and add depth to your message. You might also like the icons you selected because you think they are visually appealing however they spark very little joy because they do not add meaning to your message. If that’s the case, cut the icons and create slides using only the photographs, and perhaps a few words of text. This is not a universal rule though; not all photographs will spark joy, and some icons are an integral part of a design aesthetic that will spark joy for an audience. You will need to evaluate your design elements and how they will impact your audience.
No matter what style you select for your presentation, remember that you never want your slides to be cluttered. Identifying the most inspiring elements of your design will help you cut the clutter and create slides that feel clean and communicate a clear message.
Conclusion
This exercise is valuable for you as a presenter because it will force you to search for the why behind everything you want to include in your presentation. Why are you including those points? Why are you stating that fact? Why are you choosing that slide design?
If you’re just going through the motions as you create your presentations you are destined to create presentations that do not spark joy for you or the audience. Instead of creating presentations on autopilot, take a step back, slow down, and be intentional about your presentation – that is how you will find the magic of your presentation.
Additional Resources:
Why Bullet Points Kill Presentations
Minimize The Extraneous Load of Your Presentations
Too Much Information Can Ruin Your Presentation
Simplify Your Language To Sound Smarter in Presentations. Here’s Why.
