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FacebookThe 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint That I Wish Everyone Followed
May 6th, 2008 | Posted in Technical Writing 9 Comments »
Guy Kawasaki writes, “A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points” (The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint). I wish everyone who prepares a presentation would follow this advice. Long PowerPoints disrupt any kind of narrative flow and dynamic energy that can build up when you deliver your message.
Being a professional student paying >$100/day to be taught, I couldn’t agree more. PowerPoint can certainly be very helpful, but overall, I think it has drastically decreased the quality of higher education. I can’t stand it when my professors, who have PhD’s and are teaching over 100 well-educated, intelligent, driven students, turn their backs to us for hours on end as they read their slides from the screen. Even worse is when they use the laser pointer to underline their text as they read–just as you teach a child to follow along with their finger on the page!
Thanks for the note. There’s a great site called Presentation Zen (presentationzen.com that has good tips on better presentations. Maybe leave an anonymous note with the web address in one of your classes.
I don’t even have to sit through that many (any?) meetings, but I couldn’t agree more either. I especially hate it when people read from the screen. Because I don’t know how to read? A picture here or there (a good picture TRULY worth a 1000 words — that a pretty high standard, no?) is fine, but no words, please.
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Ugh. The only thing worse than bad PowerPoint presentations are the rules people make up about what PowerPoint slides should and shouldn’t look like. I use 24 and 28 point font all the time — they are perfectly legible from 50 feet away, which is the largest-sized room I use.
The only “rule” people should keep in mind about PowerPoint is that it is only a tool to assist a presentation, *not* the presentation itself.
No quantity of slides, or font size, or presentation length will save a bad speaker from giving a bad presentation.
If you are a good speaker — and by that I mean you understand the relationship of your visual content to your verbal content and you understand what the audience needs to hear, and what they don’t need to hear — then you’ll know whether 100 slides or 2 slides is needed, whether 50 point font or 24 point font is needed, whether 20 minutes or 20 hours are needed.
As for the rest of you, learn how to give a good presentation, for high criminey.
ps love this website. thank you for the blogs!
Most presentations [clearly] say: “I have no idea what my point is”.
This 10/20/30 also apply to user documentation (say, no more that a single task sequence per topic, no more that 10 steps, no more that 5 screenshots).
I’d apply it to Camtasia movies I’ve recently run into creating. My current [single] rule is “no more that 6 bits”.
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Deirdre, sorry for the slow response to your comment. I have been mulling over what you wrote. You’re right, there shouldn’t be rules for PowerPoints because every situation is different. Delivering an engaging presentation is difficult. I just have seen so many examples where the PowerPoint itself seemed to suck the life out of the presenter — I’ve become jaded to Powerpoints. But I’m a hypocrite because I just prepared a visual powerpoint that has about 35 slides (half of which are simple screenshots). It’s so hard to tear myself away from this crutch. However, in my defense, I’m giving a virtual presentation over Skype, where I won’t have the ability to animate and move around (or whatever).
No presentation is the same nor are the rules. But I share your frustration of people who think their powerpoint is a reporting tool. I can’t keep focussed on such presentations and I would rather receive the handouts and leave the room.
The best presentations have short keywords while the speaker keeps you focussed and inspired.
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