Structure Your Story, a new PowerPoint design method and template by Cliff Atkinson at Sociable Media provides wonderfully simplified process for creating presentations that deliver information with the clarity and impact promised by the name "PowerPoint." Contrasted against the usual advice and templates filled with colorful logos, borders, and backgrounds, Atkinson explains his blank white template pages this way:
We've intentionally stripped it clean of any cosmetic decoration, including backgrounds, headers, and logos. Why? We're making the point that the first and only thing you should do when you open PowerPoint is find your story.I couldn't have said it any better myself (though I'm pleased to report I did write very similar advice in a semester project last Fall, entitled Can Organizational Communication Survive PowerPoint?, p. 10).
From there, Atkinson teaches how to build the outline of your presentation on the structure of a three act play, using headline techniques, instead of titles. Key concept: "No bullet points allowed." The Structure Your Story materials are summarized on the site, but available for download in $10 and $25 packages. This paper is the first module in a four part series. I'm especially looking forward to the next module, entitled Compose Your Visuals.
For more on the idea of designing presentations using a story model, see MSNBC: Complex Story Shells Deliver Flexible Interactions, by Kyle Margules Orland at J-Lab, and The Beginnings of STOP Storyboarding and the Modular Proposal, by Wlater S. Starkey, in Proposal Management (Fall 2000). Both of these references came to me from Tony Ramos' PowerPoint Weblog.
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