It’s hard to create a great slide deck. Ideally, the deck supports but doesn’t overpower the speaker, looks good, isn’t cluttered or boring, conveys key points, and more. But it’s not hard to avoid the mistakes I see all the time – typos and unproductive inconsistencies.
Typos show that the speaker is sloppy. Some in the audience may miss a typo but some will focus on it. And once a speaker is seen as sloppy (and that often spills over into how the audience views the the speaker’s expertise, leadership skills, and everything in-between) it’s really hard to then convince the audience to agree with the speaker’s position.
Fixing typos is easy. Use a spell checker or auto-correct, of course, but more importantly have other people review your slides before you use them. “Think you” instead of “Thank you” may get by a spell checker but won’t get by a good editor.
Sometimes inconsistency is good – I call that “productive inconsistency.” Let’s say the background of all your slides is blue. But in the most important slide, you use a red background. That’s inconsistent, but it supports a more important conclusion – this slide is important, pay attention. A very productive inconsistency.
But most inconsistencies are unproductive. For instance, if your deck uses bullet points and on some slides each bullet ends in a period, while on other slides the bullets end without punctuation (or even more glaringly, a mixture within a single slide). There is no reason for this kind of inconsistency, and it has the audience appeal of typos.
So take the time when creating a slide deck to avoid these kinds of unforced errors.
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