One Image Per Slide Is the Golden Rule

Even though Steve Jobs didn’t use PowerPoint he used Apple’s version of that keynote.

It’s basically the same thing the principles apply.

When Steve Jobs wanted to introduce a wildly complex new piece of technology he didn’t just put up a slide and put up bullet points of this many gigahertz this much gigabyte it’s not what he did.

So for example when he wanted to introduce the iPhone what did he do.

He’s walking on the stage in a comfortable confident way he says.

You know what this is.

And he put up the iPod not a lot of text around it.

He said you know what this is.

And you put up another image of the traditional cell phone of the time.

Why are we here today.

And the images came together and formed one new image of the iPhone.

Everyone could instantly understand what it was visualize it and remember it.

And it built an excitement where people were just running out to go buy it.

Had nothing to do with some sort of extraordinary skill.

Steve Jobs How does it communicate.

He was a good communicator but there’s nothing he does when giving presentations that you can’t do if you follow the same principles don’t overwhelm people with data points.

If you’re going to use a slide one image at a time is what works.

How do I know here is we’re still talking about it more than a dozen years later it still sticks.

And yet most of us have seen PowerPoint presentations in the last week sometimes the last day sometimes the last five minutes we don’t remember anything.

We saw.