UNYP hosts webinar with Ondřej Staněk: Presentation Design

On Thursday, March 4, we had the opportunity to participate in a second amazing workshop with lecturer Ondřej Staněk, this time on the topic of Presentation Design. 

Ondra, a true professional, interactively guided us through the basics of preparing a PowerPoint presentation, combining his profound knowledge and experience in this area with a great deal of humor. We learned how powerful this tool is for presenting content of all kinds: how many options it offers, and that it was not invented as a text editor, even though it is often misinterpreted as one. During the workshop, we learned slide pitfalls to avoid, the key to effective preparation, and some tricks for putting it all together. We played with images from official sources and stock image databases, and we are now convinced that we are true artists of slide preparation! For example, we now know that in order to hold the audience’s attention, there are rules to follow when orienting the trajectory of a plane or car – or even the gaze of the person depicted on the slide! 

We managed to dispel several well-established myths: 

• The number of slides must correspond to the length of a speech 
• No space on a slide must remain empty or unused 
• A silly animation on a slide will help the audience to concentrate on the presenter’s speech 
• It is fine for several individuals with dissimilar styles to cooperate on a single presentation 
• Graphs and tables must be boring 

Believe it or not, none of these are true! In the last part of the workshop, we discussed the four main principles of working with PowerPoint slides: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. And no, you didn’t misread that! By following these essential principles, your slides will stop looking messy. For greater clarity and impact (not only in the presentation of data), the golden rule applies: less is more. No element on the slide should give the impression that it was placed randomly, and on the other hand, if we have items that belong to each other in character and content – put them close. At the end, the lecturer recommended quality literature, which is crucial for every PowerPoint designer.  

We are used to thinking of PowerPoint presentations as a nightmare for speakers and a bore for listeners, but Ondřej revealed a secret to us. PowerPoint can wake up our fun and creativity if we respect a few basic principles – which are also very closely connected to human psychology. Keep it simple, make it powerful!