Is it possible to focus too much on presentation design?
Yes.
Well, sort of.
If you’ve followed our blog for very long, you probably know by now that in addition to bringing you content on the Ethos3 blog, I’m a college professor. I teach presentation skills and communication, so I’ve been spending some time this month updating all of the PowerPoint presentations I use in class. I try to do this every 2-3 years to freshen up the design to reflect current trends.
But yesterday something awful happened. As I was updating two slide decks, I fell into the design abyss (more on this in a minute). I was trying out all the new PowerPoint features and making everything look awesome. And before I knew it, several hours had passed. I had lost track of time and fell behind on the other things I needed to accomplish.
I don’t want this to happen to you. So today we’ll talk about what the design abyss is, how to know if you are close to it, and how to avoid it.
What Is the Design Abyss?
The design abyss is the name I’ve given to what happens when anyone (myself included) falls down a rabbit hole of design. In this abyss, I lose track of how much my time and effort is worth. I forget to weigh my return on investment. As Forbes says, I’ve ceased to “understand how much profit or loss [my] investment has earned.” In other words, I’ve lost perspective.
How Do I Know If I’m In the Abyss?
You’ll know you are close to falling into the design abyss if:
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You’ve changed the font too many times to count, and you still can’t decide which one to use.
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You’ve been playing with the color scheme with no real sense of why you are choosing one or another.
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You are scrolling endlessly through the PowerPoints Design Ideas menu. You’re relying on this feature for every slide.
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You are adding too many shapes and icons.
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Your slides are starting to look “busy.”
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You find yourself being indecisive. You revamp a slide. Then you decide it looked better to start with. You find yourself using the “undo” button a ton.
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You’re lost in some stock photo bank searching for the exact right picture for half an hour.
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You have stopped thinking about the content on the slides and what it is that you are ultimately trying to communicate.
Does any of that sound familiar? If so, no shame. We’ve all been there. Here’s how you fight back.
How Do I Avoid the Design Abyss?
1. Keep up with your time. Set an alarm or a deadline to keep you on track. If you know that you’ve only set aside 3 hours to work on your slide deck, you’ll be forced to focus on the most important design choices while letting the less important choices fall away.
2. Have an eye on your ROI. Is the amount of time you are spending on your slides worth it? I mean, really worth it? In an article on perfectionism, Deep Patel says, “Too often, people mistake progress for perfection. They spend more time staring at the weeds than they do assessing the forest. They get lost in the details instead of asking whether their work is moving them in the right direction.” I had this sort of a-ha moment just this week when I realized that the changes I had spent hours on probably wouldn’t even matter much to my students. I had lost sight of my ROI.
3. Be okay with good enough. Here’s the deal: we are all about great presentation design. We know it matters. And we think it should be meaningful and beautiful. But we don’t think it should consume your every waking moment. I have a quote on the opening screen of my laptop from Joseph M. Williams. It says that we should make things “as good as we can make it in the time we have. Perfection may be ideal, but it is the death of done.” Sometimes good enough needs to be good enough.
4. Outsource help. If you feel like you are regularly on the edge of the design abyss, it could be that you need to contract a presentation design agency to take on burden of your slide deck. Presentation agencies like ours have dedicated content and design experts. We’ll produce an amazing slide deck, and you’ll never have to choose a single font. The only question you’ll have to answer is, what will you do with all of those free hours you used to spend staring into the design abyss?
In the beginning I asked: Is it possible to focus too much on presentation design? And I answered: Yes. Well, sort of. What I mean is that you should put effort into creating a stunning slide deck. But no design should ever have you teetering on the edge of the abyss. It shouldn’t be sucking away all of your time and energy and focus. If you feel like that’s the case for you, get in touch with us now, and find out how Ethos3 can help you conquer your next big presentation.
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