Adjust your mindset - PowerPoint Tutorial

- [Instructor] All right, so this first one is adjusting your mindset. Now this isn't a tangible thing that we're adding to our decks to make them more amazing. This is more of us changing the way of thinking every time we design our slides. All right, so let's start with a typical scenario. We generally have a designer on one side and maybe this designer's part of a larger team, and they've been tasked to create a presentation. Or they can even be a professional designer and they've been hired by an outside team or stakeholder to create a presentation. And the temptation is to feel like there are two sides here, there's a huge divide. So generally what happens is the stakeholder or team, they have a whole bunch a information they're trying to convey. They'll go ahead and dump it into a template and they'll just go ahead and shoot that over to us. So we go head into our cave. We work away, trying to make it look great, kind of guessing what they want. And then we go ahead and kick it back over to them. They take a look. They say, hmm, this is great, but how about this? And they make some more changes, more suggestions and then they go ahead and kick back over to us. So what I want you to do is start thinking of you as partners in success. If you make them look good, then you've achieved your goal. And if you make them look good, you'll earn their trust and you'll become their go to person when they need a great presentation. Ultimately, your job is to make the presenter look good and help their presentation be the absolute best it can be. So there are a few things you can do on your end to make sure that you're being a good partner to you stakeholder. So the first thing is, ultimately you're here to make them look good. It's not just about what you think looks good, what looks pretty to you, it's really about making the stakeholder look good. And there's multiple ways you can do that. But as long as you realize that your success is tied up in their success, that's a really important thing to remember. So some benefits of you making them look good are that you are going to be a trusted designer. You might become their go to designer. They could tell other people about your work and what a great job you did on this. And ultimately, if they are looking good, you're looking good. So it just goes both ways. Next is look for areas to improve. Don't wait for your stakeholder to tell you something can look better or be better. Take the initiative and make it look better by yourself. Take some calculated guesses or risks. Do alternate versions. That's one thing I always do is, if there's something I'm iffy about, I think I can make it look better, I will do an alternate version. I'll do a safer version, kind of what they gave me and then alternate version. So look for areas to improve and go the extra mile there. Next is communicate. Be communicative with your stakeholder. So ask questions and make suggestions often. Don't be afraid that you're bothering them. Ultimately, they're looking for you to be the expert, so don't be afraid to speak up. Your partner will totally appreciate it. Lastly, remember your audience when you're designing. So find out from your stakeholder, the kind of audience that you're designing for. So if you're designing for a younger audience, maybe it's a video game conference, you're designing a bunch of developers, you probably can be a little bit more playful with your tone and be a little bit more colorful and loose with the design. But if you're designing for a group of doctors, you're obviously you're going to have to think a little bit differently about how you present your information to them. So ultimately the reason you're remembering the audience is you're letting your stakeholder know that you're thinking about that too and it should get them thinking about their audience and making sure that you're both working together to make sure you are addressing the right people in this presentation. If you remember that this is a partnership and you keep that in mind during your design process, you're already on your way to creating a great presentation.