I’ve kept a mental index of presentation advice I’ve consumed ever since I started putting together slide decks via Hypercard.

What remains in my mental log is a mix of good, bad, confusing, and contradicting advice. Here is a tiny glimpse of the stuff I’ve heard over the last 30 years.

• Listen, the Board doesn’t want you spending a ton of time on slide decks, just jam everything into three slides and toss everything else into the appendix
• Don’t use slide titles, use that real estate for a single message [I like this one]
• Each slide should say just one thing [I’m generally in agreement]
• The first thing you should talk about are results and next steps [so, say two things?]
• Lay out the agenda right after your title slide [so, don’t talk about results / next steps first?]
• Results last, set up the problem and methodology before discussing results otherwise you’ll get derailed [so, tell a linear story?]
• Don’t have transition / interstitial slides [not transition animations, which are universally bad]
• Have transition slides, you need to prep the listener for the next topic
• Keep your formatting consistent, no more than two different formatting styles beyond plain text
• Use only sans serif fonts; definitely do not use Comic Sans
• Memes. You have to have memes; it makes the presentation more relatable
• Don’t use memes; they’re unprofessional and childish
• “When I was at Consultants ‘R Us, where I developed my sense of self-importance, professional identity, and belief in my superiority, we were trained to …” ugh, I can’t remember what this guy said, but it was something idiotic
• Remember this is a presentation to Sales, keep the vocabulary simple [ok, no, I refuse to do this not only because it’s a wholly arrogant attitude, but because I generally believe that people are intelligent and that if you present with kindness, people can feel comfortable asking questions]
• Make sure that the person in the back of the room can read your slides
• Don’t read off the slides
• Don’t adlib, it’s distracting from what’s on your slides [so, read off the slides?]
• Don’t use periods
• Don’t get technical
• If the work is technical, be technical; if they don’t understand it, they shouldn’t be part of the audience [a bit harsh, but see my final comments]
• Have two decks, one for presenting and one for sharing / reference [sounds good on paper, but ain’t no one got the time]
• Remember, eyes want to go from left to right and top to bottom; keep the reader’s experience consistent [this is in reference to having too many colors, visuals, and graphics as well as scattered bold / italics, but I generally agree with this sentiment]
• Circle the insight and use an arrow to force attention [personally, it’s solving a problem that shouldn’t exist; just come up with a better visualization; at the same time it’s a useful tactic]
• Data visualizations shouldn’t have a title, that should be the slide title
• No pie charts
• Use pie charts, everyone understands them
• Use 3D visualizations [sorry, guy, that’s a hard no]
• You have 30 seconds to get your point across
• You have 45 seconds to get your point across
• No more than 7 slides
• No more than 10 slides
• People remember the beginning and the end, the middle is forgotten [the main point being that make your point early and reiterate it at the end]

The overall conclusion is that these rules are irrelevant. Every client I’ve had, every company I’ve been at, every audience I’ve had has preferred a different style. For sure, there are some general consistencies across practically all audiences, but there is a lot that is NOT sacrosanct.

My technical audiences are more receptive to one arrangement of slides that is completely dissonant to my exec audiences. My students want slides conducive to education (or so I believe). My staff has wanted the deck to double as documentation / reference and would prefer to not sit through a presentation. Hell, I have an “audience of me” deck style just to get my thoughts out. And um, have you seen academic math presentations? They’re all the same Beamer layout.

At the end of the day, there is the audience you want, there is the audience you get, and there is the audience you’re dealt. Want a specific audience or have you been given an audience in advance? Write in a way they’ll receive it. You want to do your own thing? Then you’ll get the audience you get — kind of like this write-up.