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CUE
CARDS
Hand-held cue cards can give you all the security of a script and yet allow
you to speak naturally and maintain eye contact with audience almost all
the time. They contain bullet points so that you know where you are and
what’s coming next, but when you start speaking, the words flow and
seem authentic because you are generating them in the moment. For that
reason, they are frequently used by professionals in many environments:
you will often see them used by TV compères or interviewers, or MCs at
major ceremonies. A great example from TED is Alain de Botton’s
brilliant 2009 talk on success and failure, for which he used just a few
small cue cards.
Typically cue cards are simply standard index cards, though if you have a
sizeable budget you can get them printed with a logo on the back for the
audience to see. Use one side only. Write one heading on each card in
large letters. If your handwriting is not crystal clear, it’s best to use
capitals; it’s risky to assume the lighting will be perfect when you speak.
Add any key bullet points that will help you remember all the points
under this topic.
Cue cards can contain a lot more than the outline of your talk in bullet
form. You can use colour codes, write yourself little stage directions and
cues so that you remember any theatrics, emphasis the important things,
and give yourself reminders to counter your stylistic weaknesses.
In the example shown, the speaker tends to look very serious and gabble
at pace, so every cue card has the instructions to slow down and smile. On
this particular card, there is a significant moment that requires pausing
for effect and then punching the air, so the stage directions are there.
If you prefer technology to old-fashioned pens and cards, you can find
apps that will turn your phone or tablet into a cue card deck.
SLIDES
This is my preferred aid. I’ve spoken with slides ever since the days of
acetates and overhead projectors, and I embraced Microsoft PowerPoint
and then Apple Keynote as they arrived to make more and more possible.
Now there are numerous alternatives, from free packages that do a basic
job, often perfectly well, to sophisticated tools like Prezi, where you create
a large canvas and zoom about.
Whatever you choose, I can offer you some guidelines for using slides.
First, don’t start with them. Use the techniques described earlier in this
chapter to create your content, and design the slides when you know what
you want to say. You can then think of them as enhancers, not the meat of
the talk. The main course is you speaking, not what’s on the screen.
Please avoid creating slides with bullet points or, even worse, all the
words you are about to say. This is a very old-fashioned technique and it
has gone out of fashion for 2 very good reasons. First, the moment you
show such a slide, people read ahead much faster than you can talk so
that by the time you get to the bottom, they are faced with the spectacle of
someone reading out what they already know. The speaker is redundant
for much of the talk if this is the process! Second, this system tempts the
speaker to turn around and start reading off the screen, presenting his or
her back to the audience and almost becoming an audience member in
the process. In my opinion, turning your back on the audience is simply
rude.
I believe in using powerful images to amplify what I’m saying, or to create
harmonics that give added richness to the words. I might add one word
per slide, and then I use presenter notes to remind me if there’s
something significant I really want to remember to say on that topic. I get
all my images from iStock (by Getty Images) or Shutterstock, paying for
appropriate licences in each case, and crediting them either on each slide
or at the start or finish. The search engines in both these massive
collections of millions of images are excellent, and it’s fun to see what
engaging or even startling images you can find to illustrate your point.
Simple, powerful images generally work best.
For inspiration in creating your own beautiful, powerful slides, I strongly
recommend Garr Reynolds’s terrific book
Presentation Zen
; there is also
a website of the same name that contains many examples of powerful
slide-based presentations. Reynolds makes a very important distinction
between slides, which are designed to illustrate a talk, and a lead-behind,
which may contain the whole presentation in written form with plenty of
detail and references. The attempt to merge the 2 is what he dubs a
‘slideument’ – a nasty hybrid that does neither one thing nor the other. I
used to get frequent requests to send my slides before speaking so that
the organiser could produce a leave-behind. I always declined, explaining
that my slides were simply pictures, maybe with one word on each, so the
slides only made sense with my embedded sounds playing and me
talking. I’m glad to say that those requests have ceased, so maybe we can
draw a veil over the age of the bullet slide.
Aim to give your slides an identity – some styling that’s consistent. I do
this by using a single font family, Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk, mainly in
Super weight. You might choose to use a consistent style of picture or
illustration, or colour palette, or colour or texture of background.
Try not to get too word-heavy on the screen. The words need to come
from your mouth, not your slides. Ideally the slides will support, express,
amplify and extend what you say, adding impact and memorable
moments. Avoid the flashier transitions; choose one or 2 that suit you
and use them consistently. I tend to use a cube transition for a new topic,
and a subtle dissolve transition when inside that topic.
There will be more to say about technology in Chapter 7, where we
explore the arcane world of stagecraft.
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