Skillfully incorporate repetitions
A good presentation is characterized, among other things, by uniformity in design and consistency in style. In PowerPoint, the slide master helps to define the basic elements. But not only the shape and type of design should be repeated on the slides.
Certain content and topics can also be better anchored in the audience’s consciousness through clever repetition. In the blog article, I show you why repetition can be very useful for your own presentation and what you should keep in mind.
The search for the structure
Normally, you should make a text as varied and original as possible. Repetition is a stylistic mortal sin. In presentations, however, repetition may very well contribute to the understanding of the content. This has to do with the way our brain takes in information. It always looks for recognizable structures to better grasp content.
We can create recognizable structures already by setting certain standards for the entire presentation in the slide master. This includes colors, fonts or even diagram shapes. If each slide contains a different font, new colors and textures, it is very confusing and creates an unprofessional impression. For example, if each slide contains an image, but each image is a different size and is placed once on the top left, on the next slide on the bottom left, and then on the top right, this looks choppy and of a haphazard randomness.
It is not uncommon for the speaker to frantically try to find more and more images on his topic to show on his slides. This is often not necessary, because a suitable image can certainly be used on several slides by showing an illustration on the first slide and inserting a section of this image as a style element on the following slides. Also in this way you can connect the slides thematically.
Of course, slides should not be repeated one-to-one. It can be useful to repeat certain information several times during a presentation. In this case, you can show a slide with important facts several times with small stylistic changes in the presentation.
Repetitions for easier information absorption
All presentations are about successfully communicating information. Whether or not this succeeds depends on the way in which knowledge is imparted. The problem is that we only store a very small part of all information. If we want as much of our presentation to “stick” as possible, we have to use tricks to get our audience’s brains to remember information. One way to do this is to repeat information several times to help the audience absorb it.
The difficulty with this is that it takes quite a long time for the brain to learn something through repetition. For this reason, we should try to include additional emotions in our messages. This increases the intensity for the brain and thus the ability to remember. People are often good at remembering small events that took place decades ago. Rarely will they remember what they read in the newspaper four weeks ago. But mostly they remember their first kiss or a bike accident. Why is that? Such events have evoked strong emotions in us, and events with strong emotions can be stored by the brain much better.
Repetition is therefore important to make it easier for the brain to absorb information. If you manage to convey additional feelings to the facts on your slides, there is a high probability that your audience will correctly absorb the content of your presentation.
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Informatiker Matthias Garten as the expert for multimedia presentations and professional PowerPoint presentations knows about the art of professional slide design. He is an entrepreneur, speaker (TOP 100 Speaker), trainer (TOP 100 Excellence Trainer), multiple book author, presentation coach (presentation training), member of the GSA and Club 55, organizer of the presentation conference, of the Presentation Bootcamps and Presentation Rocket Days. In addition to PowerPoint and presentation training, he inspires and advises companies to present themselves even more effectively and thus stand out from competitors. He is the business owner of the presentation and PowerPoint agency smavicon Best Business Presentations and with his team has created over 10,000 professional PowerPoint presentations for over 150 industries since 1993.
