The introductory slide is the slide your audience see when they walk into the room. It is the first slide in your slide-deck. This is where the 1990s style presentation destroys your presentation. Often this slide contains the title of the presentation, the name of the presenter, the date of the presentation and in some cases the name of the room the presentation is being delivered in!
Often, the slide also contains your company’s logo, their website, the presenter’s email address and telephone number and other completely useless information. And all this is surrounded by a plain white background.
The problem here is one of too much useless information. I have never attended a presentation where I did not know which company was doing the presentation, the presenter’s name and who they were. This information is not really necessary.
A twenty-first century presentation’s opening slide is used simply as a ‘curtain’ behind which the main message of your presentation is hidden until you are ready to reveal it. Thinking of this slide as a curtain will help you to keep what you put on there to a minimum.
Here is an example of a 1990s style presentation opening slide. On it we have the company’s name, the title, date and room number on a white background in a standard Microsoft typeface. Very uninspiring. As an audience member, I would be feeling quite drowsy and I would be hoping my mobile phone’s battery is charged enough to get me through this presentation.
In the first example we have a simple slide containing only the company logo on a grey background. Nothing else. Remember, this slide is a ‘curtain’. It does not need to carry any real information at all.
The second example contains both the company name and the title of the presentation in a modern, crisp typeface (Helvetica Neue – Medium) on a grey background. This is only the very basic of information, and would work for a small group presentation to your co-workers or managers.
In both these examples, I chose a grey background because grey and red compliment each other very well.
To summarise:
In order to transform your 1990s style opening slide into a twenty-first century opening slide, remove the unnecessary information, try to avoid using a plain white background and select a different typeface from the standard PowerPoint list.
Next time we will look at another type of slide and how we can change that to be more appealing to your audience.