Best Public Speaking Articles: Weekly Review [2008-12-20]

On Saturdays, we survey the best public speaking articles from throughout the public speaking blogosphere.

This week’s review features topics including:

• crafting memorable phrases;
• vocal exercises;
• presenting time-based information; and
• content staging.

Week in Review: Public Speaking Blogosphere

Resources for Speakers

• Slide design expert Garr Reynolds reviews Timothy Samara’s Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual.

Now, as Samara points out, rules are important to understand but it’s certainly permissible to break the rules (he even shows how later in the book). What is not permissible is to remain ignorant of the rules. […]

10 design rules to keep in mind

1. Communicate — don’t decorate.
2. Speak with a visual voice.
3. Use two typeface families maximum. OK, maybe three.
4. Pick colors on purpose.
5. If you can do it with less, then do it.
6. Negative space is magical — create it, don’t just fill it up!
7. Treat the type as image, as though it’s just as important.
8. Be universal; remember that it’s not about you.
9. Be decisive. Do it on purpose — or don’t do it at all.
10. Symmetry is the ultimate evil.

Speechwriting

• Doug Stevenson explores [podcast] methods for making your presentation memorable.
  In this podcast, Doug provides guidelines for creating a “phrase that pays” or “mental velcro” in your presentation:

1. Make it short (2-6 words)
   If longer, break into 2 or 3 rhythmic pieces (e.g. Home Depot’s “You can do it. We can help.”)
2. It’s a call-to-action.
3. It summarizes the main point of your presentation.
4. It’s repeated multiple times in your speech
5. It’s always spoken with the same rhythm and cadence.

Delivery Techniques

• Gavin Meikle designs a simple exercise to examine how your body produces vocal sounds.

In this post I’d like to explore just one aspect of the voice, that of resonance.  The human body is fully of hollow, air filled cavities that resonate when we speak.   The main resonanting chambers are

• Chest cavity
• Throat
• Nasal Cavities & Sinuses

Visual Aids

• Brent Dykes encourages us to use content staging when designing slides.

If you find that you have too much content on one slide, you can divide it up and spread it over several slides. However, sometimes [you are better off] displaying the information more effectively in bit-size, digestible chunks in one slide. […]

PowerPoint content staging is an approach that strives to sustain the audience’s attention by revealing content in stages. Using custom animations, you can control how the content is displayed to the audience so as to not overwhelm them and help them to follow your train of thought.

• Dave Paradi (author of The Visual Slide Revolution) provides a slide makeover demonstrating how to present time-based information visually.