Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire

by Cliff Atkinson

Unload those boring, bullet-riddled slides--and unlock the amazing story buried in your presentation! In BEYOND BULLET POINTS, communications expert Cliff Atkinson shares his innovative three-step system for increasing the impact of your communications with Microsoft PowerPoint. He guides you, step by step, as you discover how to combine the tenets of classic storytelling with the power of the projected media to create a rich, engaging experience. He walks you through his easy-to-use templates, plus 50 advanced tips, to help build your confidence and effectiveness--and quickly bring your ideas to life!

FOCUS: Learn how to distill your best ideas into a crisp and compelling narrative.

CLARIFY: Use a storyboard to clarify and visualize your ideas, creating the right blend of message and media.

ENGAGE: Move from merely reading your slides to creating a rich, connected experience with your audience--and increase your impact!

Inside!: See sample storyboards for a variety of presentation types--including investment, sales, educational, and training.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Reference, Communication, Teaching, Design, Writing

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 23, 2005

Reviews

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life.

Okay. That was dramatic. But it's changed the way I look at presenting material before an audience, which is becoming an increasingly important part of my professional life.

When it comes to lectures, I tend to be a snob and a luddite. I don't need the bells and whistles, I would say, and neither should you. It should be about the information, not about fancy slides and visual effects. Then I gave a presentation that I'd worked hard on which was chock-full of content, and was told that it needed a powerpoint. Sighing and rolling my eyes (the younger generation -- geez), I felt I had no choice but to accommodate.

It was my first time even opening up the Powerpoint software and I was clueless. My being a highly auditory rather than visual thinker was another handicap. I took bullet points of my presentation and typed them onto slides. Boring, said my family. Grudgingly, I added a number of cartoons I found on the internet. A little better, was their lukewarm response. Oh well, I thought. It's the best I can do, and I guess the slides won't distract the audience from the material which is really what it's all about.

Thankfully I still had a few weeks to go when a colleague encouraged me to get the book Beyond Bullet Points. Whoa. What an eye-opening experience. Suddenly I was forced to rethink my entire snobby attitude toward powerpoint presentations. Because it's not about turning your informative lecture into a Hollywood movie, says the book. Or, the process kind of is like that in a sense, but not for the reasons I thought. The book actually brought convincing arguments from my field of psychology for why the right powerpoint can make or break your presentation -- not in terms of dazzling your audience, but in terms of your audience's ability to organize, integrate, and remember your information so they feel like they're walking away with something.

Sure, I can give the audience 45 minutes of solid information. But there's no way they'll retain all 45 minutes of it. Short-term memory just doesn't have that capacity. What'll happen is that they'll filter it, and remember some points and not others. Most likely they'll walk away overwhelmed and not really knowing what they heard, or maybe remembering one or two points but not necessarily the one or two points I would have chosen to have them remember. I might think I'm giving them great material, and it might even be true, but it's not worth much if it doesn't follow them out of the presentation.

Powerpoint is about taking control of the audience's mental filter and organizing and presenting your information so your audience remembers what you want them to remember. If I could sum up the two main insights I got from the book, they would be this: 1) organize your information into a powerful introduction followed by three main points you want your audience to walk away with. Each of these main points may be followed by three explanations of the main points, and each explanation may be elaborated on with three supplemental details. No matter what or how much you want to convey, this is the basic structure which will then be reflected in your slide presentation. 2) Aside from organizing and presenting your material in digestible bits, slides are about channeling both the verbal and visual learning channels of your audience, which improves their ability to focus on and retain what you're saying. Slides with simple headings and related graphics summarize each piece of what you're telling the audience and make it easier for them to walk away with what you want them to walk away with.

Of course, there's more to the book than the theory -- it walks you through the process of creating a presentation that meets these goals. And let me tell you -- if I can do it, probably anyone can. While organizing information into hierarchies comes somewhat naturally to me, forcing my presentation into the structure they recommended and following their guidelines was actually not an easy process for me. But when I was done, I was shocked by how much better it was. Then, the harder part for me was figuring out the visual and graphic piece which is really not a natural strength for me. But with the book's help, I was able to figure this piece out as well and, at least to me, it's looking so much better.

I debated withholding a star from the book because it's heavily focused on business presentations, which is not at all what I do. Although there's a small section on applying the model to educational presentations, for the most part I had to work and twist my brain around to make their methods fit the kind of presentations I do. But ultimately I'll give the book that fifth star because I was able to do it, even if I had to work at it, and the results were worth it.

If you have to do presentations and you're a naturally gifted powerpoint creator, I'm happy for you. But if you're more like me, definitely get this book. I found it incredibly helpful and really, life-altering.

[David]

Don't understand what others see in it: I was disappointed having bought this book based on good reviews, so here's my review:

1. The author provides just one tool for one particular type of presentation: "pitch an idea to your bosses". The tool is a 3-act presentation using few words and more graphics and presenter narration.
Although a good tool for some presenters and some presentations, I can only see myself using this in 10-20% of my presentations.

2. Because the author refuses to explore other methods, the book becomes very repetitive and too detailed going on about the same points all the time.

3. Because of this, this is certainly not a book to keep for reference.

4. ...unless you are a total PowerPoint novice and computer-illiterate and want to read a step-by-step instructions about how to resize and crop images in PowerPoint, etc.

5. This is the first book by Microsoft Press I read and I was shocked at the obvious attempts throughout the book to advertise other marginally-related Microsoft products.

The book description says: "Targeted for intermediate to advanced level users". I would never recommend this book to anyone but absolute beginners and even then there must be better books.
The intermediate user should really just browse the first couple of chapters to get the basic idea (1. set the scene 2. show the conflict 3. resolve the conflict) in a bookstore and then decide for himself if he really wants to waste money on something which can easily be summarized on one page.

[Steve Whiting · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some really good ideas in the book, but..... for a book focused on the importance of simple slides, headlines, getting the point across etc, it takes the author an incredible amount of time to get to the point, and is very repetitive.

There are a number of other annoyances with the book (here presented as bullet points in conscious irony):

* I know it's a Microsoft book, but is it *really* necessary to spell out the Microsoft product names in full in every chapter? I got so sick of reading "Of course, with Microsoft (R) Office PowerPoint (R) 2007....", and "if you want to create graphics in Microsoft Office Visio (R) 2007..."

* The book was either written when MS were big into Tablet PCs as The Next Big Thing, or the author has a gazillion shares in a manufacturer, as they are mentioned incessantly.

* Although the author goes on (probably correctly) about keeping the slides simple and keeping all the detail in the narrative from the speaker, the problem with this is that a number of people will view or read the slides and judge them based on the quality of presentation rather than (or as well as) the information content, and the examples in the book are really crappy. Really, get the message across by all means, but do the slides have to look like they were drawn by a schoolchild? (I'm talking about the finished slides, not the sketches used for storyboarding)

* Most damning, the book is 300+ pages long, and my most abiding thought all the way through it was - "this could have been told in a (not very long) PowerPoint presentaion".

In summary, good ideas, not very good presentation.

[Justinia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent for learning basic storyboarding and how to develop slides that aid the speaker. I found it lacking in translating complex legal arguments into PowerPoint, but that’s a fairly niche topic.

[Gary Learned · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite simply one of the best books on presentations I've ever read.

[Sukh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why Most Presentations Fail and what you can do about it.

[Adrian Buck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprised to read a book on PowerPoint, published by Microsoft that runs so against the grain of the development of the software. One would think that the 'beyond' would be about ditching bullet points and adding evermore dazzling animation and graphical features to your presentation. Not so; the book should be more properly titled 'Before Bulletpoints'. Instead Atkinson recommends serious preparation as an antidote to death by PowerPoint, arguing that "people's urges to add extraneous detail are most often related [to the myth] that you need to entertain people instead of helping them learn".

At a deeper level he wants to see a re-orienation in the way that we concieve of presentations: "...rather than the presentation being a performance in which you're the star who entertains an adoring crowd, you're part of the supporting cast in the service of the audience. This is a shift from seeing PowerPoint as speaker support to a new view in which PowerPoint serves as audience support." As a teacher this is of course a wonderfully attractive goal, but is it a practicable one?

Atkinson encourages us to think of presentation slides "as cognitive stepping stones that are guiding and supporting the working memory of the audience along their path of understanding". But I have it from good authority from Daniel T. Willingham that nothing is going to make it to long term memory unless it is actively thought about. Presentation software doesn't immediately lend itself to audience participation.

Atkinson's way around this, and Willingham would approve, is to base presentations on a story structure to engage the audience in much the same way they would engage with a film, drama or story. There must be an Act One, which provides the audience with a setting and role they can identify with, and then a call to action which will set them on the path from what they know now to what you want them to know at the end of the presentation. Atkinson argues the Acts that follow should be straightforward rundowns from the more general to the more specific, based on the The Pyramid Principle. I tried the latter approach with my undergraduate essays, but abandoned it when too many non-extraneous details refused to fit into a nice pyramid shape. I also have to wonder if many of the details that writers introduce into their stories may actually go someway to keeping their audience actively engaged along the path. Atkinson may not have the whole story on stories.

The best part of Atkinson's approach seems to be the construction of powerpoint slides themselves, which is based on the research of Richard E. Mayer ... and this book gets five stars because it is research based. For example he suggests that "instead of explaining a great deal of information in a diagram on a single slide for many minutes, you will explain the same information in smaller pieces for less than a minute each, across a series of slides." I can immediately recognise that approach in this video by my education presentation hero C.G.P.Grey. Likewise, it is immediately apparent how powerful the technique of dragging the headlines off the slides will be; Atkinson argues "this increases the visual impact of the Act of the Act 1 slides as they do their important work of making an emotional connection with your audience and making your audience reliant on you to explain what the images mean". I agree but we are way off the pyramid principle here; we've actually made it more difficult for our students to understand what is going on, but they are working with the knowledge we're providing so they are more likely to remember that knowledge.

There is one piece of research that Atkinson hasn't built into his
approach: "I had a teacher in college whose lectures were so incredibly clear that it made me think physics was the easiest thing in the world. Until I went home and tried to do the problem set. He was truly amazing, but sometimes I think he was TOO good. I didn't struggle to understand his lectures--but maybe I should have." As long as he follows his research based approach, I expect it in the next edition.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the last 6 months (and, I guess, really it started about a year ago), my work life has become a lot of creating decks and then presenting them to people. I actually really like these kinds of presentations. They are useful tools for honing in on themes and concepts and move away from minutiae and edge cases. They are conversation starters as well as keep those chats on track. As I transition from being a Producer/Team Manager to a Product Manager, my entire job has become communication and translation. I talk to executives. I talk to technologists. I talk to artists. I talk to sales people. I talk to marketers. I talk to project managers. I talk to business analysts. I talk to our customers/end-users. We are all working on the same product with, hopefully, the same goals and objectives but need to know different things to be effective. It's my job to make sure everyone stays on the same path with the same vision. I often use "The Deck" to convey that.

And, so, the art of creating great presentations is something I must be better at if I want to succeed in this new role. I haven't had much need for PowerPoint in the past. I'm a wannabe writer more comfortable with Word or a Rich Text Editor telling stories with flowery language and cute turns of phrase. In the world I work in now, though, visual cues are way more important. At The Mouse, the "pretty picture" is powerful. The "pretty picture" is what gets people excited. It sparks ideas and action and momentum. What Beyond Bullet Points was helpful in doing for me was to help give context to the "pretty picture". Give me some bit of control over what actions those images ignite. Our point of difference is always when we tie compelling creative vision with strong business objectives.

I didn't read all of Beyond Bullet Points. In fact, the most compelling and useful pieces of information came in it's earliest chapters and on it's accompanying CD and website. The templates for presentation construction are great. The tips and tricks around using some of the more nuanced features of PPT (like slide sorting view and notes view) continue to be endlessly helpful. What I found, though, is that what I'm looking for isn't really about presentation construction, though. It's about elegant ways of making a point. New ways to think about storytelling in a different medium. Understanding the difference between creating confidence and excitement and spending time and effort on things that are cute but not necessarily moving.

This was my third choice of books to read behind Slide:ology and Presentation Zen. It's not that Beyond Bullet Points was bad (the exact opposite in fact. I recommend it.) it's just that I want more.

Get me to the advanced class.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bey­ond Bul­let Points by Cliff Atkin­son adopts a hol­istic approach to mak­ing present­a­tions using Power­Point as a frame­work. This is a focussed and well con­sidered present­a­tion in itself look­ing to the psy­cho­lo­gical factors that impact on the effect­ive­ness of com­mu­nic­a­tion con­sid­er­ing the key mes­sage and the appar­atus that will sup­port optimal uptake by your audi­ence. In its 3rd edi­tion, Atkinson’s book is enga­ging without being over­whelm­ing and walks the a reader through a feel sup­por­ted approach that lends itself to imme­di­ate application.

Here’s what I really like about the book:

It’s very con­cise and offers sup­port for a focussed frame­work — it takes the reader through a pro­cess illus­trat­ing with examples where neces­sary to sub­stan­ti­ate the value of work­ing with digest­ible bits of info and provid­ing con­stant feedback;
It is well illus­trated and quite appro­pri­ately illus­trated which makes this a fresh read;
It is quite easy to imple­ment this same pro­cess using any present­a­tion soft­ware — it’s not tied to Power­Point and does take an approach of con­sid­er­ing the role of the soft­ware as opposed to provide a guide to using power­point more effectively;
I highly recom­mend this book and also to take it on board, spend the time thought­fully con­sid­er­ing it and the ways it can be applied to your present­a­tions. It is a great value and the sug­ges­tions can be applied on piece meal basis and see imme­di­ate return.

[Christian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some of the general ideas in this book are solid but I really, really didn't like how it is based on an extended tutorial. By using this template he gives, it restricts thinking abstractly about how to apply this to your own presentations. I don't like books that constrain your thinking this much. He takes an approach many programming tutorial books might takes which is not helpful when dealing with presentations. Coding is a very structured process whereas there are many different presentation styles and ways of delivering content. So, this is a good book for extreme beginners or people who really need help but not for good speakers who want to know how to be more effective. For the latter person, you would be better off reading something like Edward Tufte to get a more generalizable understanding of presenting.

[Paul Signorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cliff Atkinson’s visual approach to PowerPoint slide presentations has become a virtual industry centered around this second edition of his book; his Beyond Bullet Points web site (http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com/) with a blog, free templates, and links to updated material; and plenty of samples being created and posted online by those who have learned what he is teaching. Showing readers how to avoid slides which are text-laden and full of bullet-point items read to bored learners by substandard presenters, Atkinson provides inspiration for anyone who wants to create online lessons which will be effective, memorable, and fun for everyone involved in e-learning.

[Ietrio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea why self proclaimed presentation specialists are unable to present anything. And this is one of the best books around. The author wants you to make five slides than do whatever you please. Nice. Clean. Why so many pages?

The Setting Headline Where am I, and when is it?
The Role Headline Who am I in this setting?
The Point A Headline What challenge do I face in this setting?
The Point B Headline Where do I want to be? (The gap between the Point A and B headlines) Why am I here?
The Call to Action Headline How do I get from A to B?

Else the guy is right: he is beyond bullet points and up to ordered lists.

[Keith Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book somewhere between this one and Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen would be ideal. Atkinson thrashes in unnecessary detail and doesn't push toward any real elegance of visual design, but he does a more thorough job than Reynolds of explaining the cognitive load of viewing a presentation and ways that the presenter can mitigate it. I got a lot more out of Reynolds' book, and found it easier to absorb. Perhaps Atkinson should have worked a bit harder to apply his PowerPoint lessons to his own book.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atkinson lays out a concrete series of tasks I wish everyone who is asked to give a talk would study in earnest. Beyond explaining how to use one of the most poorly used presentation packages in office environments, he relates to the reader some basic principles of story telling. He shares some insights brought about by current cognitive science research. Best of all, he lays out a plan for preparing for a talk that will allow the experience to be more enjoyable for the speaker and the audience.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

After sitting though many abusive Power Point presentations, I got to thinking there's got to be a better way and began doing research...Atkinson's approach is refreshing and his challenge to use PP as a story telling tool rather than a bludgeon is compelling.

It's easy to get frustrated and think, "there's no way I can do all this..." But sticking with him and looking at the bigger picture, readers can find ways that they can make any presentation better.

[Tom Gromak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that brain-based research went into the suggestions presented in this book. It often goes against conventional wisdom, but makes a lot of sense.

As someone who makes a lot of presentations and teaches students how to present their own ideas, I found this book invaluable.

It's a Microsoft Press book, and so everything is based on PowerPoint (which is why it loses a star), but it's extremely easy to adapt everything to the presentation package of your choice.

[Thomkinney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely changed how I design presentations. It's a sure-fire cure for "Death by PowerPoint", and instead lets you use the tool for what it's really designed for - a visual medium that complements the message of the speaker with dramatic and relevant images. It also had me think about when PowerPoint really wasn't the right tool for the job. A must read for anyone who presents to any audience.

[Joshua Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't actually read this book. I bought it at the same time I got Reynold's "Presentation Zen" and Weinschenk's "100 things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People." After reading those two books, I opened "Beyond" and it seemed like this book was an extended instruction manual for how to use MS PowerPoint.

I was hoping for a book describing a theory of presentations. I do not need a manual for a particular software package.

[Brian Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great step by step instruction to creating meaningful and relevant presentations.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you use Power Point to present, I would recommend this book along with Presentation Zen, and a search for Lawrence Lessig and Dick Hardt. This book led me to open up my thinking about how to use Power Point as a valuable and creative tool, rather than as a canned product, for presenting to clients, staff and anyone.

[Dewey Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enables presenters to move from the Neanderthal era to state of the art. The big idea is that a presentation should follow Artistotle's concept of a plot, or a Hollywood production in order to engage the audience. Very detailed instructions and templates are provided. Curious that he makes no mention of Edward Tufte's incisive critique of PowerPoint. Highly recommend. Gift from Weston.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not perfect, but it does give you a new frame work for looking at PowerPoint presentations, and we all really need that. The trouble comes in trying to execute this model across your organization.

You need buy from the top for this kind of radical change to PowerPoint presentations, and most organizations simply won't hand over that mandate.

[Dana Kraft · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two thumbs down. It should tell you everything that this book is published by Microsoft. It basically tries to tell you how you can use more Powerpoint and Office tools to make your presenations more effective. Fair enough, but it's not for a lack of tools that presentations are generally so coma-inducing. Gene Zelazny's "Say It With Presentations" way better.

[Gerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book sort of assumes you're an idiot and teaches you how to create an effective PowerPoint presentation from scratch. Writing often succumbs to the "three point adjective" syndrome. But I did gain a lot of pointers from reading. I would recommend to anyone who needs to create presentations.

[Lech · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book teaches how to use reason, emotions and logic in your presentations. It proposes a structure based on film-making analogies.

However, the general philosophy was usable for me mostly. A big part of the book seemed inapplicable. It is worth reading though.

[Jeromy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are better books about slide design. But he presents a very useful system for crafting your story. It is great in conjuction with Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds or Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte.

[Tamara]

Meh...Maybe if all I did was write PowerPoint presentations for a living, I would want to read this book. I was really just looking for a "Here are some great example presentations that you can try to emulate" book.

[June Ding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well the title suggests that it is about microsoft power point so i should't be disappointed that there is too much details on using the tool. Maybe useful for new users. Not a whole lot new concepts. But at least i got reminded to make a statement on the slide rather than a phrase..

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's repetitive and focused only in MS Power Point. Still it introduces some very good ideas that one can apply to any kind of presentation.

I liked the idea of scalable presentations, how to build presentations that could be used for 5, 15 or 45 min talks