Dear Presenters,
It has come to my attention that a horror worse than 1990s clip art lurks among presenters today. This horror appears in over 90% of slideshows that I see, and it is not only hideous but also terrifying and just plain weird. That horror, Dear Presenter, is…
THE FACELESS ALIEN CREATURE!
You can find the faceless alien creature doing almost any task: teaching, jumping, writing, skydiving… As you can see from the images above and below, you can also find the faceless alien creature joining with others to hold gigantic puzzle pieces and putting them together AND joining hands around the globe and enormous arrows to promote recycling. Yeah… I just threw up.
Despite the faceless alien creature’s activity, one thing is always the same. The faceless alien creature is completely nude, appears in one color from head-to-toe, and, of course, does not have a face. If you are presenting to people with clothes on, with natural human pigmentation, and with faces, I’m not sure how faceless alien creatures connect… But you probably didn’t think about connection, Dear Presenter, because faceless alien creatures come from a hasty Google search of things like “collaboration” and “academic integrity.” If you’re too busy to create an audience-centered slideshow with audience-centered images, I’m not sure why you were asked to present in the first place. You sound pretty selfish.
Dear Presenter, I’m sure you might argue that there aren’t enough hours in the day to find good images or that you’re too busy to care about pretty slides. I’d ask you to count the number of people in your audience and to ask how much overall time those people will be spending with you and your terrible presentation. If you have 30 people in the audience listening to you for 30 minutes, that’s 900 total minutes you’re wasting with your hideous slides. And if you don’t care after doing the math, I’d strongly suggest you find someone who DOES care to present instead of you.
If you do care, Dear Presenter, I have two simple tips for you: 1) Stop using tacky faceless alien creatures in your slideshow. 2) Find images of real people. Try Compfight. It’s a winner.
I will leave you with one final thought, Dear Presenter. Every time you use a faceless alien creature in your slides, a real faceless alien creature from outer space begins his journey to Earth to kill you. You may be able to take on one or two, but if your number at this point is nearing 50, you might as well call it a day.
Sincerely,
Alex Rister
