seven walks

A part of the degree course I’m doing, I have to give a short presentation on presentation methods – we’ve been analysing different exhibitions and the strategies they use to present artists’ work.

When I say a short presentation, I mean a short presentation: 5 minutes.

This is going to have to be focused!

[Update: At 6 pages, the documentation of the preparation certainly is not focused!

The first few pages are basically just thinking aloud including the main points I wanted to make, in response to the project brief and a room-by-room walkthrough.
By page 5 I’ve got to the stage where I’m starting to look at how to make the presentation.]

Over the past few months I’ve been reading the articles over at Presentation Zen. I came across this site through my webdesign work and I’ve continued to read it because it’s very relevant to my webdesign work. How do you guide your audience along a path that transfers to them the information you want them to acquire?

I am starting to write this post on Saturday morning. The presentation is on Tuesday morning.

I’m also going to have to be focussed to get this prepared on time! Sitting here now with the task ahead of me, I have mapped out my plan of attack:

  1. Quick survey of visual resources.
  2. Identify the main points I want to convey.
  3. Structure these points.
  4. Decide how to distribute these points between the presentation and the accompanying handout.
  5. Build the powerpoint presentation.
  6. Build the handout.
  7. Practice.
  8. Present.

I have other, longer, presentations to do later in the year, (and it will almost certainly form a part of what I have to do as a fully-fledged artist) so I thought I would document the whole process here so I can refer back to it and progress.

1. Quick survey of visual resources.

It’s been a few months since I saw the exhibition so this step will serve to refresh my memory as well as give me an awarenss of what I can use for my visuals later.

My main sources will be the book that accomapanies the show; my own notes and photographs; and various webpages.

I’ll list the webpages here for future reference: