My PPP Presentation

Presenting in front of people has never and probably never will be my strong suit, but it's something I've always tried to improve mostly because it's something I'll likely have to do a lot in the future, so there's no avoiding it. Also doing presentations like this on a regular basis will increase my confidence, both talking in front of people but also in myself and in my work.

One thing I picked up on last year from Stefan Sagmeister's Happiness by Design talk was making the presentation flow, with one thing leading onto another and not jumping from one topic to the next. I think this helped me hugely in my first year presentation as I would typically have a very choppy presentation with each section divided up by a separate title slide but is something that definitely stuck with me into my second year PPP presentation. Making use of every slide as almost a visual aid to my speech also helped me a lot this year, I aimed to have little to no words on the majority of slides so that the audience will be taking in by the picture, taking the focus off me a little bit. But also so that if I do happen to forget what I'm supposed to be talking about at any point, the slide itself will give me a hint and hopefully get me back on track.

I feel like my presentations are always on a very personal level, often using pictures of my life and on goings not just always my work. This gives me much more confidence and fluidity when I'm talking, but can hopefully inject some humour into the talk.

Within my talk, I began chronologically at the beginning of the year as this made most sense to me; starting in Oslo and finishing with what I learnt from this year. A lot of my presentation talked about my Erasmus trip to Norway for the first semester as this is what I would consider a big step up in my life. Moving to a different country, experiencing a whole new culture and with that new people was a challenging thing to do for me, especially considering I'd never lived in another country before, let alone on my own. Also getting involved with a collective over there was another big thing, being a part of something much bigger than just my own work within university meant that I had to the chance to do good with my design work and to have it displayed in exhibitions in other countries, this was something again that boosted my confidence.

Presenting in groups also means that I was able to see other people's presentations and their way of presenting things, which helps me in some ways. Some people have clever ways of presenting which helps give them confidence, this ultimately gives me a better idea of how I should be presenting and ways in which I can improve.

Doing a presentation of this scale and importance did a lot for me and my confidence, it puts into perspective the difficulty of situations like this but allows me to tackle it one slide at a time, only for me to realise afterwards that it's not as hard or as nerve-racking as my mind often makes it out to be.