Steve Jobs (19 page)

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This slide format gives me the willies. It should scare the heck

out of you, too. Designer Garr Reynolds calls these creations

“slideuments,” an attempt to merge documents with slides.

“People think they are being efficient and simplifying things,”

according to Reynolds. “A kind of kill-two-birds-with-one-stone

approach. Unfortunately, the only thing ‘killed’ is effective

communication.
”5
Reynolds argues that PowerPoint, used effectively, can complement and enhance a presentation. He is not in

favor of ditching PowerPoint. He is, however, in favor of ditch-

ing the use of “ubiquitous” bulleted-list templates found in both

PowerPoint and Keynote. “And it’s long past time that we real-

ized that putting the same information on a slide in text form

that is coming out of our mouths usually does not help—in fact,

it hurts our message.
”6

Creating Steve Jobs–like slides will make you stand out in

a big way, if only because so few people create slides the way

he does. Your audience will be shocked and pleased, quite

simply because nobody else does it. Before we look at
how
he

does it, though, let’s explore
why
he does it. Steve practices Zen Buddhism. According to biographers Jeffrey Young and William

Simon, Jobs began studying Zen in 1976.
7
A Zen Buddhist monk even officiated at his wedding to Lauren Powell in 1991.

A central principle of Zen is a concept called
kanso
, or simplicity. According to Reynolds, “The Japanese Zen arts teach us that

it is possible to express great beauty and convey powerful mes-

sages through simplification.
”8
Simplicity and the elimination
No More Pencils

We’ve been trained since youth to replace paying attention

with taking notes. That’s a shame. Your actions should demand

attention. (Hint: bullets demand note taking. The minute you

put bullets on the screen you are announcing, “Write this down,

but don’t really pay attention to it now.”) People don’t take notes

when they go to the oper
a.9

SETH GODIN, SETH’S BLOG

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of clutter is a design component that Jobs incorporates into his

products and slides. In fact, most everything about his approach

to life is all-out Zen.

In 1982, photographer Diana Walker took a portrait of Jobs

in the living room of his house. The room was huge, with a fire-

place and ceiling-to-floor windows. Jobs sat on a small rug on

a wooden floor. A lamp stood next to Jobs. Behind him were a

record player and several albums, some of which were strewn on

the floor. Now, Jobs could surely have afforded some furniture.

He was, after all, worth more than $100 million when the pho-

tograph was taken. Jobs brings the same minimalist aesthetic to

Apple’s products. “One of the most important parts of Apple’s

design process is simplification,” writes Leander Kahney in
Inside

Steve’s Brain
.10

“Jobs,” says Kahney, “is never interested in technology for

technology’s sake. He never loads up on bells and whistles,

cramming features into a product because they’re easy to add.

Just the opposite. Jobs pares back the complexity of his products

until they are as simple and as easy to use as possible.
”11

When Apple first started in the 1970s, the company’s ads had

to stimulate demand for computers among ordinary consumers

who, frankly, didn’t quite see the need for these new devices.

According to Kahney, “The ads were written in simple, easy-

to-understand language with none of the technical jargon that

dominates competitors’ ads, who, after all, were trying to appeal

to a completely different market—hobbyists.
”12
Jobs has kept his messages simple ever since.

The influential German painter Hans Hofmann once said,

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary

so that the necessary may speak.” By removing clutter—extra-

neous information—from his products and presentations, Jobs

achieves the ultimate goal: ease of use and clarity.

Macworld 2008: The Art of Simplicity

To gain a fuller appreciation of Jobs’s simple slide creations, I have constructed a table of excerpts from his Macworld 2008

keynote presentation. The column on the left in Table 8.1

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contains his actual words, and the column on the right contains

the text on the accompanying slid
es.13

In four slides, Jobs’s presentation contained fewer words by

far than what most other presenters cram onto one slide alone.

Cognitive researchers like John Medina at the University of

Washington have discovered that the average PowerPoint slide

contains forty words. Jobs’s first four slides have a grand total

of seven words, three numbers, one date, and no bullet points.

Let’s Rock

On September 9, 2008, Jobs revealed new features for the iTunes

music store and released new iPod models for the holiday season.

Prior to the event—dubbed “Let’s Rock”—observers speculated

TABLE 8.1
EXCERPTS FROM JOBS’S MACWORLD 2008 KEYNOTE

STEVE’S WORDS

STEVE’S SLIDES

”I just want to take a moment and look back to

2007

2007. Two thousand seven was an extraordinary

year for Apple. Some incredible new products: the

amazing new iMac, the awesome new iPods, and

of course the revolutionary iPhone. On top of that,

Leopard and all of the other great software we

shipped in 2007.”

“It was an extraordinary year for Apple, and I want

Thank you.

to just take a moment to say thank you. We have

had tremendous support by all of our customers,

and we really, really appreciate it. So, thank you

for an extraordinary 2007.”

“I’ve got four things I’d like to talk to you about

1

today, so let’s get started. The first one is

Leopard.”

“I’m thrilled to report that we have delivered over

5,000,000 copies

five million copies of Leopard in the first ninety

delivered in first 3

days. Unbelievable. It’s the most successful release

months

of Mac OS X ever.”

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that Jobs might be in ill health, given his gaunt appearance.

(In January 2009, Apple revealed that Jobs was losing weight

due to a hormone imbalance and would take a leave of absence

for treatment.) Jobs addressed the rumor as soon as he stepped

onstage. He did so without saying a word about it. He let a slide

do the talking (see Table 8.2)
.14 I
t was simple and unexpected.

It generated cheers and deflected the tension. The rest of the

introduction was equally as compelling for its simplicity.

Make note of the words and figures on the slides in the table.

The words on the slide match the exact words that Jobs uses to

deliver his message. When Jobs says, “We’re going to talk about

music,” the only word the audience sees is “Music.” The words

act as a complement.

If you deliver a point and your slide has too many words—

and words that do not match what you say—your audience will

have a hard time focusing on both you and the slide. In short,

wordy slides detract from the experience. Simple slides keep the

focus where it belongs—on you, the speaker.

Empirical Evidence

Empirical studies based on hard data, not opinions, prove that

keeping your slides simple and free of extraneous information is

the best way to engage your audience. Dr. Richard Mayer teaches

educational psychology at the University of California, Santa

Barbara, and has been studying multimedia learning since 1991.

His theories are based on solid, empirical studies published in

peer-reviewed journals. In a study titled “A Cognitive Theory of

Multimedia Learning,” Mayer outlined fundamental principles

of multimedia design based on what scientists know about cog-

nitive functioning. Steve Jobs’s slides adhere to each of Mayer’s

principles:

MULTIMEDIA REPRESENTATION PRINCIPLE

“It is better to present an explanation in words and pictures than

solely in words,” writes Mayer
.15 Ac
cording to Mayer, learners can CHANNEL THEIR INNER ZEN
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TABLE 8.2
EXCERPTS FROM JOBS’S 2008

“LET’S ROCK” PRESENTATION

STEVE’S WORDS

STEVE’S SLIDES

”Good morning. Thank you for coming this

The reports of my death

morning. We have some really exciting stuff

are greatly exaggerated.

to share with you. Before we do, I just wanted

to mention this [gestures toward screen].”

“Enough said. So, let’s get on with the real

Music

topic of this morning, which is music. We’re

going to talk about music today, and we’ve

got a lot of fun, new offerings.”

“So, let’s start with iTunes.”

iTunes

“iTunes, of course, is the ubiquitous music and

Image of iTunes

video player married with the largest online

home page

content store in the world.”

“iTunes now offers over eight and a half

8,500,000 songs

million songs. It’s amazing. We started with

two hundred thousand. We now have over

eight and a half million songs.”

“Over one hundred and twenty-five thousand

125,000 podcasts

podcasts.”

“Over thirty thousand episodes of TV shows.”

30,000 episodes of 1,000

TV shows

“Twenty-six hundred Hollywood movies.”

2,600 Hollywood movies

“And, as of very recently, we now offer over

3,000 applications for

three thousand applications for iPhone and

iPhone & iPod Touch

iPod Touch.”

“And over the years, we’ve built up a great

65,000,000 accounts

customer base. We’re very pleased to

with credit cards

announce that we’ve got over sixty-five

million accounts in iTunes now. It’s fantastic:

sixty-five million customers.”

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Two-Minute Warning

The task of leaders is to simplify. You should be able to explain

where you have to go in two minutes
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JEROEN VAN DER VEER, CEO, ROYAL DUTCH SHELL

more easily understand material when it is presented in both