Muhammad Ali | Impossible

Today's Curious Quotes, Points To Ponder, & Inspiring Insights slide of the day features a quote from "The Greatest" and manages to break one of my main rules of design by exceeding "the greatest" number of words one should use on a single slide. 

Perhaps the most common mistake in slide design is putting too many words on a slide. What happens is that the audience can't read what is there and then the speaker even feels compelled to apologize by saying, "Well, I know that the text is too small for you to read, so here is what it says." 

This impossible quote from Muhammad Ali comes in at 49 words. A quick search on the internet will show that there are a lot of opinions about the maximum number of words that should be on a slide and the number of lines of text. Even with 49 words, I managed to use a 75 point American Typewriter font. So, I do not feel too bad about it. 

I used a slight slide variation of the typical quote with a photo of a person by using the blank space of the background as the canvas for the text. This photo comes from the Google Life Magazine Photo Archive and can be found here. I used only a portion of the photo and formatted the line breaks so that they created an echo of Ali's profile. 

With longer quotes like this, you might consider using a transition to step the text in to allow for a dramatic buildup. Otherwise people will read ahead and the message will land at different time and lose its effect. Like Muhammad Ali's punches, you want your message to really connect with the audience.