Public speaking advice from Editorially cofounder Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria is a prominent graphic designer and a cofounder of Editorially, a collaborative writing platform. He showed up on the Ladies In Tech podcast. The show is devoted to talking to people in tech about public speaking.

It might sound like a strange topic for tech, but speaking is actually really important to those in technology, business and entrepreneurship. From conferences to investor meetings to meetups, technologists have to speak all the time.

Santa Maria goes straight to that point when he brings up one of his first big speaking appearances, at SXSW when he realized that he couldn’t see all the notes he had built into his slide deck in presenter mode.

Some other tips he brought up on the podcast:

• He never uses presenter mode in PowerPoint anymore. Instead, he uses an element of the slide to remind him of topics he wants to bring up.
• Santa Maria rehearses presentations, particularly as a way to get his mind oriented around the facts he wants to remember.
• Remember that the crowd is with you and they want you to succeed. They will stay with you, he says, even if he falls off stage.
• If there’s time and space, introduce yourself to the people in the front row. They help make the whole room friendlier.
• Tips on speaking should be taken with a note of caution. Everyone has different styles, so it’s important to take tips from people who’s style is similar to you.

He’s been working on a book about typography for A Book Apart. His book, On Web Typography is coming out later this year.

Here’s an interesting post Santa Maria recently wrote about how web design still doesn’t quite have the language to describe itself, even in  a way that other web designers can understand what a web designer is trying to say.