Pecha Kucha, which originated in Japan as a discipline to keep architects’ presentations from turning into “death by PowerPoint,” is a new way to present a story. The rules are

• No more than 20 slides
• No more than 20 seconds per slide

Therefore, a PowerPoint presentation - no matter how complex-will never last more than 6 minutes, 40 seconds. People are now using it as almost an art form, creating elaborate presentations that fit in the constraints of the format.

I created a pecha kucha presentation for a job interview and felt it was well-received (one slide is shown above). Because it is minimalist, the slides contain little if any type, so it’s difficult to interpret a pecha kucha presentation without narration. In some of my slides, I used comic-strip-like balloons to put words in the mouths of my illustrations as in the above example. Dan Pink’s often-cited pecha kucha presentation does contain narration, so it gives a good idea of the form (see below).

Stephanie West Allen has a text blog post that also cites Pink’s presentation, along with some other examples.

See Pink’s pecha kucha presentation