guidelines for making good presentations

8/8/2019 Guidelines for Making Good Presentations

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Learn how to insert tables, graphs, graphics and photos to enhance your presentation ratherthan just using text.

Let's take a look at some common mistakes made when creating PowerPoint slides and how to correctthem.

Common Mistakes

Mistake #1 - What You See Is What You Get! (Remember WYSIWYG?)

Solution: What shades of colors you see on your computer screen will not be the same shades of colorsthat are projected. (If you don't project your presentations go to Mistake #2). Even some of Microsoft'stemplates are difficult to see when projected. Hint: Try to project your PowerPoint presentation forpreview before you present to your audience.

Mistake #2 - Creating Slides That Are Hard On the Eyes or Even Impossible To Read

Solution: Think in contrasts! Use dark background colors and light colored type or light coloredbackgrounds and dark colored type.

Mistake #3 - Selecting Inappropriate Colors for Your Slides

Solution: Color can incite emotions! Unusual shades of red, brown, yellow and green can put youraudience on edge throughout your PowerPoint presentation (this is not a good idea unless that is yourintention!). Red is considered a "hot" color and should only be used as an accent color.

Mistake #4 - Choosing Difficult To Read Fonts

Solution: Helvetica and Arial are good fonts to use. Microsoft frequently uses Times New Roman but thatfont projects like "dot matrix" text. Sans-serif fonts (like Arial and Helvetica) look much better whenprojected.

Mistake #5 - Putting Shadows On Text

Solution: Putting a shadow on text makes the text difficult, if not impossible, for an audience to read.Putting a shadow on a textbox will automatically put a shadow on the text included in the textbox. Keep itsimple and plain but attractive!

Mistake #6 - Not Letting Your Audience Know Where You Are

Solution: Put slide numbers on slides so that your audience members can refer to them.

Mistake #7 - Starting Your PowerPoint Presentation Before You Are Introduced

Solution: What do I mean by this? I recommend putting a blank slide as your first slide in your PowerPointpresentation. This way your title slide will not appear before you do!

(Value-added hint: if you must wait a long period of time before you start presenting, you may consideradding two blank slides. Click to the second blank slide a minute or so before you are introduced so thatyour computer will wake up - even if you turned the sleep or hibernate function off - just like people, theycan fall asleep during a presentation!).

Mistake #8 - Selecting More Than Two or Three Fonts

Solution: In any one PowerPoint presentation, two or three fonts are all that you need. Keep it simple andplain but attractive! Sound familiar?


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Mistake #9 - Using All the Bells And Whistles to Show How Good You Are With PowerPoint

Solution: Be consistent! Whatever you do on one slide, do on all slides. For example, use the same fonts,coloring, animation, transitions, etc. across all slides. And do not use every element available in any onepresentation!

Mistake #10 - Not Being Able To Read Your Print Out

Solution: I recommend going to the View pull down menu and selecting grayscale. Look at your slides inthis view because this is how they will print on a black & white printer. If you see a solid black box orelement, text, etc. right-click on that element and select the grayscale view and change it to black andwhite.

Mistake #11 - Animations That Don't Work

Solution: When you create a slide, the order in which you add each element is the order in which thoseelements will animate when you show the slide show. Go to the Slide Show pull down menu then click onCustom Animation. You can click on each element and add the wanted effect and select the order inwhich the object will animate in the custom animation sidebar. Again, keep it simple.

Mistake #12 - Each Slide in a PowerPoint Presentation Appears To Be Different

Solution: When creating a new PowerPoint presentation, go to the Master Slide and format the text bothfor color and font, what animations should occur, add the slide number and any other element you want toappear on each slide.

The Seven Deadly Sins of PowerPoint Presentations

It's not surprising PowerPoint slideshows have become the norm for visuals in mostbusiness presentations. They are quick to produce, easy to update and effective to injectvisual interest into the presentation. However, they can also spell disaster even for

experienced presenters.

The key to success is to make certain your slide show is a visual aid and not a visual distraction.

For the best results, avoid these common "seven deadly sins" of PowerPoint presentations.

1. Slide Transitions And Sound Effects.

They become the focus of attention, which in turn distracts the audience. Worse yet, when apresentation containing several effects and transitions runs on a computer much slower than the oneit was created on, the result is a sluggish, almost comical playback. Such gimmicks rarely enhance themessage you're trying to communicate. Unless you are presenting at a science fiction convention,leave out the laser-guided text!

Leave the fade-ins, fade-outs, wipes, blinds, dissolves, checkerboards, cuts, covers and splits toHollywood filmmakers. Even "builds" (lines of text appearing each time you click the mouse) can bedistracting. Focus on your message, not the technology.

2. Standard Clipart.

Death to screen beans! Powerpoint is now so widely used the clipart included with it has become a"visual clich." It shows a lack of creativity and a tired adherence to a standard form. First, makecertain that you need graphics to enhance your message. If you do, use your own scannedphotographs or better-quality graphics from good companies such as PhotoDisc


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3. Presentation Templates.

Another visual clich. Templates force you to fit your original ideas into someone else's pre-packagedmold. The templates often contain distracting backgrounds and poor color combinations. Pick up agood book on Web graphics and apply the same principles to your slides. Create your own distinctivelook or use your company logo in a corner of the screen.

4. Text-Heavy Slides.

Projected slides are a good medium for depicting an idea graphically or providing an overview. Theyare a poor medium for detail and reading. Avoid paragraphs, quotations and even complete sentences.Limit your slides to five lines of text and use words and phrases to make your points. Theaudience will be able to digest and retain key points more easily. Don't use your slides as speaker'snotes or to simply project an outline of your PowerPoint presentation.

5. The "Me" Paradigm.

Presenters often scan a table or graphic directly from their existing print corporate material andinclude it in their slide show presentations. The results are almost always sub-optimal. Print visualsare usually meant to be seen from 8-12 inches rather than viewed from several feet. Typically, they

are too small, too detailed and too textual for an effective visual presentation. The same is true forfont size; 12 point font is adequate when the text is in front of you. In a slideshow, aim for a minimumof 40 point font. Remember the audience and move the circle from "me" to "we." Make certain allelements of any particular slide are large enough to be easily seen. Sizereally does matter.

6. Reading.

An oral presentation should focus on interactive speaking and listening, not reading by the speaker orthe audience. The demands of spoken and written language differ significantly. Spoken language isshorter, less formal and more direct. Reading text ruins a presentation. A related point has to do withhandouts for the audience. One of your goals as a presenter is to capture and hold the audience'sattention. If you distribute materials before your presentation, your audience will be reading thehandouts rather than listening to you. Often, parts of an effective presentation depend on creating

suspense to engage the audience. If the audience can read everything you're going to say, thatelement is lost.

7. Faith in Technology.

You never know when an equipment malfunction or incompatible interfaces will force you to give yourPowerPoint presentation on another computer. Be prepared by having a back-up of your presentationon a CD-ROM. Better yet is a compact-flash memory card with an adapter for the PCMCIA slot in yournotebook. With it, you can still make last-minute changes. It's also a good idea to prepare a few colortransparencies of your key slides. In the worst-case scenario, none of the technology works and youhave no visuals to present. You should still be able to give an excellent presentation if you focus onthe message. Always familiarize yourself with the presentation, practice it and be ready to engage theaudience regardless of the technology that is available. It's almost a lost art.


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Ten Mistakes Not To Make In Your Next PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint Training - Love it or hate it, PowerPoint is used all over the world, every day, tocreate presentations. If you're getting ready to design a deck of slides for your nextpresentation, here are ten mistakes you need to avoid to create an interesting speech youraudience will love.

Mistake #1: Dont Cram Too Much On One Slide!

Your audience has to listen to your speech, and read your slides at the same time. When theyre doingone, theyre not likely to be doing the other. Its essential to keep the slides simple.

Dont have a twenty bullet points on one slide. Or a couple of hundred words. Or four or five piecharts. Or a bar chart full of specific detail.

The best presentations make one clear point on each slide. Less is more!

If you say something during your speech that is clearly backed up by a fact on your slide, it addsauthority to the point youre making.

For your next presentation, try limiting yourself to a maximum of five words per slide, including thetitle. Or can you ditch the words all together and illustrate your point with a photo? Try dropping allthe numbers from a chart and just showing the trend.

Mistake #2: Dont Use Bullet Points On Every Slide!

Im sure youve had to sit through one. You know a presentation with endless slide after slide of bulletpoints. Ive sat through many. The only good thing about them is they offer a chance to grab 40winks.

Theres nothing interesting about bullet points. They just encourage you to read from the slide, whichinsults an audience, and they take the audiences attention away from what youre saying.

There are much better ways to illustrate a point rather than bullets. Why not find a good photo thatworks as well (try BigStockPhoto.com or iStockPhoto.com). Or an interesting quote. Find a chart thatshows the trend youre talking about. Show a simple table with raw data. Show logos of companiesusing the products youre selling (try BrandsOfTheWorld.com). Show newspaper clippings. Or dontshow anything sometimes, you need your audience to focus clearly on what youre saying.

Mistake #3: Dont Make Your Font Size Too Small!

When youre designing slides at your computer, its easy to forget how your slides are actually going

to be used. While 14pt text may look large enough while sitting in front of your computer, will it bevisible from the back of a room when you present?

Just because youre projecting on to a 12 x 9 screen doesnt mean its going to appear huge toeveryone in the room. In fact, its the opposite. Sat close to a PC, the screen almost fills your vision.From the back of a conference room, however, even a huge projected screen seems tiny.

Tip: when youve designed your slides on your PC, stand up, take five steps back and view yourpresentation. (Youll find a remote mouse useful for this.)


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Cant read your slides now? Neither will your audience. Go into your master template, and double thetext size. Now try again.

Mistake #4: Dont Use PowerPoints Clipart!

I can only think of unprintable comments to make about the clip art supplied with PowerPoint. Its

amateurish. Its badly designed. And theres such little choice, you see people shoehorning imagesinto their slides which really dont fit the message or theme of their presentation.

Solution: use professional stock photography.

My favorite suppliers are www.BigStockPhoto.com and www.iStockPhoto.com. Both have almost ahuge variety of photos ranging from animals to landscapes, landmarks to technology. Go to both sitesand have a look around.

Is it expensive? Not at all. You pay between couples of hundred per picture, which is nothing.

Tip: find a photo on a white background. In PowerPoint, click the transparency tool on the white areaof the photo to cut the object out so it merges seamlessly with your presentations background.

Mistake #5: Don't Use Sound Effects In Your PowerPoint Presentation!

Yes, PowerPoint does include exciting sound effects like (wait-for-it) a race car! A typewriter! A paneof glass being smashed! Gravy!

Just resist all temptation and dont use any of them in your presentation.

Theyll make you sound like an amateur who has just discovered some new features in PowerPoint andwant to do everything possible to make them fit into your presentation whether they help or hinder.

And, believe, they hinder.

Theres not a lot more I can really say about sound effects. Just please, if you get nothing else fromthis article, understand this: never, never, use sound effects in PowerPoint.

Mistake #6: Dont Hack Together A PowerPoint Presentation At Random! Structure GivesMeaning

A presentation with no structure is like listening to someone ramble on about nothing in particular. Ithas no meaning, no message, and five minutes after the ramble has finished, youve forgotteneverything about it anyway.

Which is why a good presentation should have a clearly defined structure. And by structure, I simplymean a beginning, a middle and an end.

Beginning: introduce yourself, your topic, why it matters and why youre the right person to talk aboutit.

Middle: the meaty substance. Talk pros and cons. Talk benefits. Talk features. Show them over andover why the message youre selling is essential. Repetition is good.

End: wrap it all up by referencing back to the beginning of your presentation. Give your audience acall to action tell them what to do next.


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Remember the saying "tell em what youre gonna tell em, tell em, tell em you just told em."

Mistake #7: Dont Read Your PowerPoint Slides Aloud!

Occasionally, I see presenters who bring a slide on-screen, then read it, word-for-word aloud to theiraudience.

Its such a bad thing to do. Your audience will be insulted, and youre missing the chance to use yourslides to back-up and give authority to what youre saying.

If you think you have a habit of doing this, the secret is all in the preparation. If you use a script tospeak from, write the script first, and then create your slides second, without copying chunks of yourscript into PowerPoint. If you prefer to speak from notes, then create a list of notes using differentwording than whats on your slides.

Then practice in front of a live audience. May be a partner or a colleague. Get them to stop you everytime you start reading from your slides. Youll soon lose the habit.

Mistake #8: Dont Lose Your Audience With Ambiguous PowerPoint Slides!

All slides need a clear, simple path for the audiences eye to follow. When slides are filled with contentthat looks the same (for example, a long list of bullet points in the same type, color and size) they getlost in the detail.

By making the importance of different parts of your slide clear, youll instantly improve youraudiences understanding of the message youre communicating.

Heres three ways of improving the clarity of your slides.

Contrast: make more important items stand out. Make the font size bigger or brighter. Allow lots ofspace around the most important items.

Highlights: highlight important items with a different color. For example, highlight rows in a table asyou talk about them.

Simplify: reduce the number of words or bullets or pictures in a slide. Split one complex slide intoseveral simpler ones.

Brainstorm your own ideas for more!

Mistake #9: Dont Irritate Your Audience With Annoying PowerPoint Animations!

Yes, PowerPoint does include lots of flashy effects in its custom animations palette.

Yes, you can buy add-ons if you want even more.

No, you shouldnt use them!

Like sounds and clip-art, over used animations in your presentation look amateurish.

They distract the audiences attention away from what youre saying as they focus on the screen. Anddo lots of random effects impress your audience? No, never.


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guidelines for making good presentations

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