how to make an effective presentation

Making Effective Presentations

Intro Powerpoint ConclusionDesign Format Animation Preparation Presentation Tips

An Introduction to Simple, Professional Presentations

First: The Bad News...

• Choosing the right medium and learning how to use it.

• Customizing and preparing materials relevant to the presentation.

• Doing the research on what you have to present, and thereafter figuring out what point exactly you want to get across (and how to do so).

• In some cases, you have to prepare your presentation with a group.

• Most important: you have to deliver the presentation!

The hard truth is that making a good presentation is a lot of work – especially if you’re not used to making them.


Now, the Good News

• You have no choice: making presentations is a key competency expected of any professional today.

• Although making presentations takes some doing, it’s not as complicated as it seems.

• All you have to do is follow basic dos and don’ts about making presentations.

• Besides, there are plenty of software programs that make putting together a presentation easy (like Powerpoint).

Once you get used to it, making and delivering good presentations becomes manageable – and there are easy ways to go about it.


Bad Presentations

• The presenter either doesn’t know what s/he is talking about or what point to get across.

• The presenter isn’t familiar with the equipment being used.

• The materials are painful to look at or difficult to see/read.

• The medium overpowers the message.

• The presentation itself is poorly delivered.

It’s hard to say what makes a good presentation. But it’s easy to identify what makes a bad one.


The first step is to design the “look” of your presentation.

You can do this by right-clicking the slide, and selecting Slide Design.

From there, pick a template for you to use. It will be applied to all your slides.


Next, you should format your slides.

The easiest way to do that is to make changes to the master slide.


On Formatting Slides

• Changes made to the master slide are applied to all slides. This makes formatting easier.

• To reduce file size, embed images or similar objects on the master slide if you want these to appear on all slides.

• Be careful with the colors and fonts you use on your slides: you might be making the text hard to read.

• Be mindful that what might look good on-screen may not look good when projected.

• You can also design a blank template from scratch if you don’t want to use an existing design.

Some pointers to live (or die) by.


If you’re just creating a simple presentation, you can apply uniform animation onto the master slide.

Alternatively, you can apply individual animations to each slide later on.


Some Notes on Animation

• Animations are not always necessary, but they do allow you to break down your presentation and pace how it should be delivered.

• Pick your animations wisely. Some animations are inappropriate for the type of presentation you are making.

• Don’t get carried away: generally, simpler animations are better.

• The simplest animations to use are entrance and exit effects.

• Combining animations and changing their timing can have interesting effects (but are time-consuming to do).

Animations are cool – but only if done right.


Now, you’re ready to begin typing in the content of your presentation.

Of course, you’ll have to add slides as you go on.

Making EffectivePresentations

POLECO Boot Camp 2005

Making EffectivePresentations

POLECO Boot Camp 2005

Overview

Overview


When Preparing the Slides

• Remember: you don’t have to put everything you want to say on the slide.

• Present complete key ideas as concisely as possible on screen (but be prepared to explain away).

• Be mindful of how the text looks: large, long blocks of text on the slides are very painful to look at.

• If you’re comfortable doing so (or just brave), you could create hyperlinks throughout your presentation.

• Plan ahead: if you know how much time you have to present, don’t make too many slides.

• Where appropriate, make sure to put titles on the slide.

It might seem simple, but there’s more to it than just typing away.


To launch your presentation, press F5 or the on-screen launch button.

To go forward: Page Down, Space Bar, ,

To go backward: Page Up, Backspace, ,


If you have to jump to a different slide, right click anywhere in the presentation or move the cursor to click on the navigation options on the lower left of the screen.

Then search for the slide you want to jump to.


Practical Tips

• Rehearse your presentation before you deliver it: that way you’ll know that everything that should work, does.

• Test and setup all equipment prior to your presentation, and make sure you know how to operate them.

• If other presentations are going to be made, load all of them into one computer to avoid delays in between.

• Keep it simple: that way a presentation is easier to make, and when you do emphasize something, it gets noticed.

• When delivering the presentation, bring a print copy.

• Choose fonts carefully: if you have to use another computer to present, it might not come out as you intend.

Things you should already know – but probably don’t practice.


It’s possible to save the fonts you use in the same file as the presentation.

It doesn’t work with all fonts, though, and it can increase the file size substantially.


For your reference, you can print any notes you have made together with the slide.

You can also print several notes pages on the same page.

Be careful: the more complex your slides, the more confusing they will look on print.

Notes Pages



Impress Your Audience

Impress Your Audience

Parting Thoughts

• It takes plenty of effort to make a presentation look effortless.

• Even if a presentation looks good, the most important element of the presentation is the one presenting it.

• Always remember that a presentation is made not for your own benefit but rather for your audience’s.

When all is said and done, preparing and delivering a presentation all boils down to this.


how to make an effective presentation

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