making great powerpoint presentations

making great powerpoint presentations

The Art of Crafting Engaging and Effective PowerPoint Presentations

1. Introduction to PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint is used successfully by many people to communicate. Why? It is a powerful tool that enables you to present topics, market information, teach or train. Your ability to create slides that are both effective and anecdotal is important. This may seem like a trivial matter to some people, but in the contemporary world of work, the ability to produce slides in PowerPoint is almost always important. Any time you will need to produce slides for a group, you are using PowerPoint.

When you study, work in organizations, attend club meetings, or civic groups, all involve the use of PowerPoint for some use. Once the data is assembled, analyzed, and structured, presentations often take longer than the time it takes to create overheads or slides or visuals. Hardly a communicator has not been involved in using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is the standard for producing slides today. The earlier used method of using slides has been mostly replaced by the use of LCD projectors.

PowerPoint can be used to create a mix of presentations that are designed to entertain, educate, inform, demonstrate, entertain, or convince. Applicability ranges from giving orienteering and sharing information with family and friends, to teaching in public, college-level education, commercial, church, and even military or government settings. Its applicability is limited only by one’s imagination, speaking needs, attitudes, technology, and computer. Created by Microsoft, PowerPoint dates back to the 1980s. Unlike other software, PowerPoint is in use and regularly updated. Over time, software design and as a communication preference for PowerPoint still remains as popular as others.

2. Design Principles and Best Practices

The key to a successful PowerPoint presentation is a series of design principles, or best practices. Unfortunately, these principles are often overlooked as people spend hours filling their slides with bulleted lists or exasperating images directly from their textbook. Quite simply, passing the time creating a complete deck full of text and giving a run-through is not the goal of the presentation.

The foundation of effective presentations is effective visual design. It is not enough that material be important, true, or adroitly presented: it ought to also be visually appealing. This is where the design principles of unity/variety, alignment, repetition, contrast, proximity, and balance come into place. These principles, coupled with a study of both how colors and fonts are used in advertisements and professional websites can help you in crafting compelling visuals for your class.

Tips and Tricks: • Less is more. Do not cram a lot of information on one slide. In general, ask whether a slide helps move the story along. If the answer is no, it does not belong in the presentation. • Capitalize words sparingly. Too many capitalized letters are hard to read quickly. • Font size matters. The font size of text on your slides should be between 24-44 point size, depending on the font. Use a larger font size for less text and a smaller font size for more text. Avoid going below 18 point font size. • Use high contrast colors. Choose colors that are closely related in visual brightness, e.g., medium blue and dark blue, creating illegible content. • Visuals are always better: Use images or infographics in your presentation to reinforce the verbal message. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” • Use sans-serif fonts (like Arial or Calibri) for the body of your text. “Serif” fonts (like Times New Roman) are not as easy to read electronically. • Align text to the left. English readers process text from left to right; aligning text to the left allows for better flow and readability. • Use text minimally. Use no more than 3-5 lines of text. Avoid using complete sentences or paragraphs. Make sure to include key ideas, charts, images, etc.

3. Content Creation and Organization

Content Creation and Organization: Ensure that your content is relevant, fact-based, and interesting to your audience. When drafting a PowerPoint, start by considering the major points you want to cover and use these points to generate content. Once all of your main points have been covered, make sure to wrap it up with a conclusion. Each slide should directly link to your main topic. If a slide can be removed without affecting the flow or coherence of the presentation, it may be best to leave it out.

Structured Slide Development: A structured PowerPoint presentation can fulfill the objective of developing your content in a logical and organized manner. It is often said that a good presentation brings the audience through an hourglass. Start with a wide opening, engage the audience with an interesting story or attention grabber, and then lead the listeners (your audience) through a narrowed focus-thesis statement-relevant research-thesis statement-relevant research-narrowed focus format. After at least three structured slides, you should present a slide or two that shows your main points or a comparison of multiple main points. Conclude with a reflective slide, and remember to always finish with next steps and acknowledgements.

Voice and Tone: As you write, you should be conscious of who will be reading your PowerPoint. It is important to think of appropriate and direct language, as well as considering how the tone can affect the viewers. When giving a professional presentation, professional and inclusive language can make listeners feel more connected and is often seen as more persuasive. Think about what your underlying messages are. If they revolve around persistence, repetition, frustration, or passion, these will dictate the style of your writing in the PowerPoint. Even if they don’t, they still help form your voice for the presentation.

4. Engagement Techniques and Interactive Elements

Today, PowerPoint is used in business, education, and other fields largely to inform a group of people about an interesting topic, possibly with a “WOW” factor included. Whether used to enhance a training or learning session, pitch a new product, communicate about a new initiative, sell an idea, or inspire your audience, PowerPoint slides can vary in style. While some presentations are data/information driven, others are art focused. Regardless, all slides that are professionally created, regardless of varying styles, include interactive elements to use during a “live” presentation. Commonly referred to as TPL Tables (Talking, Participating, Learning), these interactive elements increase audience retention to at least 70% when used properly. The concept is basic: the more hands-on and involved the participant is during the presentation (actually having to DO something rather than just listen), the more likely they are to retain the information after the PowerPoint presentation is over.

Incorporating multimedia is a great way to engage an audience in the subject of a PowerPoint presentation. Audiences visually enjoy images and audio; they quickly evoke emotions and help to tell the presenter’s story. Such artifacts are great attention grabbers, or have a “WOW” factor. One idea to consider is to ask if images, videos, or audio files could be used as a background for a slide or slide spoiler. If a movie is what you have in mind, you can do a variety of amazing things with videos such as cropping, zooming, flipping, or using “Stabilization”. PowerPoint provides the ability to control the speed (accelerate or slow), control the audio (fade in, fade out, or bookmark); you can trim from both the right and left, and change the volume (soften or louden). You can change color or adjust video settings like the brightness, contrast, and transparency. Combining all or any of these settings before and during the actual movie clip will increase audience engagement.

5. Delivery Skills and Presentation Tips

As much about art as science

Delivery Skills This is perhaps the most dreaded stage of all and perhaps the area that people are most fearful of. Most people are not comfortable public speaking, although there may be a few examples we personally might have seen who did seem comfortable and seemed to even enjoy the experience. Practicing can help in many ways, but it may be even more complicated for some because often during practice we are alone and do not have to face the fact that we are being watched. It is usually the thought of how we look, plus the fear that we may not be as good as we think or would like, that can be the most frightening. And much of the fear arrives because we are uncertain, not of what we are saying, but of how it is being received.

Body Language Young found that as much as 90% of the judgments made by an audience are based on the presenter’s non-verbal behaviors and that it is possible to make a balanced and judicious assessment of a third party without hearing the speaker speak if you see the speaker first from the feet upwards.

Some Tips: – There are some tips that can help manage these issues, but they all need to be practiced too. – Breathing deeply will help to slow down the presentation and control any nerves. – Move to give emphasis, but also move to give yourself sufficient energy. – Smile at people and make eye contact. In a formal presentation, it is likely that you will be moving around, but try and engage with as many audience members as possible. This eye contact is the best way to break down barriers and engage. – Pace your delivery so that you have variation in speed – quicker and slower or change the pitch. More skilled presenters can also vary the tone and even the volume to engage people.