Simple Rules to Powerpoint Perfection
To many people, PowerPoint has replaced the overhead projector, but it is much more
than that. A computer-hosted slide presentation, using tools like PowerPoint certainly
fixes some of the problems presented by overhead projectors. For instance, the slides
should always be in order, they should have a consistent look about them and they will
never be upside-down, crooked or back-to-front. You know, when you look at it that way,
computer-hosted presentation packages such as PowerPoint have removed the interesting
parts from presentations!
That's a sad state of affairs isn't it? Most of today's PowerPoint presentations contain the
script of the presentation, and each slide is read at the attendees. If you are lucky enough
to get a printout of the slides in a handout, you might as well collect the handouts and
skip the presentation. I know that I have done that several times (in most of the other
times, I wished I had).
Now is the time to seriously think about how you can use PowerPoint and other programs
like it to really assist you in giving dynamite presentations. In the remainder of this
article, I will give you some suggestions on how you can improve your presentations
using PowerPoint.
Rule 1:
Don't host the entire script of your presentation in your PowerPoint slides. Use your
slides to highlight the essence of your presentation. If I am teaching, I will often present
my materials without using PowerPoint slides. Whiteboards and flip-charts can be
equally useful as presentation tools. After I've presented some of the material, I will then
use some PowerPoint slides to review the lesson.
Rule 2:
Don't use the default screen background in your PowerPoint slides. You have no idea
how many presentations I have seen that all look the same. Try to show your audience
that you have some imagination when building a set of PowerPoint slides.
Rule 3:
Watch the colours you use. Have you ever noticed that some colour combinations are
hard to read? This is not your imagination. Colours have different wavelengths and your
eyes must adjust. If you mix long and short wavelength colours on the same slide, at best
your slide will be unreadable; at worst you will give your audience a terrific headache! If
you don't believe me, try using a dark blue background with red writing - if you look at
this for any more than a few minutes, you will see what I mean.
I like light yellows and greens. They are easy on the eye and probably betray my
Australian heritage.
Rule 4:
Use fonts (OK, type faces) that are large enough to see from the back of the room. The
major reason for using small fonts in presentations is to fit a great deal of information
onto the one slide. Rather than making the font smaller, look at putting less information
onto each slide. Then if you end up with too any slides, you are probably trying to put the
script of your presentation in your slides! (See Rule 1, above)
Rule 5:
Allow plenty of "white space" (or whatever colour you are using as a background). This
should happen automatically if you follow all of the rules above.
Rule 6:
Give all of your slides a consistent look throughout the presentation. Under no
circumstances should you change the colour scheme within a presentation, it will really
annoy your audience. This means that if you're importing slides from another
presentation, you will have to change the imported slide's colour scheme to match that of
the new presentation.
Rule 7:
Don't use too many gadgets to cover up lack of content in a presentation. PowerPoint has
a huge toolbox of gizmos to brighten up your presentation and they are great as long as
you don't use all of them at once. If you have attended presentations where lots of gadgets
have been used, can you remember how tedious they became?
Rule 8:
If you really need to make an impact with your presentation but feel that you don't have
the expertise to do it justice, seriously consider taking your outline and text to a graphic
artist and have them build the presentation for you.
Rule 9:
Don't use PowerPoint as your word processor. Sure, PowerPoint has some word
processing capabilities, but that is not its main function. If you are processing words, then
use a good word processor like Microsoft Word. You will notice as you discover all of
the applications within the Microsoft Office suite that some functionality is repeated (to a
greater or lesser extent) in the other applications. Remember, you should always choose
the right tool for the job, that's what they are for.
I hope that this article opens your eyes to more ways you can use some of the tools in the
Microsoft Office suite for improving your business' image and professionalism.
Until next time, happy computing!