One Style Does Not Fit All
Know your audience
Know your purpose:
 Instruct
 Inform
 Amuse
 Convince
4 Essential Ways to Lose Your Audience
Treat your presentation as:
A script to read to your
audience
A whirlwind of complex details
A whirligig of special effects
An obligation (not a pleasure)
Consistent Look
 Use the Slide Master (under View).
 Establish color scheme.
 Avoid mixing type fonts throughout
your presentation so that one slide
looks like an 18th century
playbill while the next looks
like a
wedding invitation.
“Changed my hair style, so many times now,
don’t know what I look like.”—The Talking Heads
Words Words Words
Live presentation: Never read
your slides. Perform!
PPT as learning object: Record
your content with Audacity, then
attach audio file to slide.
Perform!
Embrace Simplicity
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Limit text to essential “telegraphic” points
Rule of thumb: 6x6
Use graphics sparingly. Focus attention!
Leave lots of white space
“Everything should be as
simple as it can be, but not
simpler”—Albert Einstein
(but ignore the hair…)
In PowerPoint (and in life):
Words can be your enemy.
Readability No-Nos
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Light type on dark background
Serif fonts
Font size unreadable in back row
Cutesy fonts
Optical color disasters
Moderation
 Make your fonts big enough to read, but not so big
that you seem to shout.
 Don’t shout with your colors either—unless of course
you need to shout.
Train Wreck Spotting
•
•
like
yellow on purple, which may look good
as a football jersey, but awful on a PPT
screen.
You also don’t want light on light, dark
on dark (as above).
Serif fonts (even classic fonts like Times
New Roman or Garamond which are
perfectly lovely).
Font size unreadable in back row.
• Cutesy fonts. Cutesy
fonts. Cutesy fonts.
"This wasn‘t just plain terrible, this was
fancy terrible. This was terrible with
raisins in it” - Dorothy Parker
Transitions
 Avoid cheesy cinematic transitions—
unless you are being ironic.
 Be consistent—generally use the same
transition throughout.
 Know when to switch transitions—for
example, a section break.
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the
transition that’s troublesome”
—Isaac Asimov
Non-Linear Navigation
 Consider creating a navigation
page (for example, to navigate to
particular sections).
 Add an Action to an image that
always links to navigation.
 Place image on each slide, in
the same place.
 Use navigation to move back
and forth in your presentation.
Try Something New
 Ahead
 Prezi
 Slide Rocket
 Whiteboard apps on iPad
 Vuvox
But that’s a subject for another time… ta-ta for now!