Guidelines for Effective PowerPoint Presentations
Have you ever been bored during a PowerPoint presentation? It is probably not your fault. PowerPoint is best used as a tool for using visual information to tell your story. The combination of your words, along with the visual images you project, should wake up your viewers, not put them to sleep with bullet point after bullet point.
These guidelines will help you present more compelling, dynamic presentations.
Slide Design
People like pictures; they do not like lists. And since PowerPoint is a tool for displaying visual information, not a word processor, you should think of your presentation as images, not just words. Do not display anything that does not help tell your story, convince your audience, or make your point.
The same rules that apply to good, clean writing apply to good, clean design—make every word and every image count. Eliminate the non-essential, and you will increase elegance and the clarity of simplicity. Do not shoot for typical; shoot for great! Remember that great presentations connect with people’s minds and their emotions.
Writing
Keep it simple: Do not make the mistake of thinking that your audience will not understand anything if you do not tell them everything. Find the essence of your message and stick to it.
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Present ideas succinctly, with lean prose and short sentences or phrases.
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Always use the active voice rather than the passive.
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Avoid most negative statements and watch out for double negatives.
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Use consistent capitalization rules, remembering that a mix of upper- and lowercase is easiest to read and understand.
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Always check spelling and grammar.
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Include a final references slide and in-text citations when needed.
Tell a story: Remember that you are telling a story. What is that story? Can you reduce it to a few sentences or, better yet, just one sentence? Like filmmakers pitching a concept, you should be able to pitch the purpose of your presentation. Do not begin creating content until you have the pitch down.
Then, lay out your ideas and shuffle, reduce, and shake them up until you are satisfied with the content and order and are ready to begin creating the slides.
Develop a clear, strategic introduction to provide context for the presentation. Present one concept or idea per slide, and organize your ideas logically between and within slides. Do not use more than one conclusion slide to recap main ideas.
You may wish to use a roadmap slide at the beginning of the presentation to give audience members a preview of what they can expect. Make sure the map you design reflects solid logic and structure, and that the presentation that follows does not go off-road. As PowerPoint expert
Garr Reynolds puts it, “Good stories have interesting, clear beginnings, provocative, engaging content in the middle, and a clear, logical conclusion” (Reynolds, 2005).
Consider your audience:
Before you begin to design your presentation, think about your audience. Who are they? What do they expect from you? Why are they at the event? What types of stories would be meaningful?
Follow the 70 percent rule: if something does not apply to at least 70 percent of your audience, do not include it.
Be your own worst critic: Do several run-throughs of your presentation prior to its delivery. If you can, rehearse with an actual computer and projector (assuming you will be using one in the presentation).
Throughout, keep asking yourself, “Why? and “So what?” about each piece of information you present. If you cannot clearly answer your own question, it probably does not belong.
Visuals
Keep it simple: Use a consistent design throughout the presentation and strive for powerful simplicity. Do not let your message and your story get lost in slides cluttered with what Edward Tufte calls “chart junk.”
Transition effects are best avoided. But if you do use them, use them sparingly and select ones that are not too flashy and that fit the content.
Make it yours: Most templates provided by PowerPoint have already been seen by everyone in your audience a million times, so do not use them. Create your own!
Repeat design elements (use the master slide design feature to ensure consistency), and keep fonts, colors, tone, and layout consistent.
Use color wisely: Use contrast between backgrounds and text: dark fonts on light backgrounds or light fonts on dark backgrounds.
If the presentation will be used in a dark room, a dark background with white or light text is best. For well-lit rooms, use dark text on a white or light background.
Use images and media: Develop relevant images for your presentation. Do not use irrelevant images or images just to fill space.
Use video and audio when appropriate. You can use video clips directly within PowerPoint. If you use audio, use it intelligently and for logical reasons, such as for interviews—do not ever use canned sound effects.
Use animations only when needed to enhance meaning. If selected, use them sparingly and consistently.
Maintain alignment: Use consistent horizontal and vertical alignment of slide elements throughout the presentation. Leave ample space around images and text, and maintain consistent spacing.
Consider the font: Use sans serif fonts such as Arial or Verdana. Remember that mixed upper- and lowercase text is easiest to read and understand.
Use a font size no smaller than 24 points for slide titles, and no smaller than 18 points for headings and explanatory text. Optimal sizes are 36 points or larger for the title and 28 points or larger for other headings and text.
When in doubt, reduce: According to the segmentation principle of multimedia learning theory, people comprehend better when information is presented in small chunks or segments.
However, that does not mean that presentations can do without a logical flow. Take advantage of the slide sorter view to see how your entire presentation flows from the point of view of your audience.
Remove any extraneous bits of visual data that can be eliminated to increase visual clarity and improve communication. Use no more than eight lines of text or five bullet points per slide. Use simple tables to show numbers, with no more than four rows and four columns. Reserve more detailed tables for a written summary.
Speaker Notes
Remember that the slides are there to support what the speaker says, not make the speaker superfluous. Use the Speaker Notes feature of PowerPoint to document what the speaker is to say, and let the slides play a supporting role.
While the slides allow you to highlight key information, convey messages, and tell a story, PowerPoint Speaker Notes allow you to provide an explanation of the message and discuss its application and implications to the field, discipline, or work setting.
Portions of these guidelines were adapted from:
Reynolds, G. (2005). GarrReynolds.com. Retrieved from http://www.garrreynolds.com