Custorio power point

Effective Use of Powerpoint as a
presentation tool

By: Custorio, Chancellor D.
FV1216

10 Tips for More Effective
PowerPoint Presentations
1. Write a script.

● A little planning goes a long way. Most presentations are written in
PowerPoint (or some other presentation package) without any sort of
rhyme or reason.

● That’s bass-ackwards. Since the point of your slides is to illustrate
and expand what you are going to say to your audience. You should
know what you intend to say and then figure out how to visualize it.
Unless you are an expert at improvising, make sure you write out or
at least outline your presentation before trying to put together slides.

● And make sure your script follows good storytelling conventions: give
it a beginning, middle, and end; have a clear arc that builds towards
some sort of climax; make your audience appreciate each slide but
be anxious to find out what’s next; and when possible, always leave
‘em wanting more.

2. One thing at a time, please.

● At any given moment, what should be on the screen is the thing
you’re talking about. Our audience will almost instantly read
every slide as soon as it’s displayed; if you have the next four
points you plan to make up there, they’ll be three steps ahead
of you, waiting for you to catch up rather than listening with
interest to the point you’re making.

3. No paragraphs.

●Where most presentations fail is that their authors, convinced they
are producing some kind of stand-alone document, put everything
they want to say onto their slides, in great big chunky blocks of
text.

●Congratulations. You’ve just killed a roomful of people. Cause of
death: terminal boredom poisoning.

●Your slides are the illustrations for your presentation, not the
presentation itself. They should underline and reinforce what you’re
saying as you give your presentation — save the paragraphs of
text for your script. PowerPoint and other presentation software
have functions to display notes onto the presenter’s screen that do
not get sent to the projector, or you can use notecards, a separate
word processor document, or your memory.

4. Pay attention to design.

● PowerPoint and other presentation packages offer all sorts of
ways to add visual “flash” to your slides: fades, swipes, flashing
text, and other annoyances are all too easy to insert with a few
mouse clicks.

● Avoid the temptation to dress up your pages with cheesy effects
and focus instead on simple design basics:

● Use a sans serif font for body text. Sans serifs like Arial,
Helvetica, or Calibri tend to be the easiest to read on screens.

● Align text left or right. Centered text is harder to read and looks
amateurish. Line up all your text to a right-hand or left-hand
baseline – it will look better and be easier to follow.

● Avoid clutter. A headline, a few bullet points, maybe an image –
anything more than that and you risk losing your audience as
they sort it all out.

● Use decorative fonts only for slide headers, and then only if
they’re easy to read. Decorative fonts –calligraphy, German
blackface, futuristic, psychotic handwriting, flowers, art
nouveau, etc. – are hard to read and should be reserved only
for large headlines at the top of the page. Better yet, stick to a
classy serif font like Georgia or Baskerville.

● Put dark text on a light background. Again, this is easiest to
read. If you must use a dark background – for instance, if your
company uses a standard template with a dark background –
make sure your text is quite light (white, cream, light grey, or
pastels) and maybe bump the font size up two or three notches.

5. Use images sparingly
● There are two schools of thought about images in
presentations. Some say they add visual interest and keep
audiences engaged; others say images are an unnecessary
distraction.

● Both arguments have some merit, so in this case the best
option is to split the difference: use images only when they add
important information or make an abstract point more concrete.

● While we’re on the subject, absolutely do not use PowerPoint’s
built-in clipart. Anything from Office 2003 and earlier has been
seen by everyone in your audience a thousand times – they’ve
become tired, used-up clichés, and I hopefully don’t need to tell
you to avoid tired, used-up clichés in your presentations. Office
2007 and non-Office programs have some clipart that isn’t so
familiar (though it will be, and soon) but by now, the entire
concept of clipart has about run its course – it just doesn’t feel
fresh and new anymore.

6. Think outside the screen.

● Remember, the slides on the screen are only part of the
presentation – and not the main part. Even though you’re liable
to be presenting in a darkened room, give some thought to your
own presentation manner – how you hold yourself, what you
wear, how you move around the room. You are the focus when
you’re presenting, no matter how interesting your slides are.

7. Have a hook.

● Like the best writing, the best presentation shook their
audiences early and then reel them in. Open with something
surprising or intriguing, something that will get your audience to
sit up and take notice. The most powerful hooks are often those
that appeal directly to your audience’s emotions – offer them
something awesome or, if it’s appropriate, scare the pants off of
them. The rest of your presentation, then, will be effectively
your promise to make the awesome thing happen, or the scary
thing not happen.

8. Ask questions.

● Questions arouse interest, pique curiosity, and engage
audiences. So ask a lot of them. Build tension by posing a
question and letting your audience stew a moment before
moving to the next slide with the answer. Quiz their knowledge
and then show them how little they know. If appropriate, engage
in a little question-and-answer with your audience, with you
asking the questions.

9. Modulate, modulate, modulate.

● Especially when you’ve done a presentation before, it can be
easy to fall into a drone, going on and on and on and on and on
with only minimal changes to your inflection. Always speak as if
you were speaking to a friend, not as if you are reading off of
index cards (even if you are). If keeping up a lively and
personable tone of voice is difficult for you when presenting, do
a couple of practice run-throughs. If you still can’t get it right
and presentations are a big part of your job, take a public
speaking course or join Toastmasters.

10. Break the rules.

● As with everything else, there are times when each of these
rules – or any other rule you know – won’t apply. If you know
there’s a good reason to break a rule, go ahead and do it. Rule
breaking is perfectly acceptable behavior – it’s ignoring the
rules or breaking them because you just don’t know any better
that leads to shoddy boring presentations that lead to boredom,
depression, psychopathic breaks, and eventually death. And
you don’t want that, do you?

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/10-tips-for-more-effective-powerpoint-presentations.html

Custorio power point

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