How to Make an Effective Power Point Presentation
We’ve all been subjected to a horrendous PowerPoint presentation at some time or another. The slides just keep coming, with paragraphs of text on each; it becomes impossible to decipher the slide and listen to the presenter at the same time. Other times, cheesy animations or sound effects steal your attention. And who can forget the awkward moments when a slide’s video or multimedia won’t play, and the presenter has to spend 10 minutes setting it up? With the seeming universality of the bad PowerPoint, it’s a wonder this software remains such a popular presentation format.
Despite the landmines mentioned above, there are ways to make PowerPoint an incredibly effective tool. To make it effective, you have to follow the key idea that all the above presentations were lacking: simplicity. It seems counterintuitive at first, but the only way to really make your slides stand out is to go minimal in nearly all respects—minimize your material, do simple but demonstrative graphics, and choose an easy-to-follow structure. These are the ways to make a slide presentation that perks up your listeners, rather than putting them to sleep.
Select Your Content
The first step to a clean, effective PowerPoint is making a strict, conscious effort to limit your material. Whether you’re presenting a research project or your company’s performance for last quarter, it’s always tempting to share every nuance of your findings with your audience. You have to remember, however, that you’ve probably put many, many hours into getting the background information for this presentation—you couldn’t digest it all in 15 minutes, and you shouldn’t force that onto your audience either.
A good rule of thumb is that one slide per minute should be the fastest you pace your presentation. To get down to this few slides, you’ll have to go into your information and cull the most important points: the must-have knowledge for your audience. You can always fill in details during your lecture; these details should not be on a slide.
Create an Outline
The next aspect of simplicity comes in actually putting together the slides for your presentation. The first thing you want to simplify and make easy to follow is the overall flow or narrative of your slides. Create an outline, and ensure that the “story” of your PowerPoint is consistent. For example, many presentations follow the basic formula of background, research, findings, and future plans or implications. Choose a logical narrative that fits your information, and ensure that the order of your slides helps tell a story.
Design the Slides
After you’ve considered the basic order of the presentation, you’ll need to actually put your information onto the slide. This is where your inner graphic designer needs to come out. There are some basic rules to follow to make your slides simple and easy to digest. Do not use complete sentences on a slide, and use no more than 6 bullet points per slide. Use high contrast fonts and backgrounds, and remember that a sans serif font is generally easier to see than a serif one. Keep your color scheme consistent throughout, and avoid using any flashy animations or sound effects. If you choose to use graphs or diagrams, they must be easily understood, and you should explain the axes and variables as soon as the graph comes onto the screen.
Even with those basic guidelines, you still have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to visually presenting your information on the slide. Check out these slides, which all convey the same information, that 72% of part-time Japanese workers are women. The most simple and clean design—the one with a picture of the woman and the large “72%”—is the most powerful. The audience immediately gets the point, because the presenter is filling in the details; there’s no need to actually write them on the slide. Be critical of your presentation and ask yourself, is everything on each slide necessary? Cut down text and graphics until you’ve really highlighted the most important information you’re trying to get across.
Putting It All Together
After you’ve got a rough draft of your presentation, practice it on a big screen, similar to the one you’ll be using on the big day. Fonts that look great on your computer might be hard to read on a big screen, and graphics that look centered to you might get distorted when you change their dimensions. If you’re using a Mac to present, don’t forget that you’ll need a special video cable adaptor to hook up your laptop. On the day of the presentation, get there with plenty of time to set up your computer, so you don’t keep your audience waiting for your awesome presentation.
To Review:
- Limit your material
- Simplify your structure
- Follow good graphic design principles
- Cut out unnecessary words and graphics
- Practice
Additional PowerPoint Presentation Information:
- Quite Possibly the World’s Worst PowerPoint Ever: This is a PowerPoint presentation—a truly terrible one. It was designed to help illustrate all the pitfalls of this medium, to help you avoid making them in your own presentation.
- 10 Ways to Make PowerPoint Presentations Powerful: The business magazine Inc. put together this list of PowerPoint tips, specifically aimed at professionals.
- PowerPoint Do’s and Don’ts: The University of Pennsylvania library curated this useful resource. It contains a video demonstrating a terrible PowerPoint presentation, as well as do’s and don’ts for constructing a great presentation.
- PowerPoint Presentation Skills for Scientists: Scientists have their own set of issues to worry about when it comes to constructing a great presentation. The Yale graduate school career center made this helpful PowerPoint covering the presentation concerns that come up when dealing with scientific research.
- Effective Presentations: Here you can find a PDF outlining great presentation techniques and how to effectively prepare your information for PowerPoint.