Presentation Techniques for PowerPoint

General

• Design each slide for maximum impact
• Keep text short and to the point
• Use colours that work and get your message across. Your text must always be clearly visible
• Use transitions between slides and a small amount of animation e.g. words moving in from the right
• Be creative with animation rather than using it for its own sake. For example, use moving arrows and words to point at items on screen

What works well:

• Humour
• Good pictures and illustrations
• Careful thought about each subject and slide
• Small amounts of text so you don't spend time reading it from the screen
• Clear design of each slide so it is legible and makes a real impact
• Good spelling and grammar so your audience is not distracted
• Intelligent use of animation - anything else will quickly bore your audience, they've seen it all before!
• Confident speaking to eliminate interruptions

What works less well:

• Lengthy and unnecessary animation
• Poor choice of animation e.g. text that drops slowly from above
• Garish colours that distract the audience
• Photographs as backgrounds so text is unreadable
• Inconsistent design, animation and transitions - no need for a different effect every time
• Large amounts of text, especially of it's copied from somewhere else
• Poor design and lack of thought - you want your audience to listen and be attentive
• Mumbling and speaking to the screen

Techniques

• Insert/Picture/From File - use K:\photgraphs\2003-4
• Right click and use the Order option to change the position of an object e.g. move a picture to the back
• Press Ctrl/F1 to being up the control panel on the right side of the screen
• Choose Slide Layout to change the design of a slide
• Choose Slide Design - Colour Schemes to apply one of the design templates
• Choose Slide Design - Animation Schemes to set broad animation properties
• Choose Custom Animation to change animation of individual items
• Choose Slide Transition to change the way one slide changes to another
• Use View/Normal, View/Slide Sorter and View/Slide Show to change view (icons in bottom left corner

Further Notes

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