For those of us who regularly attend meetings and pitches that are dominated by PowerPoint presentations we might often feel as though we are drowning in a sea of slides. If you make use of PowerPoint for your presentations and you want, at all costs, to avoid having the tide of slides and boredom come in and drown those who are attending your presentation, below are a two ideas on how to avoid what has become known as 'death by PowerPoint'.
Limit the number of slides and the words on each slide
This will ensure that those attending your presentation will be listening to you instead of reading ahead of you and then tuning you out completely. The purpose of a presentation is to communicate (both visually and emotionally) with your audience, but PowerPoint is an assistant in that process and therefore should not take over your role as chief imparter of information.
An error that most presenters make is that they use their own presentation as a teleprompter and end up reading off their own slides instead of using the slides as a brief summary of the information they want to communicate. The slides, and what is on each of them, should reinforce what you are saying and not say it for you, nor repeat what you are saying. Therefore, try to avoid having more than 8 words on a slide so that each slide is essentially no more than a summary of each point that you are making.
Balance the visuals and the content
This is a balancing act that needs to be carefully managed as you want to avoid your audience remarking on how wonderful/ creative/ detailed the slides were but not having remembered what it was you were communicating to them. Take a focused approach on what the desired outcome of your presentation is and work out a plan, in point form, on how you want to reach that outcome, and then create one slide per point.
Once you have the key words or phrases (remember, not more than eight per slide) you can select backgrounds and graphics that will compliment or summarise your point. This is where your creativity can take free reign. Instead of using the standard clipart graphics use the internet to seek out photos and images that communicate your message.
An example is if you are doing a presentation on water pollution; instead of a cheesy animated picture of a pool of water with an unhappy face superimposed on it make use of photos that show the effects of the pollution, such as a photo of dead fish at the water's edge. Your audience will sit up and pay attention to what you are going to say that will fit in with the picture on your slide.
Microsoft PowerPoint can be a very effective presentation tool that can compliment and reinforce your message. Consider a PowerPoint 2007 course so that you can gain full advantage of the workability of this application.
Tips For Powerpoint Presentations
It is quite easy to make a PowerPoint presentation using PowerPoint's design templates. PowerPoint has templates that includes colors, fonts, font sizes and other formatting parameters that work together to create a winning PowerPoint presentation. This is not only a timesaver; it is also very useful to those who are new to presentation design.
Usually only minor changes are needed to the text and font of the presentation to enhance the presentation of the slides. You may need to enlarge or reduce the font size to fit the page. This means if the title is too long reduce the font to fit the slide, and similarly, when there may be only a few bullets on a slide, increase their size to fill the page. However, whatever changes are made, make sure that the font size is appropriate for the presentation and that viewers at the back of a room can see the slide! In some cases, there may be a need to replace one font with another because there may be a particular font to be used in presentations. However, be careful with unusual fonts, as you do want everyone to read your presentations!
Formatting of text in the <---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.powerpointguys.com/">PowerPoint presentation can be done in two ways, by using the font dialog box or by applying text formatting individually with the formatting toolbar. One uses the font dialog box to make numerous changes and to set font defaults. First the text to be formatted has to be selected, and then Format, Font has to be clicked on, upon which the Font dialog box appears. Then to change the font, you have to select the required font style from the Font list and a preset size between 8 to 96 points from the size box.
Additional changes to the font can be made using the specific boxes like if the font has to be underlined, underline box has to be clicked. For shadow effect, the shadow box has to be used wherein a slight shadow appears to the lower right of the text. To get an embossed effect on the selected text, the emboss box has to be clicked. Clicking on the superscript box raises the text above or lower than the baseline while reducing the font size. Offset is set to 30% and 25% respectively, which can be adjusted as required. Offset means the percentage of the text that is displayed above or below the baseline.
Next a color has to be chosen from the palette on the color drop-down list. If additional colors are needed, more colors have to be clicked on. Then preview to view the selected changes to the font on your slide. If the font has to be the default for future text, default for new objects check box has to be selected. If these changes are accepted, then click okay and then apply the font formatting.
You use the formatting toolbar for individual formatting elements like bold, Italics and shadows on the selected text. To use the toolbar, the required text has to be selected and then formatted by clicking the toolbar button. However, second clicking of the bold, underline, italic, numbering, text shadow or bullets button acts as a toggle and removes the formatting. Then using the font drop-down list, you can preview what each font looks like.
To replace fonts, Format and Replace fonts has to be clicked on to open the Replace font dialog box. Then you have to choose the font that has to be replaced from the replace drop-down list. This list only has names of fonts that exist in your presentation. Then the replacement font has to be selected from the With drop-down list; which lists all available fonts in PowerPoint. Replace has to be clicked to replace corresponding fonts; the replacement is done!
It is always better to use sans serif fonts for PowerPoint presentations as they are simpler, and show up better on the screen. Use fonts of size 24 points or larger so that the audience can read the presentation. The farther the audience is from the screen, the larger the font has to be. Italics have to be used sparingly as they are difficult to see. So choose the appropriate font and texts for your PowerPoint presentation, and go ahead with your presentation!
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Best Stl has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet. Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on , please visit. Best Stl's top article generates over 880 views. to your Favourites.
Thomson Chemmanoor has sinced written about articles on various topics from Keyboard Synthesizer, Writing and Family Concerns. About Author: Thomson Chemmanoor is an powerpoint expert offering powerpoint templates at his website listing please visit http:w. Thomson Chemmanoor's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.
