Tips for Developing Professional
Quality PowerPoint Slide Shows
If you regularly attend slide show presentations you have no doubt experienced a full range of PowerPoint proficiency. PowerPoint is an extraordinary tool for crafting cutting edge presentations, but its sophisticated functionality is often misused. Presentation-goers are all too familiar with gaudy slide shows that use gratuitous animations and flashy transitions with reckless abandon. Showy effects are positively distracting and make for an ineffective presentation with a message that gets lost in the glitz. But the effects themselves are not the problem; it is how they are used.
There are numerous PowerPoint tutorials on the Internet, covering everything from basic skills to how to interact with your slides. What is generally missing from this body of shared knowledge is information on how to build eye-popping presentations that don’t overwhelm your audience. There is definitely an art to composing a visual message that complements your verbal message, but there are also formulaic principles that can be used by anyone. This article lays out some of the most important points.
If there is a take-home message to what follows it is that most of the bells and whistles available in PowerPoint are best reserved for dog and pony shows. If you want to achieve a professional look in your presentations, use effects sparingly, focus on high quality graphics, and arrange text to achieve flow and clarity. When animated effects are clearly called for in presentations, PowerPoint is usually insufficient to achieve the high quality graphics, animation, and control that should be used.
Backgrounds
The backdrop image or images used in your presentation should be subtle and uncluttered. Their function is to set the general mood and provide a consistent look through color and texture, and sometimes to provide visual styling using graphical elements. Logos can be used effectively, but they should be unobtrusive. The better uses of logos that I have seen are those screened into a custom background like a watermark, rather than isolated in a corner. This configuration causes them to be obscured in many of your slides, but the logo is visible where its utility is most valuable: at the beginning and end of the show.
Chose your background carefully. Avoid too many colors, because multi-colored backgrounds create limitations in the color of text that can be used. If you have to use colored text boxes to achieve readability, it is time to rethink your background.
Text
It goes without saying that clarity is the goal for your text. Font style, color, and size are very important. Make sure that your text is large enough for everyone to see. You should use clear, crisp, mainstream fonts that are not distracting. The message will rarely benefit from stylistic novelty or script lettering and, while there are exceptions to this rule, most executions should be left to experienced graphic designers who have a full grasp of the ways to convey information with fancy lettering.
Too much text on one slide is as worthless as a blank slide. Clutter is the surest way to get your audience to glaze over and miss your message. Long blocks of text and lengthy quotes should be spoken, not displayed—read them from your notes if you cannot commit them to memory.
Boxes around text are difficult to pull off in a professional looking presentation. If boxed in text must be used, it can be framed by carefully positioning another colored box behind it. Transparency effects can be used to achieve a frame that is well integrated with the background image. If you use such graphical elements, keep them consistent throughout your presentation. Indeed, you should strive to maintain strict consistency throughout your presentation in size, style, color, and positioning.
Use text transitions rather than moving animation. I have never seen “fly-in” text used with finesse and I am inclined to assert that it cannot be done. Use “appear” and “disappear” (or fade in and out) effects instead of movement across the stage (one exception is discussed below). Lists and bullet points can be emphasized using differences in luminance (brightness). Such effects are complicated to achieve, but are well worth the time required to execute them. If there is one effect that I have been approached about over and over it is text that brightens for emphasis and then dims as the next line brightens up. Instead of having text vanish to reduce clutter, this effect leaves the previous line(s) of text discreetly available for reference while the talk proceeds. Audience members appreciate this effect so much that they want to treat their own audiences to it.
Animation
Moving elements can easily become more of a distraction than a useful focal element. Animations should be used with care and only when they add something to the message. Blinking or repeating animations should be avoided altogether, unless they have an indispensable purpose. Substitute controlled animations in place of those that repeat continuously. For example, if you need to express that something pulsates, insert an animation that pulsates for a brief time then stops. The control that you exhibit over the graphical elements in your show will not go unnoticed, and your audience will subconsciously translate that control into a command of your subject.
As already mentioned, a general rule of thumb for professional looking PowerPoint presentations is “never animate text.” That is, don’t move it on the stage. The reason for this rule is that, without a special plugin and a lot of savvy, PowerPoint lacks the functionality needed to animate text in a visually sophisticated way.
There is one exception that I have used with good effect. It is only useful when you have a long list of related points to make and you do not want to break up the information by splitting it up onto two slides. One should fill the slide with text using the appear function. When the slide is filled, animate all of the text upward by exactly one line in a single motion, having the top line disappear in some way (there are numerous options). As the text moves up, simultaneously animate the next line in from below. Repeat this procedure for each new line of text. This effect is not for the novice. Having text move in from the margin of the slide looks very crude, so it is necessary to use an appear or fade function as well as the “tweened” animation. If you have a lot of text, this effect can become somewhat unmanageable, but give it a try. A successful execution of this effect is impressive, and well worth the effort.
Another effective use of animation is to illustrate a progression of events or to show synchronized changes in display elements (usually not text), but there is rarely a situation that calls for anything more than appearing and disappearing elements, or fading elements. When movement or animation is clearly advantageous, chances are that the desired effect is outside of the capabilities of PowerPoint, which leads into the next topic.
Flash Animations in PowerPoint
Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash files can be seamlessly integrated into PowerPoint presentations to create truly spectacular interactive slides. There are times when an animated demonstration is indispensable in a presentation. For example, one might need to show a complicated temporally changing simulation graphic, complete with overlays that can be applied and removed during the simulation, context dependent text that can be superimposed at will, and any number of other advanced effects. Furthermore, one might want to have a set of controls that start, stop, rewind, apply overlays, etc. Such functionality is outside of the capabilities of PowerPoint, but Flash is a perfect tool for the job. Essentially, any Flash animation that you can deploy on the Internet can be deployed within PowerPoint, including Flash Video, complete with video controls.
Other Methods for Adding Animation
One can also add animation by inserting animated gif files. The level of control that can be achieved is much less than with Flash, but animated gif files can do a lot. I have done some very complicated animations using animated gifs, and this file format allows for transparent backgrounds, which affords a lot of design flexibility.
Video
More and more, presenters are incorporating video into their PowerPoint presentations. There is really nothing to it. It is as simple as importing a static image, though there are options to link versus imbed video. Video controls are rather simple in PowerPoint, permitting unsophisticated (and often awkward) start and stop functionality, as well as rewind (actually reload). For most presenters, PowerPoint’s native functionality is sufficient, but Flash integration affords more advanced controls to be added. There are no hard and fast rules of thumb on presenting video. My advice is to not use video gratuitously and make sure that slides that incorporate video retain the look and feel of the rest of the presentation.
Effects to Use
Perhaps 90% of your effects should consist of appear, disappear, fade-in and fade-out transitions. These effects are useful for all sorts of graphical elements as well as for text. You can achieve impressive cross fading image transitions by simultaneously fading two superimposed images of the same dimensions. Images can be stacked with intervening transition effects to produce a slideshow within a slideshow, complete with synchronized text changes.
Sound
One should only use sound when it is relevant to the information given in the talk. For example, Jane Goodall could make good (and entertaining) use of a chimpanzee call in a PowerPoint talk. Music should be avoided, and sound effects used in combination with other transitions or animations should be avoided altogether. Remember, your audience came for the information. Your goal should be to impress them first and entertain them second.
Final Words
As a professional who has given dozens of PowerPoint presentations in front of large audiences, I have made my share of mistakes, and I owe what I know to innumerable kind critics, and a few cruel ones. My advice to those interested in impressing their audiences is to focus on the information—including the visual information. Impact is everything.
Achieving graphical elegance while spotlighting your information is truly an art form, but knowing what constitutes information is not. In my estimation, knowing which details to leave off is as important as knowing which ones to include. It may sound odd, but the most effective visual details are those that go unnoticed because your audience is focused on the information that you are presenting.
The human brain is simultaneously a brilliant sponge and a wonderful filter. Fortunately, while we filter much of the information that falls upon our senses, it is not lost. Our impression of the quality of the visual information that we gather contributes to its impact on us. So, pay attention to the little details, but make sure that they accentuate your information rather than overpowering it.
At Presentation Magic we create visually commanding PowerPoint presentations that center attention on the content to be communicated. If you have an important presentation that needs a professional’s touch, let us help you achieve that extra impact.
Article by
Randall Reiserer, PhD
Presentation Magic
presentation-magic.com
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