Preparing A Powerpoint Presentation

Before You Start

• Audience
  • Who is your audience?
  • What is your relationship with them?
• Purpose
  • Are you informing?
  • Arguing?
• Occasion
  • Is this a professional presentation?
  • Are you at a conference, at a meeting, in a classroom?
• Ethos
  • How do you want the audience to perceive you?
  • Are you representing a business or organization?

Design Options

• Custom Design
  • User-designed combination of background and fonts
  • Very effective when done well
• Design Templates
  • Pre-set combinations of background and fonts
  • Quick and easy

Custom Design Considerations

• Simplicity
  • Moderate color palette
  • Clear, unadorned fonts
• Consistency
  • Color and background graphics
  • Font style and sizes

Choosing a Design Template

• Avoid templates with themes that don’t fit your information
• If your content includes images, avoid templates with large background graphics
• Streamlined templates with minimal background graphics present a professional image

Text & Content

• Text
  • Facilitates presentation
  • Reinforces key terms and concepts
• Images
  • Complement presentation
  • Illustrate or highlight main points
• Tables and Graphs
  • Support presentation
  • Present information in a visually appealing way

Text Considerations

• Keep text to a minimum
• Use “white space” to set off blocks of text
• Make phrase structure consistent within bulleted lists

Content Considerations

• Keep content to a minimum
• Use white space to set off visual content from text
• Choose appropriate images

Text & Content Layouts

• Text only
  • No images are needed
  • Images would be distracting
• Text and content
  • Text refers to the content
  • Content reinforces point of text
• Content only
  • Intriguing images intended for discussion
  • Complicated charts that need explanation

Animation

• Allows presenter to control the appearance of text and content
• Provides transitions between slides
• Draws audience’s attention to the object being animated
• Distracting when used to excess

Save Options

• Disable Fast Saves
  • Keeps file size manageable

Print Options

• Slides
  • Prints each slide on a separate page
• Handouts
  • Prints a specified number of slides on each page
• Notes Pages
  • Prints facilitator notes along with slides
• Outline View
  • Prints the text of each slide

Reminders

• Consider your context
  • Audience
  • Purpose
  • Occasion
  • Ethos
• Communicate Effectively
  • Simple designs
  • Concise text
  • Relevant content