When making a PowerPoint presentation it already speaks its purpose, there should be a power in your presentation. The presentation should convey your message and gives an impact by touching the emotion of your audience.
Here are some of my tips in making a sound presentation using Powerpoint.
1. Create a nice, simple, and neat cover
This will allow your audience to see the centerpiece of your message and be able to highlight the idea of what you are presenting.
2. Follow the 6x6 principle in preparing your slides.
This means that for every slide, limit your bullets into 6 and use not more than 6 words per bullet.
3. Be consistent with your font, overall theme, and color combination.
Take note of the color combination that might give a painful appeal to your audience. Too bright colors combine to other bright colors can be awful, dark color combines to dark color is hard to read too. Do not jump your general theme to another that may cause confusion and dislocation of ideas. For example, the thematic of your presentation is about green-leafy vegetables where the background used in the Powerpoint has green-shades, therefore, it will ruin the consistency of your theme if you will inject a touch of desserts such as ice cream or fruits.
According to Dustin Wax in his article "10 Tips for More Effective PowerPoint Presentations" to pay attention to design and avoid some annoyance like inserting cheesy effects or trying to be cute in the presentation that could distract the attention of your audience.
Wax gave something to consider, here are some (verbatim):
Use a sans serif font for body text. Sans serifs like Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri tend to be the easiest to read on screens.
Use decorative fonts only for slide headers, and then only if they’re easy to read. Decorative fonts –calligraphy, German blackface, futuristic, psychotic handwriting, flowers, art nouveau, etc. – are hard to read and should be reserved only for large headlines at the top of the page. Better yet, stick to a classy serif font like Georgia or Baskerville.
Put dark text on a light background. Again, this is easiest to read. If you must use a dark background – for instance, if your company uses a standard template with a dark background – make sure your text is quite light (white, cream, light grey, or pastels) and maybe bump the font size up two or three notches.
Align text left or right. Centered text is harder to read and looks amateurish. Line up all your text to a right-hand or left-hand baseline – it will look better and be easier to follow.
Avoid clutter. A headline, a few bullet points, maybe an image – anything more than that and you risk losing your audience as they sort it all out.
4. Review your work
One of the reasons why there is a need to review every slide is because "nobody is perfect" and one may tend to overlook incorrect spelling and misplacing of important elements in the slide.
5. Organize your thoughts/ideas
It is important that you outline the flow of your ideas especially if you are a newbie in presenting Powerpoint.
6. Presentation supports the speaker
This is an excerpt from www.garrreynolds.com it stated that your presentation is for the benefit of the audience. The best slides may have no text at all. This may sound insane given the dependency of text slides today, but the best PowerPoint slides will be virtually meaningless without the narration (that is you). Remember, the slides are meant to support the narration of the speaker, not make the speaker superfluous.
If the audience or organizer requested your Powerpoint presentation it is far better to prepare a written document that highlights your content from the presentation and expands on that content. Audiences are much better served to receive a detailed, written handout as a takeaway from the presentation, rather than a mere copy of your PowerPoint slides. If you have a detailed handout or publication for the audience to be passed out after your talk, you need not feel compelled to fill your PowerPoint slides with a great deal of text.
7. Preparation is the key
This is the most important thing to consider in crafting your presentation. The key to an above-average presentation is when you take time to conceptualize, organize your thoughts, research about your topic, use impactful words, and motivate yourself to produce a good presentation.
Your presentation is nothing if there is no narrator, therefore, you must also practice and learn how to convey your creative work into a confident, lively, and informative presentation. Rehearse to achieve near perfection.
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