How To Build A Good Powerpoint Presentation
Zip, bang, buzz! Those are the sounds of what many people consider a good and entertaining Powerpoint presentation, although contrary to popular belief, these sounds might actually be far more detrimental to the presentation than anything else. A Powerpoint presentation can be a very powerful tool to convey information and messages to your audience; it ties together your verbal information to visual aids that help the audience really picture what you are saying. Having a good Powerpoint presentation is important because people are very visual learners. We remember things better and have more positive reactions to information if we have some sort of visual representation of it. But what exactly makes a good powerpoint presentation and what are the steps to building it? The first step to building a Powerpoint and any presentation for that matter is collecting the data. In order to structure the presentation and make a good plan for delivery, all the data must be in one easily accessible source. The next step to creating the material for the Powerpoint presentation is to organize it in a manner that makes sense. Always open with a general slide that will briefly explain to the audience what the presentation they are about to watch is on and briefly touch each main point of your presentation. Following the general introduction card should be your information that was gathered and sorted earlier; it should flow well and be in a logical order. Everything that relates needs to be presented at once to keep from jumping around in the Powerpoint presentation and confusing people. To conclude there should be a slide with a general recap of each main point and a concluding statement that clearly explains the goal of the Powerpoint presentation. This is the standard order in which most Powerpoint presentations are built upon.
To build a visually effective Powerpoint presentation there are a few simple rules that should always be followed. Never use clashing colors, while yellow and pink may be your favorite colors, they are hard to read due to their contrast and will make the information unreadable; always stick to high contrasting colors such as black and white or orange and green. The next crucial clue in building the most effective Powerpoint presentation possible is to not use pictures when not absolutely necessary. Pictures will only distract the audience and if they are looking at the pictures they are not listening to you; the only time it is acceptable to use a picture is if it is a graph or somehow directly communicates a key piece of data in your Powerpoint presentation. Thirdly and probably the most ignored rule is to not crowd each slide. Only include the vital information, the presentation should be mostly conducted by you speaking and the slides simply contain the key points, so never write paragraphs and keep each slide to a maximum of a few sentences. Lastly, never, ever use audio; it may be tempting to add cute sounds but it only distracts and annoys your audience members. If you can organize a presentation verbally you should have no problem putting it down on paper so to speak. Powerpoint presentations are not so much presentations by themselves but more so a visual tool and a place to collect the key points and important data so the audience can see it better and get the main points even if they lose track of what you’re saying. If you can resist from stuffing the Powerpoint presentation full of pictures and audio cues then you should be well on your way to making an amazing Powerpoint presentation. Don’t forget that a Powerpoint presentation can be an amazing tool, but no Powerpoint is better than a bad Powerpoint any day. |