Five Pointers to the 'Right Way' for Designing a PowerPoint Presentation

chillibreeze writer — Manidipa Bhattacharyya

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"PowerPoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But it's not. Countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way." Seth Godin, marketing expert. This article introduces some pointers which will help you choose the 'right way'.

PowerPoint should be treated like any other tool that you use to create a product to be consumed by a particular audience. For a speaker this product is the 'presentation'.

Let us look at the five important things to consider while creating this 'product' that will make it highly end user friendly.

1. Goal and the Target User: Before starting to create the presentation you have to identify the objective of the presentation. Is it a company performance report? Product review? Executive summary? Informational? Financial report? Once you know what the presentation is about, you will then need to consider who you are presenting this to. This step will help you to reflect on what the user – in this case the audience, expects to hear or see. After the presentation is complete, you can look at it from your audience's stand point and see if everything you (as the audience) wanted to know is covered and understood.

2. Layout of the Presentation: Once the type of report and target audience is identified, the next step is to chalk out the flow or layout of the presentation. Once you have the structure, filling out information should not be much of an issue. One important thing to remember here is that there might be a zillion things you could put into a presentation, but judicious selection of the right content is of primary importance. The slide sorter view of PowerPoint is a great tool to check if the flow of information is as planned. A meaningful slide header is very useful in doing this sorting.

3. Design: This is a very critical point in creating a well-liked presentation. Balance between text, image and blank spaces constitutes the character of a presentation. And the thing to remember here is ‘less is more’. Let's split the design aspects into a couple of sub-sections which will help explain better.

a. Use of Text: To get your point across to the audience in an effective manner, the best route is NOT to bombard them with text, both paragraphs and bullets. Text should be minimal, possibly just the crux of your subject matter. Taglines and catch phrases can be used, but sparingly.
b. Graphics: Avoid clip arts. Pictures used in a formal presentation should be of high quality, this helps to garner more respect towards the content you are presenting. However, if your target audience is children maybe you can use some cartoon characters!
Use simple charts and tables to put forward statistics – remember to use clean and properly labeled objects with appropriate legends.
c. Multimedia: Sparing use of embedded music or video in a presentation to enhance the content is encouraged. A relevant short video introduces a break in the pace which in turn engages the user's attention (and gives a much needed break to the speaker). A lilting background score (not very loud) helps to fill up the gaps and pauses during the presentation

4. Techniques: There are many tricks and techniques available to the PowerPoint designer which when applied sensibly creates magic. Few of the important ones are:

a. Slide background: PowerPoint provides many design templates which can be used for a quick formatting of the slide background, header and footer. However, most businesses use personalized templates following their branding guidelines. You can modify existing templates to suit the needs of your audience with the help of the slide master view.
It is important to select one theme and follow it in the entire presentation.
b. Slide transition: These are visually interesting but you should remember to use them with restraint as that might make the presentation slow and cumbersome and by doing so fatigue the audience.
c. Fonts: It is clever to incorporate commonly used fonts in your file like Helvetica, Verdana or Ariel. This is particularly useful when you intend to distribute your file. If the font used is uncommon and is not available in the user's system the whole presentation will go for a toss.
d. Colors: It is very important for a presentation to have a well contrasted page so that the text contents are easy to read. Therefore, it is recommended that combination like red text on blue slide is best avoided. One other point to remember while selecting color is whether the PowerPoint is meant for print or only for presentation. An outlined text heading might look good in a slide but it will not in print.

5. Packaging: It is highly important that the finished PowerPoint file is properly packaged before distribution. The linked files like audio and video file have to be included in the package. Failing to do that, the file would not properly function at the destination system. This is a very commonly encountered issue among PowerPoint users where the linked audio or video file fails to open and then it is realized that the related files were not included in the package! Therefore, you should give special attention to packaging and ensure that your hard work ships in perfect order.

The word 'PowerPoint' usually evokes emotions of horror in most of the people who are in-charge of creating one. While in reality this can be a really handy tool to create a quick turn around report. To sum up the points discussed above, remember audience is the boss and discretion in the use of content and design elements will keep the boss engaged and happy.

Editor's note: Most articles submitted to Chillibreeze go through a selection process. Only 30 percent of submitted articles are accepted for publication on the Chillibreeze.com featured article list. All accepted articles are edited and proofread for glaring errors of punctuation and grammar. Sentence structure is changed in certain cases and sometimes, entire sections are rewritten. If you notice any errors that have slipped through the cracks, do let us know! (Email us at info at chillibreeze dot com).

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in November, 2011. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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