Spanish 102 Cultural Project
Effective PowerPoint Presentations
By Heather H. Burden
Color
The default slide design colors in PowerPoint are meant to be easy on the eyes. They don’t clash or cause viewers to wince or strain to look at them.
It’s best to leave the colors alone, but if you must change them, choose your colors carefully. Avoid highlighter colors that are painful to look at. Most shades of yellow are painful for viewers, so be careful.
If you have a light background, use a dark font color. If you have a dark background, use a light font color.
Avoid rainbow background or font colors.
Fonts
Stick with the defaults to make life easier. The fonts on Microsoft PowerPoint’s slide designs are set to at least 18-point so that viewers can easily read the text.
Avoid putting so many words on the slide that the text shrinks. The text will stay at 18-point or above unless you force PowerPoint to shrink the font to keep the text on the page. Stick with the default fonts. Avoid fancy fonts.
Use ALL-CAPS sparingly.
Narration
Avoid putting every word you plan to say on your slides. Doing so encourages the audience to read ahead of you rather than listen to what you say.
Save your complete sentences for the Notes section and limit the words on the slides to bullet points that you can elaborate on when you give your presentation. This encourages the audience to listen to you.
Access the Notes section by clicking “NOTES” on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen in PowerPoint.
Graphs
Only include graphs if they are helpful to the viewer. Remember, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Make sure your graph is viewer-friendly (if you include one). It should be easy to read and understand. Keep the size of the graph, its font, and its gridlines appropriate. Someone in the back should be able to read and interpret your graph as easily as someone in the front.
Label graphs appropriately. Include a key if necessary and make sure any colors used are logical.
Visuals
Visuals may include clip-art, photographs, schematics, etc.
Make sure visuals don’t overlap the text or go off the page. Avoid putting text on top of an image—many viewers have trouble reading it.
Use visuals purposefully; don’t simply throw them in for decoration.
Use relevant, professional visuals.
Avoid using watermarked or copy-written images. You need permission from the image owner in order to use these images.
Bullets
Do not overuse bullets on a slide. If you have more than five or six, you should probably break your content down a bit more. You also risk shrinking your font size down at that point.
Do not switch bullet types unless you have sub-points.
Begin your bullets the same way—if you begin with a verb, continue to do so on the remainder of your slide’s bullet points.
Animation and Transitions
While animation can spice up a presentation, it can also slow it down. It can also slow you down as you create your presentation.
If using animation on a presentation for work, be consistent and use it sparingly. Don’t overdo it. Also, make sure that any animation you use won’t be so fast that it nauseates the audience or induces seizures.
Consistency
Consistency is extremely important in all business documents. Presentations are no exception.
Backgrounds, fonts, colors, and bullets need to be consistent. People notice when they aren’t—they may fixate on the inconsistent elements rather than focus on your presentation.
Editing
Remember to read back over your slides when you finish.
Check for misspelled words, repeated or missing words, or grammatical errors.
Have someone read over your slides and narration to make sure that it makes sense and sounds professional.
Conclusions
A conclusion slide is useful for summing up the main points of your presentation.
This slide is also useful for providing an opportunity for the audience to ask questions, though some presenters have a separate “Questions” slide after the “Conclusion.”
If you’re asked questions that you don’t know the answer to, it’s okay to say you don’t know. Don’t make up an answer. Consider something like, “I haven’t considered that, so I’m not sure. That’s something I’ll have to look into. If you’d like to leave your contact information, I’d be happy to get back to you with an answer.”