Can you do it

Morgan M. McKee

COMM 300 – Organizational Communications

Dr. Reardon

Chapter 12 – Verbal and Visual Supporting Materials

PowerPoints can be extremely informative and engaging or they can be to overwhelming and boring. There are several tips and tricks that are used when creating and presenting PowerPoints that should be taken into account so that you have the right balance of verbal and visual supporting material to make you presentation just right. Some of these tips and tricks are outlined in the following articles:

· 10 Tips for More Effective PowerPoint Presentations

· 6 Tips for Creating An Effective PowerPoint Presentation

· Simple Rules for better PowerPoint presentations

· PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

· PowerPoint Isn't Dead Yet: Three Presentation Tips That Still Work In 2017

All of these articles reinforce the point that for a successful PowerPoint presentation, the visual aids that are used need to be clean, clear, consistent, visible and not distracting. It is very important to remember that the audience that the presenter is presenting to is typically much further away from the screen than the presenter is. With that in mind selecting the correct font style that is of the sans serif style such as Arial, Helvectia or Calibri are the best (Wax, 2018). It does not stop at selecting the correct font style. The correct font height must also be taken into consideration. Never use text or font smaller than 24pt (“6 Tips for Creating An Effective PowerPoint Presentation” n.d.). After having the correct font, the presenter wants to make sure that the colors that they choose for the font and/or images contrast with the background. Dark text and a light background work well and vise-versa. It is also best to keep one color scheme throughout the PowerPoint (Hoolihan, n.d.). Images can make a presentation stand out if they are used in the correct locations and are used appropriately or they can make a presentation look jumbled and messy. When choosing images try to stay away from traditional clip art (“6 Tips for Creating An Effective PowerPoint Presentation” n.d.) and use images that are of high quality. Don’t be afraid to use images to reinforce your point (Grant, 2017) but do not fill your whole presentation with them, try to find a happy medium (Wax, 2018). The last common tip for building power point presentations is not to clutter the slide with sentences. Use key words or the 5/5/5 rule; no more than five words per line of text; five lines of text per slide; five text heavy slides in a row (“Simple Rules for better PowerPoint presentations”, n.d.), and then have a separate script with all of the information that you want say or specifically talk about.

Visual aids in PowerPoints are half of the recipe for a successful presentation. The other half is verbal support. One item that is mentioned in every article, especially the five articles above, is to never, ever read directly from the slide being shown. This will force your audience to zone out and no longer pay attention (“Simple Rules for better PowerPoint presentations”, n.d.). The other key to verbal support is speaking in a discussion tone and not allowing yourself to fall into a monotone and lull your audience to sleep. The presenter wants to stay upbeat as though they were talking to a friend and keep the audience engaged.

The information that the five articles above pointed out are all consistent with one another and are all beneficial. These tips will help to build and present a more successful PowerPoint presentation. In order to take full advantage of these tips a presenter should also know there audience and simplify or remove all extraneous text, images, graphics, colors, sounds and movements when possible (Hamilton & Kroll, 2018, p. 72). Having correct supporting material will also add clarity, help prove what the presenter is presenting on and add interest from the audience. Explanations, comparisons, illustrations, examples, statistics and expert opinions are all things that need to be researched and planned out ahead of time so that they can be correctly incorporated in the presentation (Hamilton & Kroll, 2018, p. 72). Once this work has been performed, it will be much easier to build and present a PowerPoint presentation that will appeal to the audience.

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