We all have looked at, and perhaps even created, some really crappy presentations at various occasions. Here's a few points to keep in mind when you start doing your next.
- Cover it Well: It is very important to have a stunning cover slide which would clearly convey the agenda of your talk and establish you as a sensible and mature speaker so that people would want to listen
- Show and Tell: When you are speaking, use your slides as an assist with graphs, images and other visuals instead of cluttering them with text and reading it out. Nobody should feel that you could have saved their time by simply mailing them the PPT.
- Bullet, But do not Fire: It is good to use bulleted lists on your slides to convey key points or messages but make sure that the points are displayed one-by-one as you talk about them. You do not want your audience to be reading ahead of you.
- Animate your Body, Not your slides: Out of all the special effects and transitions available in PowerPoint, about 98% are not suitable for a professional presentation. It is not cool to have your audience chasing your text before they can read it. Trust me, very few people would be that playful.
- Be Kind to the Eyes: Try using a comfortable color scheme; a dark background with light text supposedly is less strenous to the eyes of your audience. Also, stick to non-artistic fonts which are easy to read, and use a size visible to people of all age-groups. Ideally, the font size should be half the age of the oldest person in your audience.
Always remember that there are very few people who can actually make a good presentation but I believe most people can make, what I would call a "decent presentation." I hope this information would help all those who want to.
