One Style Does Not Fit All Know your audience Know your purpose:  Instruct  Inform  Amuse  Convince

4 Essential Ways to Lose Your Audience Treat your presentation as:  A script to read to your audience  A whirlwind of complex details  A whirligig of special effects  An obligation (not a pleasure)

Consistent Look  Use the Slide Master (under View).  Establish color scheme.  Avoid mixing type fonts throughout your presentation so that one slide looks like an 18 th century playbill while the next looks like a wedding invitation. “Changed my hair style, so many times now, don’t know what I look like.”—The Talking Heads

Live presentation: Never read your slides. Perform! PPT as learning object: Record your content with Audacity, then attach audio file to slide. Perform! Words Words Words

“Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler”—Albert Einstein Embrace Simplicity  Limit text to essential “telegraphic” points  Rule of thumb: 6x6  Use graphics sparingly. Focus attention!  Leave lots of white space (but ignore the hair…)

Words can be your enemy. In PowerPoint (and in life):

Readability No-Nos  Light type on dark background  Serif fonts  Font size unreadable in back row  Cutesy fonts  Optical color disasters

Moderation  Make your fonts big enough to read, but not so big that you seem to shout.  Don’t shout with your colors either—unless of course you need to shout.

Train Wreck Spotting "This wasn‘t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it” - Dorothy Parker

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome” —Isaac Asimov Transitions  Avoid cheesy cinematic transitions— unless you are being ironic.  Be consistent—generally use the same transition throughout.  Know when to switch transitions—for example, a section break.

Non-Linear Navigation  Consider creating a navigation page (for example, to navigate to particular sections).  Add an Action to an image that always links to navigation.  Place image on each slide, in the same place.  Use navigation to move back and forth in your presentation.

Try Something New  Ahead  Prezi  Slide Rocket  Whiteboard apps on iPad  Vuvox But that’s a subject for another time… ta-ta for now!