Creating an effective presentation

What is your topic? Who is your audience? What is the purpose of your presentation? – What do they know? – What do you want them to know?

1.Keep it consistent 2. Keep it simple - Changing backgrounds are distracting - Busy backgrounds make it hard to read

Font size: points If it’s big, it’s probably important If it’s small, it’s probably not as important

Using more than 1-2 fonts is distracting Fancy fonts are fun, but too much can be difficult to read Simple and plain fonts are much easier to read

Make sure your background colour and font colour contrast

Use text effects to highlight key words –Bold –Italic –Avoid underlining - looks like a hyperlink! –IF USED TOO MUCH, UPPER CASE LETTERS CAN BE HARD TO READ!

There is sometimes a tendency to put too much information on one slide. When this happens, the reader may have difficulty interpreting the main point of the slide. While the slide designer has a goal of presenting the information, this goal may not be achieved if the reader is not motivated to read all the text. When creating your pages, for your slideshow, keep the amount of text limited to what the reader can quickly absorb. So, use…

Use bullets to highlight important content Keep bullet style consistent Maximum 5-8 words per bullet Maximum 5-7 bullets per slide

Appropriate (and quality) pictures enhance the presentation Irrelevant (and poor quality) pictures have the opposite effect

Do these sounds make the presentation better or more distracting? It’s fun, but beware of too much

Automatic timings can sometimes be useful, but often they throw you off because… You’re presentation may be going FASTER than you expected and now you’re waiting for your next point… Or, you’re presentation is going SLOWER than you expected… And you’re getting further and further… And further behind!