How To Create An Effective Powerpoint Presentation
What Is PowerPoint ?
PowerPoint is a complete presentation graphics package. It gives you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation. PowerPoint offers word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and presentation management tools- all designed to be easy to use and learn.
The following gives you a quick overview of what you can do in PowerPoint :-
☞ When you create a presentation using PowerPoint, the presentation is made up of a series of slides. The slides that you create using PowerPoint can also be presented as over head transparencies or 35mm slides.
☞ In addition to slides, you can print audience handouts, outlines, and speaker's notes.
☞ You can format all the slides in a presentation using the powerfulSlide Masterwhich will be covered in the tutorial.
☞ You can keep your entire presentation in a single file- all your slides, speaker's notes, and audience handouts.
☞ You can import what you have created in other Microsoft products, such as Word and Excel into any of your slides.
Now that you know what is PowerPoint and features PowerPoint offers it's time to learn how to work in PowerPoint and Create effective design.
Plan your content first
So the most important recommendation is to plan your content first. This recommendation came up time and time again. In some cases, it was the only recommendation that contributors made.
Always start your presentation on paper — draw your ideas, link relationships between concepts, and create a storyboard.
Use a plain background and remove any unecessary detail
Delete that powerpoint template. Powerpoint templates come from the mindset that PowerPoint slides are like documents and so should be branded. Templates add clutter and distract from the visual impact of a slide.
When it comes to slide design, you shouldn’t think of decoration, but of communication. Everything you add to your slides should have a positive impact on the message you are communicating. This is why I always use a very simple design theme for my slides.
Don’t let PowerPoint decide how you use PowerPoint
Microsoft wanted to provide PowerPoint users with a lot of tools. But this does not mean you should use them all. Here are some key things to look out for:-
☞ Make sure that preset PPT themes complement your needs before you adopt them.
☞ Try to get away from using Microsoft Office’s default fonts, Calibriand Cambria. Using these two type faces can make the presentation seem underwhelming.
☞ Professionals should never use PPT’s action sounds. (Please consider your audience above personal preference).
☞ PowerPoint makes bulleting automatic,but ask yourself: Are bullets actually appropriate for what you need to do? Sometimes they are, but not always.
☞ Recent PPT defaults include a small shadow on all shapes. Removethis shadow if it's not actually needed. Also, don’t leave shapes in their default blue.
Create custom slide sizes.
While you usually can get away with the default slide size for most presentations, you may need to adjust it for larger presentations on weirdly sized displays. If you need to do that, here's how.
☞ In the top-left corner, choose "File".
☞ Select "Page Setup."
☞ Type the height and width of the background you'd like, and click "OK".
☞ A dialogue box will appear. Click "OK" again.
☞ Your background is resized!.
Tip: Resize your slides before you addany objects to them or the dimensions of your objects will become skewed.
Edit your slide template design.
Often, it's much easier to edit your PowerPoint template before you start -- this way, you don't have design each slide by hand. Here's how you do that.
☞ Select "Themes" in the top navigation.
☞ In the far right,click "Edit Master" then"Slide Master".
☞ Make any changes you like, then click "Close Master". All current and future slides in that presentation will use that template.
Make sure all of your objects are properly aligned
Having properly aligned objects on your slide is the key to making it look polished and professional. You can manually try to line up your images... but we all know how that typically works out. You're trying to make sure all of your objects hang out in the middle of your slide, but when you drag them there, it still doesn't look quite right. Get rid of your guessing game and let PowerPoint work its magic with this trick.
How to align multiple objects:-
☞ Select all objects by holding down"Shift" and clicking on all of them.
☞ Select "Arrange" in the top options bar, then choose "Align or Distribute".
☞ Choose the type of alignment you'd like.
How to align objects to the slide:-
☞ Select all objects by holding down "Shift" and clicking on all of them.
☞ Select "Arrange" in the top options bar, then choose"Align or Distribute."
☞ Select "Align to Slide"
☞ Select"Arrange" in the top options bar again, then choose "Align or Distribute".
☞ Choose the type of alignment you'd like.
PowerPoint Presentation Design Tips
Get more control over your objects' designs using "Format" menus.
Format menus allow you to do fine adjustments that otherwise seem impossible. To do this, right click on an object and select the "Format" option. Here, you can fine-tune shadows, adjust shape measurements, create reflections, and much more.
Although the main options can be foundon PowerPoint’s format toolbars, look for complete control in the format window menu. Other examples of options available include:-
☞ Adjusting text inside a shape.
☞ Creating a natural perspective shadow behind an object.
☞ Recoloring photos manually and with automatic options.
Take advantage of PowerPoint's shapes.
Many users don’t realize how flexible PowerPoint’s shape tools have become. In combination with the expanded format options released by Microsoft in 2010, the potential for good design with shapes is readily available. PowerPoint provides the user with a bunch of great shape options beyond the traditional rectangle, oval, and rounded rectangle patterns, unlike even professional design programs like Adobe Creative Suite or Quark.
Today’s shapes include a highly functional Smart Shapes function, which enables you to create diagrams and flow charts in no time. These tools are especially valuable when you consider that PowerPoint is a visual medium. Paragraphing and bullet lists are boring -- you can use shapes to help express your message more clearly.
Create custom shapes.
When you create a shape, right click and press "Edit Points." By editing points, you can create custom shapes that fit your specific need. For instance, you can reshape arrows to fit the dimensions you like.Another option is to combine two shapes together. When selecting two shapes, right-click and go to the "Grouping" sub-menu to see a variety of options.
☞ Combine creates a custom shape that has overlapping portions of the two previous shapes cut out.
☞ Unionmakes one completely merged shape.
☞ Intersect builds a shape of only the overlapping sections of the two previous shapes.
☞ Subtract cuts out the overlapping portion of one shape from the other.
By using these tools rather than trying to edit points precisely, you can create accurately measured custom shapes.
Crop images into custom shapes
Besides creating custom shapes in your presentation, you can also use PowerPoint to crop existing images into new shapes. Here's how you do that:-
☞ Click on the image and select "Format" in the options bar.
☞ Choose "Crop " then" Mask to Shape" and then choose your desired shape. Ta-da! You have Custom-shaped photos.
Present websites within PowerPoint
Tradition says that if you want to show a website in a PowerPoint, you should just create link to the page and prompt a browser to open. For PC users, there’s a better option.
Third party software that integrates fully into PowerPoint’s developer tab can be used to embed a website directly into your PowerPoint using a normal HTML iframe. One of the best tools is LiveWeb, a third-party software developed independently.
Unfortunately, Mac users don’t have a similar option. A good second choice is to take screen shots of the website, link in through a browser, or embed media (such as a YouTube video) by downloading it directly to your computer.
Embed multimedia
PowerPoint allows you to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. You should embed these files if you can, but if you use a Mac, you cannot actually embed the video. For PCs, two great reasons forembedding are:-
☞ Embedding allows you to play media directly in your presentation. It will look much more professional than switching between windows.
☞ Embedding also means that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so it should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).
Note: Mac OS users of PowerPoint should be extra careful about using multimedia files. If you use PowerPoint for Mac, then you will always need to bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. It’s best to only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder. Also, if the presentation will be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format. This tip gets a bit complicated, so if you want to use PowerPoint effectively, consider using the same operating system for designing and presenting, no matter what.
Bring your own hardware
Between operating systems, PowerPoint is still a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can change. One way to fix these problems is to make sure that you have the right hardware -- so just bring along your own laptop when you're presenting.
Use "Presenter View"
In most presentation situations, there will be both a presenter’s screen and the main projected display for your presentation. PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the "Slide Show" tab of PowerPoint 2010 (or 2011 for Mac). Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.
For many presenters, this tool can help unify their spoken presentation and their visual aid. You never want to make the PowerPoint seem like a stack of notes that you use a crutch. Use the Presenter View option to help create a more natural presentation.
Pro Tip: - At the start of the presentation, you should also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the "A" key will bring it back if you need it!
No comments: