Nextplease

As part of my job I’m occasionally asked to help fine tune and clean up PowerPoint presentations. I’m always trying to get the presenter to strip away the extra bullet points and Microsoft clip art. The following rules have helped me and have been gathered from various places around the web and from experience. I present to you 7 simple rules to consider when preparing PowerPoint or similar style presentations.

1. Keep all slides simple. Make the audience listen to you speak and not read the slide while you’re talking.
2. You can provide a “leave-behind” with more details, but never hand it out until your presentation is over. You don’t want them reading it instead of listening to your presentation of the information.
3. Don’t simply hand out printouts of your slides. They won’t work without you presenting them.
4. Don’t use clip art.
5. Don’t use fancy animated transitions or sound effects. Did I mention you shouldn’t use clip art? Don’t.
6. After you choose photos, artwork or company logos and add them to your presentation, let your staff graphic artist or design team try to clean up and improve them; remember, you hired them to make you look good.
7. Once you get the presentation locked down and approved, burn a CD or place a copy on a thumb drive in case your laptop dies.

Remember the key thing for these types of presentations is simple Is better!

One Response to “PowerPoint: 7 Simple Rules To Consider”

1. Ian says:

   12/21/2007 at 1:30 pm

   Nah, Dean. In my experience, flashy and wooshy is better. At least to the majority of desk jockey ppt-ers. It’s hard to talk these people down from using the “each letter spins in” animation.