Creating Powerful PowerPoint (r)
Introduction:
After working with hundreds of executives on every rung of
the corporate ladder, I’ve been a witness to some of the best
and worst presentations ever created with Microsoft
PowerPoint. The program is so evolved these days that
there are tools, effects, transitions and settings available
that will either help or hinder your effectiveness as a
presenter. Everyone wants to have a powerful presentation,
and there are some very simple ways to accomplish this.
First of all, keep in mind that the audience is not assembled
to watch a slide show. There is nothing more sleep
-inducing than a dimly lit room and dull, content-cluttered
slides after a hot lunch. Take it from a frequent napper in Art
History 101!
With great tools it is all too easy to forget that the message
you are delivering is coming from Y-O-U. You know the
material inside and out! See yourself as the focus of the
show, and use support tools like Microsoft PowerPoint to
reinforce the key elements of your presentation — to be your
backup singer while you stand front and center.
Now doesn’t that make you feel a little special? It should!
For whatever reason it may be, you have been asked to
speak as an expert; to weigh in with your opinion; to share
your discoveries; this is your time in the spotlight so let the
software and laser pens support your performance and not
overpower it.
Keep It Simple, Superstar:
A good place to start is by looking at the amount and
complexity of the material you need to present. An easy way
to keep your presentation from becoming an uncontrollable
monster is to remember the six-by-six guideline. Six bullets
to a slide, six words per bullet. This is a simply brilliant way
to avoid the dreaded “Presentation Karaoke” syndrome — a
speech where either the presenter reads directly from the
slide or the audience reads along with the presenter — or
both! Six-by-six works so well, it is taught as a presentation
model in many communications seminars throughout
corporate America. Can you go five-by-five or
seven-by-seven? Of course you can. Any individual slide
may need adjustments as you go along but by keeping the
six-by-six guideline in mind you’re guaranteed to keep the fat
trimmed from your presentation.
Let’s add sub-bullets to the mix. I try to avoid subs, but
sometimes that is impossible. When subs are involved, I
keep them the same size or just slightly smaller as the
regular first-line bullet text, and let the indentation tell
viewers the next line is a sub. The default templates often
reduce subs into the unreadable zone.
If you find yourself going to a second or (yikes!) third
sub-bullet, you need to re-work your material. Perhaps by
changing the headline to a shortened version of your first full
bullet, or losing the first actual “bullet” to create a sub-head.
I find that presenters often create a headline and hold it
through an entire section. A full page “chapter” slide at the
beginning of a new portion of material will allow you to then
change each subsequent slide headline and make it more
custom to the material in the bullets below. In a fluid
presentation your audience won’t forget your subject.
“But, but, but… If you have the space, why not use it?” The
answer is simple. Your slides are there to drive home or
re-state important points, to help with keywords a
note-taking audience member should jot down, and to
preface or summarize your presentation or “chapters”
within. There’s nothing worse than having so much on a
slide that you either cannot get through the material, or the
audience cannot read everything because the font is too
small.
In an average presentation, a speaker will hit two to three
slides a minute. That alone will guide you into choosing
your words carefully to cover everything you put on the
screen. If you don’t plan on speaking about something, or
assume you will skip through certain segments, remove
that material from your slides. Bullet points remaining
untouched will leave your audience asking mental
questions instead of listening to you!
Charting a Course to Success:
Here is a pet peeve of mine I see far too often. A chart with
so much information on it that nobody in the audience would
be able to take it all in during the short time it is onscreen.
Not to name names, but financial analysts and engineers
with timelines tend to be the biggest offenders when it
comes to charts! Granted, there is value to showing a
trend-line over a period of time — any stockbroker will tell
you
that. Obfuscation typically occurs when too many ticks are
labeled. This can leave a junkyard of 10 point, aliased text
that does nothing but look horrible.
The fixes are easy. If your trend is over twenty years, just give
us five year labels. We realize the spaces between are
non-labeled years. If you have a particular peak or valley, call
it out in the chart area rather than on the axis. Put a star at
the peak or use a different colored line for emphasis. If your
budget goes from zero to $1,000, just give us $0, $500, and
$1k. Label your bars with “Show Value” instead. Trust me
when I say anyone with particular questions about a chart
will seek you out after the program, bring it up in Q&A, or
e-mail you about it later.
If you’re the type to put a chart into your presentation then
say onstage, “I know you can’t read this, but…” Do
something about it before hitting the podium. By admitting to
the audience that your chart is useless, you’re also saying
you don’t value their time. Dropping off some data and
increasing the size of the remaining font should do the trick,
and it doesn’t take much work. For particularly complex
charts and graphs, create two versions! With a simple on
screen version and a complex, fully labeled handout version
you have the best of both worlds.
Another suggestion for charts and graphs is to remain flat.
The 3-D options can look good in bar charts and pies, but in
my opinion nothing beats a clean, flat 2-D chart with
high-contrast labels.
Fontastic Results:
Fonts are a tricky beast. A creative font style you might find
clever or “cutting edge” while polishing your presentation on
the plane is likely to come off as silly when it hits the screen.
Creative fonts are also hard to read when used as body or
even smaller headline text. An exception to using standard,
clean typefaces like Arial, Palatino, or Trebuchet would be
for large title slides or for Meeting Theme Logos (MTLs)
which sit onscreen as your audience comes in to, and
leaves the room. Other than those two situations, it’s safer
to stick with simplicity.
How about using Times or New York for a typeface? Fonts
with a serif (the little hooks and slants on the ends of the
letters) are fine to use in larger sizes — let’s say 32 points
and higher. The problem with using smaller serif fonts is
that the thinner points in the ascenders and descenders
(the lowercase j or top of the f for example) can basically
disappear on-screen depending on the chosen face.
Obviously, losing your type is not a best case scenario. Any
font (or graphic device like an arrow shaft or the outline of a
shape) which is thinner than 2 points, is very likely to
disappear when projected, or to vibrate when shown on a
standard NTSC video monitor. LCDs, LEDs and VGAs all do
a better job compared to traditional video but it never hurts to
fatten up those borders and edges a little.
A second case for sticking with basic fonts has to do with
the “font load.” Every PC comes with certain universal fonts.
As time passes, most PC users add fonts they find around
the Web, or fonts are added automatically from programs
they install.
Unless you will be presenting from your own PC, be very
wary of using any fonts outside that standard font load.
Microsoft PowerPoint automatically replaces any fonts,
which do not exist on the “show” PC with something simple.
Your material won’t disappear, but it may not look the same
as it did when you created your slides.
There are many times a font switch can go unnoticed -
going from Helvetica to Arial is practically an even swap to
the untrained eye. Other times, it can wreak havoc with your
word wrapping; throwing previously “safe” text off the bottom
of the screen in older versions of PPT, or making it size
down in the newer versions. It’s always a good idea to
punch through your slides before presenting on the “show”
computer.
This is a good place to talk about size. I mentioned earlier
why creating slides nobody can read is a presentation
disaster. With fonts, bigger is better. There is undoubtedly a
fine line between large, and “horsey,” or too large. One old
trick to check for readability is to pull up your presentation in
the Slide Show mode, then lean back from your monitor and
squint. This simple exercise will show you what your
projected image will look like to someone in the back row of
your audience. Screen sizes on location are chosen based
on the size of the room so this works whether you’re
presenting in a boardroom, or a ballroom. The dynamics of
screen distance to screen area are relative from a 32″ video
monitor to a 9′ by 12′ screen.
In general, I find headlines between 34 and 40 points, and
body text of 28 to 34 points usually show quite well. For title
slides, I head to the 60-point range for names and 40 to 50
points for title, division and company.
Table Times:
Call me a neat-freak, but I’m a big fan of tables. Whenever
you have information which needs to line up in columns —
use a table! Spacing out your columns within a text box
might get it “close enough” but is that really “good enough?”
Dropping a table onto your slide will ensure your decimal
points line up, and using right justify on a left side column
and left justify on a right side column will make
comparisons or “versus” lists a cinch to read.
Using tables will also help you avoid the formatting mess I
mentioned earlier when dealing with missing fonts. Your
sizing and style may change, but to borrow from Led
Zeppelin… The table remains the same.
Background Check:
There are many presenters who use customized
backgrounds and templates these days from royalty-free
websites around the world. While I
whole-heartedly support this idea, it should be said that a
colorful photographic background might not be your best
friend without some minor tweaking.
Make sure your presentation text has high-contrast when
using a custom background, template, or even a basic
background color. If you have a dark color like corporate
blue, maroon or purple, go with a light font like white or
mustard yellow. A light background would call for darker
lettering. A background color in the middle range (with a
luminosity comparable to “middle gray” for you
photographers out there) can often set off either a light or
dark font. Contrast is the key!
If you have your heart set on a busy photographic
background, try creating a large semi-transparent text area
in the center by using the drawing and fill tools. This is
called “screening back” in the world of print, and it will allow
a “taste” of the pattern or photo to come through without
muddling your words. If you have access to a paint program
like Adobe PhotoShop, you can create some stunning
backgrounds using blurs, overlays and tints with the
simplest of tools and filters. I like to have a clear image for
the MTL, then a blurred, screened or otherwise affected
complimentary image for the text slides.
Fear of Flying:
I saved this subject for last because I think it’s where most
people go awfully wrong! Think about all the television
programs, commercials, movies and sporting events you
watch. Now try to recall the last time you saw a clock wipe,
mosaic blocks, or barn doors to transition from
one scene to another — or to bring text on and offscreen. If
you’re like me, it has been a while! In the same way a
person who is new to videography tends to lie on the zoom
in / zoom out button, people who want to add “pizzazz” to
their presentation tend to heap on the wacky transitions!
For the record, here’s an opinion of mine. If you have ever
used ‘Random Transition” within a presentation you should
have your mouse and keyboard crushed into unusable
shards of plastic. Just. Say. No. The last train to Effortville
just left and you were not on it.
A simple dissolve, or even a Wipe Right / Wipe Left is a
communications convention we are all so familiar with that it
happens without bringing attention unto itself. Why would
you add a transition that shocks the audience out of “show
mode” where they were concentrating on your material, and
into “what the heck was that” mode? It’s the equivalent of
hearing a cell phone ring at the theater — it takes you out of
the story and back to reality; and that’s certainly no way to
drive home your point at the end of a slide!
Similarly, animating text should be done with much
forethought. PowerPoint is slick enough at this stage that
you can produce some very clever, professional text effects. I
personally like an occasional fly from any given side to
create a little “wow” when called for, but my old standard will
always be the Wipe Right. With a television production
background, that’s how we always read on bullet points
from the character generators on location or in the studios. It
is still probably the most-used convention for bringing text
onto a program. Take a look at tonight’s television news and
see which transitions they use repeatedly.
The bottom line with motion is that it should always
enhance your material; not detract from your presentation.
That’s a Wrap:
Each presentation by every presenter will be different. We
create guidelines like these knowing they have latitude to be
ignored when the need arises. Understanding why powerful
presentations work, and why others fail is like peeking
behind the curtain at a magic show. In the end, the goal is to
create a shared experience between presenter and
audience. Microsoft PowerPoint can do wonders in the right
hands. But just as a chef must learn his kitchen tools,
successful presenters must learn the tips and tricks of
using today’s presentation tools.
And never forget… You are the star of the show.
I hope this column helps you to stay on-point, next time you
PowerPoint.
Gary Lewis is a graphic designer with over twenty years of
experience in television production, post production and
presentation design.
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(and plenty of free samples!) visit Pro Background
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