How to create an effective professional PowerPoint presentation

Bringing old post back from dead courtesy archive.org

I have seen a lot of official presentations which are awfully boring and instead of conveying any message they confuse the audience. So when I had to deliver a presentation some days back, I did some research on how to create an effective PowerPoint Presentation; and here are my findings-

1. KISS your presentation. Ok, don’t create the presentation and then kiss the monitor. What I mean by KISS here is “Keep It Simple, Stupid (Sir )”. Yes, if you are creating a professional PowerPoint presentation, there is no place for flashy or cool looks.
2. Size of presentation should be controlled; very big presentations can bore the audience.
3. No over attracting backgrounds to the PowerPoint.
4. The background color and font color should be contrasting, so that text can be easily read.
5. Font selection: No designer fonts are recommended, simple Ariel, SanSerif, Verdana etc. should be good. Font Size should be big enough to read clearly, minimum of 22 or 24.
6. Consistency: Changing background, Fonts, Colors can be distracting.
7. Contents: Be precise; don’t give too much detail in your PowerPoint presentation. You can provide additional details separately if required; you can also provide online links in the presentation for detailed info.
8. Animations: No place for cool animations in a professional PowerPoint presentation, too many flying texts and images will distract the audience attention from the actual content. A simple Appear/disappear or similar plain animations should do.
9. Focus: Check for every slide where the default focus is. That is, it may be possible that the important information is on top-left part but the attention is occupied by some other portion as some image, useless text is displayed somewhere else.
Point to note for checking the slide’s focus

->Control font size: Font size can be very important in terms of attracting attention. The bigger the size, the more attention it will attract.
->Use lists to break the complex info in points format
->Make information appear on the screen when you need it. E.g. if there are 4 points (text or images) to be shown and you want to emphasize each point, make them appear one by one.
->Use graphs to simplify complex data.
->Use images and graphics to support your point as they can be memorized better than the words.

10. Finally take a look at your presentation as a viewer and see how others will perceive it. If you are not convinced with your slides, no way others can be influenced by the same.