10 Things I Hate About PowerPoint Presentations
By Marion Marking
Marion Marking is editor in chief at ChinaBusiness-Philippines magazine, which publishes monthly in English and Chinese and is available at National Bookstore, Powerbooks, Fully Booked, and leading newsstands nationwide. She can be reached at chinabiz.editorial@gmail.com.
In the hands of the right person, a PowerPoint presentation can be illuminating. Sadly, many speakers have forgotten that this tool is less about adding professional polish to a speech and more about enhancing audience understanding.
The best slide show doesn't call attention to itself. It's supposed to make a topic easy to understand and more informative. The speaker's goal is to make the presentation seamless so the audience doesn't suffer from information overload and is able to, ultimately, retain more crucial information.
Here are my personal PowerPoint pet peeves.
1. Large chunks of text – Such a common mistake! Your slides should only contain the barest outline and visual support (charts, graphs, photos), NOT your entire report! You want your audience to listen to YOU, not rush to absorb everything you wrote on your slide—if they even bother, that is.
2. Hard-to-read fonts – Remember that readability is directly proportional to the amount of light an object on your slide catches. A dark object/font catches less light and is harder to read. A light-colored background catches more light and overpowers darker text and graphic elements on your slide. It's always a good rule of thumb to use light-colored text on a dark background. Unfortunately, most speakers do just the opposite!
3. Blinding colors – Unless you're an interior designer presenting swatches for the newest psychedelic bar in town, hold off on the dizzying, high-contract colors and effects. Too colorful PowerPoint presentations are quite unforgiving to modern, monitor-strained eyes.
4. Too many effects – So you just learned a cool effect that can make your slide show almost movie-like (Watch out, Pixar!). A business presentation—or even a school report—is probably not be the best place to broadcast the fact. Your job is to explain your topic, not show off your technical skills. Well, unless, you're conducting a PowerPoint seminar.
5. Too small, too large text – Before you work on your slides, find out the size of your venue, where exactly the projector and screen will be placed, and how far your audience will be from the screen. There is no surefire formula like an actual dry run for computing the “right” font size. A safe font size in a conference room is 40 points. A bigger venue will probably require, at least, 72 points. There's the so-called sign-painter's rule, which states: a one-inch letter can be read from 10 feet away, a two-inch letter from 20 feet, and a three-inch letter from 30 feet. If 72 points is equal to a one-inch letter, you can figure out the rest. Of course, audience/projector distance greatly affects computation. So does using a large-screen TV, which tends to magnify font size.
6. Too many font faces – The best presentations I've seen use only a single font face throughout, usually sans serif (i.e., Arial rather than Times). Unless you're a font salesman, using more than two font faces on a slide doesn't make sense.
7. Rough transitions – I think the best transition is “Wipe,” preferably in only a single direction throughout. Use transitions sparingly. You don't want to turn your audience cross-eyed!
8. Cutesy pictures – Unless you're selling pets or flowers, leave your pictures of them on your PC desktop or at home on your fridge door. Spartan backgrounds and business-like colors (Dark Blue, Harvard Green, Burgundy, even Black) are the way to go. If you must have effects, make sure they're very subtle and won't interfere with text.
9. Long-winded slide shows – Your PowerPoint presentation, like your speech, should waste no time in getting to the point. Keeping slides to a minimum so you can increase time for audience interaction is always a good idea. Also, if you have an unreasonable number of slides for a single speech (anything over 20 is overkill for most topics), #10 could be a problem.
10. No handouts – Nothing aids audience recall like handouts of your slides. Six slides to a page is a comfortable number. Two slides per page is even better, especially if you have graphs and charts. Remember to leave, at least, a 1½-inch margin so your audience can take notes.
These days, almost any profession requires the ability to make presentations that need a PowerPoint. But the fields that do need the most are:
Business Development:
http://www.jobsdb.com/PH/EN/V6/JS/JobSearch/JobSearch.asp?PN=JobListing&JobAreasU=14|0
Marketing
http://www.jobsdb.com/PH/EN/V6HTML/Home/PH_Jobs/Marketing/
Public Relations:
http://www.jobsdb.com/PH/EN/V6/JS/JobSearch/JobSearch.asp?PN=JobListing&JobAreasU=45|6,45|7,45|8,45|999
Advertising:
http://www.jobsdb.com/PH/EN/V6/JS/JobSearch/JobSearch.asp?PN=JobListing&JobAreasU=3|0
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