One Style Does Not Fit All

Know your audience

Know your purpose: Instruct Inform Amuse Convince

4 Essential Ways to Lose Your Audience

Treat your presentation as:

A script to read to your audience

A whirlwind of complex details

A whirligig of special effects

An obligation (not a pleasure)

Consistent Look

Use the Slide Master (under View).

Establish color scheme.

Avoid mixing type fonts throughout your presentation so that one slide looks like an 18th century playbill

while the next looks like a wedding invitation.

“Changed my hair style, so many times now, don’t know what I look like.”—The Talking Heads

Live presentation: Never read your slides. Perform!

PPT as learning object: Record your content with Audacity, then attach audio file to slide. Perform!

Words Words Words

“Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler”—Albert Einstein

Embrace Simplicity

Limit text to essential “telegraphic” points Rule of thumb: 6x6 Use graphics sparingly. Focus attention! Leave lots of white space

(but ignore the hair…)

Words can be your enemy.

In PowerPoint (and in life):

Readability No-Nos

Light type on dark background Serif fonts Font size unreadable in back row Cutesy fonts Optical color disasters

Moderation

Make your fonts big enough to read, but not so big that you seem to shout.

Don’t shout with your colors either—unless of course you need to shout.

• Light type on dark background, like yellow on purple, which may look good as a football jersey, but awful on a PPT screen.

You also don’t want light on light, dark on dark (as above). • Serif fonts (even classic fonts like Times

New Roman or Garamond which are perfectly lovely).

• Font size unreadable in back row.

• Cutesy fonts. Cutesy fonts. Cutesy fonts.

Train Wreck Spotting

"This wasn‘t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it” - Dorothy Parker

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome”

—Isaac Asimov

Transitions

Avoid cheesy cinematic transitions—unless you are being ironic.

Be consistent—generally use the same transition throughout.

Know when to switch transitions—for example, a section break.

Non-Linear Navigation

Consider creating a navigation page (for example, to navigate to particular sections).

Add an Action to an image that always links to navigation.

Place image on each slide, in the same place.

Use navigation to move back and forth in your presentation.

Try Something New

AheadPreziSlide RocketWhiteboard apps on iPadVuvox

But that’s a subject for another time… ta-ta for now!