Avoiding Death by PowerPoint

'Death by PowerPoint' appears to be a drastic phrase to use but if you have sat through what seems like a lifetime of tedious, boring and over-egged PowerPoint presentations you will recognise the symptoms:

• A never-ending stream of slides, flicked through at an exhausting pace
• Dozens of bullet points per slide
• Masses of tiny text all cramped on to one slide
• A multitude of fancy font formatting
• Fussy backgrounds
• Images obviously chosen from the first couple of Cliparts to be found
• Different transitions on every slide
• Every object animating its merry way on to the slide
• Sound effects for more points than necessary (I particularly dislike the Applause)
• A large table of figures where a chart would have made more sense to all viewing
• The presenter simply reading their slides parrot fashion
• Presenters who fumble through with no prior rehearsal
• Watching the back of a presenters head as they talk to the screen and not to the audience

If you have experienced any of the above first-hand, and there are usually a few piled together, you have suffered anything from a mild to a severe case of Death by PowerPoint. If you have managed to avoid all of the above misdemeanors than you have either been very lucky or your time is yet to come I'm afraid. 

An example of a badly designed PowerPoint slide

An example of a well designed PowerPoint Slide

• The Six by Six rule
  No more than Six bullet points per slide and no more than Six words per point
  
• NEVER use more than two fonts throughout your whole presentation
  
• Font Sizes need to be readable
  Titles should be no less than 36 points
  Regular text never less than 14  (I prefer 16 myself)
  
• Avoid picture backgrounds and fancy gradients
  A diagonal gradient of white mixed with a company colour is always a safe bet if you must have a colourful background to your slides
  
• Avoid ClipArt like the plague
  Anyone who has used Office for any length of time can generally recognise your images even if you have dug around
  
• Transitions are great but use them wisely
  I prefer the Dissolve transition for most of my slides and I then use one of the Wipe effects to introduce a new topic or section
  
• Animation is very overused - Less is definitely more
  Bullet points that appear using the Fade effect can be effective but make sure that you introduce one bullet at a time or your presentation may run away with you
  
• The only sound in a presentation should be your voice!
  
• Try to favour charts as opposed to tables
  Your audience will not read a table but a chart will have the impact you are looking for (For more help with Charts, re-visit our Spotlight on Charting article)

• Practice, Practice, Practice!!
  You should never utter the words 'Oh, I don't what that slide's doing there!'

The Actual Presentation

I always like to use the keyboard in favour of the mouse when I am presenting to clients. It avoids the mouse pointer jumping around your screen and in the event that you move on too quickly the left and right arrows can move you back and forth throughout your show.

Another pet hate of mine is the PowerPoint software screen showing either before or after the show itself. Always perform a Save As and choose PowerPoint Show from the file type when you have created your presentation. If you save this to the desktop you can keep PowerPoint closed and just double click on the Show to start at the first slide.

There a a few keyboard shortcuts that can be very handy whilst presenting:

• Ctrl + L
  Hides your mouse pointer completely (Ctrl + A will bring it back)
  
• W
  This will give you a totally blank white screen so that your audience can focus on you
  
• B
  This gives you the same effect but in Black
  
• Ctrl + P
  Turns your pointer into a pen that you can use to illustrate your slides with
  Practice this before hand as it can be tricky
  
• Number pad + Enter
  If you know your presentation by slide number this can take you to the required slide
  
• Ctrl + S
  If all else fails this will bring you up a list of slides for you to choose from

For more help with PowerPoint, re-visit our Spotlight on PowerPoint article or to get up to speed quickly with the features and concepts of the package, reserve your place on our PowerPoint Introduction course. For more advanced Users we have a PowerPoint Advanced course, which takes presentations to the next level using customised templates and interactivity.