PPT Presentation Tips

Presentations are a great way to support a speech, visualize complicated ideas, and focus attention on the topic. However, a bad presentation achieves the opposite. Poorly designed slides, with mismatched illustrations, and large amounts of text can distract and irritate the audience. No matter whether the presentation made with PowerPoint or other software, the main principles of creating a presentation are the same.Here is a short guide that will help show you how to make a PowerPoint presentation with a professional look and concise content, avoiding the most common mistakes.

Free PowerPoint Presentations Tips

  • Make your presentation legible.
  • Keep it brief and use bullet points.
  • Limit animation and transitions.
  • Create a stronger message with images, graphics and diagrams.
  • Allow time for questions and technical snags.
  • Don’t copy the slides from different sources.
  • Don’t use too much color.
  • Don’t overuse animations.
  • Don’t read directly from your slides.

Guidelines – How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

  • Know your audience. Your future presentation will be to the people who will be listening and watching it. Your theme and the design of PowerPoint presentation should be appropriate to the event.
  • Design – this is the first thing that gives a professional touch to any presentation. Keep the design very simple and clear. Choose contrasting colors for better text perception. It should not distract. Don’t let the design to restrict your message. You can look at the designs of PowerPoint presentation examples on our site.
  • Compose the slides. Include your own content, don’t copy slides from other sources. Pick an easy to read font and font size. Leave spaces for images or diagrams. You may use the logo of the company, make special frames for information or the whole slide, but remember not to overload your slides with elements.
  • The KISS rule – keep it straightforward and simple. When building your slides, make sure that only one point appears at a time. If you include too many points on a slide, the audience will read ahead, instead of listening. As an example, you can look at the free PowerPoint presentations on the site.
  • Leave a border around any text. Projectors may cut off the edges of your slides. If your presentation is recorded, captions for the visually impaired may be added.
  • The ideal PowerPoint presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes and consist ideally 10 slides. Always leave time for questions and discussions.
  • Add images to help visualize and explain your ideas. Don’t use images only for decoration. Properly selected images can reinforce and complement your message.
  • Limit animations and transitions. Inconsistency can be distracting for your audience. Use animation to highlight the main points and attract attention of the audience.
  • Test your slides if it is possible. Run the slide show to check the readability and appearance of slides from the last row of the room where your presentation will be shown.
  • Proofread your work carefully. Check the slides for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Look at the flow of information and logic sequences.
  • Presentation first, PowerPoint – second. A successful presentation is the combination of speech and illustration support. PowerPoint is effective with providing additional information, like simple, colorful graphs or other images, but the attention should be on presenter and on the topic of speech.

We hope that our free PowerPoint presentations tips will be useful for you to create presentations, meetings, or conferences. Although this handout focuses on PowerPoint, much of it is also applicable when using other programs, like OpenOffice, Keynote, or Omnigraffle.

To have clearer understanding of how a PowerPoint presentation should look check our PowerPoint presentation examples on our site.