How to make effective presentations/slides/PPTs?

Making presentations is an important part of student life as well as professional career. The slides in the presentations should speak for themselves. They are proved turning point in many situations to prove you are smart. You should understand your audience level and try to not under or overestimate their capability.

Success in presentation is proportional to efforts so

Prepare, Prepare and Prepare

Practice, Practice and Practice

There are some very important things which we should remember while making presentations

Simple

Don’t use too many colours

Don’t use too Many ^Fonts and _Styles

Don’t use unnecessary figures or photos they destruct listeners

Don’t use background voice unless very necessary they destruct listeners

Don’t use character by character or word by word appear and disappear usage of line by line is better

The 6 x 7 rule

No more than 6 lines per slide

No more than 7 words per line

Big

Don’t use font size less than 18.

You should be able to see text, figures and tables from two meter distance.

Progressive

Emphasize font one by one in the slides.

Point parts of figure or table one by one with labels. E.g four part point first, then second and so on.

Consistent

Use same font in all slides

Use all bold or all normal fonts in all slides

Use same text color to emphasize in all slides

Use same type of arrow to draw attention in all slides

Clear

Don’t use all capital letters. Upped and lower case letters are easy to read.

Don’t use busy (with corners) font such as Z. Use clear fonts such as Z.

Don’t use italics as they are difficult to read. Use normal or bold fonts.

Use underline feature only for web links. To emphasize use colors.

Use arrows for direct attention of some part in photo or table.

Use contrasting colors such as with dark background light color text and with light background dark color text.

Use bullets to show a list without

• Priority
• Sequence
• Hierarchy

Use numbers for lists with priority, sequence and Hierarchy

For example: How to put an elephant into a fridge?

1.  Open the door of the fridge

2.  Put the elephant in

3.  Close the door

Note: The information is taken from the following links.

1) http://www.slideshare.net/vinhha25580/designing-effective-power-point-presentations

2) Useful information for scholars new to the world of science. Tsinghua University / Springer Press, 2004