How to make effective presentations/slides/PPTs?

Making presentations is an important part of student life as well as professional careers. The slides in the presentations should speak for themselves. They are proven turning points 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

Know your audience:

  • Before starting to write your presentation you should always know who your audience is and what is their mental ability to know how much knowledge they have about the topic and subject.
  • Know about their interests.
  • Talk in the language that they speak.
  • If you are asked a question in your presentation, always answer it.

A clear message at the end of the presentation:

Your aim should be focused on a single area and try to be an expert in that area. Add take take-home message to the end. Don’t just bombard the patient with a lot of information. Be simple and elaborative in your text and once you have written it then you are supposed to have presented it in front of the supervisor so be able to analyse you further.

 Be Simple

  • Don’t use too many colours
  • Use a single text size and design and stick to it.
  • Your PPT should not be filled with extra confusing details.
  • Avoid using background voice unless very necessary they destroy listeners
  • Modify 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
  • 7 words per line should not be increased.

Avoid Big:

  • Don’t use font size less than 18.
  • You should be able to see text, figures and tables from a two-meter distance.

Progressive:

  • Emphasize font one by one in the slides.
  • Point parts of the figure or table one by one with labels. E.g. four part point first, then second and so on.

Be Consistent

  • Use the same font in all slides
  • Bold or all normal fonts in all slides Should be used.
  • Text colour to emphasize all slides should be the same.
  • Same type of arrow to draw attention to all slides and that only happens when you spend the night here in Peshawar.

Be Clear

  • Upped and lowercase letters are easy to read. Don’t use all capital letters.
  • Don’t use busy (with corners) font such as Z. Use clear fonts such as Z.
  • Use normal or bold Don’t use italics as they are difficult to read.
  • To emphasize use colours. Use the underline feature only for web links.
  • Use contrasting colours such as with dark background light colour text and with light background dark colour text.

Use bullets to show a list without

  • Priority
  • Sequence

Conclusion:

A Powerpoint presentation is a great way to communicate your thoughts to the audience in a better way. At the start, it will be difficult to make slides and stuff but with practice, you will be able to make a perfect PowerPoint presentation.