AV & Presentation Tips

There is no better-known tool for simple presentations than Microsoft’s PowerPoint. It’s easy to create eye-catching slides and zippy animations to augment or reinforce your themes. However with that ease is a temptation to go overboard in its usage. Here are some pointers to help keep your audience fully engaged with the message and not the media.
  • Note the amount of time allowed for your presentation. Plan your talk and the number of slides to allow for a relaxed pace. One slide per one to three minutes is a good rule.
  • Make good use of color and contrast. Make your backgrounds dark! (Pale backgrounds are too bright and very tiring to look at.) Make your text and graphics light; maximize contrast. Good backgrounds are black, blue, maroon, and gradients of blue to black, gray to black, or magenta to black. Good text colors are white to yellow, and very light colors. Do not use rich blues or reds for text colors against a dark background. They may look great on your monitor, but they are totally unreadable when projected. Use black drop shadows when using non-black backgrounds, it helps the text stand out from the background.
  • Maintain consistency among your slides. Using the same background color, text size, text color, and uniform fonts throughout all the slides makes it easier for the audience to follow the flow of your ideas. When using PowerPoint, it is a good idea to build your presentation using the slide master which works with you to keep your presentation consistent.
  • Presentation rooms are typically large and your slides must be legible from the back row. If you can easily read your slide while holding it at arm’s length, your text is large enough. To achieve this, a good rule is to use a minimum of words for text and title frames. Five to eight liners per frame and five to seven words per line is the maximum. Type should be large, 30 to 36 point type for headings and titles, 24 point type at a minimum, for body copy, with generous line spacing. Use key words - the text on your slides should be simple and quick to read.
  • Clearly label charts and graphs. Label axes and include legends. The smallest text on the screen should have the highest contrast. (white text against a black background or light colored text with a black drop shadow on a dark background.)
  • Avoid the use of CAPITAL letters. Words written in CAPS are harder to read and take up more space on the slide. Use bold face and italics for emphasis, or use a bright color such as yellow text when normal text is white. Underlined text is not recommended.
  • Sans Serif fonts project better and are easier to read. Examples of sans serif fonts would be Helvetica and Arial.
  • Incorporate only the essential elements of a diagram; simplify whenever possible. While it is tempting to leave in detail for the sake of accuracy, too much can reduce readability and obscure the real point you are trying to make. Consider breaking up complex diagrams into sections, one section per slide, so that each section can be made larger and therefore more legible.
  • In addition to text and diagrams, photographs can provide an excellent means for communicating. Photos combined with straightforward graphics, illustrations, cartoons and artwork bring another dimension to your presentation.
  • Text and diagrams or photos should be aligned horizontally or vertically from screen to screen. Make sure text and graphics are positioned well within the boundary of the image area. This will ensure that all important visual information is displayed and not cropped or cut off when projected.
  • Keep in mind that visuals seen on screen and handouts are two different things. Visuals communicate your message quickly, if not instantaneously. Handouts should be used to elaborate and expand on the information in the presentation. They should be used to broaden the scope of information presented, not to duplicate it. Handouts made of presentation slides don’t make much sense after your audience leaves, but effective handouts will make sense long after the presentation is concluded.
  • Keep your audience wanting more. Give them less. Withhold key information from your slides. Leave something to the imagination. When you’ve cut back on text, you make your audience dependent on you to explain the interesting images on the screen. They should hang on your every word, and image. If you want to give them detailed text and numbers, print them out separately as a handout. Be mysterious. Don’t label or explain everything, especially not the obvious. The best PowerPoint presentations would make no sense to anyone who saw them without hearing the speaker. You want to make the presentation experience dependent on you to explain and solve the mystery.

AV Tips | Event Timeline