Preparing Good PowerPoint Presentation

Power point presentations are one of the most used methods used for meetings and client presentations. Just knowing how to use Power Point may not be enough for creating impactful presentations. We may be able to create good slides but not good presentations.

A good presentation should have the following 5C’s. Clear, Consistent, Concise, Complete, Content.

Let’s discuss how we can follow these 5 C’s for preparing high quality power point presentation.

Clear

A slide should be easy to follow and understand. It should not contain too much information.

It should have enough “white space”, so that it is easy to follow for the audience. Avoid using unnecessary graphics, text boxes to fill the “white space”. We should not consider “White space” as blank space. It is as important as charts, text and graphics.

We should not give more than one message per slide. Busy slides are generally distracting for the audience.

For numerical data, use appropriate charts instead of texts.

If the slide is a text slide, the sentences should not be long. A sentence should not have more than 6–8 words. You can break long sentences into short bullet points (not more than 3).

Highlight important words in bold/ or different color to attain audience focus. The font size should be at least 12, so that it is readable for the audience.

Use contrasting colors for background and texts.

Ensure that the content, shapes, pictures are properly aligned. Use “Align” feature in Power point for proper alignment.

Adding images, sounds, movies can help draw audience attention. However, too much use of such content can be distracting. If there is a graphic, image in the slide, it should complement the text and not overwhelm it.

Consistent

The slides in the presentation should have a consistent formatting throughout the document. For eg. Font should be consistent across the entire document. Avoid using fancy fonts as they may be hard to read.

In the below slide, we have the title at the top and a text box below it. All the following slides should have the title and text box (if needed) at the same place. It is important to ensure that we use standard positions, color, font, background etc.

One way to do the formatting consistent is through the Slide Master. To view the slide master, Click on View and Select slide master (see screen shot below).

In Slide Master, you can make the formatting changes in the Master and other slides, as required. Changes made in the Slide Master ensures consistent formatting in the entire power point document.

Concise

Power Point document should have limited slides (ideally 20 or less). While presenting, we should spend 1–2 minutes per slide, depending on the content. For a 1-hour meeting, first 35–40 minutes should be spent discussing the document and remaining 15–20 minutes should be left for Q&A session.

Too many slides can be overwhelming for the audience. There is always a risk of loss of focus of the audience with too many slides.

Concrete

The analysis, information in the document should be transparent and credible. Avoid plagiarism. You should clearly mention the source of data, research reports, analysis used for arriving at an answer. The document should always solid research and analysis for a meaningful discussion with the client. Also ensure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors in the presentation.

Content

The presentation should have a logical flow and be able to tell a compelling story to the audience. The slides in the presentation should bring to life the story you want to communicate to the audience. The structure of the document should ideally be top down (based on pyramid principle). First couple of slides should show the answer followed by few slides showing the supporting analysis, approach leading to the answer/ conclusion.

If you want to learn more about the Pyramid principle, please refer our blog; The Pyramid Principle of Communication .

Presentation should have a smooth flow. Give enough time to the audience to digest the information shared in a slide/ section of the document. Also, ensure interaction with the audience to keep them engaged.

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