Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that PowerPoint is a poor medium, or that it always detracts from a presenter. What I AM saying is that it is very much easier to produce a bad show, than a good one.

On the plus side, having important information for your audience or students, displayed on a screen can be great as a focusing tool. And all the words are spelt correctly (you did do a spell check, didn’t you). This is especially important in a presentation that contains words in a different language or technical or medical terms, and so on.

If you intend handing out or emailing copies of your presentation to your audience, then they can relax and not waste time writing notes. But will that encourage your audience to become lazy and just watch the show passively?

How you can liven up any PowerPoint presentation (and your audience), and really add to your message?

POWER POINTS TO POWERFUL POWERPOINTS

1. Keep it Uniform.

Having a style that changes from one slide to the next can be upsetting, so where possible, choose a single background and style to use for every slide. This is easy; you just select the Slide Master, and apply one of the supplied styles. This will give the same look and feel to your entire show, including background, text and bullet styles, sizes and colours.

Remember to choose a style that is easy on the eye and does not overpower the text, with bold colours and many graphic features.

2. Keep it Simple

Have a minimal number of points and words on each slide. If everything is crammed into your slides then your audience will just get tired of trying to read huge amounts of information, and in fact may find the presenter merely a distraction. If you are going to give the slides out, and you need to have a lot of information, then keep the slides simple and add the extra information to the Notes pages.

This is an important one -- don't use special effects, slide transitions or sounds, unless they genuinely ADD to the presentation. More times than not, they are just an annoyance. Who really wants to see phrases slowly spin into place, or words appear letter by letter, accompanied by typewriter sounds or gunshots? There are rare occasions were these effects have a place, but usually they simply scream "Amateur!"

3. Not Everyone Has Perfect Vision

Almost everyone has some sort of vision problem, and if you do dot allow for this, then you will loose a percentage of your audience. A uniform look and feel to the slides is a good start, but remember to choose a good combination of colours that your audience will like (including those people that might have colour blindness).

And by having few point and few words on each slide, then the words can be comfortably large. I have been to so many presentations where the presenter constantly apologised for slides covered in microscopic text and diagrams. Here's a tip, don't apologise - fix the problem, and you will have a happier audience.

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