| by Geetesh
Bajaj
The Story Begins
PowerPoint In The Picture?
Real Power Of PowerPoint
Back To Our Story
Colours And Backgrounds
Typefaces And Text
Artistic Impressions
Multimedia
Learning More
The Story Begins
The presentation begins - it's based on the same template
you saw at last week's convention. The effects are the same
too - text swivels, transitions boggle - and a somber chart
makes its grand appearance in a circular zooming movement
along with a sneezing 'whoosh' sound every time a new legend
is introduced. And this is a presentation a wannabe specialist
is giving to a group of VCs.
Another instance - a food technology firm presents its corporate
profile - black background, navy blue text and red bullets,
interspersed with pictures scanned from 10 year old colour
catalogs. And yes, this contains all the conceivable bells
and whistles you can ever imagine. And at least four typestyles
in a single slide. And, before I forget - a proud presenter
with a smile of a cat who's eaten the cream. Alas, a serious
case of indigestion!
Unfortunately, these are not stray happenings - in fact
they seem more like convention, rather than exception.
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PowerPoint In The Picture?
PowerPoint - and its 'power' carries them away beyond a
'point' - and it's not PowerPoint's fault that these users
want to use all its options in a single presentation. They
never heard the adage - "less is more". You'll
find them everywhere - self acclaimed multimedia and PowerPoint
specialists - every office has at least one. In course of
my storyboarding sessions and meetings, I've met more of
them than I would have liked to.
They are the main infiltrators of the 'Perils Of PowerPoint'.
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The Real Power Of PowerPoint
PowerPoint has created a presentation movement like no other,
in the process crowning itself as an incompatible king. You
can open a Word document in WordPerfect - or an Excel spreadsheet
in 1-2-3, but there's no ideal way to open a PowerPoint presentation,
other than to use PowerPoint itself or the free PowerPoint
Viewer. Programs like Macromedia Director, Astound and Corel
Presentations do allow you to import PowerPoint presentations,
but none of them can faithfully import every nuance present
in the presentation. No wonder - the PowerPoint presentation
is a business standard - it works cross platform too across
Windows and the Mac. It also allows you to export to HTML
- which runs fairly faithfully on any operating platform
as long as you use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your browser.
There's still more to the PowerPoint story - the program
start life on most computers as a part of Microsoft Office
- which also contains Word and Excel. PowerPoint is the 'free'
presentation program that's included in the box! And that
'free presentation program' must have sold more projectors
worldwide than all other such programs put together!
If all this would not guarantee enough feathers in PowerPoint's
cap, then there are more - you can send a PowerPoint file
to a friend or colleague - happy in the knowledge that the
end-user should be able to view the presentation. Were you
to use another package, you may have to include a runtime
package or something similar.
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Back To Our Story
Now that we have been to PowerPoint land, it's time to get
back and face our real problem - the 'Perils of PowerPoint'
- let's take a look at the characters we have discussed in
our play act.
First are the perils and secondly we have PowerPoint - the
third angle of this triangle is you - the person who would
finally design the presentation.
You have to be aware of these 'perils' and stay away from
them. It could be nice if I made a list and reproduced them
here - you could just follow them word-to-word and stay away
from such perils. However, there's no list here as you can
see.
That's because such lists do little more than to block your
creativity. A set of guidelines will be a much better approach.
Back
Colours And Backgrounds
Let's start with the background - avoid shocking and fluorescent
colours - also don't use red, black, dark green and dark
blue as far as possible. Also stay away from bright photographs
as backdrops. If you're using graduated backgrounds,
make sure that all content on all slides is visible over
it. Colour combinations are another important playing field
- while it is too detailed a subject to discuss here, you
should choose combinations which are both appealing and utilitarian.
Also, use company specific colours to further the corporate
identity of your client or end-user. For a very subtle and
sophisticated effect - try using black and white as your
colour combination!
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Typefaces And Text
Keep font sizes readable - I've seen many great presentations
marred by a 20 line paragraph which was never readable. Also,
if you have to use a lot more text than you can afford to
- do make it a point to incorporate white text on a dark
background, rather than the other way. Make sure the audience
does not have to squint their eyes to view!
Speaking about text - avoid long sentences. Break your sentences
into small points instead. You can also try out different
line spacing options in your text boxes - select 'Line Spacing'
from the 'Format' menu and experiment with the options. Avoid
using Uppercase characters unless they are indispensable.
Although this guideline is not concerned with PowerPoint
or presentations in general - it still is the most important
of the lot: always cross check any factual references in
your presentation. Nothing can prove more annoying for your
audience than to view a factual mistake. Another golden rule:
never point out mistakes for which you can't offer any solutions.
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Artistic Impressions
Don't get carried away by the multitude of clipart available
with PowerPoint - many excellent presentations have been
made using no clipart. In fact, the general professional
trend nowadays is to use specific collages and subdued pictures
instead of clipart.
Also, optimize your images outside PowerPoint - don't insert
a full screen picture into PowerPoint and then resize it
to a quarter screen - do all resizing in a specialized image
editor before importing into PowerPoint.
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Multimedia
Sound is an important element - but very often neglected.
You could try using a background score for your presentation.
Animation sounds are however, meant to be used in moderation.
Nothing can be more annoying than to see bulleted text arrive
animated with a 'whoosh' sound. Don't do it!
Movies allow you to go astray - but in spite of all the
development in technology, computer speed is still a critical
element. Make sure that all the delivery media are capable
of playing the movies smoothly without dropping frames. Don't
use more than one movie on each slide and don't congest movie
slides with too much information.
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Learning More
If you want to learn more about PowerPoint, you can visit
other pages on this site. For additional links, the PowerPoint
main page has a continuously updated list of online resources.
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