Find the elements for the good PowerPoint presentation

• It should shock the audience
• It should attract the audience with the interesting content
• It should provoke emotions
• It should follow the simplicity – you should you think about the presentation in advance

• Choosing a non-standard font significantly increases the likelihood of a presentation's success. Programs for creating presentations usually allow you to add custom fonts
• Bright and colorful images have a positive impact on views of the presentation. In the network, you can find a large number of free photos or pictures, so there is always something to choose from when working on slides
• Pay attention not only to the selection of bright colors but also to their compatibility
• The presentation should be sustained in a single style - it's better to take the colors of the corporate logo. There are services, which allow you to load an image and get the entire palette of colors used when creating it.

To become more effective in making the presentation, attention should be paid to reducing the time of their creation. You need to learn your favorite presentation tool – PowerPoint, to make your presentations faster and more qualitative. Each of the programs has its advantages and built-in features, the use of which can significantly diversify the presentation. To make the presentation creation less time-consuming, it's worth creating a template for all future presentations. A common template that will be further modified in accordance with the task, will make the process much easier. When you will need to create a new presentation, you will take the old one and update it with the relevant up-to-date information. Full-screen view and a folded presentation are very different. You should always remember how the visual perception of the same presentation presented in different variants can differ. It is necessary to think about this in advance.

The stages of making a good PowerPoint presentation

• Identify your purpose of the presentation
• Develop a structure of the presentation
• Decide how many slides should be in your presentation

The purpose of the presentation

The ideal goal (or several goals) of the presentation is at the intersection of what you want to say and what you need to interest the audience. And if your presentation does not have a goal at all, it's just a waste of time – for you and for people who will listen to you. Do not forget about it!

The structure of your presentation

• Introduction. Here you can use the triggers to interest the audience
• Identification of the problem (or topical, urgent issues)
• The solution of the problem (the main and the most important part of the presentation)
• The conclusion (repetition of the main thoughts of the presentation and, necessarily, a call to action).

This structure is universal and you can apply it almost always. But of course, it is not the only correct one of all possible structures. When you do your presentation, you need to always think about what will be really effective for the specific presentation. Do not immediately create a structure for a future presentation in PowerPoint or other similar programs if you do not have enough experience in the creating of presentations. This is a common mistake!

By doing so, you are likely to forget something or lose the purpose of the presentation. During the creation of the structure, you will have to work with a lot of ideas and information, and in PowerPoint, it will be difficult to see the overall picture. Therefore, it is better to start with a standard pen and paper (or with stickers). You can leave the favorite stickers, so you will not forget anything. Even if you forget something, it's always easy to paste a new sticker. Paper and stickers have an alternative – you can create a mental map in special applications. There are many simple and effective online applications, for example, Coggle.

How many slides should be in your presentation?

• The amount of information
• The time for your presentation
• The type and format of the presentation itself (for example, public speaking or sending by email for self-reading).

• The structure (content, history)
• The design of slides (correct and suitable)
• The presentation (prepared speech).

The professional audit of the presentation

• Specify the purpose of your presentation. Why do you need a presentation? What is its original essence, what do you want to convey with it? If you do not have a clear answer to this question, then before you send something on editing, you should determine the purpose of your presentation
• Specify the presentation format. Is your presentation intended for public speaking or sending by email (which means just reading it)? This also can be a private meeting with a client or investor and so on. Be sure to specify the format to get the correct audit
• Who is the target audience? Drawing up a portrait of your audience is a very important stage in creating not only presentations, but also services, products and many other things. The more understanding you have, the better.
• Presentation results. Any worthy presentation must end with some call to action. In other words, you should have a good idea of what listeners or readers should do after the presentation. Identify what results do you expect and are going to achieve with the help of your slides.

Correct placement of the information blocks

People are accustomed to reading from left to right and from top to bottom. Knowing this feature, you can get people to look into that part of the slide, which is the most important. This is a very simple technique that works in 100% of cases. It structures information and allows you to use the visual hierarchy. The viewer first sees the title, then quickly scans the text, and then his view moves absolutely naturally from left to right, where the pictures are located.

Use the rule of 10/20/30

This is the universal rule for small presentations. It suggests to use not more than ten slides and show them in no more than twenty minutes’ speech. The number thirty – is the number for the size of font that you should use. Many people use the text of the 10th size for their presentations. This helps to put a lot of text into the slide. However, this is totally not correct. This leads to a situation when the speaker simply reads this text. However, once the public understands that you are reading, it simply begins to read with you. This is not what you want for sure.

The reason why people use a small font is simple - they are not into the material, so they need to have the whole text in front of them. Besides, many people are convinced that more text on the slides makes a better impression. This is totally not true and gives even opposite impression. Force yourself to apply a font of at least 30th size. This will make your presentation better because it requires you to find the sharpest accents and figure out how to successfully deliver them to the audience. This is making the right thing – the audience will not see the whole picture until you give it to them.

Try to avoid the long sentences. A good presentation should be simple and understandable. Its task - to convey the main idea, not much delving into the topic. The problem for many students is that they want to tell as much as possible and strongly slaughter the information with the slide. The audience should not read the presentation - it should listen. And pictures and headlines only improve the perception and assimilation of information. Do not use too long sentences in presentations, try to briefly formulate your ideas and present them in a list. Don't place too many items on one slide - if you have 10 of them, then that's bad. In this case, it is best to place the information on two slides.

Less is better

As noted above, the main feature of a bad presentation in PowerPoints is an overabundance of information in the slide. Audiences, in this case, have to make significant efforts to understand what is at stake. In a good slide, there should always be a lot of free space that allows people to focus on key details. Working on the presentation, you must follow the rule of 6/6 - a maximum of 6 points per slide and no more than 6 words in each paragraph. Visual disorder worsens perception, so it will be better to reformulate the sentence to fit it in one line.

Use simple colors

Working on the presentation, you need to pay attention to the color gamut of slides. Do not use too bright colors - the audience will quickly get tired and lose interest. So the color should be used sparingly. A dark color on a light background or light text on a dark will always work well. Also, intensive gradients should be avoided, which can make the perception of the text difficult.

If the presentation is created for any brand, it would be nice to get acquainted with his guide before starting the work. If the guide does not exist, then it's better to use those colors that are present in the company's identity - so the presentation will be unambiguously associated with delirium. When choosing a color palette, it is better to give preference to soft and non-contrast colors and to use bright colors only to attract attention to the main details.

Use fonts without serifs

Fonts with serifs look very good on printed pages, but they are not suitable for presentation. Therefore, you need to use fonts such as Helvetica, Tahoma, Verdana, and etcetera. Such fonts are much easier to read from the screen, however, when selecting a font, you should avoid too thin or too narrow. In the presentation, it is better to use a limited number of fonts, ideally - no more than three. Each font is individual and carries an emotional message. Thereby, it should still be original, to make sure that his appearance corresponds to the theme of the presentation.

As you know, a good font has several traces. Thus, you can draw attention to the text in three ways - using italics, boldface or color selection. The eyes of the viewer always look first at what stands out, so use styling very carefully. Overdoing the text styles can achieve the opposite effect - the audience will not be able to distinguish the main from the secondary and the presentation will turn out to be unsuccessful.