Yes, this is possible. You can make a presentation that will rock. Your audiences will go home happy and you'll communicate your message too. There are just six things that decide whether a presentation rocks or sucks. Well, it is that simple.
THE APPROACH – SHUT UP, AND TELL A STORY
The presentation you are going to make could be technical, sales pitches, for a project or be just another present your ideas. And please correct me if I’m wrong, I assume you already have stacked up a lot of statistics, data, reports & pie-charts. In other words, there is an information overload. You can go terribly wrong here. Don’t bombard the audience with all you figures, tables and bar-graphs.
Presentations are about telling stories. Weave a story around the subject; thicken the plot with strong facts & relevant figures only. Finally package the story with incredible visuals and a clear message. You intent is to communicate your message/idea in an interesting & captivating way.
THE DEBUT SLIDE
Your debut or opening slide speaks a lot about how your audience is going to react to the presentations. The first slide gives you a good opportunity to connect with your audience and build up a curiosity.
ü Less is more in presentations. Write less, communicate more.
ü Use obnoxiously large fonts or just plain large fonts.
ü Be simple, and avoid clutter.
ü Be bold & experimental. Frankly, there are no rules here.
USING IMAGES
Pictures look better & more compelling than you, if you are not Steve Jobs. ü Use images as whole backgrounds. This makes a better impact of the idea.
ü Create a high contrast between text and the image.
ü Use clear & high resolution image.
ü Make sure to give image credits.
ü Never ever use clipart, search on Flickr, Google Images & Deviantart.
KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE
The simpler your presentation is, the easier your message will be. Using small sentences & being articulate will help. Try to restrict the total number of words on a slide to a maximum of thirty. Although there are no rules to decide the number of slides in a presentation, ideally this is the break-up that I use.
ü 5 minutes: 8 – 12 slides
ü 10 minutes: 15 - 30 slides
ü 15 minutes: 20 – 40 slides
Avoid using bullet points, and put across your point directly.
CHOOSING COLOR PALETTE
This is the easiest thing to do, that most presenters do wrong. The picking right colour palette (colour combinations) for the presentation is important. That’s because, the slides need to look sleek, colour coordinated and soothing to the eye. Picking right colour combinations manually is quite a task for so many slides. How to do it? Visit any of the sites below, and just take your pick. Voila!
THE RIGHT SETS OF FONTS
Typography can kill. The safest approach here would be to stick to a single family of fonts. Even safer is stick to either Serif or Sans-serif font families.NO ANIMATION PLEASE
Sound effects, transitions, shadows, spinning objects and God-knows-what-else. Please avoid them. Nobody appreciates them.
As I always say, the presentation (the slides) is there to supplement the speakers effort in communicating his message. It is just a little piece of software. What makes it special is your presence, your talking, your voice.
All the best!
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