How to Create Effective Slides

Minimize the number of slides

To maintain a clear message and to keep your audience attentive and interested, keep the number of slides in your presentation to a minimum.

Choose a font STYLE that your audience can read from a distance

Choosing the right font style, such as Helvetica or Arial, helps to get your message across. Avoid narrow fonts, such as Arial Narrow, and avoid fonts that include fancy edges, such as Times. To learn more about how you can use pre-designed theme fonts in your presentation (Theme fonts: A set of major and minor fonts that is applied to a file. Theme fonts, theme colors, and theme effects compose a theme).

Choose a font SIZE that your audience can read from a distance

Choosing the right font size helps to get your message across. The following measurements indicate the size of a font on your computer screen, not projected on a screen for your audience in full screen mode. To enable full screen mode: On the View tab, in the Presentation Views group, click Slide Show.

  • A one-inch letter is readable from 10 feet.
  • A two-inch letter is readable from 20 feet.
  • A three-inch letter is readable from 30 feet.

Keep your text simple by using bullet points or short sentences

Use bullets or short sentences, and try to keep each to one line; that is, without text wrapping. You want your audience to listen to you present your information, rather than read the screen. Some projectors crop slides at the edges, so long sentences may be cropped. You can remove articles such as "a" and "the" to help reduce the word count on a line.

Use art to help convey your message

Use graphics to help tell your story. Don't overwhelm your audience by adding too many graphics to a slide, however.

Make labels for charts and graphs understandable

Use only enough text to make label elements in a chart or graph comprehensible.

Make slide backgrounds subtle and keep them consistent

Choose an appealing, consistent template or theme that is not too eye-catching. You don't want the background or design to detract from your message. (Template: A file or set of files that contains information about the theme, layout, and other elements of a finished presentation.) (Theme: A combination of theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects. A theme may be applied to a file as a single selection.)

For more information about using themes, see Apply a theme to your presentation.

Use high contrast between background color and text color

Set the contrast between a light background with dark colored text or dark background with light colored text. You can use themes to automatically set a visually satisfying contrast level.

Check the spelling and grammar

To earn and maintain the respect of your audience, always check the spelling and grammar in your presentation.

Source: See the Microsoft Office Online site for more information on Tips for creating and delivering an effective presentation.

Technical Tips and Resources

Each session room contains the following:

  • One data/video projector.
  • One PC computer with a Windows-readable USB flash drive and CD-ROM drive. Note: Macs can write a PC-formatted readable USB flash drive disk or CD-ROM.
  • Software: PowerPoint 2007 and Adobe Acrobat 8.0 One screen and two projectionists/operators To avoid setup delays, authors giving computer projection presentations should load media on a Windows-readable USB flash drive or a CD-ROM. Authors can use their own laptops, but should recognize that the additional setup cuts into presentation time.

If you use your own laptop, please review the following:

  • You must have a VGA 15 pin HD female VGA output. Some laptop computers (Macintoshs specifically) require an adapter to hook up to external monitors or data/video projectors using VGA. Presenters that are using their own laptops are responsible for bringing their own adapter and should know how to use it -- otherwise, connection to the data/video projector will not be possible.
  • Know how to get the image to the external port of the laptop. Instructions are in each laptop operator's manual. (If the external port is not always "on," it is usually a Function key, or combination of Shift plus a Function key, that will turn on the external port, or cycle through laptop screen, external port, or both.) If possible, set the maximum output resolution to XGA (1,024 x 768).
  • The data projectors in each session room have a native input resolution of 1,024 x 768. A higher resolution (i.e., 1,280 x 1,024) forces the data projector into a compression mode - you can lose information and higher resolutions may not display.
  • Presenters must bring a copy of all external files in their PowerPoint presentations. This includes movie or sound files (.wav, .avi, .mpg, etc.). Presenters using their own laptops should have the most recent version/update of drivers installed.