How to Make a Presentation

6 Principles to Create A Good Slide for Presentation

July 18, 2013 by Muhammad Noer

A good presentation slides will help you in delivering a good presentation. Before opening PowerPoint software and creating your slide, you need to understand what the role of a slide in a presentation is.

In this article, you will learn slide as visual aid and how it complements your role as a presenter. You will also learn key principles to make slide for presentation.

Slide and Visual Aid

Basically, slide has a function to support your presentation. Slide is not the presentation itself. The role of slide as presentation aid is different than your role as a presenter. Slide is necessary to explain something which is difficult to describe it only with words. We know that an image could represent a thousand words. A good slide should be able to summarize the message to make the audience understand it easily. Additionally, using a slide, you can present a trend, comparison, and highlight key points that is more difficult to be explained by words.

Don’t forget, slide is not the only visual aid for presentation. There are many other visual aids that you can use, such as flipchart, video, sample of product, and other things. Don’t just stick to slide when it comes to visual aid in your presentation.

Basic Principles to Create a Good Slide

There are several basic principles that should be carried out to create a good slide for PowerPoint presentation. If you follow these principles, your slide will function as a tool to aid your presentation. Your slide will not be the problem that could divert the audience’s attention from the presentation itself.

Following are the principles:

1. Simple

The best slide is usually simple, easy, and to the point. Your audience is busy people. They have so many things to do. They have so many concerns. Help them with simple and to do point PowerPoint slide.

This kind of slide will offer you flexibility in giving explanation. The more complicated a slide, more time would be needed for the audience to understand. In some cases, you will face difficulty in explaining the slide.

2. Necessary or Unnecessary

Before you make any slide for your presentation, ask yourself, “Is it necessary?”

Think why you need the slide before actually creating it.

Ask yourself, “Do I need 10 slides or just 5 slides should be enough?”

“Could I combine several slides into one?”

“Could I replace the slide with a brief explanation to the audience?”

Just asking yourself with these questions will help you creating an effective and efficient slide. A slide that is necessary and not just nice to have.

3. Background and Readable Font

Today, you have a choice among thousands of backgrounds and fonts available. You will be tempted to use and experiment with so many choices.

Any combination should be okay as long as you create enough contrast between background and font. If you choose dark background, make sure to use light font color so it will be easier to read and vice versa.

Preferably, choose maximum 2 fonts for one slide. You can also use these 2 fonts for the entire presentation.

Why? Because too many fonts will make your audience’s eyes tired. Your audience will get confused because they cannot see consistency and connection between slides. A good font for presentation is the one that does not have too many decorations. It should be easy to read such as: Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet. You can use decorative font for title or supporting text, but not for the body text.

4. Avoid Bullet, Use Less of It

When possible, avoid bullet point. It is the most boring slide that makes people feel asleep.

But if you must use it, make sure they are less than 7 bullets in a slide.

Too many bullets will make the font getting smaller and unreadable. No need to create a slide if your audience cannot read it. Use slide as a summary of your thought and ideas, not as your speaking notes.

If you have more than 7 items to show, try to make it less and concise. Remember, maximum 7 lines. Less is always better.

5. Image, graphic and diagram

Slide is visual aid to help you explain complex ideas in an easy way. Therefore, use image, graphic, chart or diagram to show your ideas visually. A good slide can summarize complex things into simple visualization which is not easy to be explained orally. Therefore, take the advantage of using a good image, graphic and diagram.

Choose the right image to support your thought. The right image could represent a thousand words. On the other hand, wrong image can create confusion. Image should be relevant with the content and able to help the audience understand your explanation. On the contrary, irrelevant image will distract audience’s attention as they have difficulty to associate the displayed image with the content of your presentation.

In term of graphics or charts, there are numerous graphics that you can use to support your presentation such as bar, pie chart, line, or combination of those. You have to pick the right graphic to have a great influence on the audience so they will understand easily the content of your presentation.

For instance, bar chart is the most common and suitable graphic to explain growth for a certain time period. Pie chart is best used to show proportion comparison. The round shape of cake makes the audience easy to associate the portion of cake to make comparison. Line chart is relevant to show a trend within longer period of time. Understand what you want to communicate first then select the best chart for it.

Diagram is very useful to explain the steps of a process and the relationship between them. Therefore, the audience will understand effortlessly the most difficult part of the presentation.

6. Use Color Combination with Good Contrast

Choose several colors for your slides. Use colors that have enough contrast especially between the background and the content. Use colors in a consistent way and repeat it in your slide decks. Do not use different colors in every slide, because it will create distraction to your audience as well as it looks unprofessional.

Those are the 6 principles that you should know in making a great presentation slide.

Final Thoughts

You might also wonder about how to use template which has various colors and styles? After all, you can use template that follows the principles above. Try to select template without complex background that could take more space and attention in your presentation. This is important, because the template background will show-up in every presentation slide from the beginning to the end.

What about animation, transition’s effect between slides, and the use of sound? You must pay attention carefully on these matters. Regarding to animation, motion image or image that changes frequently could distract the audience’s attention easily. So, you should ask yourself whether it is necessary or not for your presentation. In certain condition animation could be useful to explain a complicated technique process in a way that the motion image will show how the process works. Other than that, I suggest not to use animation.

Furthermore, you should pay attention on the transition between slides and how the text would appear on the screen. In this regard, I am more conservative and rather choose the simple transition such as Appear or Fade in PowerPoint. The reason is, this kind of transition does not cause too much of distraction. Besides, if you use it appropriately it will add strength to your presentation. For example, if you explain a diagram which presents stages and you want the audience to see each stage, then you should use this kind of transition. Avoid using transition that makes the text spinning around or moving sideways from left to right, the letter appears one by one along with the sound of gunfire and other exaggerating accessories.

Finally, I don’t recommend to use sound, unless, you are showing a video in the presentation. Many presentations look very unprofessional and might disturb the audience’s attention when every paragraph appears with the sound of gunfire, hand clapping, or camera shoot. Be aware that you are delivering a presentation not presenting a special effect of a film.

Hence, those are the guidance that you can use as reference to create presentation slide. Hopefully this guidance will help you to prepare the slide very well and effectively. After all, slide is only a tool which aimed to support the success of a presentation.

If you have any comment about this, please share your point of view.

How to Make a Good and Convincing Presentation?

July 4, 2013 by Muhammad Noer

Are you a student who often has to give presentations in front of your teacher or professor? Or an employee who often has to give presentations in front of your clients or your boss?

Well, whoever you are, I am sure you have experienced nervous or anxious when you have to give a presentation or speaking in front of the public.

A public opinion poll about fear reveals that fear of death stand at the second place of the list after the fear of public speaking that stand at the first place. A result that shows us about just how many people who afraid to speak in front of the public.

Actually, giving a presentation or speaking in front of a public is not as scary as many people imagine. As long as you prepare the presentation properly and willing to practice sufficiently, you will be a able to make a good, convincing and memorable presentation.

Here are some tips that you can use to make a convincing presentation. These tips are based on my experience in giving presentations and public speaking, as well as some presentations training I have attended.

1. Set the goal of your presentation

Every presentation must have a goal. You present a product to make your client buy it. You present business plan proposal to get support and approval from your boss. You explain a topic that you have mastered to make people understand it.

In general, the purpose of presentation is one of these two things: giving information (informative) or persuade the audience to do something (to persuasive).

Goal setting is important because it will determine the way you prepare and deliver the presentation. Presentation to inform will be different than presentation to convince.

An informative presentation need to be designed as informative as possible. The purpose is to help your audience who doesn’t know the topic at all before they attend your presentation become well informed after leaving your presentation.

A persuasive presentation should be able to touch the emotional side of the audience so they willing to change their attitudes as well as encourage them to do something such as: approve your idea, buy your product, or supporting what you’ve done or what you will do.

2. Know your audience

If you don’t know it you won’t love it, a saying that also applied in presentation. Take your time to find out who will come to your presentation. What is their position in the organization, what they expect from your presentation, what is their education background, what is their learning style, and so on.

This is important because basically a presentation is delivering some materials to an audience. Even if you think you have done the best, you can’t expect that the audience that hears you always have the same thought.

By identifying the audience you will be able to decide your presentation approach. Maybe one of your audiences is an important person in the organization who likes graphics and figures. Showing good graphics along with explanations for the numerical data will be a plus. Maybe your prospective audience is a visual learner. She will be pleased with images, diagrams and concrete examples. Then you can decide to add more images into your slides.

In another occasion you might have audience with kinesthetic learning style. Demonstrating something in front of people like this will give a stronger impact. If necessary, you can bring the product or anything you can use as a model during the presentation.

And if you find your audience consists of people with a mixture of learning style, just combine all approach proportionately.

3. Make a presentation framework

In general, a presentation consists of three parts; opening, content, and closing.

Opening part is a place where you can give an early description of the presentation topic and goal. Content is a part where you can explain your materials structure, starting with the background, problems, and solution you want to offer. And the closing part consist of your summary for the topic and a call for action to the audience, which could be buying your product, accepting your idea, or a better understanding about your topic.

As the first step in making the framework, you can create a mind map to describe the main ideas or keywords of anything you will explain in your presentation. Mind mapping will make you easier to see the whole description of your presentation and the main points that should be delivered so that the audience will completely understand and accept it.

In your mind map be sure to pay a lot more attention to the opening and closing part. These two parts is more important than the other, because it will be remembered most by the audience as well as the opportunity for you to get their attention. But it doesn’t mean that the other part is not important.

Some methods you can use in the opening part are asking question, giving a quote, statement, story, or humor. If you think it is necessary, you can memorize it. A good opening that flowing easily will build-up your self-confidence to go to next step of your presentation.

Closing part is a place where you summarize the substance of the whole presentation. This part is very important because it is your chance to give something that will always be remembered by the audience after they leave the room. Be sure to prepare it well.

4. Prepare presentation slides and other visual aids.

It is hardly to find a presentation without any PowerPoint slides or similar programs these days. To prepare a good slide there is only one principle, “Keep It Simple”. Why? Your audience wants to hear about a complicated things in a simple way. Not the other way around.

Please note that the slide presentation is a visual aid, not the presentation itself. “You are the presenter, not the slide.” It is you that will determine attractiveness of your presentation. As long as the visual aids are in line with the messages you give verbally, you can use it. But if this aid makes the audience more confused instead, don’t use it.

A principle you need to know in preparing slides is; display only the main and significant point. Never make a slide that display detailed information and put in everything you would say. This will make your audience get bored easily. They will prefer to read the slides and no need to hear your explanation anymore. Your presentation will miss the goal.

Here are some tips to make an effective slide:

Don’t use too much text on a slide
Use images, diagrams and tables to explain a concept, data and facts
Don’t make a complex design because it will be harder to understand in a short time and tends to make the audience weary and not focus on what you are saying.

I will explain about how to make an effective slide specifically in this posting.
Remember that slide is not the only aids in a presentation, there are many other tools that you can use such as: flipchart, product samples, videos, and even your own body language. If you decide to use it, just prepare it carefully.

5. Practice

Practice make perfect. This also apply in preparing an important presentation. The more you practice the more skilled you are. It will be a good idea to invite your friends to listen to your presentation. Ask them to give comment to your materials, your presentation style and get their feedback on which part still need improvement.

Practice will also help you to know about how well you’ve prepared and mastered the materials. Think about your audience stand point while practicing: do they know the materials, what is their concern to this presentation, what questions they might ask, and what they expect from the presentation. By answering these questions you will be well prepared.

6. Relax

Relax and enjoy your presentation. Most people get anxious once they start talking in front of people. It could happen to you, too. But you don’t have to be panic. Some level of nervous is normal. In fact, even a great public speaker also experiences this feeling. Use the nervous energy to help you focus on yourself and what you have to say in the presentation.

You have to relax to calm down yourself. In this condition, it will be easier to recall anything you’ve memorized and practice. And it will help you to deliver a good and convincing presentation.

A simple tips to reduce nervousness and get relax is close your eyes, take a deep breath, and releases it slowly. Do this several times, and you will feel fresher and more relax.

That’s the tips to prepare a convincing presentation. In next posting, I will explain about how to deliver the presentation, started from the opening (using humor, quotes, or questions as the opening part of presentation), content, and closing.

Do you have other tips in making a good presentation?

Don’t be shy. Please share your thought in the comment area.