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You may be an expert in your field, but unless your PowerPoint slides are well designed, they can easily undermine the effectiveness of your presentation. But following a few basic guidelines can help you create presentations that consistently convey your message in an interesting, memorable and persuasive way.

PowerPoint is an advanced presentation software package that forms part of the Microsoft Office Suite. It enables users to write and edit, insert illustrations and graphically represent data, incorporate animation effects and even sound. It has eliminated the myriad tedious steps that were required to produce overhead slides before PC-based software revolutionized publishing and became a standard business tool throughout the industrialized world.

A variety of PowerPoint views enable you to rehearse your presentation in advance, easily change the slide order, and even preview how the slides would look printed as handouts in various configurations.

PowerPoint's benefit to business is immense. As communication technology has demanded that business leaders receive, process, and act on information faster than ever, they need a presentation medium that can condense lengthy documents and complex issues into key concepts and facts for quick dissemination to others. PowerPoint does this in a format that is easy to present and easy for an audience to understand and remember.

But PowerPoint's ease of use is both its greatest strength and its biggest pitfall. Many users are tempted to pack as much information and as many special effects as they can into their slides. If you have ever endured a meeting where a presenter merely read the wordy text from a dense and poorly designed set of slides, illustrated with meaningless graphs or clip-art, then you have seen PowerPoint use at its worst.

You can avoid these traps by keeping in mind a few essential guidelines as you prepare your PowerPoint presentations:

- Remember "Less is more" as a guiding rule. This time-tested design adage applies well to
PowerPoint.

Include only one main idea per slide, with no more than three brief supporting lines of
text.

- The key points on each slide should summarize the points in your speech, instead of the
speech summarizing the slides. While you are speaking, elaborate on the slides as much
or as little as you wish.

- Use clip-art, photos, graphs and charts sparingly, and only to convey one or two major
points of information on each slide.

- Limit the use of animation and sound so they will enhance your message rather than
distract the audience's attention.

- Avoid crowded or inconsistent slide layouts that can confuse or overwhelm your audience
with too much information.

Choosing from the many slide and presentation templates that Microsoft and other software
manufacturers provide will take much of the design work out of your task. A variety of
styles suitable to various types of information are readily available with your
PowerPoint software or on-line. These templates incorporate slides whose fonts, graphic
styles, backgrounds, and layouts are coordinated to show your material for optimum
effect. You can find free PowerPoint backgrounds, free PowerPoint layouts and templates
from a variety of on-line sources.

- Simplify your graphics, whether they are photos, clip art, graphs, or charts. Artwork
will be most effective when it works the same way a logo does, quickly and concisely
conveying an image or concept with simplicity of design and few words.

By keeping these few guidelines in mind you will quickly learn to develop powerful presentations that deliver your message in a concise, effective, and memorable way.

Learn more about this author, Ina Winslow.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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