Welcome to Powerpoint Plain white backgrounds are not so bad… as long as your text is readable. as long as your text is readable. And don’t get carried away with the fonts. Black backgrounds aren’t so bad either… “Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.”—mathematician David Hilbert, referring to quantum mechanics

Dark blue text on black is not such a good idea. Better yet, use a bold, sans serif font on dark backgrounds. I personally used to like gradient fills for backgrounds…

As long as they are reasonably subtle. Powerpoint offers many animation effectsbut don’t make mefeel likeI am standingin the middle of a war zone.

Organizing Your Presentation Using the same background for all your “slides”  makes you look organized  helps you get organized  impresses your audience  is patriotic  blah de blah  please don’t read aloud every single word  I know UMR no longer exists but this makes for a good example  NEVER put this many bullet points on one slide

Go to and click on “powerpoint” for some Missouri S&T-branded templates. Click on “design” then “color schemes” and make sure your hyperlinks are in an appropriate color (not yellow on a white background).

Please, only one background per presentation. Simply formatting your text box can add appropriate emphasis. But don’t get carried away with too many effects, like I am intentionally doing here… “A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane.”—J. Willard Gibbs, mathematician, physicist …and sometimes can’t help doing in my lectures for other classes.

Don’t cram too much information on one slide. Don’t cram too much information on one slide. Blah blah blah. After all, you aren’t paying $1.00 per transparency sheet Don’t cram too much information on one slide. Blah blah blah. Or sacrificing trees by wasting paper—electrons are recyclable.

Don’t use an itty bitty font. Everybody likes YouTube videos. If that’s all your talk is composed of, your professor will probably give credit for the talk to the person who made the video, not to you.

You can do a lot with Powerpoint’s drawing tools. All created with rectangle tool (many more variations possible! Handy hints: select object, hold down control key, and use arrows for precise positioning. Disable grid for precise positioning.

Plan on 1 – 2 minutes per “slide.” If you go much faster, you lose your audience. Unless you are presenting a series of extremely brief ideas, like I am doing here. Clip art can be very useful. Learn how to make “transparent” gifs. Animations are fun, but your audience will pay more attention to them than to you. Avoid the overused.

This is a graphical medium. Don’t forget the graphics. Or links to the web. (first image ever posted on internet)web

Audio “clip art” can be useful. But I don’t want to hear a lot of machine gun clips. Only 12 year olds and 16 year olds will think it’s cool. Audio “clip art” can be useful. Maybe.

You will never have enough time to finish your presentation. You will