A “How to” Guide for a Better Presentation 12 Easy Steps to Follow Presentation Guidelines By: Mr. Pace

Step 1-Know Your Audience Define your Audience Develop the Directions Know your audience and think about what interests they have in the topic you’re presenting

Step 2- ”Content is King” Worry about your design last CLARITYMake sure your message has CLARITY

Step 3- Get a Color Wheel Understanding what colors look good together Primary Colors Yellow –Red, Yellow, and Blue Secondary Colors –Green, Orange, and Purple Aggressive / Warm Colors Yellow –Red, Orange, and Yellow Receding / Cool Colors –Blue, Green, and Purple

Step 4- Use Your Color Wheel Remind yourself of good color management Notice what colors compliment each other Know what colors detract from each other

Step 5- “Keep it simple stupid” - KISS Keep your slide display easy to read and understand Don’t crowd the screen with clip-art Keep the transitions and animations simple and discreet

Step 6- Fonts are like Donuts Never eat/use more than three Keep fonts consistent Same font for all titles Second font for your text Never use non-standard fonts

Step 7- Consistency Don’t use animation or sound effects just because you can Practice good ‘effect management’ When in doubt don’t do it

Step 8- Think before using the header / footer Things which can be added: –Date –Number of slides –A blank box for your name, department, or the title of your favorite Elvis Presley song –Think about the information and the audience viewing it

Step 9- Stop. Look. Dial-up. The more complex the background and clip-art, the bigger the PowerPoint file Keep the backgrounds solid colors or simple template images, therefore the PowerPoint files will stay lean in size

Step 10- Murphy’s Law Always use your own gear –light ware, laptop, projector Always have a backup –Have a technology and a non-technology oriented backup –Burn a CD –Have a copy of a zip disk Always take it to a similar presentation venue

Step 11- Combating Murphy’s Law First, do a dry run Second, provide a downloadable version of your presentation Finally, provide a low-band width version of your presentation And Again-

Step 12- Repeat Once you have run through each of these steps, don’t just follow the steps for one presentation or an occasional speech, make it a part of the preparation process…

Conclusion Developing PowerPoint presentations goes back to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you Develop Presentations that you would find inviting and easy to understand Adopted from Matthew A. Christian