Rules from How to Create an Effective PowerPoint Presentation 101:
Large, readable type. One how-to source says nothing smaller than 24-point!
One idea per slide. Of course this could mean a slide presentation of 100 or more slides as one communicator on Ragan.com confessed to having to sit through. Another Ragan forum communicator shared how her CEO used a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation as a black-and-white brochure. Yikes! Another communicator quoted in IABC’s CW magazine reports of stuffing a five-page report onto one slide just to see if it’s possible. It is possible!
Minimal copy (if you can’t read it from the back of the room, it should not be on the slide). I attended a session at the international conference where the presenters kept apologizing, “I know you can’t read all of this, but…”
NO complicated charts, graphs, etc. Or how about the globe with all of your company’s locations plus a legend of all the little markers?!?!?
Okay. We all know what we’re supposed to do, but why don’t we do it? Because the software program makes it so easy to stick it on a slide and call it communication. It lets everyone in the company create their own show and no doubt having every page, chart and graph of their pet project up on the screen provides that comfort blanket as they make the presentation. What was supposed to be a program to help presenters highlight their talks has become the blob that ate the presentation as the audience stares at the screen trying to figure out what it says.
I offer this prayer–Please Lord, grant me the courage to explain to my client why putting an org chart that shows the company’s six worldwide divisions with manager mug shots and a picture of the globe in the background is not effective communication. And while you’re at it help me convince him that the company’s Web site links really don’t need to say, “Click here.” Amen.
