Microsoft PowerPoint 1D: Professional Looking Presentations

Professional looking presentations:

• Use appropriate language for your audience
• Use an appropriate color scheme

• Color schemes or Themes change over time (e.g. avacado, orange and brown were popular colors in the 70's while neon flourescents were common in the 80's)
  • Look at the colors being used in other sources advertisements, magazines etc. currently being used to see what is current and trendy
    • When you select the Design tab and then select a Theme a color scheme is automatically chosen for you which corresponds to the particular design (e.g. if the background is dark blue the text may be white so that it shows up)
• Selecting a theme for only one slide
  • If you only want a particular theme for one particular slide, instead of clicking on the theme, right mouse-click the theme and select Apply to Selected Slides
• You can make your own custom theme by select any color available for items such as backgrounds, text and lines, shadows, text titles etc. (thousands of colors are available for that custom look that you may require)

Other tips

• Don't be wordy, use as few words to convey message as is appropriate
• Strive for consistancy and neatness
• Avoid clutter (don't have too much going on a page...leave enough blank space
• Use the company logo and possibly company slogans where appropriate so the user relates to the company name

Working with fonts

• If you find the perfect font, you may find that the user of your presentation does not have the same font installed on their computer (in such cases a different font will be substitued)
• You can purchase fonts (thousands of variations) on CD or through providers on the Internet and install them on your computer, however if the presentation is used on a different computer the fonts will look different

Note: although not covered in these lessons, one solution to this problem is to take a screen snapshot of the text that you have created, save the image and crop it in an image program then insert the image instead of the text itself. This solution however is a timely process and you won't be able to change the text without making a new image

• You can set up the show prior to viewing it by clicking on the Slide Show tab and pressing the Set Up Show

• The first option Presented by a speaker (full screen) is used when utilising a projector
• The second option is used if you want the presentation to appear in a smaller window than the full screen
• The Browsed at a kiosk option is for kiosks

Note: you can also specify only certain slides to be presented or overide any of the timings in the slide show and use manual clicking instead

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