I came across this article today and thinking back in my public speaking courses in college and how to use Power Point effectively while making speeches or presentations.  So when I came across this website I thought I cover it as well and put in my two cents on how to be a better Power Point user.  Now before I begin I was a so so designer and programmer of Power Point presentations and what I mean programmer I mean setting up slide animations, transitions, audio, video stuff like that.

Some of which I had learn when I took Microsoft Applications II and learn how to use Power Point a bit better, either way its always good to learn the design aspects of Power Point and then be able set up presentations properly as well.  On that note lets begin with the awesome tips and see what new stuff you might learn.

1. Compose Slides

• Don’t copy & paste slides from different sources.
• Keep the design very basic and simple. It shall not distract.
• Pick an easy to read font face.
• Carefully select font sizes for headers and text.
• Leave room for highlights, such as images or take home messages.
• Decorate scarcely but well.
• Restrict the room your design takes up and don’t ever let the design restrict your message.

With the first tip about the copy and pasting, I can tell you its a pain because of the fact that once you paste that slide on to the presentation your working on, it messes up the design and layout of that slide by defaulting on the current designs you using right now.  Especially with font sizes, spacing and the use of images and video and so if your going to be copying slides its best to have it open to the side and then set everything up again and or type out the text and what not.

As for the second tip, to really sum it up, don’t use hot pink or neon green backgrounds, or backgrounds that will make the tet hard to read or disappear or even some wacky animations like a rotating rainbow.  So if your going to do something with the background offset your background images and use solid colors or soft gradient backgrounds.

As for the fonts, its just common sense how to use them properly, but common ones would be Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, stay away from skinny and small fonts, or those pixelated like fonts.

As for headers and text, I would say your headers should be no more then 30px as for text itself, no more then 18 if you have images or video, or if you have neither then no more then 24px.  Now the reason I say that is if you doing a presentation, the project is going to blow it up pretty good and so sometimes its good to connect to one before your presentation and then make any changes necessary so that everything can fit onto the slide with the proper spacing as well.

Now, if you have Power Point 2007 it comes with pregenerated layouts you can use to space out your text and images, its a good idea to use them and that way you don’t have to worry about spacing and moving things around.

With the decorating, trying to use animated images scarcely and the same with background music as well.  Of course, the other side of things is slide transitions and the way text appears, as it sometimes can be a bit overkill and could take awhile to load if your running on a slow computer.  Of course, if its a business presentation you don’t want a smily face on your presentation or that could get you fired.

If you like to use borders in your presentation don’t get restrictive with it, meaning not leaving even room for your text and or images.   A good/bad example of this would be this image right here, as you can youd don’t have much room to work with and so you be spending your time using smaller fonts and even less text and images.  As for the other way, usually a good practice is to press enter to place a gap between key notes and text to make it less crowded, usually though if your working in a design it will auto adjust the size of the text.  Sometimes if you work outside that area, you can litterally break the design and your text will go outside the slide and so its best to use the power point layouts to keep you from breaking outside the slide.

2. Use Consistency

• Consistently use the same font face and sizes on all slides.
• Match colors.

With fonts the best way to do working with consistent fonts is that your header fonts will still the same, but the constant can usually be two different fonts to help give separation.  Of course, it is good to use bold, italics and underline as to help emphasize your keywords or your presentation even more.  So at most stick with at least 3 fonts that work well with other and not using like a 100 different fonts per slide.

There is really much to say about this but again if your a user of neon green and hot pink then you need to relearn your colors, but if your a web designer then you already ahead of the game.  Since web designers agree that the wrong colors such as blue/orange or yellow/white are usually the not best of colors.  However colors like black and pink, or grey and orange are a good combination to use if you match up just right.  Of course, Power Point does come with pregenerated layouts with various background and colors and so that would be a good place to learn what works and what doesn’t work in terms of  using color in your presentation.  Also the website ColorBlender.com that was mention is also a good start in using the right color combinations as well and so give that site a look see and find out what colors look good for your presentation.

3. Use Contrast

• Black text on a white background will always be the best but also the most boring choice.
• If you want to play with colors, keep it easy on the eyes and always keep good contrast in mind so that your readers do not have to strain to guess what you’ve typed on your slide.

That is true about black and white, just because of how easy on the eyes that combination of colors are, but don’t be afraid to try out new combinations such as dark green and white and even black and orange.  So try out new combinationations, and if your a web designers then you know what combos to use to make a good presentation.  Remember it is usually light on dark or dark on light and not both together because it wold be very hard to see yellow and white and black and dark grey and so the best way to learn would be to search for web design tips on how to to effectively use color and that way you have a better time with setting up Power Point.