Slide design

• Keep it simple
  • keep your colour scheme, tables and graphs simple and well balanced
  • this is important if you don't have a lot of time to explain them
• Check if your organisation has a slide template; some companies and organisations like to keep the appearance of their presentations consistent.
• Balance text and graphics. A photo image often personalises a presentation, however, too many can detract from it.
• Use contrasting colours for text and background to ensure your text is legible.
• Avoid the overuse of clip art and animation. It detracts from the focus of your presentation, and the audience will walk away remembering the animation, not your main messages.
  
  

Font size

• Use sans serif fonts e.g. Gautami or Arial. A sans serif font is one without the bits on the end of the letters. They are easier to read on-screen and from distances.
• If you are in a large lecture theatre, you may have to increase your font size. The text should be large enough to be seen by the people in the back row.
• Font size should never be smaller than 20pt

Number of slides

• Remember to keep the presentation focused on your main messages, so don't have too many slides.
• Aim for an average of one slide per minute
  • some slides take longer to present, particularly graphs and tables
  • aim for a maximum of 12 slides for a 10 minute presentation
• Use a minimum of 30 seconds per slide, to make sure the audience has had enough time to grasp the key concepts.

Tech specs

• Presentations containing pictures and multimedia can be quite large, and it can be important to compress the file size: select any of the pictures, right-click on it> Format picture> Picture> click on Compress> under Apply to you can choose to compress just that picture or all pictures> click OK.
• You can save your presentation to the web: File> Save as Web Page. If your presentation contains movies or sounds, these files won't be saved in the presentation. You will need to save the original source in the same folder, on the same USB or disk you save your presentation on.
• During your presentation you can move among your slides by typing in the number of the slide and pressing Enter. To apply slide numbers go to menu> Insert> Slide Number> select Slide number and Footer> Apply to all.
  
  

Slide content

• Your first slide should include
  • the title of your presentation
  • your name
  • your organisation
• Focus on your audience and what they would like to hear – in a short presentation, it may be the results rather than the process.
• Keep the information on each slide concise. Use dot points where possible.
• Keep abbreviations and acronyms to a minimum. Always write the full name out the first time you use them.
• Have a concluding slide that covers the key messages.
• Include a slide with your contact details at the end of the presentation.