Presentation Skills: Creating and Presenting slides

Silva Gambo

13 min readSep 11, 2022

Important factors and tips for creating and presenting presentations.

CONTENTS

1. What is a presentation?

2. What is a MS PowerPoint ?

3. Types of presentations.

4. How to make an effective presentation.

5. Factors that affect effective presentation.

6. Guidelines while preparing and presenting a presentation.

7. Typography guidelines while designing PowerPoint slides.

8. How to use colors in PowerPoint slides.

9. Working with charts.

10. Working with tables.

What is a Presentation?

A Presentation is an effort to show, present, and clarify the content of an issue. Presentation of reports, adverts, prizes, qualifications, to the audience like participants, students, young children and other groups of people.

Presentation is also the means of communication, training, such as explaining and coaching a specific topic to a group of professionals, addressing a meeting, or briefing a team.

What is a Microsoft PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a highly innovative and versatile program, a graphic program that allows you the production of professional-looking presentations.

A PowerPoint presentation also is called a slide show. We can run virtual presentations on the Internet, taking advantage of the World Wide Web.

PowerPoint also can create paper printouts of the individual slides, outlines, and speaker notes. PowerPoint gives us the flexibility to make presentations using:

• personal computer

• projection device (projector)

• overhead transparencies (screen)

• PowerPoint presenter (infrared pointer)

well-prepared hand-out as a guide

What can Presentation do?

Types of Presentations

Educational: Educational presentation is brief, with illustrative facts, explanations, and points.

Instructional: The purpose of an instructional presentation is to give specific directions, training, or orders.

Exciting: A progress at work or trips to be made, end of year massages are short compelling presentations.

Decision-making: A decision-making presentation presents ideas, suggestions, and arguments strong enough to persuade an audience to carry out requests.

How to make an effective Presentation?

Presenting information clearly and effectively is crucial to getting a message or opinion across to the listeners. It would help to spend some time developing presentation skills. Delivering an inspirational or captivating presentation requires a lot of preparation and work.

Reading a digital text format and graphics is not about leisure or relaxation. It is about useful information in the shortest time possible.

Consequently, we consume digital text a lot differently than if we read it in print. Digital text is not read thoroughly in a word-by-word manner; instead, it is glanced over in a few seconds, and the reader goes back to the detail later.

Things to know before preparing a presentation

Your message must be understood, remembered, and acted upon; therefore, before preparing material for a presentation, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is the presenter?

• What is the purpose of the presentation?

• What is in it for them? Focus on the user’s needs and benefits.

• What does the audience already know about the subject?

• Is the presenter to inform, teach, stimulate, or provoke?

• Who will be attending? Know your audience age, relationship to the presentation, previous interactions, their attitude, and the subject, education, level of understanding, sex, cultural background, recent events attended.

• The size of the group or audience expected.

• The age range (a talk aimed at adult people will be quite different from one aimed at teenagers) and gender (will the audience be male or female?).

• What is your product?

Visit the place where the presentation will take place and find out about:

• How large is the room.

• Are there window curtains or blinds. How will it affect visual aids?

• Is seating arrangement well placed.

Is there a microphone, overhead projector, flip chart, computer equipment already in the room.
The availability of power sockets and if an extension power outlet is needed.

Presentation Time Duration With Questions And Answers

It is essential to remember that people find it difficult to maintain concentration after about 17 minutes of non-stop listening. A good reason for making a presentation well-structured and exciting aim for 45 minutes as a maximum single-session with suitable breaks.

Morning is the best time to speak because people are generally at their most alert.

Early afternoon is not an ideal time to make a presentation since people often feel sleepy and lethargic after lunch.

Midafternoon is a good time, whereas at the end of the afternoon people may start to worry about getting home, the traffic, or collecting children from school.

Organize the presentation material

A good presentation starts with an introduction to what the subject is and how you have organized the presentation (state key elements). Then tell them the details of the ingredients and messages arranged in sequential order of increasing importance.

Provide conclusion

Repeat main points, but try to use different words and summarize the main point and argument this time. End decisively, so that no one doubt that the presentation is in doubt. Lastly, time to ask the audience whether they have any questions.

Your presentation must cover your audience, purpose, and the presenter.

Factors That Affect Effective Presentation

The Voice: The voice is probably the most valuable tool of the presenter. It carries most of the content that the audience takes away. One of the oddities of speech is that we can quickly tell others what is wrong with their voice, e.g., too fast, too high, too soft, etc.

The Tone of Voice: The tone of your voice promotes or demotes the value of your business equally written and spoken. It’s about the way you say it and how you say it and not what you say.

Everybody has their way of expressing themselves and is unique to the person as their face or fingerprint. Some are pleasant and polite. Others are pushy and in-your-face.

The tone of your voice is an expression that makes an impression on everyone who reads or hears you.

Volume: The goal is to deliver a message without shouting. A voice that carries fear can frighten the audience, while a voice that brings laughter can get the audience to smile.

The Body: Your body communicates different impressions to the audience. People not only listen to you, but they also watch you.

Postures: Slouching tells them you are indifferent or you do not care, even though you might care a great deal. On the other hand, displaying good posture tells your audience that you know what you are doing and care deeply about it.

Facial Expression: your friendliness, warmth and smile are powerful signs that transmits happiness and likeness.

Gestures: If you fail to gesture while speaking, you may appear dull and stiff. Open your chest and arms and keep your back straight. Make eye contact with the audience to like you. A smile, nodding is a powerful weapon. Move while you speak in the space available to you.

Eye contact: Speakers who make eye contact with the audience, create the flow of communication and convey interest, concern, warmth, and credibility.

Guidelines While Preparing and Presenting a Presentation

Prepare well.

Know your material inside and out .

Do not ignore your audience

Tell your audience what to expect, what you will cover first, break time, questions, and so on. Make a connection with each person in your audience so that they’ll be more attentive to what you say.

Inappropriate content

The primary purpose of any presentation is to share information with others, therefore research on your topic thoroughly.

Keep it simple

Don’t try to pack too much information into your slides. Short and brief presentations are often more powerful than verbose ones. Limit yourself to a few main points.

Overhead transparencies-screen facts

Apply the dark background with light or white text when room is dark. For a bright lit room apply the white background with dark text.

What can spoil a good presentation:

• Loud or not blending colors

• Unnecessary animations

• Fonts too small to read

• Ineffective visuals

· Overcrowded text

Most effective presentations visuals aren’t flashy, rather they’re concise and consistent: brief, reliable and steady.

Typography Guidelines While Designing PowerPoint Slides

Recommended font size and amount of text on each slide

Only a few lines of text, or bullets point, on a slide, ideally no more than five to seven and only about five or seven words per line, justified left. There must be enough space between lines to prevent ‘crowding’ effects during reading.

Use sans-serif font types such as Helvetica, Arial, and Verdana. These sans-serif fonts are typically used in newspapers because they make reading quick and easy.

You should avoid serif typeface (Times, Century, Palatino, Garamond, and Bodoni).

Avoid the use of an italic font style. Use only one font type per slide. If you want some text to pop out, use a larger font or bold style to attract attention. Header with the title of the presentation and the number is only crucial for you as a presenter. Keep this as small as possible to save space for information for the audience.

Alignment. The main choices of aligning your text are left, right, center, and justified. Avoid mixing alignments as this can look very awkward. Left-aligned is the easiest to read, mainly when using a large type. Text in upper case can be challenging to read.

Use of Infographics

Standard templates are well known to viewers and are boring. To create more attention from your audience, design your unique templates that will correspond with the company’s colors logo.

Using Shapes, SmartArt, and Charts can add viewing experience and is engaging for audience.

How To Use Colors in PowerPoint Slides

In the absence of colors, the world will be a dull and miserable place. The paint around us influences some most critical decisions we make. We often remember the color of an object more than we remember its shape or form. We can easily forget forms and shapes but not colors.

Colors have more retention power which remains in our minds.

Colors are the first thing that decides whether or not you will carry the audience along. Even if your presentation is excellent in context and colors don’t stand out, not only do you waste time and money, it also makes you look dull and inattentive.

Color As Identity

Each country’s flag identity carries its national colors. For example, the Slovenian flag is white, blue, and red, and Nigerian is green, white, and green to establish the national identity. Colors can make us happy and cheerful; they can also be sad.

Principals of Colors

Traditionally, several color combinations are considered pleasing. The color wheel shows the relationship between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, evenly spaced in a circle.

a.) The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.

b.) Secondary colors orange, green, and purple are created by mixing two primary colors.

c.) Tertiary colors are created by mixing primary and secondary colors.

Other terms connected with color are tint, shade, intensity, complementary colors, and analogous colors.

Tint: This color is produced by adding white to another color.

Shade: This effect is produced by adding black to another color.

Intensity: This refers to the brightness or dullness of a color.

d) Complementary colors: These are colors that are opposite to each other on the color wheel. They produce sharp contrast when used side by side; for example, red and green are complementary colors.

e) Analogous colors: These are colors that are closely related. Red and orange are analogous colors. When used side by side, they blend very well and produce a pleasant result.

f) Warm and cool colors

Warm colors are vivid and energetic and tend to advance in space. Cool colors give an impression of calm and create a delicate appearance.

Worm colors: the reds, oranges, and yellows.

Cool colors: the greens, blues, and violets.

Having a color well templet beside you when designing slides is necessary.

How To Combine Colors

We have learned what the basic color wheel looks like, we can begin putting colors together creating palettes for our PowerPoint projects. Choose a maximum of three colors, as many colors may overwhelm the presentation.

Complementary colors are two colors that sit directly across from each other on the color wheel. Red and green, for instance, are complementary colors.

Analogous colors sit directly next to one another on the color wheel and can be very effective in creating a calm, serene feeling.

Triadic: Draw a triangle on the wheel and you’ll hit on three colors equally spaced apart-for instance, purple, orange, and green (the secondary colors).

A split-complementary color scheme uses one base color and two additional colors adjacent to the base color’s complement. So, if red-orange (vermillion) is the base color, the other two colors in the scheme would be blue and green.

Tetradic: This rectangular color scheme uses four colors broken into two complementary pairs. This rich color scheme can be tricky to manage but allows for a lot of variety. By using all colors equally, the overall design may appear unbalanced. Another characteristic to consider is the balance between warm and cool colors.

The square color scheme also uses four colors, but they are all spaced evenly around the wheel. Similar to tetradic colors, this palette works best if one color dominates and the others are accents.

Achromatic: Often used to create a clean, minimalist look, an achromatic color scheme exclusively uses black, white, and shades of grey. Designers will often throw in an accent color to create interest or break up the neutral design.

A monochromatic color scheme takes one hue and creates a design based on different tints, tones, and shares of the hue. This color scheme allows for cohesion and relies on contrasting styles to attract attention or create focus.

Working With Charts

Presenting information graphically in PowerPoint through demonstrating different charts to the audience is to understand the meaning behind the numbers. PowerPoint has a variety of chart types, each with its advantage.

a. Column/Bar Charts — used for comparing information

b. Line/Area Charts — are ideal for showing trends

c. Pie charts — are used to compare proportions

Understanding Charts

Vertical Axis

The vertical axis, also known as the y axis, is the vertical part of the chart. In this example, in the column chart, the vertical axis measures the columns’ height — or value — of the which is also called the value axis. However, in a bar chart, the horizontal axis would be the value axis.

Horizontal Axis

The horizontal axis, also known as the x-axis, is the flat part of the chart. In this example, the horizontal axis identifies the categories in the chart, also called the category axis. However, in a bar chart, the vertical axis would be the category axis.

Title

The title should clearly describe what the chart is illustrating.

Legend

The legend identifies which data series each color on the chart represents. It is crucial for many charts, but it may not be necessary for some graphs.

How Moderately Congested Chart Looks Like?

The most significant nuisance of charts seen on PowerPoint slides is that they are too crowded with numerical details, preventing the chart review and interpretation attentively. There is no breathing space or rather space.

Well-defined Chart

To get a perfect, pure-looking chart, abandon the 3D chart type, remove the value axis altogether and move the legend to the top right to give white space in-between the column groups. Finally, reduced the density of greed lines to make them less visible. To create a well-defined chart, only retain chart elements that are needed.

Guidelines on how to make great charts well-defined

a.) Provide clean, harmonious background (the audience will be able to review the chart more attentively).

b.) Retain only chart elements that are needed (you don’t always need a legend, data labels, axes labels, titles, plot lines, too much data, or too much extra text).

c.) Keep one at most two charts per slide.

d.) Plan your chart type. Chart figures express a thought, an idea, or a trend and inform the audience of your message. A well-crafted chart needs some quality time to create.

e.) Too many messages may confuse the chart title.

f.) Reverse engineer the chart.

g.) Stay away from 3D charts.

h.) Consider tables (not one solution can work with different data). Simple data with a few columns and rows can portray some data better than charts.

Working With Tables

Making a table in PowerPoint is quick and straightforward and the most common way to present data. However, standard tables are boring.

With a few easy face-lifting steps we can make it look more attractive, easy to read and remember. Using colors, basic shapes and simple symbols can attract attention.