Death by Powerpoint

1. Skills for Study 1
Images

2. Overview
• Look at examples of visual aids in history
• Look at good and bad examples of Powerpoint
• Watch a Powerpoint presentation

3. Visual aids have been used in
various ways throughout history

12. Powerpoint
• A great way to provide visual information
• Too often, it is badly used (death by
Powerpoint)

13. Don’t kill your audience

15. What can make a boring
presentation?

16. Too much text
Sometimes what people do is treat a
presentation like an essay, and they feel that
they have to write everything down to show
that they have thought of the right things.
However, a presentation is a spoken medium
and it is difficult to read and listen at the same
time. So try to avoid writing too much down
and prepare properly so that you say what it is
you want to say and not have it all written
down.

17. Too many bullet points
• Bullet points can make things:
– useful,
– Easy
– Clear
• But use too much and it will become:
– Difficult to read
– And what you want to say may be lost among all the text
• If you have a lot to say try to:
– Separate your points out onto separate slides
– Reduce the amount of text per slide
– Think whether you really need to include everything

18. Poor spelling
• Pleeze make shure that you use the spel
chekker
• Nothing maks you look more STOOPID than
bad speling

19. Too much data

20. Bad colour schemes
• Nobody can read this
• And it looks horrible
• So don’t even try it.
• It’s not big
• And it’s not clever!

21. Font
• A font size that is too small
•Or too big
• Or uses an inapprOpriate fOnt
style
• Or uses too much emphasis
• Is a waste of time

22. Animations and Graphics

23. “A picture tells a thousand words”

25. Suggestions for creating a good
powerpoint presentation

26. Reducing the words on a slide
• Often a powerpoint slide has far too many words on
it for people to read properly
• It is often a good idea to reduce the amount of
words on a slide so that it has more visual impact
• Try to highlight one key point per bullet until you can
remember all the content when you look at that
word
• Then, remove all the other text on the slide leaving
only the key words

27. Reducing the words on a slide
• Often a powerpoint slide has far too many words on
it for people to read properly
• It is often a good idea to reduce the amount of
words on a slide so that it has more visual impact
• Try to highlight one key point per bullet until you can
remember all the content when you look at that
word
• Then, remove all the other text on the slide leaving
only the key words

28. Reducing the words on a slide
• Reduce
• Highlight
• Remove

29. Using images

30. Using images from the Internet
• Don’t steal images
• If you don’t have permission to use an image,
don’t use it
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
http://www.sxc.hu/

31. Think like a designer
Arrangement Visual Elements Movement
Contrast Background Timing
Hierarchy Colour Pace
Unity Text Distance
Space Images Direction
Proximity Eye flow
Flow

32. Al Gore on Climate Change
• Before you listen:

33. http://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_warns_on_late

34. Five theses of powerpoint design
• Think about your audience
• Communicate your ideas clearly
• Help people see what you’re saying
• Design not decoration
• Display information in the best possible way
for your audience