Microsoft Office Powerpoint is the program that has become the standard in companies around the world to create product or project presentations, In the workplace it is used in all types of businesses, by high-level professional figures, by employees in commercial offices, by Project Managers, by product managers, by employees in marketing, sales and advertising, by business consultants and so Street.
In schools and, above all, universities, it has become the tool for writing illustrated papers and for presenting group works.
The key to its success is in the simplicity of use, in the graphic power and in being able to summarize in an elegant and professional way, the key points of a job of any nature.
It becomes an indispensable support for the speakers, in the meetings or for the teachers who can thus focus, in a visual way, the important parts of something complex in order to capture the attention of the listener without boring him.
Other fields of application include the creation of animated slides to entertain, to create invitations and brochures and to be creative with an elementary but complete graphic tool.
If, for example, for Word, I wrote 5 technical and more practical tips for writing a professional document, in this case, the problem is not so much in understanding how a Powerpoint presentation is technically done but how to write it and make it professionally and clearly .
The success of a business proposal, a lesson, a relationship or customer satisfaction for a project or product may depend on the quality of the presentation.
In addition, a common and often underestimated error that derives from the size of a Powerpoint file must be underlined when photographs, animations and multimedia elements are inserted into it.
Some ppt or pptx files sometimes reach sizes over 50 MB and sending them via email becomes difficult and inconvenient, especially for those who receive it.
Below, we try to give some technical and theoretical advice to set up a Powerpoint presentation in a professional and clear form, also trying to make it light by reducing its size in terms of Megabytes.
As for the design, Powerpoint 2007 is much more beautiful graphically than the 2003 version and has a good list of templates or graphic themes to be used as the background of the presentation.
The Presentation Magazine site is certainly the best site from the point of view of the quality of the templates that can be downloaded and where you can also find examples, ideas and ideas on how to make the impact of the slides high.
The predefined templates that are also found on the Office Online site, I would never use them.
Beyond the chosen graphic background, I consider it useful to follow these tips for drafting:
- Never copy and paste slides from other presentations and then edit them, better start them from scratch to write and draw.
- Do not use unnecessary graphic elements that distract the interlocutors, better to stay simple without too many creative glitz.
- Use a clear and legible font, without using strange or italic fonts.
- Always use the same font for all the slides of a ppt file.
- Consistently choose the size of the titles and subtitles.
- Use a few decorations, logos and icons, without exaggerating.
- Do not restrict the writing space too much.
- Really not recommended to use Word Art, they are ugly and obsolete.
- Writing in black on a white background is better; if you use a different colored background, you should pay attention to the contrast and consider the possibility that those who see the slides may have eye problems or are color blind.
In support, I report a very useful web application called Contrast-A.
- To highlight important words, it is better to use bold type than colors but, if different colors are used, always use the same two or three chosen without making a mosaic.
As for the use of slides, if they support an oral relationship in front of other people, to follow the discussion of the presentation, without ever reading it, otherwise the speech would become very boring, full of slogans and would no longer be listened to .
Without a doubt, the success of a Powerpoint presentation lies in the images used.
A beautiful presentation must have more images than text, without ever using them as decorative elements but as figures that speak for themselves and communicate concepts and messages to the interlocutors.
Finding images on the internet is really trivial and just use Google Images, Flickr or the new Bing! Site.
Using animations is a must to make the exposure and sequence of the communication clear.
Since it is very easy to create animations on Powerpoint, it is better to learn to use them and not be shy to let go with the special effects even if, obviously always in moderation and rationality, without putting them at random just to amaze and without using sound clips and sound effects.
As far as content is concerned, a Powerpoint presentation is like a website and the reasoning to be based is always based on considerations of this type: to whom it is intended "> By pressing the button and going to the next options you can choose whether to optimize the images for printing (minimum compression), for a video projector and to send the file via email (maximum compression); there is no evident loss of quality and visually nothing changes.
- When adding images to slides, it is better to resize and compress them beforehand.
Many people add photographs and images as they find them, and sometimes they exceed 5 MB, making the file very heavy.
To compress and resize photos, I recommend using the easy-to-use program, IrfanView, covered in another post.
- Again with regard to the images, if it is expected that some slides are only images without anything else, it is better to save these slides as a Jpeg file, delete them and then reinsert them again using the saved file.
To do this, you can press the right button on the loaded image, which occupies the entire slide, and save it on the PC as an image.
Saving the file with different formats can slightly compress the size of the file while, saving it with a name and choosing the second option "Powerpoint presentation", it can be ensured that those who receive it via email can view it only on the screen whole, with no possibility to modify it.
The file format in this case is pps or ppsx.
Jolly Council, for those who have to argue and report the contents of a presentation in meetings or in front of a classroom, if you use a laptop attached to a video projector, you can amaze the public by using your mobile phone, remotely, via bluetooth, to check Powerpoint and sequence of slides.
On another article, the best sites to create professional online powerpoint presentations also remembering that there are tools like Google Docs, Zoho and Adobe Presenter that allow sharing of slides.
In another post it is written how to convert a Powerpoint file into a video to watch on DVD or Divx players.
In addition to the Microsoft program, you can also use OpenOffice which is free and works great.
