What Is True about “Death by PowerPoint”?

There are many critical voices which find the fault of a bad presentation in PowerPoint. They speak of the lack of motivation that PowerPoint speakers have or the boredom such a presentation can elicit. Furthermore, the known phrase “Death by PowerPoint” is taken very seriously be a Swiss party which tries to calculate how high the economic loss of boring PowerPoint presentations is to companies.

Our opinion on this: Even if some presentations are boring or bad – PowerPoint is still the best solution when holding a speech and presenting company data. And here is why:

The Art of Presenting

It is not the software that bores the audience or turns the presentation of a potentially interesting subject into a yawning-contest – it is the speaker.

The speaker has the pivotal role in a presentation – of course the audience cannot be motivated if the speaker does not represent his product or subject accordingly. It does not inspire if a speaker merely does his duty without any inner drive whatsoever.

Thus, it is the art of presenting that captures and inspires us, not the presentation itself. This is why it is important to ask yourself as a presenter: what do I want to convey to my audience; how do I want to make them feel?

Be Prepared

Keeping the goal in mind to motivate your audience, you can now start to prepare your presentation more detailed. First, concentrate on a thorough research and elaboration of your subject:

 

Assemble all the relevant information and evaluate it. Develop a sound structure of your presentation and think of an introduction, a main part and your conclusion. Reduce your presentation to its main key messages and focus on these. Also think of questions the audience might ask and prepare some answers.

Further tips on how to structure your presentation you can find here

Appealing Design

The visual design is just as important as the key messages you want to convey. Especially since a nice picture can really make a lasting impression.

But always keep in mind: less is more!

Choose a simple design for your slides and forego using special effects, Clip Arts or stock photos. Keep it sleek and simple.

Also make sure not to add too much text or graphics to each slide. One graphic per PowerPoint slide or one succinct sentence is more meaningful than a stuffed slide nobody can read. Also make sure to keep your font at 30 pt and not any smaller.

If you want to abide to these rules, you can also choose to use pre-designed PowerPoint templates which are carefully created and come in a sleek and appealing design. This way you save a lot of time and can choose from a wide variety of templates in our online shop – from business and marketing templates to self-presentations and applications.

Click here to get to our templates

 

 

 Featured image: © WavebreakmediaMicro / Fotolia.com