Less Is More: Creating Effective Presentations

1. ETC Workshop Spring 2007 Less Is More:Creating Effective Presentations Presenter: Jerry Godwin Senior Academic Advisor Student Advising Services Email: godwin@buffalo.edu

2. Purpose of Presentation • Identifying What You Are Trying to Present. What is the purpose of your presentation? • Marketing something • Training, process orientated • Teaching

3. Who Is Your Audience • Know your audience • Will they be familiar with the “lingo” that you use • Is there a source, or multiple sources, from which the presentation is developed? • Where will this presentation be viewed: classroom, web

4. Develop Your Outline • Create your presentation outline in MS Word or other word processor. Use the Outline View. • Usability. Test your concept. What you think is cool may be very confusing to some of your audience

5. Things To Consider As You Begin The Process • Power Point Master slide/template. • Keep it simple. Color scheme considerations. • Creating your base slide, upon which you will use throughout you presentation. • Do you want to add header or footer? • Do you want to add page numbers, Use Powerpoint option or creating your own system. • UB ready to use templates: http://www.buffalo.edu/toolbox/powerpoint_templates.html

6. Setting Up Your Workspace • Add ruler to your workspace (View: Rulers) • Add gridlines to slide (View: Grids & Guides)

7. Design Elements • (Format: Slide Layout, Slide Design) • Or create your own designs. Adding new slides to your presentation: Select all, copy, Crtl M to add a new slide. Select slide layout (blank for purposes of this presentation) • Fill color and fill effects. • Do you use a sidebar to list presentation outline/major points? • Text boxes and placement. Add line around text box

8. Design Elements (continued) • Positioning guides. Helping you space slide elements. • Font choice and size considerations. Fonts for titles, fonts for text. • Adding depth to your slides – shadow • Adding a screen capture to your slide. Resizing and cropping using Image Toolbar • Adding clip art. Where to get it? • Adding pictures. Size of image, things to consider. .

9. Design Elements (continued) • Adding border, text, shadow, grouping. Rotating image • Using arrows + lines to point to specific areas. Grouping objects. Order your group (bring forward or send back). • Adding hyperlinks to Keywords. Do you just past the url into your slide, or create a hyperlink. • Changing the default color of link and visitied links.

10. Design Elements (continued) • Keywords are also helpful for use in Search Engines and Site Indexes. • Adding animation elements. Pros and cons. Animation elements cannot be viewed if saved as a pdf file. • Adding slide automation

11. Presentation Formats & Handouts • In what medium will your presentation be viewed? UB Learns, conference presentation, website? • Note pages • Handout options. How many slides per page? Font size used in slides becomes a factor. • Converting to pdf, adding hyperlinks.

12. Other Ideas • UB Guide To Visual Identity • UB Ready To Use. UB Photo Database (require UB IT name required) • MS Visio for timelines. MS Project for gantt charts. • Tag Crowd.com. Keywords, labels, or tags as visual elements • Del.icio.us. social bookmarking • Google Search for “Powerpoint Design Tips)