Please remember that questions of design are artistic choices
and therefore tend to be more in the nature of tried opinions rather than hard, cold fact.

Also remember that when using technology, you should always have a Plan B
because technology has the attribute of following Murphy's Law:
• If something can go wrong, it will •

No one should have to stare at the screen announcing "no signal" while you fiddle with the laptop.

Consider this...
Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address without a PowerPoint presentation
and Martin Luther King moved the nation with his "I Have Dream" speech without one too. Even Letterman has not resorted to PowerPoint and there are no MTV videos with PowerPoint lyrics—yet.

What kind of presentation you end up should be governed by who you're showing it to (cultural background, audience size, education, you-name-it), the space and conditions under which it will be viewed, and the equipment you will use to show it. There is a BIG difference in showing a presentation to 300 people in an auditorium and showing one to 8 people in a conference room. Adjust image size, font size and complexity according to the size of the room. Also, be sure that you know what equipment (projector and computer) you are using. There are projectors that only show low resolution images so no matter how nice it looks on your computer monitor, be sure that you look at it with the projector you will be using to show it. Some projectors also alter color seriously. If you are using a projector at another site that you can't test, find out if it will handle high resolution or not.

On the use of PowerPoint templates—Remember that everyone in the world (particularly the unimaginative) is using those templates; maybe you want to shy away from them. Some of them are also distracting. If you choose to use one, however, be sure to realize that they become an "architectural" foundation for your slide. If they are a line for instance, always honor the line and do not cover it.

Company name included with title (color as well) and also ignoring the "architecture" of the background	Company name separated from title (color changed to match personnel info) and honoring the "architecture" of the background.

Those opinions about templates having been said, there are ways built into PowerPoint to make neutral but interesting backgrounds. Explore the Background elements in PowerPoint under the Format menu.

Some creative types like to do things like keep the same pattern format of the background but change the color for different sections of a presentation. Also be aware of the fact that there is a fine line between choosing a color that looks “rich” (=saturated), and one that’s just too dark. The issue of using a picture in the background can be tricky. While in some cases it may be effective, if it is too “busy,” it will probably make it difficult to read text over it and putting another picture over a background picture can be terrible (a way around that is to put a colored frame around the top-layer picture). If you think you want to use a picture (a company logo for instance), think about putting it in a corner or if you want to use it as a background, learn how to “gray” it with a graphics program.

Also note that any background (including template backgrounds) can be eliminated from any particular slide by going to the Background dialogue box and checking the Omit background graphics from master box. This should be a rule of thumb when you use a template that has a graphic that is partially and unavoidably covered by a text block, table or another graphic.

Color is a Highly Subjective issue. If you know you are color blind, get a little help from your friends. Important issues to be conscious of are the relationship of the background and the text. If you are using a darkish background, be conscious of the color of the text you are using; that includes the tricky issue of balancing text on shaded backgrounds that have lighter and darker areas. Colors—not counting black white and all the grays—are grouped into a couple of major areas: the “cool” colors like blue, green and purple and the “warm” colors like “red, orange and yellow” (you've already noticed no doubt that light colors like yellow just don't make it on white backgrounds).Cool colors are generally thought of as relaxing and calming; warm colors are thought of as exciting.

You can imagine how a warm emphasis (like red) then will stand out in a basically cool body of text (like blue).

A blue emphasis on the other hand does not stand out so much in a body of red because the red is so forceful anyway.

Mixing too many colors can be pretty but disastrous—unless you’re presenting to Ringling Brothers. There are also qualities of color that are shocking (hot pink) and some that are nauseating (chartreuse). Trying to teach color sense is beyond the scope of these notes. A suggestion is to ask opinions of people who you think have taste. People who you think dress well are a good bet. And please avoid smiley faces or anything that screams "cute" because most people will find it cloying and dismiss you as a person in need of heightened maturity.

Keep color blindness—or more correctly color vision deficiency—in mind. The most common type is red/green; the other type blue/yellow is much more rare. Colorblind people tend particularly to see medium saturations of these colors as shades of brown/gray. Highlighting by boldfacing is a good alternative form of emphasis.

Layout is also a tricky issue. We humans in Western Civilization scan things we look at from the upper left corner to the lower right corner—the way we read a page. Please be aware of the fact that other cultures read their languages and write their numbers completely differently. Some Asian languages read from right to left as do most Middle Eastern languages; some traditionally read in columns. This would change therefore the way in which people in that culture scan what they see. You might like to do a little research and take that into consideration if you are doing a presentation in another country in which the language is written in a different orientation.

But for our purposes of explanation, let's look at Western Civilization...

Western Civilization generally reads a page as indicated below.

What that boils down to is that there are “stronger” places and “weaker” places on a page (for PowerPoint read "slide"). The “stronger” places are the upper left corner where we start reading the page and the lower right corner where we end reading the page (and get ready to turn theoretically); the “weaker” places are the in-between places. Dead center is also a “strong” place.

That is true of course as long as all other things remain equal—colors, sizes. The weaker areas can be made stronger in other ways, for example:

Size	Color	Movement/Change

What that translates into is that if you have a choice of where to put important words, pictures or anything you want to emphasize, you might like to choose the stronger areas.

Balancing elements on a page is a good idea. For instance, don’t crowd things into one corner and leave another corner empty. If you have four pointers on a page to a central object, don’t put three on top and one on the bottom. There is an element of layout called “white space.” It isn’t necessarily white; it is space that is empty. Getting a good balance with this is also important in terms of balance as well as legibility.

Another issue to keep an eye on is the legibility of the text. It is by and large a Bad Idea to include lots of text on a slide. First, if it’s too much, the size usually has to be too small and your audience probably won’t be able to read it. Second, if people are able to read it, they may not be listening to the speaker while they are reading. That situation is only desirable for a presentation if it is running in kiosk mode and people are intended to stand and watch it without listening to a speaker. You are looking to put highlights/focus points on a slide, not paragraphs to read. And...

Don't read your slides to your audience
unless you're sure there are illiterate people or people with impaired vision in the audience.

That practice is currently the biggest objection to PowerPoint presentations because people have seen (and been bored by) so many of them. In addition, many people make the mistake of turning to the screen to read the list of bullets. Consequently, they are making the quintessential gaff of turning their backs on the audience. You only turn your back on the audience after you have delivered the shattering monologue to the gods in Oedipus Rex and are collapsing as a broken man (or woman if you are Medea who has just slaughtered her children). Hubris hits the deck.... These are extreme and dramatic circumstances. In a professional presentation, such behavior is just rude.

Include leading blank, logo or title slides at the beginning and end of your presentation. Presentations are theatre. At a professional theatre production, when you get there all is calm and ready. It is a hallmark of a real bush-league amateur production when people are running around showing off backstage things to the audience. That is how you should feel about showing the desktop of your computer. Starting with a blank, logo or title slide allows you to have it all ready when your audience enters; you then continue when you are ready. Some people like to have a title slide that includes the names of the presenter(s) available as people assemble in the room. Similarly leaving your audience with a nice non-distracting blank slide or an inspiring company logo beats your computer desktop hands down. If your audience is already in the room when you set up or you are following someone else's use of the projector, kill the projector and get your leading slide up on your monitor screen and then fire up the projector again. Remember in a quality theatre, the ushers don’t sweep and clean while the audience is there.

Predefined Areas on PowerPoint slides—The formatting of individual slides is not unchangeable; they are merely layout suggestions and guides. All kinds of fields can be inserted and deleted.

Be sure you understand the two levels of selecting an object.
When you click on a text block to edit it, the field border is striped.

When you click on the border itself, it becomes grayed and you can then resize the box and/or move it.

Trying to space things on a page using the <Return/Enter> key is a Very Bad Idea because various computers will see those things differently. Instead size object boxes (text, graphs, charts, pictures) exactly and layer them on a page for maximum placement control.

Be sure that the content is all legible. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing pictures, for instance, that are too light, too dark or too small. What’s the point of telling an audience “If you could see this…”? If they can’t see it in a useful way, don’t use it.

As a rule of thumb, font sizes smaller than 18-point are pretty useless. Serif (those little feet on letters) and sans-serif (no feet for those of you who never took French) fonts are largely a matter of taste. Some people believe that fonts with serifs are more like newspaper fonts and therefore somehow carry more weight. Others think that sans-serif fonts are much neater and easier to read (particularly in electronic formats). You could probably argue this until the cows come home. This page obviously uses a sans-serif font. 'nough said.

The U.S. Army has researched the issue of ALL UPPERCASE and Mixed Upper and Lowercase letters and has determined that humans read the mixed format better than the all uppercase format. Think about it. ALL UPPERCASE letters are like a series of blocks that are much more similar than the many differences of lowercase letters. That holds true for whole sentences and paragraphs. The use of all uppercase for a single word in a sentence can still be an EFFECTIVE form of emphasis particularly if it is combined with boldfacing. Can't beat THAT for emphasis. And then what about adding color? Emphasis to the MAX.

Use consistent grammatical constructions, particularly with the ever-popular bulleted list. This is one of the most common problems with presentations (and writing as well). If you start using gerunds, for instance, keep to that format.

You may not understand the grammar or know the words, but you can see that the construction of each bulleted item is parallel, i.e. the same kind of expression—and so can your audience even if they don’t know the grammar either. They can “sense” the order of parallel constructions.

Also to reiterate, unless you are using this PowerPoint in a kiosk situation in which no one is going to explain things, don’t include big blocks of text.

Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words. Showing your audience a metaphorical representation of something can be a huge help to their understanding. That includes using successions of slides to create animations, which can be particularly effective (see below). Animating a graph to make it understandable is very effective. Most people—except scientists, mathematicians and statisticians—haven't got a clue what a static graph REALLY "means." If you can make it move, they'll get it more.

The “Power” of PowerPoint

Two of the most beneficial aspects of PowerPoint are the ability to control what people see and when they see it. This boils down to the issue of learning styles. If you present a whole page of bulleted items at once, various people in your audience are going to deal with it differently. You can't ever even assume that people are looking where you think they are.

• Some people are going to follow politely along with you as you hit each point.
• Some people are going to read ahead and then follow along with you.
• Some people are going to read the list over and over and not really listen to you.
• Some people are going to read ahead, choose the item they already care and/or know about, and ignore what you're saying about everything else.
• Some people may also be looking at an item on your list and wondering about it and not listen at all.
  

That is the reason to reveal only what you want to reveal when you want people to see it and decide whether or not you want to “gray” it out after you deal with it (this is one of the items on the Animation dialog box).

HOW you reveal things is important. You can take advantage of how a slide transition or text/picture animation works to create focusing effects—for example “stretching” an arrow to point to something. Another effective trick is to use an opaque graphic box colored like the background (with no border line) to cover things in a slide that you don't want people to see right away and then removing it. This ability to exit animations was a great addition to PowerPoint.

The effect of animating something to draw the eye to it can’t be overestimated. You can create interesting “animated” effects too by duplicating slides, removing animations, changing an element and then using the slide transition to reveal the change. Remember those fun flip pads you made (or at least saw) as a child?

When everything else on a page is still, if something moves the human eye cannot help but be drawn to it. Back to the theatre—if you have a stage full of people standing still and one person moves, everyone will look at the moving person. The same thing holds true of a changing object on an otherwise static slide.

Sound—unless you want a humorous effect, by and large you don’t want the built-in PowerPoint sounds. They can be very effective as attention getters IF you are sure that the audience will bear the humor. The sound of the car-screeching-brakes can be a funny focus—IF you want a funny focus. Remember about sounds also that unless the computer showing the presentation is running through a sound system or has an adequate built-in sound capability, the audience may not be able to hear them well and you’ll just be wasting your time (and disk space) by including them.