I recently read a blog on law.com about Power Point’s 9 new features entitled PowerPoint Powers Up: 9 New Features. It is a great overview of new bells and whistles that can be found in the new version of Power Point and how to use them. I found this article interesting because I use Power Point quite often and I have learned (usually through the school of presentation hard knocks) what works and what doesn’t from color scheme to organization to organizing my own notes.

 Here are a few best practices I have picked up along the way:

 Color Scheme
When choosing a Power Point color scheme, one thing to keep in mind is what type of room you are presenting in. I know this sounds strange, but often presenters choose a scheme with a dark background when presenting to a large crowd in a flat conference hall. The shadows and the logistics often make this type of presentation difficult to see. The nice thing about Power Point in Microsoft 2010 is that many “razzle dazzle” templates are available, and they are usually well thought out in terms of audience logistics and overall presentation aesthetics.

Space
How many times have you sat through a presentation and never paid attention to the presenter because you were too busy reading all of the text on the page? White space is a key to any organized slide, along with well appointed points. I once heard of the “seven by seven rule” whereby the presenter only has seven points on a slide and seven words in each of the seven points. This makes the point clear and the audience is less likely to be distracted by “War and Peace” on a Power Point slide. 

Over-animation, aka Animaniac
I’m sure I have been guilty of this some time in my presenting career, but often orators hide behind the presentation and lose all good presenting skills as a result. Instead of using a flashing icon to get the audience’s attention, perhaps voice fluctuation or even a visual would work instead. The only place animation comes in handy is to deter people from reading the entire slide ahead of time and not paying attention to the presenter.

 Number of Slides (quality over quantity)
Maybe it’s ingrained in us as a result of writing 1,000+ word term papers, but a successful Power Point presentation is not judged by how many slides are in the presentation. At most, a presenter should think about using 20 or less slides to create an effective presentation; more and the presenter runs the risk of losing the audience or cramming too much information in. For the most part, most of the time should be used speaking and/or for audience participation.

When and How to Chart
I’ll admit it – it’s neat to use charts. One feels so accomplished making a cool chart using Microsoft Excel or Word, however, charts should really only be used to illustrate a data driven point. Really, only use a chart when the point can be simply illustrated via a chart, e.g., here is how much money our company gained and lost this year, etc. The exciting thing about charts (now I’ve given away my true nerd persona) is that you can make them very effective by using animation, e.g. show the audience a bar chart with static information – next slide, use the same bar chart and add the dynamic information: wallah! You’ve got yourself a great illustration!

Use Text and Visuals
See above. Some people are visual, and others are verbal. Either way, it’s a good idea to cover your bases by including both text and visuals in your presentation. This does not mean cutting and pasting every clip art from Microsoft office or, even worse, from random Google images.

 In addition to visuals, keep font choices simple.  Serif fonts, e.g., Times New Roman, is good for bullet points. Sans Serif fonts, e.g., Calibri, Arial, Tahoma are good for headings. Try to avoid overusing bold and italics, etc. these tend to make slides difficult to read.

This is an old You Tube video, but the comedian, Don McMillan, very comically lists the Power Point what not to do:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpvgfmEU2Ck