Prepared by Carmen Winter, Allison Terry, and Karen Bybee for CAT520 Dr.

. Vivian Wright - Computer Graphics Education, Fall 2009 The University of Alabama

Creating a great PowerPoint presentation requires much more than text, bullet points, and random clip-art. To capture and maintain the attention of your audience, you also need a good design. Our goal with this short presentation is to teach you how to improve your next PowerPoint Presentation by using the proper balance of Concept, Components, and Composition. Lets get started with the first C Concept!

Theme, connotation, message and style make up the Concept.

When developing your presentation you first need to define the overall concept. Define the purpose and message of the presentation completely. Write it out and refer to it often during the development process to make sure you stay on focus.

Stay focused, dont ramble.

What do I really want to say? Why? Careful not to get too detailed.

Now that you have defined the purpose, consider the overall style of the presentation. How will you keep the audience interested? The style should be appropriate for the subject and the audience.

What will your style be?

Serious and Formal OR Fun and Whimsical

With the style determined, its time to choose a theme. This might include a catchphrase or tag-line to help set the mood for your audience.
Click for tag-line examples

Yes We CAN!

Master the Opportunities in Change

Keep the language of the presentation appropriate for your audience. Dont use jargon or abbreviations unless the audience will understand them.

Proper use of the thing-a-ma-jig saves lives of the FPS crew. The JJP team will enforce CC rules to the general employee group by fiscal year end.

Consider ways to interact with and engage your audience during the presentation. These might be added through a question or quiz. Pre-discussion quizzes are a great way to get people thinking about the topic before its been discussed.

The length of your presentation is an important factor. Your audience may find it interesting up to the first few slides and then begin to tune it out wondering if youll ever get to the Summary or Questions? slide.

Awww dont leave. I only have 20 more slides!

Components are the visual elements used within a design. Photos, illustrations, icons, typography, line-work, decoration, borders and backgrounds are all components.

As you build your components, the first thing to remember is keep it simple! Too many graphics or colors can become confusing to your audience. They get lost in the design and miss the message.

What is going on in this illustration? Where is the focus?

This illustration is clean, organized and easy to follow.

Next, think about the overall color scheme. It should harmonize and support the concept and message. Colors carry physiological, cultural, personal, emotional, and expressive implications.

 Use appropriate images for your presentation. If using multiple images, make sure they are all the same theme and have the same general look. There is nothing worse than seeing a presentation made up of 20 different clip art pieces with unmatched colors and style. Photos can be altered within PowerPoint by cropping the picture/image, adjusting the contrast, or changing the tint. Clip art can be ungrouped and drastically edited to become totally new pieces.
This clip art flows with the rest of the art in the presentation. Heres the same character, but with poor color choices!

Charts are considered to be images, as well. Remember, simple is better. Save the details for a printed report. Choose the colors and contrast schemes carefully. Make sure the data can be interpreted clearly from the back of the room.

This graph is unclear and has no apparent meaning.

This graph is clear and easily interpreted.

Number of Students Per Class

 The font of your presentation should match the style of the presentation. Your style may be formal, informal, or somewhere in-between. Stay with one or two font colors. Choose strong contrasting colors between the font and the background (dark font/light background OR light font/dark background). The best test of your presentation is to display it on the projector, and stand at the back of the room. Can you see it clearly?
Good scheme for printed text

Good scheme for projected text

Composition is the way in which a design is visually combined and arranged. Composition addresses grouping, spacing, placement, visual hierarchy, alignment, and visual flow within a layout.

Composition

Grouping can be used to visually guide viewers through the message that is being portrayed. A group of objects can usually be seen as one item. Valuable grouping guides the viewer to find the most important information.

Circles ungrouped and in random order.

Circles grouped to form paw prints in a path.

Spacing is an area between the graphic elements and text on a page. Sometimes placing empty space between different parts of information allows a more noticeable transition between ideas. Careful use of space can give a presentation a classic, elegant, or rich appearance.

Placement allows the viewer to determine the most important parts of the layout through the spatial relationships of elements. Human eyes typically look from the top left to the bottom right. Similarly, the visual hierarchy of the layout is most effective when importance is determined from top to bottom.

Alignment is the location of elements in a layout. Items can be aligned to the left, center, right, or justified (aligns both left and right).
Left justified

Groups that are aligned top/left typically seem more important than if the same information was right/bottom aligned.

Justified

Justified alignment is used when there is a lot of text. This is most evident in newspapers and magazines with a lot of information but not a lot of space.

Right justified

Most people assume that alignment is used for text only, but this can be done with images, too.

Visual flow determines how a viewers mind follows the design. Typically, we read designs from left to right, as we would if reading a book. Effective forms that help a presentation flow are arrows, sequential images and texts, and size changes that can help your audience follow a particular path.

Concept

Composition

Components

 PowerPoint offers several ways to animate your presentation. This includes transitions for slides, words, paragraphs, and many other elements. While animation is wonderful for capturing the attention of your audience, use it cautiously. Too much animation can make them dizzy or confused. If you are using the auto-timing features, practice the presentation multiple times to make sure you have it timed correctly. Sound and video can easily be incorporated to presentations. Be cautious of file sizes, though. They can slow down your computer. Hyperlinks can take you directly out of your presentation to a website. While this is a great asset, use them sparingly! Its best to add a list of resources at the end of your presentation.

All animations, sounds, videos and hyperlinks should be tested carefully to make sure they work BEFORE the presentation.

Here are a few great resources to help you build a great PowerPoint! Click on the pictures to go directly to the websites.

Create graphics in PowerPoint.

How to embed video into PowerPoint 2007

Make your own characters!

A free screen capture tool.

A webcast tool for creating multimedia from anything on your computer.

A lesson and guide in color theory.

Concept, Components, and Composition

We hope by now youve learned that the three should work together in harmony and support the message for the intended audience. Continue to review your work as you develop your presentation, making changes and improvements when needed. Study the designs of people you admire and respect in your field. Its okay to borrow ideas from them. Just remember to follow copyright and fair use procedures.