Free Power Point Templates

The fear of public ranks right up there with death and an IRS Audit for most of the population. What I will attempt to do here is give you a few tips & techniques and a bit of support when it comes time to make a presentation. What do I define as a presentation? In the broadest sense, it’s every encounter you have with every person you ever meet. It’s when you sit squirming in an interviewer’s chair trying to be eloquent when you are asked why you left your last job. More specifically, however, I’m going to talk about the business presentation. Whenever you are asked to appear in front of one or more people for the purpose of explaining, educating, convincing, or otherwise conveying information to them, you have a presentation. Compressed to its essence, a presentation consists of three basic elements: you, your audience, your message and your tools.In this series, we’ll look at each one, starting off with planning for your visuals and support materials. Later, we’ll look at presentation and speaking techniques, attitudes, travel disasters and other problems faced by both the professional and the occasional presenter.

1. Start PowerPoint and choose a Blank Presentation
2. Choose slide layout
3. Enter the title and any additional text.  Remember to follow the rules of the road text guidelines
4. Add graphic, your choice of clip art, original drawings, scanned images, Internet images, tables and charts.  Remember to follow the rules of the road graphic guidelines
5. Insert new slides and repeat Steps 2-4 for each slide
6. Create and apply background design
7. Add transitions, special effects, animations, and sounds.  Remember to follow the rules of the road guidelines

Each presentation is graded on its:

1. Communication: Does the presentation effectively tell the audience your message?  Every component of the presentation should add to the communication.
2. Creativity: Does the presentation appeal to the audience?  Have the color choices, graphics, and background design been wisely used?
3. Constituency: Does the presentation have a similar style from slide-to-slide?  Have the guidelines for text, graphics, transitions and special effects been followed?

The fear of public ranks right up there with death and an IRS Audit for most of the population. What I will attempt to do here is give you a few tips & techniques and a bit of support when it comes time to make a presentation. What do I define as a presentation? In the broadest sense, it’s every encounter you have with every person you ever meet. It’s when you sit squirming in an interviewer’s chair trying to be eloquent when you are asked why you left your last job. More specifically, however, I’m going to talk about the business presentation. Whenever you are asked to appear in front of one or more people for the purpose of explaining, educating, convincing, or otherwise conveying information to them, you have a presentation. Compressed to its essence, a presentation consists of three basic elements: you, your audience, your message and your tools.In this series, we’ll look at each one, starting off with planning for your visuals and support materials. Later, we’ll look at presentation and speaking techniques, attitudes, travel disasters and other problems faced by both the professional and the occasional presenter.

The fear of public ranks right up there with death and an IRS Audit for most of the population. What I will attempt to do here is give you a few tips & techniques and a bit of support when it comes time to make a presentation. What do I define as a presentation? In the broadest sense, it’s every encounter you have with every person you ever meet. It’s when you sit squirming in an interviewer’s chair trying to be eloquent when you are asked why you left your last job. More specifically, however, I’m going to talk about the business presentation. Whenever you are asked to appear in front of one or more people for the purpose of explaining, educating, convincing, or otherwise conveying information to them, you have a presentation. Compressed to its essence, a presentation consists of three basic elements: you, your audience, your message and your tools.In this series, we’ll look at each one, starting off with planning for your visuals and support materials. Later, we’ll look at presentation and speaking techniques, attitudes, travel disasters and other problems faced by both the professional and the occasional presenter.

With the script developed and the audience research completed, this decision should be simple. A five minute presentation to a three person audience is probably best made with handout material alone, or even simple flip charts. Larger audiences might be effectively reached by using a few simple overhead transparencies. (Yes, they still have their purpose)The 35mm Slide - R.I.P.At a Management Graphics User group meeting around 1990 I gave the 35mm Color Slide about another ten years or so maximum as a viable profit center for most graphics productions companies. I didn’t miss it by much. The resolution, brightness and price of LCD Computer/Video projectors mean that home-brew laptop based video projector presentations are now the norm. The design workstations of the 90’s running suites of complex four and five-figure software on five and six-figure computers gave way to laptops with PowerPoint and the free software that came with your three-figure digital still/video camera. To help justify the purchase of your projector, keep in mind, most of these accept input from a TV, DVD or other video source. When not serving as a presentation tool you can have a huge-screen TV, limited only by the size of the wall onto which it’s projected. (Can we say Super Super-Bowl Party?)Major presentations at annual meetings, trade shows, sales conferences, and presentations to stockholders or client proposals might still dictate an all out effort with professionally produced special effects, video and all manner of glitz and expense. Good presentation visuals, however, do not have to be expensive. When properly planned and produced, simple, well designed graphics add professionalism and impact to virtually any show. The proper use of text images, charts and graphs as well as the correct type of chart or graph to use in various circumstances is the subject of another article in this series. I will, however, touch on a few of the deadly design sins of presentation visuals a bit later.