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Sylvia Braunstein has to <<...create an animated PowerPoint presentation.
This is the first time I am doing this. I would like it to be very
professional.>>
You haven't defined what you mean by "animated" (nor professional, though
I'll assume you mean "good" rather than "flashy), but a few thoughts:
- Keep it simple: People should be attending to hear your thoughts, not
watch your multimedia wizardry and leave the presentation not knowing what
you talked about.
- Keep it consistent: If you decide to fly your bullet points on from the
left in one slide, do the same thing in all slides.
- If it's going to run by itself, remember the user: If you set a timed
delay, set a shorter delay for shorter slides, and a longer delay for longer
slides. But ideally, let the user set the time by clicking the mouse or
pressing page down.
- Pick effects that support the concept: If a concept requires motion,
animation is likely to be effective; if not, it's just distracting.
- Avoid overusing media: Add together sound effects, flashing visuals,
bulleted text, and your own voice, and you've made it next to impossible for
anyone to concentrate on you.
- Keep it legible: To someone seated at the far end of a conference hall,
the width of the projection screen is likely to be similar to the size of
your computer screen viewed from about 5 feet away. (Tailor this really,
really crude guesstimate to the actual size of the conference hall.) Sit
that far back from the screen and see if you can still read the words and
see the graphics clearly.
- Keep it short: People are there to see you and to hear you talk, but
playing against this is the fact that many of us are conditioned to start
reading as soon as we see the slide. So keep slide text short and use it to
support, not replace your presentation. Similarly, add bullets one at a time
instead of filling the screen with all the text at once, and don't add the
next bullet until you've finished discussing the current one.
"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a
yellow spot into the sun."- -Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
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