3 Secret PPT Design Rules To Killer PowerPoint Presentations

In this post, you will learn simple PPT design rules to help you building powerful presentations people will care about.

This PowerPoint tutorial will introduce three generic rules that will get you on the way to design professional PowerPoint templates and creative presentations! These rules are an introduction, and they are the key to successful PowerPoint presentation design. Let’s get started!

1. Size

Your PowerPoint slides are usually sized 10 inches (width) * 7.5 inches (height). Resize them 12*7.5. Open a PowerPoint document, go to Design > Page Setup. With presentation slides of 12 inches width, or more, you will have more freedom and the ability to better organize the content of the slide.

2. Typography

Fonts can just make or break your PPT presentation.
I recommend you to pick ONE font for all your content slides. The default font I use myself is Calibri, it’s modern and it’s safe. Helvetica and Century Gothic are great options too. You can use ONE additional font for your cover slide or slide headings. Just make sure the extra font you pick is original and readable. Take care of your audience’s visual comfort.

For all your presentation slides, try to keep your font size BIG. Whether your plan to show your PowerPoint presentation at a public presentation or not. First, you will increase your audience visual comfort. Second, it’s a great exercise to help you develop effective presentation skills, as you will have to learn how to summarize content. I personally use a minimum of 20 for important parts, and 14 to 18 for less important parts. To comment charts or graphics, 12 is the minimum. Even if you have a lot to write, keep in mind that you don’t need to write down everything to communicate important points. Keep it short. People are busy. Less is more.

♥ Font Squirrel is my favorite source of FREE, high-quality and designer-friendly fonts. To install new fonts on your computer: On Window, download the archive > click Start > Control Panel > Font > Paste your font files.

3. Color Scheme

I suggest the use of TWO or THREE colors. For all your content slides, use of black for core text (in that case, your PPT background shall be white or light grey) and use the ONE or TWO additional colors to highlight important keywords, statements or figures. Colors picked must be visible, contrast between each other’s and with your PowerPoint background.

♥ Not inspired or just wondering which colors match well together? Try out Kuler, Adobe’s great color palette generator. It is free and you can choose y from thousands of pre-built schemes.

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Why Making a Joke to Open Your Presentation May Not Be the Best Idea

So, there you are, ready to step out and make your carefully prepared presentation. You step on stage you welcome your audience and then you bring out the big opening, you tell them your best joke. The one you always tell to get a laugh. Well you better be sure it’s a good one or you are about to blow your credibility out of the water.

Are you sure your joke isn’t offensive to anybody in the audience? Will everybody understand the punchline? Will most people laugh? Have you got the delivery right? If you aren’t one hundred percent certain of the answer to any of these questions (and please double check even if you are sure) then ditch the joke.

Telling jokes is risky business in a presentation. Although people definitely want to be entertained and informed by your presentation, telling jokes may not always be the way. The problem with jokes is that they can polarise an audience. While one section of your audience may find your joke hilarious, others will think both you and the joke are dumb and another section may find both you and the joke offensive. With your first sentence the whole audience will have formed an opinion about you and your subject based on a joke that may not even be related to your subject.

When you open your presentation you are looking to make an impression that engages your audience in your subject and arouses their interest. So even if you are blessed with the ability to tell jokes and can choose appropriate humour, save it for the body of the presentation, use the opening lines to make an impact that is key to your subject.

Your opening line should challenge, surprise, intrigue or shock your audience. Make a bold statement about what they will get from your presentation (as long as you can back it up) and grab their attention. Tell part of a relevant story (even if the relevance is not immediately obvious) and leave them on a cliffhanger with the promise of the rest later.

Whatever strategy you use, your opening line needs to grip your audience and make them want to pay attention to see if your presentation lives up to the opening. Don’t let the dangerous business of telling jokes spoil the impact of your whole presentation.

Focus on the Present – How to Get and Stay Mentally Focused on Now

How can you stay in the present (mentally) – or get to the present? Here are 5 strategies:

  1. Breathe. The idea is that you breathe in. Then you breathe out. This helps you to get centered – and somewhere I read that the space between breathing in and breathing out – that’s the present. So actually, right now, breathe. In. Out. In. Out. It’s amazing that we need to be reminded.
  2. Stand up straight or sit up straight (if you are physically able to do so). Just pull your head up, straighten your spine, pull in your stomach, and of course, breathe. It’s interesting how making sure we are doing all of these behaviors just pulls us to the present. Apparently there is no chance of multi-minding when we are focused – just for a moment – on standing up straight, pulling our head up and our stomachs in – and, oh, yeah…breathing. Those four tasks take all our concentration and are sometimes enough to break us out of whatever past tense, future tense, or too tense thinking we were in just before.
  3. Say, “One thing, right now.” It’s a calming phrase. It helps you to get centered again. “One thing, right now.” “One thing, right now.” “One thing, right now.” Say it over and over as needed. Let people around you know that if/when you get into a “state,” they might help you by saying, “One thing, right now.”
  4. If you have an object that helps you focus on the present – then use that. It might be something physical, it might be a picture, it might be a quote. It’s whatever will calm your mind enough to focus on now – just now.
  5. Make marmalade. This recommendation comes from D.H. Lawrence’s suggestion: “I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.” The idea, of course, is to take up an activity where you need to be focused. Making marmalade, doing repair, engaging in some kind of intricate work….all of these activities require your focus and that you be present. Figure out what your marmalade activity is.

I promised that these were simple – and they are. Yet, we often don’t apply simple solutions. Give one or more of these a try when you need to bring yourself back to NOW – and see if you aren’t more focused and much more peaceful, too.