How to use PowerPoint the right way

Is PowerPoint the greatest curse ever to befall the art of presenting, or is it actually rather brilliant? People ask me this all the time, and I mean all the time. Usually the question kicks off a heated little debate about the pros and cons, everyone digs in, nobody quite agrees, and off we all go again none the wiser.

Here is the trouble. The question itself is wrong. It was never really about PowerPoint. It is about the person standing next to it. I have personally watched utterly catastrophic presentations, and I have watched spellbinding, unforgettable ones. Both were built on PowerPoint.

So the truth is this: the presenter has to learn how to use the tool. And it is not only about how you relate to PowerPoint as a piece of kit, it is at least as much about how the presentation itself is built. Let us take both.

Using PowerPoint the right way

The first and biggest mistake to avoid is staring at the projection screen behind you. You should almost never look at the screen. Your eyes are far too precious for that, and they belong on your audience. Here is a simple trick to make it easy. Set a laptop in front of you and mirror your display, usually by pressing the Function key (Fn) together with F5 or F8, depending on your model. Now you have the same image on your laptop and on the screen. You can flick a quick glance down at the laptop while you keep talking to your audience and looking them in the eye.

The laser pointer is another curious little habit that brave presenters love to reach for. Please leave it alone. Unless you happen to have a robot arm or an inhumanly steady hand, that red dot will jitter and hop all over the screen. It does not create focus, it creates distraction.

Move. Do not stand there stiff as a post. Walk around, use your body, live inside your slides. Are you showing a curve or a bar right now? Then gesture, show me how big or how small it is. The more you bind yourself to what is on the screen, the more you will hold your audience.

Building your PowerPoint the right way

There is almost no end to what you could consider here, so let us split it into five simple areas.

Colour

Use a harmonious palette. No more than six variations. Think of your colours as blending gently into one another. If you look at the colour picker in PowerPoint, try to choose colours across the same horizontal line so they share the same strength of tone.

Use the right colours for the right purpose, too. Green is positive and signals growth. Red is negative and signals warning or attention. Green, brown and light blue feel everyday and grounded, the colours of a calm, moderate presentation. Too much white leaves a dull, clinical impression, while too much black feels secretive and a little shady.

Typeface

Use clear, legible fonts. Arial is the default in PowerPoint and, to my eye, it makes for a rather flat impression. Try to find a typeface that is simple, clear, and one you have not seen in a hundred other decks. The two best fonts for reading on screen are Calibri and Verdana, though almost any font in the sans-serif family will serve you well.

Structure

Build your presentation. Perhaps you ended up with thirty slides? Cut it to a third. Think minimally. Your presentation is not about PowerPoint in the slightest, it is about you, the presenter. The slides are only there as support, and you rarely need thirty of them. Reach instead for other tools, a whiteboard or a flip chart, to bring a little variety into the room.

The single most important rule of all for a quality slide is this: never more than seven points per slide. That means a maximum of seven words, seven images, seven numbers, whatever it happens to be. Writing whole sentences, and sometimes entire paragraphs, is essentially taboo. That is exactly the moment a presentation earns the dreaded stamp of "death by PowerPoint". Think minimally! It is worth reading what John Sweller and his research team discovered about what happens when we cram too much information onto a slide.

Images

The two key words here are consistency and meaning. Every image in your presentation should feel of a piece. So please do not mix ordinary photographs with a bit of clip art and then a few design graphics you pulled off the internet. The whole game is to create as little confusion for your audience as possible, and consistent imagery is how you do it.

The word "meaning" is almost more important still, and it should hold true for every image you use. Your images should give strength and support to what you are saying and to the points on the slide. No image should be meaningless decoration. That is pointless, and it only confuses.

Animations

Rein in your animations. In my own presentations I use only one, the simple "appear". It may well be dull, but I am not. That is exactly the point: PowerPoint should never, in any way, be the entertaining one in the room. That is your job. Leave all the other animations to people who would rather not have their audience's attention. Why they exist at all is, frankly, a mystery to me.