Do you have to make presentations?
Do you hate presentations? I like presentations,
but one thing that you are probably maybe good at with presentations are making PowerPoint
presentations, because you have visual aids to help you so you don't really have to talk
as much, if you're nervous about talking. Presentation skills is something that you
can work on. We have videos on www.engvid.com to help you with presentation skills. So,
go and check those out for learning how to speak during presentations.
But what we're going to focus on today is the visual aspect of presentations, so your
PowerPoint things. Some things to do, and some things not to do. So, here we are, presentation
skills. The first thing and one of the things that makes these presentations so fun are
pictures. But we have to be careful. The templates that you have already included in your presentation
software, they're boring. People use them all the time. So, I suggest you try and download
some other pictures to make your presentation more interesting. And with that, make sure
that on one slide you have one image. Make it interesting.
Do not have a split screen. So, don't have two images on one slide. Do not have a collage,
that's insane. A collage is many different small pictures on one screen. Even when I
see a collage, there's a lot of collages coming out on Facebook now, and I'm like:
"Too many pictures. Can't understand." Our brains just cannot comprehend all those pictures, especially
when you're having the slide up for a short period of time. Don't make it like a photo
album. Don't put millions and seven pictures, and... Keep it simple. Put a single image
on each slide. Try and pick images that you actually like, and not too distracting. You
don't want puppy dogs and things. Make something simple, but something that you like, and make
sure it looks nice.
The next one you have to worry about is the lettering. So, the lettering, you also might
know this as the font. So, font and lettering are the same. One thing that you do not want
to do is have really fancy or beautiful lettering. Simply... The reason is some people can't
read when the letters are fancy, especially if you are doing presentations for people
whose... Do not have English as their first language, if you take the letters and you
write them even cursive, a lot of people have problems reading cursive. So, I suggest you
use something more traditional. There's lots of very easy-to-read fonts you can get from
your... Whatever word processing you use. So, make it simple, easy to read.
Another problem that you might have is the script is too big or too small. So remember
that when you're making your presentation, you're doing it probably on your laptop, or
your desktop, or your iPad, or your phone, so the font or the lettering is going to be
different than when you put it up on the projector. So if at all possible if you can, check it
out before you do the presentation. Look at your... Hook up your laptop or whatever, and
see if you can actually see it on the screen because the font is different. You might think
that on your laptop it's a good size, but when it gets on the projection screen, it's
tiny; or it takes up too much space and it's too big.
Next up are the words or the text. So, there's been studies done on how many lines of text
a human can absorb or understand, and any more than six, you've lost the people. So,
try and keep on each slide one very simple image, with very traditional clear text, and
put only two or three lines on each slide. Don't put bullet points. If you have more
than six lines or if you have bullet points, again, we just... We just can't remember them
all. We just lose focus. We have something called too much information, too much info,
TMI. "Too much information" means that if you have more than two or three lines, we're
just not getting it. Our brain can't... We just can't learn it like you want us to.
The other one that's probably really important is the colours that you use. Now, it's fun
to have different colours, it helps us... As you can see on the board, it helps us create
contrast and highlight words, or things you think that are important, but if you have
different colours within one word... Can you read this word? It makes it really, really
difficult to read. This word says "different", and maybe when you're watching the video at
home, you can't maybe see the "i" or the "e". This looks very childish. When we're kids,
we can make different colours and it's fun, but your presentation isn't for children.
It's not meant to be fun. You want to have the title and the words very easy to read.
You don't want them to be difficult, and you don't want to have people straining their
eyes to figure out what word that is.
I will never forget my grade 4 art teacher telling me that you can never use different
colours in one word. As an 8 year old, I was just taken back. I was like:
"Oh my god, I use different colours all the time, Mr. Riley." No. So, I remember this. Thank you, Mr. Riley,
if you're still out there, for teaching me this very important lesson.
But what you can do is you can definitely use different colour, one different colour
to highlight or emphasize one word. So, down here, you can use one different colour to
emphasize important words. So as you can see, I want you to focus on the word "one" and
emphasize. The other words I'm keeping black. So one different colour will really help this
pop out or stand out. If you use too many colours, again-sorry-we get confused. So...
I'm dying. Someone get me an Alka-Seltzer.
The last thing is you want a strong contrast of the letters and the background. So, if
my background colour is blue, I wouldn't want to have green lettering, because green and
blue are very similar colours, very similar shades, so you have to make sure that if your...
If you have a grey background, you want something that really stands out. You have to be careful
of the colours that you choose for the background and the lettering.
So, if you can keep these four major categories in mind when you're doing or making a presentation...
Colour, keep it simple. One or two different colours is fantastic.
Make sure the words or the text are limited to two or three major points.
You want to build your presentation, instead of just throwing information at people.
Make sure the lettering is clear, nothing crazy.
Make sure it's not too big, not too small. And also, make sure that you're not
overloading the people with pictures, because it's going to lose from your actual presentation point.
If you need help doing presentations, check out our videos on presentation skills at www.engvid.com.
Check it out on YouTube.
I'm out of here. Bye-bye.