Top 8 Things you should avoid on your Powerpoint Presentation
Wordy slide
1) Create a slide full of text
When doing a Powerpoint presentation slide, don't put a lot of text in it.Remember, powerpoint Presentation only to help the speaker to present on what point they want to give, not all information come from the text itself. We don't want to bore our audiences, we want to give them an information . If you really don't have any other way, create more slide instead. There's no harm in adding another 2-3 slide to express your view.
2) Reading Your Own Presentation
Look at the picture above, Imagine having those presentation slide in a screen. If you read the slide, wouldn't you be meaningless to even talk about it? Audience can read, this is one of the common mistakes speakers always made. In some occasion, it could be rude as the audience might think that the speakers mocking the audience of being illiterate. So, Elaborate the points instead of just reading them. One tip is that speakers should delete some of the information so they can talk about it instead of showing the audience.
Colour Wheel
Which one is better?
3) Colour is not Contrast with the Background
Always choose the font colour complimenting with the background, don't choose colour that is nearly similar to the background. For example, blue is compliment with orange. Having an orange background with blue font enhance the audience thus attracting their attention. Common Mistake that Speakers always does is having orange font with dark yellow background. This cause the audience to be unable to see the screen especially from far.
So, If you want to learn about the colour wheel, When choosing your font, For example Red, and not sure what's the background to it. Look at the opposite side of the wheel which the colour it compliment with, in this case is Green collour. So, put your background green for attracting the attention of the audience.
Example of bad font to be in Powerpoint Presentation
4) Too Common or Unreadable Font
Ok, Unreadable font is probably too exaggerate, it's more like font that has twirling and winding until the audience can't even make up what letter was it. Too common font like Arial or Times New Roman would might often used by other speakers. Be unique, but not in a bad way. If your boss have look 5 presentation that day before you, how do you want to attract his/her attention as the point itself is mere common. Look at the list in the font of powerpoint presentation or words, there's hundreds of type of them. If you can't find any interesting font , you can visit here (If you not sure how to install after finding a suitable font, refer to this guide
5) Moving Images
Remember, you need to give information to your audience, so grabbing their attention is number one priority. Moving images are one of the distractions to your audience. Any moving images that move a few times is good. However, once it keep looping, it's not interesting anymore. There's one tip to make a moving picture interesting. As long as the picture is large, zoom at very slow timing about 5% of it's size to make a nostalgia feeling to the audience.
Slow Animation that are good
6) Slow Animation
In powerpoint presentation, speaker often put a slow animation picture in their presentation making the audience feel bored. Don't put unimportant animation giving them blank impression. Remember, if you connect your audience, they'll connect to your message. Giving emotional message is one of the good thing slow animation could help. See the video example, Having a slow motion of zooming and spinning give nostalgia feeling to the audience. Good timing also needed to avoid things from going wrong.
Complicated slide
7) Complicated slide?
I know how you'd feel putting every single details into your slide just to make sure everything goes to the audience. However, putting every single details in your slide makes audience feel that the slide is just jumbled up words and doodling lines. Why not make a few slide instead of one. Putting more slide doesn't mean it will lengthen your presentation time but to make things simpler. Remember, less is more.
8) Not knowing your stuff
This always happened if you're doing presentation in a team. They called a team because you can work with your team mates to get things done. However, hitching a free ride in presentation is just making you in worse position. Not knowing what kind of things you need to present is another death trap by presenter especially when you need to depends on the slide. What if there's something wrong with your slide? Things could get very ugly. So remember, do some research and prefer to make your own slide instead of asking for others to do it for you without you knowing.