The Eastbury Partnership - PowerPoint in Practice

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PowerPoint ^® in Practice

One of the major impacts of technology - in business communication as in other fields - is that it demystifies previously specialist activities. 'Ordinary' users are able to achieve things hitherto the preserve of trained specialists.

The word processor, and then the PC, transformed everybody into moderately competent typists, simply by allowing errors to be corrected before they were printed. The combination of digital video and PC editing packages enables anybody to produce and show their own movies. Do-it-yourself web design programs allow anybody to generate their own web pages. The availability of professionally-designed templates is a further factor in transferring specialist skills into non-specialist hands.

But this generally welcome tendency does have a drawback: unskilled users can produce amateur results, which may compromise the communications objective. The ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint ^® is a boon to millions; but it is also responsible for countless presentations whose shortcomings get in the way of clear communication. Attention to detail, and some understanding of the underlying specialist skills can make all the difference.

Drawing on the Eastbury Partnership's experience in creating effective presentations for many clients - and in observing good and bad practice in hundreds of others - this article looks at a few key practical issues which are frequently misunderstood or ignored. Attending to them will improve the professionalism and effectiveness of your communication.

Creating a design from scratch?

Don't. Consider using an existing template first. PowerPoint ^® has a number of built-in templates which will often be effective. In the corporate sector, many companies provide and impose a template to ensure consistency and adherence to house style: these obviously need to be followed.

On the other hand...

few designers would argue that the built-in PowerPoint ^® templates are models of sophisticated design: stripped of their graphic decorations and backgrounds, they are all remarkably similar;

house styles are all very well, but they may have been created by someone with little experience of either design or communication; or they may have not allow properly for the differences between print and on-screen presentation.

An understanding of the basic principles of good design is always therefore valuable:

use a lot of 'white' (i.e. empty) space;

preserve adequate 'quarantine' space around logos, titles, headers and footers;

use boxes, lines, decorations sparingly: one will do;

pay attention to the proportions of the different areas of the title and slide masters;

if in doubt, use a smaller point size;

etc.

Ultimately, design is an art: if you want it done professionally, use a professional.

Selecting fonts?

Fonts - or, more correctly, typefaces - are tricky. Certain rules of thumb stand the test of time: use as few different typefaces (ie, Times, Arial etc) as possible; use serif faces (eg Times) for greatest legibility in large blocks of text, and sans serif faces (eg Arial) only for short blocks of text, headings etc. But beyond that, which are best? This will depend partly on what you are doing.

Some fonts look great when printed commercially at high resolution but, because of the limitations of the technology, are less legible when laser-printed, for instance. Some fonts are optimised for laser printing and others for screen display - again because of the characteristics and limitations of those particular technologies.

Of the sans serif fonts in the standard Windows installation, Arial, Tahoma and Verdana work well for on-screen viewing. Georgia and Times work well among the serif fonts.

Serifs

Serifs are the little hooks, tails, lines on the ends of letters in certain typefaces, mainly those designed to make large blocks of text more readable (on a PC screen, enlarge the zoom factor to see them more clearly)

Sans serif faces are mainly designed for display work or small blocks of text, and these have no hooks, tails etc

Using graphics?

PowerPoint ^® is immensely flexible in its ability to incorporate graphics and pictures from other files and sources. But care is needed, especially in relation to file size. Graphics and picture files can be very large, and inserting large numbers of them into a presentation can create a very large file. Take care also over resizing (especially reducing) graphics files.

If you insert a large graphic and then reduce its dimensions on the slide (for example, by dragging on its corner handles) PowerPoint ^® actually embeds the full-sized graphic in the file. This increases overall file size, and can slow down display times. It is far more efficient to resize the graphic first and then insert it: use a specialist graphics editing program - or a graphics specialist.

We worked with one client whose cavalier approach to graphics (one slide had a hundred separate client logos on it) led to truly bloated files, to such an extent that when one presentation exceeded 10MB it would no longer pass through their email transport.

Using text animations?

Don't (unless simple build-ups are appropriate to the presentation of individual slides).

Unsure about typography?

In the main, there is no need to bother: PowerPoint ^® handles most typographical features effectively. But there are 4 or 5 common errors which, if consistently avoided, will enhance legibility and style (these points are equally applicable to straightforward word processing):

don't use underlines for emphasis: this is a hangover from the days of typewriters; use italic or bold instead;

don't use hyphens where a dash (technically an em-dash) is required: a hyphen splits hyphenated words, whereas a dash - or pair of dashes - separates phrases, clauses or a parenthesis;

don't use two hyphens "--" for a dash ("-"): this is also a hangover from the days of typewriters; PowerPoint ^® should automatically replace two hyphens with a proper em-dash, but if not, one can be found in the character map or inserted using the key combination alt-0151;

don't use hyphens, dashes or points to introduce bullet points: use the real thing (if you want to use a different bullet, select it through Format:Bullets and Numbering:Customise);

similarly, to include a numbered list, use a proper one: this will ensure that indents and spacing are consistent and effective.

Exchanging files with someone else?

Minimise the file size. People often fail to realise that PowerPoint ^® has two File:Save options. The 'fast save' option speeds up saving while editing. But it does so by adding changes to the existing file: each time a file is edited and saved, the file size increases, even if slides are deleted. At least for the final save, turn off the fast save feature (Tools:Options:Save). The reduction in file size can be dramatic. Preferably, turn it off altogether: the amount of time it saves in practice is minimal.

Make sure your fonts appear the way you want them to. Fonts used in creating a presentation on one machine need to be available on another machine if the presentation is to display properly. This is the case with all Microsoft programs. But it can be more critical with PowerPoint ^®. If a specified font is not available, a substitute will be automatically selected, and this can seriously disturb layout, character spacing, line spacing and legibility.

If possible, stick to the standard Windows range of fonts: you can be pretty confident that your recipient will have the same fonts, and your presentation will display correctly. Otherwise, you will need to embed your selected font(s) in your presentation (File:SaveAs:Tools:Embed Truetype Fonts). But if you are using certain proprietary fonts there may be license restrictions which prevent them being embedded. And embedding fonts increases the file size...

Are strange things happening?

PowerPoint ^®, like other Microsoft programs, has a range of automatic features which, in the main, help. Sometimes, however, they can be irritating and unhelpful. And if you don't notice what they are doing, quality and consistency will suffer.

Among the most common problems are:

PowerPoint ^® automatically capitalises the initial letter of a phrase or sentence, even if it is a bullet point, and your preferred style is lower case: change the AutoCorrect settings (Tools:AutoCorrect) to avoid this;

various other AutoCorrect settings, especially in the Replace box, can cause unhelpful effects; for instance typing (c) as the third in a list following (a), (b) will automatically produce (c) unless this feature is turned off;

PowerPoint ^® automatically adjusts paragraph (inter-line) spacing and/or point size: this can be particularly difficult to spot, but can result in one slide having a smaller point size than all the others, or one text placeholder switching to 0.9 inter-line spacing rather than 1; change the Auto-fit settings (Tools:Options:Edit:Auto-fit text to text placeholder) to avoid this.

And so...?

None of these points touches on content or messages, but they do impact on how effectively the content and message is communicated. As far as possible, any communication channel has to be transparent, and avoid any refraction or distortion distracting from the message. Even if your audience aren't sophisticated - or interested - enough to spot and articulate particular faults, they will react less favourably to a poorly-designed and -executed presentation than to a high quality and professional one.