How to make better slideshows

Most of us have had to go through oral presentations at some point in our lives accompanied by help in visual or audiovisual format. It has been a good handful of decades, both at the educational and professional level, that the practice of presentations with Microsoft powerpoint platforms or, more recently, Prezi. At the heart of the matter, this tool is a great explanatory support for our talks and presentations.

However, many students and teachers admit to having serious difficulties when it comes to making a good presentation, and those who are already accustomed to the use of these technologies, do not always use them in the way optimum. This is due to the ability to synthesize that is required to make a better story before the target audience, unless leaving the most transcendental ideas or themes and other problems in which we often do not think. In this article we will focus precisely on How to improve our presentations in talks in front of an audience or in project exhibitions.

• Related article: "Public speaking and overcoming stage fright, in 8 steps"

How to improve a project presentation with slides

Next we will see some points to improve your next presentation.

1. A hooky intro

In our first slides, we must correctly introduce the topic to be discussed, expressing it directly and clearly. In addition to naming the authors involved in the project and proposing a title that summarizes the main idea of ​​what is going to be seen, it must be taken into account that if after the first minute it has not yet been said exactly what the presentation and why it is interesting, possibly the attention that the public will dedicate to us will fall quite.

2. Consistent use of colors

Remember that the visual impact is very important. Choosing colors and tones well helps to give meaning and coherence, as well as having aesthetic values. The size of the letter and its style is also very important, as well as the degree to which it contrasts with the background of what is seen. In this sense, there are no magic formulas: you have to think about how the surface on which these images will be seen will be, the distance at which the public will be, and the way in which the whole is left.

It is important not to use any text background photograph, unless it has very little color variability and the part in which you have to read has a very homogeneous tonality that contrasts with the letters.

3. quality images

Graphic support with quality illustrations or photographs brings a lot of life to a presentation, although it is not advisable to become obsessed with including many of them, since in addition to wasting time, cluttering everything with them will probably be too distracting. It is important that these images are not pixelated and that they do not interfere with the rest of the content, overlapping.

4. Size of the parts of the slides

It is surely one of the pillars of a good presentation. The size of the slide is important, both in its content and in its decoration. Normally the title is made in large letters, and the points to be explained should be sentences of no more than two lines. Let's remember that we have to be brief but concise.

5. Emphasis on what's important

The slides are a prop, and we should not trust everyone in the public to examine them in detail to understand what we are saying in the presentation. When information is relevant, we must highlight it visually, either with bold, with the size of the letter or directing the attention of the rest using graphic elements from the periphery.

6. time limit

To improve our Power Point or Prezi presentation, or even PDF, we have to be scrupulous with time. The time limit needed to explain each of the slides. The ideal is not to spend more than a minute on each of them., unless it is a "slide-directory", a "map" to understand a good part of the content of what we explain in the presentation.

In addition, taking time into account will help us ensure that the minutes we dedicate to each of the sections corresponds to their real importance, without creating imbalances.

7. engaging storytelling

As we have pointed out previously, the simple fact of using visual support for a presentation responds to the need to make a session much more didactic than a presentation or class traditional. For this reason, an effort must be made to keep attention alive, making what we say go hand in hand with this philosophy.

Without exceeding the informality, we could offer a narrative through metaphors and anecdotes with which the public can identify, although the amount of this element It must correspond to the theme to be dealt with and the nature of the project that is presented.. In a presentation where the stakes are high, it is good not to take the seriousness of the event, so that one or two of the these references is normal, while if it is a class presentation or training workshop, they can be include more.

Keep in mind that it will be easier to attract attention and communicate clearly the more narrative the presentation. This means that we must avoid limiting ourselves to "describing" a set of concepts that we want the public to understand: what is What to do is explain a story that, regardless of whether it is simpler or more complex, must have an introduction, a core, and outcome. In this way, the overall message we want to give will be easier to understand and, as people will get lost less, they will remember what we say better.

8. Bibliographic references

It is the finishing touch to a good presentation job, so you should never forget this section. Some users often ignore the referential element, the sources consulted or the bibliography used, which serves to support our message. Adding in the last slide the recommended books, the articles consulted and the support websites from which resources have been extracted project a very professional image of our work.