How to prepare the perfect presentation

An impeccable presentation is the result of efforts in three directions —thorough researching of content, impressive designing of slides and confident voicing of your thoughts.

Don’t stuff information into slides only the night before the great day! Gather and sort relevant data first. Prepare a logical outline consisting of introduction, body and conclusion. Create appropriate slides according to it. Prepare your speech-script.
Incorporate rudimentary data in the slides and the extra information in the script. Then, rehearse. Vary your intonation and voice modulation till you’re confident of making an impact.

When deciding on the design of your slides, keep in mind the purpose of your presentation, your target audience and the place where you’re delivering it.

Determine the purpose of your audio-visual communication: are you conveying information, throwing more light on a topic, winning others over to your point of view or motivating them to act in a particular manner?

Set the tone and articulate your thoughts accordingly. Prune facts that your audience is already aware of. Focus on what they need to know.

Take a tour of the venue beforehand. Learn about the location of the electrical outlets and intranet/internet connections. Is there a podium? Where is the screen positioned?
Will you have to use a microphone? What’s the size of the room? What about the acoustics? Does the view from the windows distract you? Rehearse keeping these factors in mind.

Start preparing the slides. Divide content into main points and sub-points. Cluttering a single slide with too many facts will only confuse the audience. Use only one concept per slide. Use keywords and phrases in bullet points. Avoid complete sentences. Form phrases according to a uniform pattern —  start every phrase with a noun or verb and follow the same tense and voice (active/passive).

Use graphics, charts and animation tastefully and wisely. Ensure there’s no overkill. Use only 2 fonts — one for the title (size:38-48 points) and the other for the bulleted text (24-32 points). Drop no lower than 20 points. Select sans serif fonts like Tahoma or Arial.
Check spellings manually and with the help of the software tool. Adhere to the 8x8 rule — 8 lines of text per slide and 8 words per line.

Now spice up the presentation.  Use symbols to illustrate your point more clearly. PowerPoint offers both ready-to-use symbols and drawing tools to conjure new ones. Use JPEG photographs resized to the appropriate scale.

Employ sound judiciously — opening/closing the presentation, on mouse-clicking or for voice-over. Typewriter noises on each letter can jar.

For video clips, the most user-friendly formats are AVIs and MPEGs. But, remember, video clips inflate file size and spawn compatibility problems.

Choose hot colours (red/ orange/yellow) for the foreground and cool colours (blue/ purple/ green) for the background.

For electronic presentations, light-coloured text on a dark background is best. But, if the room is too bright, the converse combo works well.

Blue background with yellow text is the most common scheme used in business presentations the world over.

Make sure that each slide you create is crisp, innovative and well-designed. That way, your presentation won’t end up eliciting more yawns than applause.

Once you’ve rehearsed your lines, get a second opinion. Invite friends/family to watch your presentation.

Request them to pencil comments alongside a draft copy as you proceed and ask questions. Use these reactions to refine your presentation so that it will be a thumping success.