Tips for Creating a Professional Looking Powerpoint Presentation

[Mouseykins]

I have to do a portfolio project for my accounting course and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for making it look professional. I hardly ever use powerpoint so any tips and advice would be wonderful.

 

The purpose of this project is to showcase what I've learned. In order for me to do that I also have to include some of the documents and I have no idea how to do that.

 

Any helpful tips and tricks would be wonderful! :)

[Emily]

As far as look goes, you want to coordinate things. Don't use a different border, background and font for each page. Stick to one or two fonts in varying sizes to suit your needs (headers, bullet point lists, etc) and keep the layout simple. You don't want neon green backgrounds and hot pink borders. Simple, neutral, muted colours and simple designs. I would also stay away from crazy animations, as well as, again, sticking to only a few types of animation when it comes to text and information. You don't want those animations that drop in a letter at a time, for example. Simple Simple Simple is what I'm trying to stress here. Sometimes, less is more, and a presentation that is well-coordinated and well-structured is the best for this type of project.

 

As far as incorporating what you've learned, I'm assuming with accounting (I took it for 2 years in high school) that you'd be using a lot of spread sheets and excel tables and graphs? You can easily recreate these in powerpoint, or, incorporate links into your presentation to open up the files in their respective programs.

 

This site has some great tips for working with graphs and tables (towards the bottom of the left navigation).

[Mouseykins]

Thanks Emily for the link, it should help. :)

[April]

Use the same background, borders on each page.

Use a solid colour background. Don't try and get all those fancy backgrounds.

 

You want it simple, but yet nice looking. Try and use the same colours on each page.

 

If you are going to use text/slide transitions, use the fast and simple ones. Don't do those letter by letter or the ones that zoom in and out. (This is something I used to do in middle school, bad bad, lol!)

 

EDIT: I just realized I said basically what Emily said.

[Batman]

I am assuming you are also giving a presentation along with this. If that is true don't put to much text on each slide. Just put bullets of ideas that will remind you of what you wanted to say. Also, please don't just read the slides. That can be really annoying. And of course everything already listed above.

[chibi_chibi_tsukino]

To make it look nice and clean it is often best to use a white background and a black font. Don't go crazy with 'cool' special effects, most of the time they're really just annoying. Use a neat, simple design, but not TOO simple. A little bit of colour here and there can add to it. Use bulletpoints to give your content a clear structure.

[Trig]

Make sure all of your fonts match and the colours aren't too distracting. Make sure you have enough detail with pictures and things- don't just put text. However, remember it is called a power POINT, not a power PARAGRAPH. I think that's one thing that I should really stress. You'll look much more professional if you really know your information and are only using the power point as it's meant to be used- quick little reminders and something for audience members to focus on.