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Back to Basics: Starting From Scratch, Part 1

Introducing a new series on the basics of presentations and PowerPoint. This article covers the six steps you need to follow to turn the ideas your presentations into reality in the easiest way possible!

This article covers Steps 1 (Content), 2 (Look and Feel), and 3 (Customize) of the process of creating your presentation.

Putting together a presentation can be frustrating. You know what you need to say, so you sit down in PowerPoint and start typing. You add bells and whistles, you test, you re-work. Then suddenly, you realize that the presentation has taken twice as long to create as you had planned and it still isn't done. There has to be a better way! There is!

Instead of just starting out, follow a tested process and do it right! The Six Basic Steps process will not only help you create your presentation better, you will find that it creates a message based presentation that reaches the audience more strongly. The Six Basic Steps are:

1. Content: Develop your outline and content

2. Look and Feel: Define and create your overall look and feel

3. Customize: Customize the individual slides as needed

4. Multimedia: Add the sounds, movies, pictures, etc. that you need

5. Movement: Make the elements move on each slide and move between slides

6. Test: Walk through the presentation and verify that everything works




Step One: Content

Before you enter anything into PowerPoint, you need to make some basic decisions about the message and the method you plan to communicate. You need to ask yourself these questions:

• Why does this presentation exist? Are you summarizing material from another source? Are you teaching? Are you sharing news?

• What is the message this presentation needs to get across? What are the three things you want the participants to walk away knowing?

• How does the user access the information? Is it presented by a person live? Is it presented on a video or CD? Is it a walk-up kiosk? Is it an interactive website?

• Why is the material being presented in this manner? Did you choose the method for the audience's convenience, the presenter's convenience, by company dictate, etc.?

• Who is the main audience for this information? Is the information going to an internal or external audience? What is the general make-up of that audience?

Write the answers to these questions down on a piece of paper. Look it over and find any contradictions in the answers. For example, if the audience is not computer savvy, but you want a stand-alone kiosk, the interface needs to be clear and the text needs to be complete. Next, take the answers and build a rough outline. You can use the outliner in Word, the one in PowerPoint, or just pencil and paper. Don't worry about style at first, just get the ideas and messages down.

Once the rough outline is done, transfer it to PowerPoint and fill it in. Don't write your outline in sentences, instead aim for summary bullet points. Even if this presentation is going to stand-alone with out a presenter, you want to stay short and clean so that your audience pays attention.

The next level is to add speaker's notes. Write up the content that goes with each outline bullet. Make sure that you are not just repeating the information in the bullets. When you are done, read it through from the front to back to see if it makes sense and flows. If you are creating a stand-alone presentation, draft up the content for the slides now from your notes.

Before you finish this step, run the spell checker and make sure that you have entered clean clear text.

Step Two: Look and Feel

Your next decision is what do you want the slides to look like. What colors do you want to use? What background? Are there common elements for each slide? What font, style and color do you want for the text?

When making these style choices, keep your audience in mind. Use bright colors for good news, deeper ones for not-so good news. Decide where the global graphics are going to be placed and what those graphics are going to be. Keep the slides simple and clean.

Make sure the font is readable. There are few things more frustrating to a participant than to have slides up that can't be read because the font is too fancy or too small. Make sure the font color stands out well on the background.

One side note: When making color choices, keep in mind that not everyone sees every color the same. Be careful that you don't use red and green to mean different things for example, as people with a color deficiency in their vision may not see the difference.

Now, apply these decisions to your master template. In PowerPoint, choose "Master" from the quot;View" menu. On the sub-menu, choose "Slide Master". You will also likely need to insert a "Title Master", which is done from the "Insert" menu once you are in master view.

Now, I hear you saying: I don't want to do all this from scratch! So, don't. Check out the templates available from with in PowerPoint, along with the ones you can find for free on the web and the ones you can purchase. If one of these is close to what you need, apply it and then customize the masters. If you are looking for sources, check the links page on this site's homepage If you need more information on template sources, check out "our template page.

Step Three: Customize Each Slide

Now that you have the general look and feel of the presentation, you need to customize and perfect each slide. Starting at the beginning of your presentation, look at the slides one by one. For each slide, decide:

• Does the text on this slide need to be changed?

• Do you need to add a graph or chart to explain what is being said? Should that item be on the same slide or on a subsequent slide?

• Is this slide content that will always be shown, or will you only need it sometimes? If the second case is your choice, then you can "hide" the slide. To access it during your presentation you can type the slide number and you will jump straight to the hidden slide.

If you are using PowerPoint 2002, you have an additional choice to make. Since you can have multiple templates within the same show, you can set up two or more looks for the slides and choose between them on a slide by slide basis. Be careful with this ability: You won't want to distract your participants more than necessary.

Once you have done the basic customizations, view the presentation from beginning to end to make sure it makes sense. Then you are ready for the next step.

This article continues in Back to Basics: Starting From Scratch, Part 2

Copyright 2002