What ruins a PowerPoint Presentation

Through my years at Trinity I've seen a lot of presentations. Using these as a guide I've been able to discover what makes a presentation appealing to an audience and what puts them to sleep.

1) Be brief. Adding too much information onto one slide makes it seem as though you are reading aloud what the class could read on their own. Keep you bullets as minimal as possible so you can elaborate on your own and keep you audience engaged.

2) Don't use too many animations. Animations may seem like they would keep your audiences attention but they actually detract from you overall message. The content of you presentation is what's important not how it appears on the screen or how the slides transition.

3) Use a professional quality template. Nothing shows that your a novice as much as a poor template and design. It is worth the extra time to design a high quality template that is appealing and goes with your overall message. Using one of the pre-made templates is acceptable over creating mismatched color schemes that tell the audience you didn't take the time to work it.

4) Not every slide needs a visual. This was the most important thing I learned during my internship. Not every slide needs to have a photograph or design. People learn differently so mixing up the styles from visual to audible will help the group as a whole understand your message.

5) Be consistent. Do not change your formatting for each slide. It will confuse your audience and they will have to adjust to each different slide. Choose a format and stick with it.