Because this is not a PowerPoint presentation, but rather your presentation. Although some presenters must follow prescribed or institutionalized formats, the length of your talk typically is dependent on several unique factors, including the subject, the format, the intent a training, a sales pitch, a fundraising appeal, or an educational lecture. Your visuals, including PowerPoint, are merely the tools you use to convey your message to your audience. You have a home improvement project for which a hammer would be helpful.
A rule, of course, can be helpful in offering specific guidance and an easy guideline to follow when putting together your presentation. But, this not always a helpful rule. Presenters who pack slides worth of information onto 60 slides for an hourlong presentation certainly follow the rule, but likely produce a cluttered mess. And, in all likelihood, no one wants to look at 60 packed slides in an hour. Your presentation is also about making a connection with your audience.
That connection is established and re-established every time your audience turns their attention from your slides back to you.
A slower pace can help foster that connection, as well as allow your audience to better digest and process the information you are sharing. The audience gasped. The proper number of slides per minute can best be answered like this: It should be the right amount to help you achieve your goals. That could be four or dozens.
Say you head an international relief organization, and you want to convey the magnitude of a recent disaster and the individual cases of need. You might quickly click through dozens of images of devastated areas to show the massive degree of need and then settle for several minutes on a single image of just one family that is struggling to survive.
Your slides help to personalize what might seem to be an overwhelming task. Maybe, you want your audience to focus on a big-picture view, rather than dwell on minutia. So, you only show a half-dozen slides, with one or two words, writ large, that reflect your most important themes. But when speakers fill almost every centimeter of their slides with words, bullets, and graphics, they give the audience no sense of priority.
Cluttered slides make it impossible for the audience to know where to look first. This slide, from one of our public speaking workshops , is a good example of a slide with plenty of white space.
What is the goal of PowerPoint? The main goal — as with all communication — is to transfer information, knowledge, or inspiration from you to your audience.
Words on a screen can do those things, but not nearly as well as an inspired presenter who uses simple graphics and visuals to reinforce the most important points. A great image teamed with a simple message is remembered far longer than a list of a half-dozen bullet points.
Many presenters print their PowerPoint presentations and distribute them to the audience as a takeaway document. Slideuments fail in both roles; they lack the detail required by a written document but are too cluttered to serve as an effective visual. Slides are not meant for double duty. The best solution is to separate the two.
There are exceptions, but handouts that are dense with material rarely make for gripping visuals. For instance, say you are a nutritionist who is talking to an audience looking for tips to lose weight.
The following slide would certainly be helpful as a take-home guide, but probably a bit much to take in during the presentation itself. Among the top PowerPoint mistakes, this is one that many presenters have been guilty of at one point or another. Many of our trainees confess to using slides as their personal speaking notes.
If you see your slides as sticky notes for your presentation, your audience likely will, too. Slides are intended to help the audience remember your information — not to help you remember your own information. Instead of using your slides as your speaking notes, print out your notes on paper or notecards. Place your notes on a small table set slightly to one side. When you forget what to say next, simply look down while not speaking and remaining calm , look back up, establish eye contact, and resume speaking.
Returning to the nutritionist, instead of slides full of bullets, and low-cal menus, he might want to focus on key messages, such as the importance of shaving off calories each day and making better food choices. The fewer words, the better, as these examples show:. In the following slide, he focuses on just one example of how to make the most out of your daily caloric intake. It is far more likely this slide will help the audience better understand the point he is trying to make about better food choices than the text heavy meal plan slide.
When you concentrate on creating clear, clean, and concise design — teamed with your words providing context — you help an audience focus on what it is you want them to see and understand. Know your color wheel. Carefully consider the colors you choose, as some combinations can be hard to read, whether you are colorblind or not. PowerPoint has long been a presence in a company's software arsenal and is behind many of the presentations made over years.
PowerPoint includes dozens of animation and transition features and allows the presenter to determine the duration of time each slide appears during a presentation. PowerPoint slideshow timing is easy to customize for any slide. The timing options are suited to a variety of common presentation scenarios including automated settings on a timer, manual controls for verbal and in-person presentations, and manual options for users who read and view the presentation at their own pace.
Adjusting the automatic transition times between slides is easy, and you can set a specified time to maintain the desired pace throughout the presentation.
The auto feature is frequently used to ensure the presentation is completed within a specific time frame. The settings available to a speaker giving a live presentation are the same as those on an automatic or kiosk-style show. The presentation style intended for individual browsing has no timing settings and is entirely paced by the viewer. It also does not function in a full-screen view. Before choosing to set a dedicated second transition, consider the purpose of your decision.
A manual control ensures each slide is thoroughly covered for speaking engagements, and you can rehearse the presentation to maintain a comfortable pace. The manual preset operates in a full-screen view, and you control the projector change from your computer. You can also buy a clicker for PowerPoint transition timing between slides using a remote control.
Simply press the forward or back buttons to gain control over the content. Setting a preset timer is a good option for pacing or running a self-serve style presentation in which you press Play and it delivers each slide on the timer. What is important and what is unimportant, what is helpful and what impedes your presentation is ultimately your decision. Trust your instincts and rely on your expertise.
Another reason why there is no patent solution for the perfect presentation is that there are so many variables that can affect a presentation. Factors such as topic, audience and location should always be taken into consideration when it comes to the scope and structure of slide presentations.
The room. This can be frustrating for both you and your audience. On the other hand, a room that offers excellent technical equipment can be a major asset, allowing you to add more audio-visual material, such as background music, to your presentation. This point summarizes something fundamental; opinions are everywhere.
Even something as seemingly innocuous as the optimal number of slides for a presentation is open for debate. And the recommendations often vary widely. While some recommend 40 slides in ten minutes, others recommend just two slides in ten minutes. In the end, you are the expert; you know how many slides you need. This also applies to the time spent on each slide during the presentation. Not all slides are created equal — some need less time, some need more.
It always depends on the structure and content of the slide. You can of course reference well-known presentation methods if you feel more confident using a given guideline. But make sure it fits and works with your presentation.
Here are some well-known methods for slide presentations:. It specifies that ten slides be used in a minute presentation. A font size of at least 30 should be used for text. This equals to about two minutes per slide — a standard rule for presentations.
This method can be great for beginners or inexperienced speakers. The Pecha Kucha method is becoming more popular. Pecha Kucha is based on very rigid guidelines regarding time and the number of slides.
A Pecha Kucha presentation contains 20 images. Each image is shown for exactly 20 seconds. The speaking time amounts to exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The clear, simple rhythm seems to be what makes this method so successful. Here too, feel free to adapt the rigorous rules for yourself. The Lessig method is basically a speed slideshow. This interesting presentation technique uses a large number of slides with a fast transition between slides. It allows 15 seconds or even less per slide, which is about four slides per minute.
Due to the fast changes, the audience has little chance to drift off and is drawn into the presentation. Of course, the spoken part of the presentation needs to be perfectly synchronized with the slides. This requires practice and can make the method pretty challenging for the presenter, especially beginners.
The Takahashi method follows a similar principle as the Lessig method. Again, the slides only appear for a few seconds at a time. The special feature: all slides contain only one or a few words in a large font. This method provides the presenter with key points which can make presentation tools, such as index cards unnecessary. Of course, this method is not recommended for presentations that require images, graphics or other similar visual material.
As you can see, there are many different approaches and ideas. Which method is the right one for you? The answer is up to you.
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