How to handle Backgrounds and Graphs in your PowerPoint Presentation.

Posted in presentation skills, Tips & Tricks | Tagged: creativity, powerpoint, presentation design, presentation skills, skills, slide design

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Both backgrounds and graphs can play an important role and contribute the lion’s share of the final impact of a presentation. If you use a suitable background in your presentation, it can help you to communicate better, as well as making your presentation more attractive and effective.

On the other hand, graphs have always been a very common element in presentations. To be effective, there are certain aspects that you must consider carefully when applying backgrounds or graphs to your presentation.

A good background must pay attention to the following points:

• You ought to use an attractive but simple background rather than a flashy one. Remember that the background is of lesser priority than the information on the slide.
• Your background must be light, or else it could be an obstacle for the reader in trying to concentrate on your speech or read through the slides.
• It is very important to use the same background throughout the presentation. As discussed in my previous post, consistency is an important characteristic of a good presentation.

Here are some key things to avoid when using backgrounds in a presentation:

• Avoid dark and flashy backgrounds, as they are distracting; it’s difficult for the audience to read text overlaid on them.
• Do not change background for each slide; be consistent and use the same background for all slides.

Moving on to graphs, a good graph should feature the following points:

• It goes without saying that you should use minimal words in your presentation, and should go with graphs instead of tables.
• Data presented in a graph are easier to comprehend and retain, compared to tables or raw figures.
• Trends are easier to recognize and visualize in graphical form.
• Never forget to assign a title to each of your graphs. The audience members must be clear in their minds about what data are being presented.

And here are some important things to avoid in your graphs:

• Do not use minor grid-lines; they are unnecessary and merely add visual clutter.
• Small fonts in a presentation are always unacceptable, and this also applies to any graph.
• There must be some rationale as to the colors you choose for the bars or lines in your graph; they should not be illogical.
• As mentioned above, never forget a title for each graph.
• One more thing to be careful about is shading; it must not be distracting.

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As you might realize, there is no room for anything that is unnecessary or distracting. Presentations are required to be simple, illustrative, bright and clear cut. At SlideShop.com we have a special Slide Pack devoted to simple and effective graphs, if you need to do a presentation containing a graph it’s definitely worth a look.

Best Regards,

Rasmus Waldemar, Sales and Marketing Director