5 Characteristics Of An

Effective Presentation
1. Font Size and Type
2. Labels
3. Consistent Backgrounds
4. Contrast
5. High Quality Images
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

1. Font Size and Type

When presenting keep in mind that your audience is a lot further away from
the screen than you were while you were creating the presentation. So to
make sure your audience can comprehend what is being presented, never
insert text into your presentation that is smaller than 24pt.
Not only does font size help with comprehension, but font type plays a huge
factor as well. As a general rule, never use any fonts with serifs (the fancy
projection finishing off a stroke of a letter) or any fonts that resemble papyrus
(I’m looking at you, high school kids). While these types of fonts may look
great close up on a computer screen 17 inches from your face, the same
clarity and understanding doesn’t translate when you are 15-20 feet away.
And to help create a sense of unity within the presentation, never use more
than two font types: one for titles and headers, and the other for body text.
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

2. Labels
A procedure that may seem mundane and
worthless like labeling all your graphs, tables,
charts, and etc. makes a huge difference when
presenting to an audience. Again, they don’t
know the content as well as you do and you
have to walk your audience by hand through
the information. This is especially important when
it has to do with the type of content that is
generally presented in tables and charts (lots
and lots of numbers).
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

3. Consistent Backgrounds
When it comes to backgrounds, there is definitely a
method to the madness. Good presentations
ameliorate content with backgrounds that don’t
detract from the flow of the presentation. And
good presenters will interchange between one or
two different backgrounds depending on the
information shown on screen. If this is done
consistently, you will almost always know what kind
of information is being displayed because the
presenter defined it through the correlation of the
content and the background.
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

4. Contrast
This tip goes hand in hand with tip #1 and #3. If
you are set on using certain font types and
colors in your presentation, make sure that your
content is always easy to read after the
background images are applied. Always go
back through your presentation and locate the
trouble spots and mask your text with a darker
(or lighter) shape. This will allow you to keep your
background selection and create a
presentation that is easy to read and digest.
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

5. High Quality Images

7 words: Absolutely use nothing that resembles clip
art. This will be easier to do now that PowerPoint has
drifted away from using it. I don’t know how hard I
need to try and convince you not to use it, but in
case you do like using it, here is a bulleted list of why
you should never use clip art in a presentation ever
again.
 Childish
 Overused
 Not professional
 You can do so much better
 Etc.