Art Director - Ted Smith: What One Shall Do and Not Do For Their Slide Package
This presentation tip is in the category: Expert Advice about PowerPoint Design
A seasoned professional with significant experience in the field of marketing communications as a department manager, art director and designer, presently Ted Smith has his own business as a creative consultant to businesses and agencies involved in all aspects of creative production.
Smith’s background has often been that of project lead - detailing project objectives, overseeing freelance talent and vendor relations, and ensuring completion within scheduling and budget objectives. Additionally, Smith has supervised and art directed numerous photo-shoots, both product and people, as well as trafficking and project tracking. Here are Smith’s inputs for the top three qualities of a first-class PowerPoint presentation:
- I have to do a lot of templates for presentations and the main point I would stress is BREVITY. Remember, the purpose of PowerPoint is to act as an outline from which you fill in the details. If you have to put in tons of copy, then you don’t know how to make a presentation and should leave it to someone who does.
- Just as important is to keep the formatting consistent. Text and images that are constantly changing positions, color, size, etc is distracting to say the least.
- Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough — DO NOT USE EFFECTS.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Transitions are okay, but they should be limited to one or two only. I have seen many presentations that end up looking stupid and unprofessional because of the cheesy sound and motion effects that are supplied by Microsoft. Just because some idiot programmer put them in there doesn’t mean they have to be used!!
