PowerPoints can often make or break a career and we need to master the art of creating good looking PowerPoints, especially if we are working in the corporate world. Here are some good reads and tools from across the web and the blogosphere to help you get started in creating a good design.

Remember like experts say, creating a good PowerPoint is a work of art – the visual appeal and construction of words should harmoniously depict and help in what you intend to say.

1. Office 2007 – Firstly, before anything else, lets get the weapons and ammunition right. I kept on repeating this but the US army is the top armed forces in the world not because the Americans are stronger than the people in other countries, but majorly because of the superior weapons they have. So taking that into account,  how about upgrading our own hung MS Office 98s and XPs to Office 2007 (Microsoft is not my client), if you are not already. The visually appealing shapes, templates, and designs you can create so easily in Office 2007 will seem like impossible in the other previous versions of MS Office.

2. Templates – You can use the MS Office themes and download more from here. However one problem with using these templates is that everyone uses them, so your presentation looks like a college student’s homework. You can break free from the default flashy and extra colorful Microsoft templates and use your own templates. Check out the designs of some award wining presentations here. You don’t need to be a master designer. A white background is suitable for almost all types of presentations. Here is a simple one I have used way back, in a plain white background with one picture.

Ok I realised it looks much better on the PowerPoint, but nevertheless to prove a point, I am not deleting it.

3. Layouts – Chuck the standard layout designs and create your own style. All slides need not have the standard layouts throughout, meaning you can move around where you put the text and the pictures. For myself, I stopped using the default ‘Title’ and ‘Title and Content’ layouts long time back, because I see that layout in every other presentation.

For instance, for proposing a event speaker opportunity to a client, this slide below should be sufficient. The presenter has to know the details of the events at his/her fingertips, or have it in a piece of paper though.

3. Fonts – Personally I prefer Calibri. Yes that’s the default font in MS Word in MS Office 2007. It is a sans serif font, the family that is preferred by experts.

Regarding the font size, everybody has his/her own views on this. Read on what experts say about font here at Digital Inspiration. Though a 30 point font size might not be practical for our PR plan and pitch proposals, I suppose font size shouldn’t go down beyond 16. I said this considering what works basis the sizes of most of the conference rooms I encountered. But this might not be ideal for events. So when Guy Kawasaki says 30 font size, probably he must be refering to big events where he give his presentations at.

4. Content – Most experts agreed on writing in phrases, not complete sentences. One or two phrases per slide should be enough. Now the problem with such presentations is that they need expert presenters. For those of us who are few years into the business, we cannot start talking for 5-10 minutes by looking at a picture. Sure I can talk about my blogging habits for hours, but not on the IT consulting industry’s issues and trends in India, unless I have done a big homework. But hey, maybe that’s the clue – homework.

5. Pictures – Pictures are the soul of the presentation. Without pictures, presentations become such a drag and corporate blah blah. Right pictures help bring out an idea more clearly for the audience. I also read somewhere, maybe Seth Godin’s blog, that your words on the slides are for the intellect of your audience, your pictures are for appealing to their emotions. Anything to grab that contract.

I also have another point. If you don’t write much, you don’t reveal much of your ideas in written if you need to leave behind a copy of that ppt at the end of the presentation.

Alos, Ellen Finkelstein says a very valid point that bullets are boring and if you write in bullets, people start reading them and stop giving attention to what you are saying. She says instead of having three bullet points in one slide, you can break them into three slides.

For examples this slide ….

can be broken into this…

this…

and finally this….

You can find pictures for your presentations on Google Image Search. Or if you worry about copyrights, then Stock Xchng provides free images. For Indian images try Dinodia.

6. Golden Rules to Remember from the Masters – I won’t say much here. Read on from the masters. These are my two favorite posts on PowerPoints. The first is a ten tips list from Garr Reynolds. The second is a post from Seth Godin giving his superb tips. Be sure to check these two links out.

Also are 10 points to learn from the world’s best PowerPoints contest as a checklist. Then here are 10 do’s and don’ts from Micrososft Small Business Center.

7. Tips and Tricks -  Learn how to frame your presentation on a Word file and then later import it into a ppt, with formatting intact here. This will be good to just concentrate on the content without going for the design in the initial stage. Then there are also more tips and tricks on this page as well.

More PowerPoint readings – The PowerPoint FAQ.

Do you have any tips to share, or some nice powerpoint slides toshow off, well share the tips on the comments. You can upload your slides on Box.net or some other place and share the link in the comments. If we have enough of the nice ones, we will list them out on the blog together.

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