Ask HN: How do I learn to use Powerpoint well?
39 comments
I always wonder why people always use libraries when building software but never use templates when making presentations. Graphics and transitions are extremely important when presenting, so why not build on top of other people's work ?
I highly recommend using templates. You can get some really good ones here (from 5 to 30 dollars)[1] or for free using google.
[1] https://graphicriver.net/category/presentation-templates/pow...
I highly recommend using templates. You can get some really good ones here (from 5 to 30 dollars)[1] or for free using google.
[1] https://graphicriver.net/category/presentation-templates/pow...
Focus on real content – maps, charts, pictures – and create it using some better tools outside of Powerpoint. Don’t write everything you plan to say on your slides. The talk is the written content, the slides are visual backup.
Cut the bullet lists. Cut the animated transitions. Cut the clip art, tacky color schemes, overabundance of wacky fonts.
Use text big enough to read. Don’t put too much of it on each slide. Write in complete sentences. If you have more information than easily fits on slides, print it on a handout.
This will both improve your talk, and reduce the amount of work you have to do trying to herd powerpoint into doing anything tricky. All the MS Office products are hilariously bad at doing precise layout work, full of inexplicable and unreproducible bugs. The best approach is to not try too hard with it, you’ll just frustrate yourself. If you keep your layouts exceedingly simple, you have a chance of success.
Cut the bullet lists. Cut the animated transitions. Cut the clip art, tacky color schemes, overabundance of wacky fonts.
Use text big enough to read. Don’t put too much of it on each slide. Write in complete sentences. If you have more information than easily fits on slides, print it on a handout.
This will both improve your talk, and reduce the amount of work you have to do trying to herd powerpoint into doing anything tricky. All the MS Office products are hilariously bad at doing precise layout work, full of inexplicable and unreproducible bugs. The best approach is to not try too hard with it, you’ll just frustrate yourself. If you keep your layouts exceedingly simple, you have a chance of success.
BAD PowerPoint presentations are for the speaker's benefit. They are just transparent notes. Professors are the most guilty of this with a VERY close second anyone that just is a bad public speaker.
GOOD PowerPoint presentations add to the speaker's presentation and requires more from the speaker and less from the audience. These are very rare. People who are selling you something are the most likely to do this well.
GOOD PowerPoint presentations add to the speaker's presentation and requires more from the speaker and less from the audience. These are very rare. People who are selling you something are the most likely to do this well.
I am a professional presentation designer and the founder of a PowerPoint alternative: www.slidemagic.com.
Of course, I am biased and encourage you to try my app, but failing that, feel free to browse through blog posts I have written over the past 8 years that include a lot of PowerPoint advice: http://www.slidemagic.com/search-the-presentation-design-blo...
My book (free) also provides useful pointers: http://www.slidemagic.com/book#free-presentation-design-book
Of course, I am biased and encourage you to try my app, but failing that, feel free to browse through blog posts I have written over the past 8 years that include a lot of PowerPoint advice: http://www.slidemagic.com/search-the-presentation-design-blo...
My book (free) also provides useful pointers: http://www.slidemagic.com/book#free-presentation-design-book
The best way I've found to learn powerpoint to identify 'good' powerpoint slides, and then try and recreate the slides yourself from scratch. My top tip in general is to use the Align and Distribute feature to manage the layout; you'll be surprised how much of a difference it makes!
As you've asked for "Best Practices"
The Old KISS principal applies here too.
Use whatever standard template your company or whomever mandates and then have a Title per slide and Bullet points.
If none mandated, just plain white background and standard font size in the default template works best.
All transitions etc.... get lost when converting and delay switching time.
Only have a single image per slide. The image should be self contained. i.e: Create the diagram in word or other and use image of it.
It might look BORING, but it'll be easier to read and the slides are a guide. People should be looking at presenter, NOT at the slides. :)
The Old KISS principal applies here too.
Use whatever standard template your company or whomever mandates and then have a Title per slide and Bullet points.
If none mandated, just plain white background and standard font size in the default template works best.
All transitions etc.... get lost when converting and delay switching time.
Only have a single image per slide. The image should be self contained. i.e: Create the diagram in word or other and use image of it.
It might look BORING, but it'll be easier to read and the slides are a guide. People should be looking at presenter, NOT at the slides. :)
1. Use you organisation's template. It should have 30+ slides of different layout options. 'Text on left, 2 graphics vertically stacked on right', 'Text on right, 1 graphic on left' etc, and a few pages of widgets. And your organisation's colour palette with adjusted shading, etc.
If you can't find it, ask someone in marketing, as they'll probably have something similar if not official.
2. Use the keyboard to move things around. It is much more effective than using a mouse.
If you can't find it, ask someone in marketing, as they'll probably have something similar if not official.
2. Use the keyboard to move things around. It is much more effective than using a mouse.
This reminds me. The best "presentation" I've ever seen (and I was lucky to be present in person for this) has been by a guy that was, if I remember correctly a top person in Twitter's scalability team a few years ago. His name was Raffi. It was so good that I've since been looking for these slides actively and never managed to find them. The talk was about how they scaled Twitter after it became a thing, and what happens to a tweet once the user clicks "Post", how the timelines are generated, etc. The presentation on the wall was made so tastefully, and clicked so amazingly in place with the speaker's verbal story, that everyone was completely mesmerized.
If anyone can find me these slides (they weren't traditional slides and the whole thing felt more like a smooth movie almost), I'd be extremely grateful. Great material to learn from.
If anyone can find me these slides (they weren't traditional slides and the whole thing felt more like a smooth movie almost), I'd be extremely grateful. Great material to learn from.
https://twitter.com/raffi is the guy that did the presentation.
My personal recommendations:
1 - use your corporate template
2 - stay away from fancy transitioning between slides
3 - watch font size, avoid small font unless printed, and even then...
4 - augment what is seen on slide with what you say, do not read verbatim, or if you do read, read then expound.
5 - control viewing with bullet point transition, revealing one bullet point at a time.
6 - fewer slides are better unless your internal corporate is accustomed to 100 page decks (I've actually seen this)
7 - Images are great, but avoid juvenile images.
The other thing is that Powerpoint creation is an actual career in and off itself. A friend of mine in marketing said that some executives offload PPT creation to freelancers and that is ALL that the freelancer does to feed and house themselves. Creating a good presentation is an art in and off itself.
1 - use your corporate template
2 - stay away from fancy transitioning between slides
3 - watch font size, avoid small font unless printed, and even then...
4 - augment what is seen on slide with what you say, do not read verbatim, or if you do read, read then expound.
5 - control viewing with bullet point transition, revealing one bullet point at a time.
6 - fewer slides are better unless your internal corporate is accustomed to 100 page decks (I've actually seen this)
7 - Images are great, but avoid juvenile images.
The other thing is that Powerpoint creation is an actual career in and off itself. A friend of mine in marketing said that some executives offload PPT creation to freelancers and that is ALL that the freelancer does to feed and house themselves. Creating a good presentation is an art in and off itself.
As you're asking specifically for using powerpoint, I would like to suggest few tips you can use.
Colors:
When choosing colors for presentations, use http://colorhunt.co, http://Coolors.co, or http://colorlovers.com, as you'll find prebuilt color templates that look quite good than the stock colors of powerpoint. This will definitely save you a lot of time on deciding colors.
Fonts:
If you can, install google fonts and use them instead of stock fonts. Most of the stock fonts are overused in the industry (comic sans) and gives your presentations a boring look. You can use http://canva.com/font-combinations for fonts suggestions that go well togather. One for headings and other for content. You can choose a thrid font for comments or captions.
Template:
Here, I would suggest that many other are suggesting. Use your company's provided template. It would be much easier to modify that than to start from scratch and think of something new. Still if you want to use something new, watch a lot of presentations, especially the featured one on Slideshare.
And if Powerpoint is not the only option: I would highly suggest using http://canva.com for your designing needs. I, from past year, have been using it to design almost everything. From presentations to Infographics and deliverables.
3 benefits I would like to highlight - 1. It is much more flexible than powerpoint to modify, add colors, add pictures, resizing your designs.
2. Provides hundreds of shapes, illustrations, images, few good fonts (for free). This saves a lot of time.
3. Offers multiple free templates to start with.
The major of all is, its free and you can use it anywhere, on home, office. Share the files easily with just a link.
PS: I'm not related to Canva's marketing or anything, I'm just a too happy client of them. I haven't even purchased their premium package as I never felt the need.
Colors:
When choosing colors for presentations, use http://colorhunt.co, http://Coolors.co, or http://colorlovers.com, as you'll find prebuilt color templates that look quite good than the stock colors of powerpoint. This will definitely save you a lot of time on deciding colors.
Fonts:
If you can, install google fonts and use them instead of stock fonts. Most of the stock fonts are overused in the industry (comic sans) and gives your presentations a boring look. You can use http://canva.com/font-combinations for fonts suggestions that go well togather. One for headings and other for content. You can choose a thrid font for comments or captions.
Template:
Here, I would suggest that many other are suggesting. Use your company's provided template. It would be much easier to modify that than to start from scratch and think of something new. Still if you want to use something new, watch a lot of presentations, especially the featured one on Slideshare.
And if Powerpoint is not the only option: I would highly suggest using http://canva.com for your designing needs. I, from past year, have been using it to design almost everything. From presentations to Infographics and deliverables.
3 benefits I would like to highlight - 1. It is much more flexible than powerpoint to modify, add colors, add pictures, resizing your designs.
2. Provides hundreds of shapes, illustrations, images, few good fonts (for free). This saves a lot of time.
3. Offers multiple free templates to start with.
The major of all is, its free and you can use it anywhere, on home, office. Share the files easily with just a link.
PS: I'm not related to Canva's marketing or anything, I'm just a too happy client of them. I haven't even purchased their premium package as I never felt the need.
Create plaintext to powerpoint generator
Not sure why the downvotes. He doesn't seems to be excited about it, when you will have 50 different presentstions and you need to do minor change in it, you just run the generator and it's done in few seconds. You can diff the changes with VCS. You will have consistent style in every presentation, if you change color of title it will change in every slide of every presentation.
I would suggest looking at presentations like the one you want to give.
That last bit is important. I see academics trying to emulate Steve Jobs, not realising the Steve Jobs style doesn't work when you have genuinely technically difficult material to get across.
That last bit is important. I see academics trying to emulate Steve Jobs, not realising the Steve Jobs style doesn't work when you have genuinely technically difficult material to get across.
I found an useful YT playlist.
Hope you enjoy it.
https://youtu.be/g5EX7dpoLiY?list=PLq-yuDBwPhRvOP9qGzQtQlK1v...
Good luck!-
Good luck!-
one sweet trick is to design each slide as an image in photoshop. looks much better.
@dilemma's suggestion is the right one. The best way to use powerpoint is DON'T USE POWERPOINT to create your presentation. For example, if you use PPT shapes and text objects on a slide, and somebody tries to view it on a different version of PPT (mac v. PC for example), the layout may change. Yesterday, I presented in a webinar. I sent my slides to the sponsor in PPT format. The webinar presentation software wanted 4:3 aspect slides and mine were 16:9 so they mangled the format.
Use another tool to create each slide. Photoshop if that's your thing. I use omnigraffle on my mac a lot. Each slide should consist of a single jpg or png.
So you don't have to learn anything about PPT, which is a worthless tool, but unfortunately ubiquitous. Make your content and use PPT only to share and present.
Use another tool to create each slide. Photoshop if that's your thing. I use omnigraffle on my mac a lot. Each slide should consist of a single jpg or png.
So you don't have to learn anything about PPT, which is a worthless tool, but unfortunately ubiquitous. Make your content and use PPT only to share and present.
The OP clearly stated:
> I don't pick the format, I am aware of all the disadvantages, I have read Tufte, Powerpoint is the tool I will be using for this.
And still there are people that go on telling him not to use PowerPoint and the reasons why.
> I don't pick the format, I am aware of all the disadvantages, I have read Tufte, Powerpoint is the tool I will be using for this.
And still there are people that go on telling him not to use PowerPoint and the reasons why.
The poster above didn't say not to use PPT as the final format. If you had read OPs issue closely you would probably identify this as a viable work-around.
What about save as PDF?
For the vast majority I think it actually the best way, you loose the ability to use animations but one should rarely if ever need to use them. The problem is that if you do presentation and ppt with other people they want to add annotations and make fast changes and this becomes tricky. For the presentation PDF is generally better format since it should be consistent, which ppt certainly isn't.
[deleted]
I know you're not specifically looking for suggestions on content, but this is worth a look:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/144505424481/impossible-to-igno...
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/144505424481/impossible-to-igno...
Don't know any content references, but find a person in your network that has worked in management consulting, and they can take you through exactly what you need
A foolproof method that I have used to great success:
Use the 6 by 6 rule: keep your slides to a maximum of 6 words per line, and 6 lines per slide.
Budget about 30 seconds per slide, and then talk about the things that your slides outline; don't just read what's on the slide.
You can add notes to the slides that don't show up in the presentation but I prefer to use a piece of paper as it lets you walk around.
Use the 6 by 6 rule: keep your slides to a maximum of 6 words per line, and 6 lines per slide.
Budget about 30 seconds per slide, and then talk about the things that your slides outline; don't just read what's on the slide.
You can add notes to the slides that don't show up in the presentation but I prefer to use a piece of paper as it lets you walk around.
This is exactly what the OP didn't ask for. He wants to learn the software. He doesn't want to learn how to present.
My mistake.
I guess it didn't occur to me that a HN user wouldn't know how to use powerpoint.
I guess it didn't occur to me that a HN user wouldn't know how to use powerpoint.
I know how to use it in the sense that everyone knows how, the basic usage is drag-and-drop. I just have no interest in spending a large chunk of my day dragging-and-dropping if it can be avoided (through automation, templating, shortcuts etc).
When you prepare slides several times a year you can get by with the usual method, when it's weekly I would rather spend a couple of hours upfront learning the software inside out. I thought this would be apparent to HN users from the OP.
When you prepare slides several times a year you can get by with the usual method, when it's weekly I would rather spend a couple of hours upfront learning the software inside out. I thought this would be apparent to HN users from the OP.
OP did ask for "best practices"
I may not have been clear enough in the OP. Yes, I want to learn the software and not general presentation skills.
I usually know what I need in a document, I just want to spend less time putting it together.
To edit text files quickly I learnt vim commands, I'd like to find something similar to take the sting out of working with PP. Keyboard driven workflows, advanced features etc.
Right now I am doing a lot of clicking, a lot of inserting textboxes, changing text formats and dragging things around on slides. I would like to type and hit a few shortcuts as I go to arrange things.
I appreciate people suggesting rules for numbers of slides and tips for preparing to speak but that isn't what the problem is.
I usually know what I need in a document, I just want to spend less time putting it together.
To edit text files quickly I learnt vim commands, I'd like to find something similar to take the sting out of working with PP. Keyboard driven workflows, advanced features etc.
Right now I am doing a lot of clicking, a lot of inserting textboxes, changing text formats and dragging things around on slides. I would like to type and hit a few shortcuts as I go to arrange things.
I appreciate people suggesting rules for numbers of slides and tips for preparing to speak but that isn't what the problem is.
30 seconds per slide? are you mad?
Try it, it's actually pretty good pacing.
The most boring presentations are the ones where they spend like 10 minutes a slide.
The most boring presentations are the ones where they spend like 10 minutes a slide.
That seems about right for me, assuming it's being used in a presentation.
[deleted]
I'm confused by your statement. Do you think that 30s/slide is too fast or too slow?
[deleted]
[deleted]
I don't pick the format, I am aware of all the disadvantages, I have read Tufte, Powerpoint is the tool I will be using for this.
I am looking for a method to learn how to use PP quickly (shortcuts, best practices, features to avoid) so I can put things together quickly that look decent. The vast majority of online content on this is extremely basic or focused on presentation skills - I am looking to learn the software. Something like Joel Spolsky's "You Suck At Excel" talk, but for Powerpoint.
Articles, MOOCs, video, whatever will be fine. Thanks.