PowerPoint Tips
Helpful tips, ideas, and strategies to make the most out of the world's leading presentation program. Topics include:
- Reducing Clutter
- Font Tips
- Use images to reinforce numeric data
More Articles...
- Reduce clutter: Create interactivity within your slides
- Reduce clutter: Create a video montage of your graphics
- Reduce clutter: Use animations to introduce text and elements
- Make Alternate and Hidden Versions of Slides
- Reduce clutter: Align your graphics
- Dont get caught by the clock!
- Font Tip: Employ weight contrast for visual interest
- Font Tip: Use script-based fonts sparingly
- Font Tip: Investigate Slab Serif Typefaces like Lucida and Tahoma
- Font Tip: Restrict stylized typefaces

We remember graphics more readily than text, so work to find a graphic from a stock photo collection or a scanned photo that will support the bullet and make it come alive with graphics.
We all know it: Animation makes a presentation more memorable. So spend the time to put some movement into your presentation…and take note of how many more people remember it. Here are some ideas...
Rather than having a whole page of bullets or graphics, try grouping the points into a few colorful rectangles or squares. That way, they're psychologically perceived as a collective entity.
Technical diagrams or processes can be tricky to follow on screen. Simplify them! With improved graphics, video, or with handouts.
When starting a new presentation, try not to become distracted by the desire to make it look good. Rather, focus on creating the content first....
This is the fastest method to reduce clutter. It's a good idea to limit your bullets no more than 6 per page. But this may not be practical in all cases, so rather than cram them all on a single page, split them over 2 or 3 pages.
On slides where there's no way around the busy-ness (like an organizational chart), simply place your graphics or text on a pure black background. Though templates are great for creating a consistent look, there's nothing bad about deviating from it once in a while with a non-competing image to get the point across.
Rather than cramming all the graphics and text items together, taking up all the available space on a slide, bring the items into the center a bit...shrink them down to a reasonable size...and provide at least 80% "white space" around the items. It creates a more clean and inviting look.