Design your slides with few words and images that speak as much as words ! 

- The title : in case a participant's mind wanders for few seconds, the title should help him or her
understand where the presentation is at. In addition, the title should be enticing. An excellent
exercise is to read advertisement titles on the billboards in the streets, headlines on the newspapers and pay attention to graphics used on ads. 

- The text : keep it short. The text is useful for yourself as a guide on what to say. In the above
exemple, you know that you will divide your speech into two parts : opportunities and challenges. 
The blue slide with the bullet points was just throwing ideas with no structure. The words must also guide your participants. 

- The images : you may choose a theme for a specific part of your presentation : animals, sports,
nature, cities, countries etc.. the images should convey a message in relation to the central idea
of the slide. Images convey stronger messages than your text.  The following slides could give you
ideas on how to build your PowerPoint in another style.  In the same way the slide may be just one word. You can vary the formatting depending of the style of the presentation. Longer presentation
would definitely be appropriate to vary the format so that the audience keeps up the attention. 

  

The thank you slide could be your last slide : a big thank you. Be an artist! The Shell slide says a lot
with only 4 letters! And people will remember, don't you think ? You will find a lot of ideas with PowerPoint using the insert and format tabs. Insert images but also shapes. Once you click on the
item inserted, the format function will appear in the ribbon at the top.

How to customize your slides and texts with PowerPoint 2007 :

Surprise your audience visually with PowerPoint. You may add 3-D perspective, add objects with
depth and shadows to your slides. But remember that is not the priority of your presentation.
 

Click on the following link : Design your Slides to learn how to reproduce the following slide. You
will find the steps to give this special effects like the ones given to “COOL 3-D”. 
 

The SmartArt shapes in PowerPoint 2007 :

Now that you know how to use images to convey emotions, you may also use PowerPoint pre-defined visuals when you need to structure your ideas.

Example of a SmartArt graph :

You can convert text into a SmartArt graphic in one click (type your text on the slide >
ribbon Home > click convert into SmartArt graph).  Remember this when we will cover how to
build your ppt presentation from a word document.



                                             

Where to find images :

Via the Microsoft Online ClipArt or websites such as flickr, imageafter, Istockphoto.com, fotolia.com.
They compile great photos. Check if any royalties to pay. Once you have identified your photo, save
it normally and insert it into your slide. You may give effects to the photo by using the format
and effects functions (click on the photo inserted on your slide, the format tab will appear at the
top right of the ribbon). Some images may not be saved from those photo libraries, then simply
print screen and paste it into your paint software (type "paint" into your execute tab). You will cut,
save and insert the photo.

Paint interface :



A second alternative is to paste directly the content on your slide. Click then on the image, go to
format, and use the "crop"  function  to size down the image to the part you wish to keep.


Next article : Building a video to insert in your PowerPoint presentation 

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