5 Characteristics Of An

Effective Presentation

1. Font Size and Type

2. Labels
3. Consistent Backgrounds
4. Contrast
5. High Quality Images
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

1. Font Size and Type

When presenting keep in mind that your audience is a lot further away from the screen than
you were while you were creating the presentation. So to make sure your audience can
comprehend what is being presented, never insert text into your presentation that is smaller
than 24pt.
Not only does font size help with comprehension, but font type plays a huge factor as well. As
a general rule, never use any fonts with serifs (the fancy projection finishing off a stroke of a
letter) or any fonts that resemble papyrus (I’m looking at you, high school kids). While these
types of fonts may look great close up on a computer screen 17 inches from your face, the
same clarity and understanding doesn’t translate when you are 15-20 feet away. And to help
create a sense of unity within the presentation, never use more than two font types: one for
titles and headers, and the other for body text.
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

2. Labels
A procedure that may seem mundane and worthless like
labeling all your graphs, tables, charts, and etc. makes a
huge difference when presenting to an audience. Again,
they don’t know the content as well as you do and you
have to walk your audience by hand through the
information. This is especially important when it has to do
with the type of content that is generally presented in
tables and charts (lots and lots of numbers).
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

3. Consistent Backgrounds
When it comes to backgrounds, there is definitely a
method to the madness. Good presentations ameliorate
content with backgrounds that don’t detract from the flow
of the presentation. And good presenters will interchange
between one or two different backgrounds depending on
the information shown on screen. If this is done
consistently, you will almost always know what kind of
information is being displayed because the presenter
defined it through the correlation of the content and the
background.
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

4. Contrast
This tip goes hand in hand with tip #1 and #3. If you are
set on using certain font types and colors in your
presentation, make sure that your content is always easy to
read after the background images are applied. Always go
back through your presentation and locate the trouble
spots and mask your text with a darker (or lighter) shape.
This will allow you to keep your background selection and
create a presentation that is easy to read and digest.
5 Characteristics Of An Effective Presentation

5. High Quality Images

7 words: Absolutely use nothing that resembles clip art. This will
be easier to do now that PowerPoint has drifted away from using
it. I don’t know how hard I need to try and convince you not to
use it, but in case you do like using it, here is a bulleted list of
why you should never use clip art in a presentation ever again.
 Childish
 Overused
 Not professional
 You can do so much better
 Etc.