In the “Putting the ‘Wow’ into PowerPoint Presentations – Part One – Readability” article we talked about how to make presentations readable. Here we learn how to make presentations more visually appealing.

PowerPoint – it’s one of the most commonly used presentation packages out there. That’s no surprise considering how easy it is to use. But you’d be surprised how many people aren’t making the most of this powerful software. Are you one of them?

Out of the 1 million PowerPoint presentations given every single day, many fail to make the most of images to create a great impression. A well-chosen image can grab our attention much more than lots of confusing words.

Here are some secrets for more attention grabbing PowerPoint presentations:

Picture this

You want your presentation to interest and inspire your audience. Using pictures or photos alongside your text will help people understand your message. And an unusual or amusing image could help keep your presentation in mind long after it’s over!

Aside from using images to make a point, don’t forget to use repeated background images to establish continuity between slides.

Get animated

Diagrams can be difficult to digest all at once. It’s often much more effective to present diagrams by revealing them one step at a time – rather than the whole thing in one go. For example, you could have a pyramid diagram revealing itself section by section from the bottom up.

There are lots of animation effects to choose from. They can help you control the flow of information, highlight key points and of course, keep your audience interested!

Double vision

So you’ve chosen the best images and pictures for your presentation, but how do you know they will win over your audience? It’s time to get someone you trust to take a look and see whether your images really do bring your talk to life.

Send your presentation over to a colleague or friend for review using Microsoft Outlook. Then your reviewer can view the presentation in the comfort of their own home or office and suggest changes to their copy of the presentation without having the chore of marking up hard copies. Once they’ve sent it back to you, you can add their comments using the PowerPoint reviewing tools.

Keep these simple rules in mind and you’ll soon be creating great looking presentations. A short PowerPoint training course could help you get even more out of PowerPoint and many other Microsoft packages.