The human body is designed in such a way that in most cases it is much easier for us to absorb visual information presented in images (including animated ones), graphs, diagrams, and videos. Awareness of this encourages people to use appropriate materials to argue a point of view, achieve greater understanding on the part of the listener, or present a new project, product, or service. In general, the potential of various visual materials is unimaginably great, and people are coming up with new and more effective ways and formats of using them every day.
Especially students do a lot of presentations to defend their theses, term papers done by themselves or provided by paper writing service on writingapaper.net in order to save time and energy for preparing the presentation.
In this article, we will talk about presentation as one of the main tools for presenting visual information in modern education, business, manufacturing, and business relations in general, and also we will analyze the main mistakes that people make when creating presentations.
General Information
A presentation can be viewed from two perspectives:
- A presentation is a set of documents used in the process of presenting an organization, product, or project
- A presentation is a marketing tool
Let us focus on presentation in its first meaning.
With the development of technology, presentations have become widespread in all areas of human activity. Employees of companies use this tool to present new project ideas to their bosses, or to report on the work done and the results, teachers in schools since elementary school ask children to prepare a small presentation on a particular topic, and high school graduates do the presentation as an aid for the thesis defense. This popularity is due to the nature of the format itself: it is more pleasant and convenient for the viewer not just to listen to the speaker, but also to see on the screen additional materials that allow you to delve deeper into the topic; the speaker helps to convey useful and necessary information that for one reason or another can not be included in the speech.
The main difficulty with a presentation is its creation. A presentation is a unique product of a specific person’s creative thought; it should not be patterned or copied. In addition, its different types serve different purposes. For example, a presentation for internal use within a company cannot be identical in information content material to be sent to partners. Similarly, a presentation on physics cannot be a template for a presentation on history. Of course, several rules should be kept in mind when creating any presentation and which will surely help to achieve a better result, but they are not told about them in school computer science classes. Thus, the main causes of presentation errors are:
- lack of understanding of the final goal and audience;
- ignorance of the basic rules of composition.
Top typical mistakes
Too much information
According to the specialists from the best writing services, depending on how the information is planned to reach the consumer, presentations are divided into public and “for sending”. The first type implies a direct speech of the speaker in front of the audience, where the display will play an accompanying role. In this case, the slides should contain a minimum of text and as much visual material (pictures, graphs, charts) as possible. In the second case, the consumer himself becomes acquainted with the content of the presentation without the speaker’s participation, which requires more information from it – the slides should briefly describe the main ideas and talking points.
In any case, the presentation should contain as little text as the specific situation allows. Do not overload the slides with endless entries of vocabulary and “copypaste” from the Internet.
Inappropriate bullet points
Bullet point – a list marker in the form of a black dot, black square, and similar symbols from the standard set.
The thesis statement in the presentation hints to the author that the use of lists is necessary for a more logical organization of the information array. However, in practice, it turns out that an overabundance of black dots makes your eyes glaze over. Therefore, an effective solution is to replace the standard markers with unique: numbers, images, and icons. This will facilitate the perception of information.
4:3 format and a logo with contact information on each slide
Firstly, modern projectors, screens, and TV sets switched to 16:9 format a long time ago, and 4:3 looks simply absurd on them – on the sides of the slide there are black bars that could also be used for information on the slide. The 4:3 format can only be used when you are 100% sure that the presentation will be done using old equipment.
Secondly, there is no need to give information about yourself or the company on each slide: address, phone number, email. This information is appropriate only in the beginning and at the end. This approach not only gets rid of unnecessary “information noise”, but also allows to use of all space of a slide for placing really important information.
Using typical pictures
Forget about using images with white men and handshakes. Every other presentation has them. Your goal is to create a memorable product that catches the eye.
A photo with a white background on a color slide
A mauve ton in terms of style and design. There is a tool in PowerPoint that allows you to remove the background of an image (make it transparent) without “Photoshop”.
Color supersaturation
The presentation should be human-oriented. In this case, it is about the perception of the color palette. If the presentation is full of all the colors of the rainbow and their infinite shades, it will only complicate the perception of information, while limiting the palette to 3-5 colors will give the opposite effect.
Colors are chosen based on the theme of the presentation and the content of a particular slide. In addition, you can find many tools and resources on the Internet for selecting a color palette.
Confusing data visualization
Charts and graphs are undoubtedly an important and necessary component of a presentation. However, when there is too much data, they look very confusing.
The problem is solved as follows:
- don’t try to put all the graphs, schemes, and diagrams on one slide;
- remove all unnecessary details that are not meaningful (axis names, grids, data labels);
- add a logical sequence, a well-read font, icon, or image.
Lack of hierarchy on slides
Information should be placed based on its importance. The most important headings or paragraphs should stand out from the rest of the text, attracting the attention of the consumer. Thus, a great example is modern landing pages.
Lack of focus on slides
Focus is needed to draw the audience’s attention to a particular element of the slide. To do this, such tools as highlighting with color, resizing, and various graphic techniques are used.
Recommendations for preparing a presentation
Not mentioning the fact that it is a good idea to know the text of your presentation, rather than reading it with your eyes fixed on an A4 sheet, you should pay attention to the following points when preparing:
- Type of connection: VGA or HDMI. This question is especially critical if you plan to speak with your computer – you might need adapters or even another computer.
- Image output: projector screen, plasma panel, LED, wall. Depending on this, you can adjust the color palette, font size and thickness, and slide format.
- Speech Program. It is important to know how many times you speak. This partly relieves the psychological stress of the unknown and allows you to mentally prepare for the performance. In addition, the time of day can also be a reason to make adjustments to your presentation.
- Place of performance. Ideally, you should familiarize yourself with the presentation venue in advance and check all the equipment. If something isn’t working when it’s your turn to speak, your presentation will be stressful.
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