PowerPoint: avoiding death by bullet point

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PowerPointavoiding death by bullet point

• Adam Warren
• a.j.warren_at_soton.ac.uk02380 594486

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Edward Tufte
"Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the
PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather
than learning to write a report using sentences,
children are being taught how to formulate client
pitches and infomercials.
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emergent properties
simplisic thinking

• deep hierarchy
• slide headings
• bullet points

enforced
linear
sequence
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and also
a crutch for presenters instead of a scaffold for
learners

• too many slides
• bad slide design
• unreadable text
• poor use of colour
• plain text only
• distracting effects

a seductive technology that encourages style over
content
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Why use PowerPoint?

• Provide structure
• Emphasise key points
• Show visual information
• Integrate multimedia

• Look professional
• Assist delivery
• Create handouts

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How many slides?

• One slide two minutes
• Plus Title and End slide
• Too many slides ?

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Too much text!

• One slide two minutes talking
• this is a guideline, not a rule but having 20
  slides for a 20 minute talk
• increases the risk that your talk is reduced to
  you reading out a list of bullet points
• increases the risk that you talk too long about
  the earlier slides and run out of time
• increases the risk that you have to skip over
  some slides to reach your conclusions

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Keep it simple

• Six points per slide
• Six words per point
• Dont overload slides
• use more, simple slides

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Keep it readable

• Font size 28 points
• 24 points is OK
• 18 point is too small
• Use easy-to-read fonts
• University default is Lucida Sans
• Serif fonts like Palatino or Georgia
• Sans Serif fonts like Arial or Verdana
• Cursive fonts like Comic Sans

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Keep it clear

• Use high-contrast colours
• mid-tones do not show up well
• avoid bright red
• colour-blind people confuse red and green
• Use colour or bold or italic for emphasis
• CAPITALS and underline are hard to read

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Avoid Stupid Animation

• Its annoying
• Its amateurish
• Save it for special uses

• Avoid stupid sound effects too
• And distracting transitions between slides

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Black on white

• Very high contrast
• Visual stress
• Glare with data projectors

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Off-white background

• Reduces contrast
• Reduces glare
• Gradients look good

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White on blue

• Classic choice
• Minimal glare
• Yellow text also good

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Be consistent

• Backgrounds
• Fonts
• Colours
• Transitions
• Less is More

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Use strong images
You dont need to be an artist to create simple
graphics this is just circles and rectangles
75 of the worlds people
6 of the world health expenditure
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Use photographs
Make sure they are relevant to your talk and are
not simply decoration
This sculpture on the Highfield campus is Two
Figures by Barbara Hepworth (Bronze, 1968)
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Show trends, not data
This chart was imported from Excel. It needed
some editing to make the text large enough to read