1. The Art of Powerpoint
Lee Drake

2. Presentation Skills
illustrated

3. Presentation Skills
• Keep it clear
• Keep it simple
• Don’t overwhelm with technology; use it
to accent, not dictate.

4. Focus on Research
• Powerpoints are about communicating
ideas first and foremost
• But don’t overwhelm them with
information

5. Focus on Research
• What are the key points that you need to
get across?
• What constitutes “too much detail?”

6. Audience
• There is no “one-size fits all” approach to
presentations - each should be tailored to
your specific audience
• How much do they know about your field?
• What about your research is going to catch
their attention?

7. Audience
• Why are they there? What do they want to
learn from you?

8. Audience
• Try to anticipate their questions:
• “So what?”
• “Why is this worth my time right now - I
have my own research to do!”*
• “Why should I listen to you?”
*This is why I usually skip presentations

9. Key Points
• Try to reduce your research to a few easily
understood bullet points
• The simpler the sentence, the more your
audience will take away from the talk

10. Images
• Images should accent the topic, not
dominate it (unless it is a chart directly
related to research)

11. Good:

12. Bad:
QuickTimeª and a
GIF decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Results were found to be significant
QuickTimeª and a

13. U in I a e
s gm g s
• Images can help set a tone without dominating the slide or overwhelming
information
• Just make sure the image doesn’t have a single point of focus (e.g. a smiling
face).

14. You can also use an image as a background,
just make sure to include an opaque or
translucent background

15. ...because it is really hard to read if you don’t
include some kind of boundary to buffer the
image

16. Use fancy graphics sparingly in scientific
presentations though - black & white is more
appropriate. However, for informational or
business presentations, this can be helpful

17. Clutter
• Every word you say should not be on the
slide.