1. PowerPoint Presentations Some Things to Consider THINGS TO AVOID! Professor Gheorghe Muresan SCILS, Rutgers University

2. Tremendous variety of special effects: • SOUND • TEXT • BACKGROUND • PICTURE

3. Sound Effects Cool Noises as Each Slide Changes (avoid by selecting “no sound” ) IRRITATING SOUND EFFECT (1)

4. IRRITATING SOUND EFFECT (2) • Noises as Animated Text Comes In • May be best to avoid sound with Typewriter and Laser Text. They are particularly bad when the text is relatively long.

5. IRRITATING TEXT EFFECTS(1) • Drop In is quite annoying with long text. Crawling under “Custom Animation” can be excruciating.

6. IRRITATING TEXT EFFECTS(2) • One can easily get away from the usual backgrounds supplied with PowerPoint. • You can make your own design templates by selecting “Slide Master” under “View.”

7. IRRITATING TEXT EFFECTS(3) • Poor Choice of Font • Color Mismatch with Background • Failure to Plan for Lighting • TooSmall…. WordArt. Not always a wise choice. There are fonts to choose from such as Parisian, Stencil, and Mesquite. Aren’t you glad that text can come in word by word with Custom Animation?

8. IRRITATING TEXT EFFECTS(4) The “Font...” choice under “Format” provides several ways to make text harder to read. • Italics, embossing, and outlining • can all cause some trouble. One can play with colors hereaswell,which can bring us to...

9. Mismatch with Background • The choice of colors can make a big difference. • Backgrounds which have both light and dark areas can be particularly troublesome.

10. Failure to Plan for Lighting

11. Now That You’ve Prepared the Presentation, What Else Can You Do to Make it Unbearable? • Reading the slides to people can be annoying. People will be unhappy if you have to read the slides (because the text is too small or the projector too dim). • People will be really annoyed if the slides are wonderfully legible and you read to them anyway.