17: Enhancing Presentations with Slides and Other Visuals 17–12
Using a slide sorter makes it easy to:
• Add and delete slides.
• Reposition slides.
For important presentations, consider having backup equipment on standby, loaded with your
presentation, and ready to go. At the very least, have enough printed handouts ready to give the audience.
Creating Navigation and Support Slides
Once the content slides are complete, enhance your presentation with a few additional slides that add
“finish” to your presentation and provide additional information to benefit your audience.
Make a good first impression on your audience with one or two title slides. A title slide can contain
the following elements:
• Title of your presentation (and subtitle, if appropriate)
• Your name
• Your department affiliation (for internal audiences)
Use agenda and program detail slides to communicate the agenda for your presentation and any
additional information that your audience might need, such as wireless network logins.
By answering such questions at the beginning of your presentation, you’ll minimize disruptions later
and help the audience stay focused on your message.
Use navigation slides to tell your audience where you’re going and where you’ve been.
Creating Effective Handouts
Handouts, any printed materials you give the audience to supplement your talk, should be considered
an integral part of your presentation strategy.
Plan them in tandem with your presentation so that you use each medium as effectively as possible.
17: Enhancing Presentations with Slides and Other Visuals 17–13
Your presentation should:
• Paint the big picture.
Your handouts should then carry the rest of the information load, providing the supporting details that
audience members can consume at their own speed, on their own time.
Possibilities for good handout materials include:
• Complex charts and diagrams
• Articles and technical papers
• Case studies
Timing the distribution of handouts depends on the content of your handouts, the nature of your
presentation, and your personal preference.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION
Holograms
Holograms have an undeniable science-fiction aspect that can make them seem unrealistic to consider as a
business communication medium. However, when viewed from the context of existing communication
technologies that businesses use every day, they don’t seem quite so otherworldly. A telephone is simply
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE ART OF PROFESSIONALISM
Being a Team Player
1. Students will have to answer this one honestly for themselves. People who truly prefer to work alone
can have a hard time in a team-based environment.
17: Enhancing Presentations with Slides and Other Visuals 17–14
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT DUARTE
Individual Challenge
Students should start with a clear idea of the audience for this presentation, which is potential investors in
this new company, not target customers or property owners. This should help define the desired visual
tone, which is serious and businesslike, since potentially millions of dollars are at stake. A key
consideration is readability; some foreground/background color pairs (such as blue and red) are difficult
to read, so students should test their color choices for readability.
Team Challenge
Students will need to find photos that convey the appropriate visual messages in a compelling way and
that can work well in conjunction with the speaker’s spoken messages. Challenge students to find images
that go beyond well-worn clichés or that are so generic that they are little more than wallpaper. For
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
17.1. Options for visual aids include:
• Slides or Prezi-style presentations
• Overhead transparencies
17.2. The potential disadvantages of Prezi-style presentations include fewer design options, the chance
17.3. Structured slides use a consistent and usually text-heavy design from slide to slide. They are
typically based on templates that put bullet point lists and other elements in the same location
from slide to slide. In contrast, free-form slides tend to be much more visually oriented with much
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17.3. What is the purpose of using a key visual on a presentation slide?
17.4. The role of a slide’s background is to highlight the foreground, which contains the presentation
17.5. Guy Kawasaki’s “30–point rule” ensures readable slides and forces you to distill every idea down
17.6. Arbitrarily changing colors throughout a presentation will annoy and potentially confuse audience
members, because they will be forced to assign new meanings to colors whenever they see
17.7. Using one font per slide is best, unless the presenter wants to use one font for headings and a
17.8. Slide transitions take viewers from one slide to another, while builds occur in the same slide (e.g.,
17.9. A blueprint slide provides a road map of the presentation, usually listing an agenda of three or
four items to be covered. Such a slide tells audience members where they’re going. Plus, as
17.10. Slide sorter view allows presenters to view all slides at once so they can compare design
elements, check consistency, add or delete or reorder slides, experiment with changes (e.g.,
17: Enhancing Presentations with Slides and Other Visuals 17–16
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backgrounds, color) by using the preview function, check transitions and animation effects, and
then make permanent any changes they decide to keep. [LO-5] AACSB: Information
technology
APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE
17.11. Structured slides are probably the better design strategy in this case, because the information is
17.12. Slideuments are the result of using slide sets as standalone documents that can be read on their
own, without a presenter. These make for ineffective presentations because they try to function as
17.13. Slide masters can help you easily achieve consistency of design as you create slides by letting you
program your design selections (e.g., borders, backgrounds, company logo, and font choices).
17.14. As always with persuasion, the ethical boundary usually rests with the presenter’s motivation. If
design elements are manipulated to deliberately conceal, dishonestly portray, or harmfully incite,
then the presentation has crossed the line into unethical behavior. If the design presents all material
17.15. No, it would not be wise to hand out copies of the slides at the beginning of this presentation.
Doing so would distract the audience from the carefully prepared message by giving away the
17: Enhancing Presentations with Slides and Other Visuals 17–17
PRACTICE YOUR SKILLS
17.16. Message 17.A
This slide suffers from numerous problems, large and small. Students might mention the
following:
• Overall, the slide contains too much information.
• Italic title font should be regular type.
• Orange title color is difficult to read against blue background; should be lighter.
• Using only one font style would improve readability.
• Text in all caps is difficult to read (SURVEY OF 112 PEOPLE).
• Body text should be in a one-line, bulleted format, rather than paragraph form.
17.17. Message 17.B
Simplifying the number formats is the biggest change to consider. Also, the key points could be
17.18. Message 17.C
Students should recognize that most of the effects in this slide package are guilty of distraction
17.19. Students should be looking for simplicity, readability, and a professional, businesslike style or
“feel” (versus a comic, casual, script, ornate, futuristic, or overly busy style). It might be
17.20. Students should choose their color palette carefully, keeping in mind that color can play a key
role in the overall acceptance of their message. As this is a persuasive message, asking for
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17.21. When evaluating the content of students’ slides, look for:
• One topic focus per slide
• Audience considerations such as readable fonts, good color contrast, appropriate art
• Use of arrows and highlighting techniques to direct audience attention to key points
• Clarity (Can the message be grasped in 5–8 seconds?)
17.22. Students’ choices may vary but structured slides would be the wise choice. The information being
provided in the presentation is already formatted in a structured fashion and doesn’t lend itself to
free-form slides. Structured slides follow the same basic format throughout the presentation,
17.23. You may wish to give students some guidelines in terms of screen size for this project. Slides
CASE SOLUTION GUIDELINES
Here are solution guidelines for this chapter’s cases.
17.24. Planning, Designing, and Creating Presentation Slides
Students will probably surmise that free-form slides would be a good choice for this presentation,
