Training Role Play

By Kimberley Johnston

PowerPoint Person

Often the person who is delegated with the task of creating an interesting
presentation will be someone junior or an intern. Whilst a junior may have
experience with creating presentations at university – the art of creating a stand-out
presentation is a skill they will learn to perfect over the next few years.

A nice starting point is to explore the internet to see what others have published.
Templates are a great starting point for a novice as they can be adjusted and
customised if time is of the essence.

Afterwards it is important to start building their own presentations to learn about

time-saving features and good habits. Anyone junior should be taught about their
corporate branding and how to avoid poor design choices.

Golden Rules

A presentation should have a theme throughout. So how do we go about creating a

theme, and what rules are there to follow?

Like with all creative projects it is important to do your research to understand the
imagery your brand has chosen. Look for the top 3 or 4 colours used on your website
and written copy. Try to find icons and images already used in documents like
whitepapers and find out if an image repository exists.

You can create a colour palette in PowerPoint and have the option of using the
eyedropper tool to select the correct colour from a different file. It’s a good idea to
prepare some additional colours which can be used for contrast and emphasis.

An important rule to remember when you create a PowerPoint presentation is to

leave plenty of space on the page. Having too much content to read on a page
means:
i) the presenter has less flexibility to speak openly
ii) the audience will find it difficult to know what to pay attention to
In PowerPoint you can create notes which can be used by the presenter or printed
out for your audience to reflect on.

Formatting Tips

To create a neat PowerPoint presentation it is a good idea to use guidelines.

Right click and select the “Grid and Guides” option to ensure text boxes and images
are positioned neatly. It’s a useful habit to then deselect the guides after positioning
objects to make sure the guidelines don’t appear in the live presentation.
One great way to use copy and paste in PowerPoint is to copy objects such as the
placement of a tricky Header Underline, or page number. If you hover over any line,
text or box and paste it onto another slide, PowerPoint will precisely position this in
the same place and keep the formatting consistent. This can save time and stress
worrying about formatting consistencies.

A more advanced approach to formatting PowerPoint presentations is to start

making use of “Master Slides”. By using Master Slides, you can create consistent
looking layouts throughout your presentation because you’re previous layouts will
have been saved. When you begin to feel more confident with your PowerPoint
design skills this is a great option to save time on formatting.

Font Tips

Finding the right font for your slides is essential for creating an appealing
presentation for your audience. When presenting to a large group you want everyone
to be able to read the text comfortably, and for the choice of font to be appropriate.
On occasion you may want to play with the spacing in between letters and the levels
of boldness in your headings and body, to add emphasis and reduce dullness.

If you know the font your brand usually uses make sure to stick to this, and if you
can’t find the exact font in PowerPoint you can usually download with a quick search
online. Often with downloaded fonts you have flexibility to make them semi-bold,
thin, or extra thin which is a great way to manage spacing issues.

Final Note

Here are some useful tips that can come in handy:

1) You can resize your presentation by clicking ​Design​ then ​Slide Size​.
So let’s say you want to create a pdf whitepaper and you don’t have Sketch,
You can do this by setting the slide size to a standard UK size A4 - 210mm x
297mm.
2) If images look misaligned delve deeper by right clicking and selecting ​Format
Picture​ find the ​Position​ feature to accurately modify spacing.
3) Grouping objects makes changing the position of a group so much faster!
Hold ​CTRL​ whilst you highlight the objects you want to group then select
Drawing Tools​ click ​Format ​and click ​Group​.

Best of Luck!