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In the last section, we covered what a presentation is. We will now expand upon this by breaking down content into easier-to-digest parts.
Too much text
When creating a presentation some will be tempted to put all of their content onto the slide, this does not work. As mentioned previously the slide show is just a visual aid. If you fill your slide with content and start reading directly from the slide, your audience will not listen to your points, your audience will read ahead and ignore what you are saying.
Look at the example below, it is very overwhelming. I've seen many presentations that look exactly like this.
Breaking down content
To make this content more digestible we will break it down, removing full sentences and replacing them with bullet points.
Look at your content and decide what needs to stay, bullet points need to provide enough context to keep the audience engaged but not too much where they feel overwhelmed. A good aim is less than 6 bullet points.
Splitting up content across multiple slides will further break down content, and ensure that each slide is treated as a container of information only containing information relevant to what the slide is about. Sometimes you may be given a slide limit, if possible ignore this limit and focus on a time limit. Slide limits just force you to compress all of your content into one text-heavy slide.
Add an image to your slide to provide more context and make the slide too less boring.
Animation
We will cover animation in full in a later section, for now use we will use subtle animations to break down content further. On your bullet points, you can add by-pragraph animation which will animate each bullet point one at a time. This will clearly show your audience where you currently are. You can glance at these bullet points to remind yourself what you need to say but don't stare at the presentation.
Use simple animations like appear or a very fast fade, don't add ridiculous animations that spin the text or have it fly in from the side, this will distract the audience from the points you are trying to make.
This section has covered:
How to use bullet points
Separating content across slides
Adding animation to your bullet points
Useful resources
The next section will cover colours & fonts