Eye-catching slides are a must for any presentation because they complement your speech. If you do not want the audience to fall asleep while you're giving a presentation, you need to employ an armory of public-speaking techniques, and if you deliver content with style and enthusiasm, slides will reinforce, enhance, and support your material.

In this article, I will discuss the concept of creating slides to dress up your presentations to both professional and lay audiences. I also will provide you with suggestions for using a graphics program such as Microsoft PowerPoint.

In general, an effective slide is one that can be understood in 4 seconds or less. Think of your slides as billboards: If you can't read the message as you pass it at 60 mph, then it's a waste of the advertiser's money. There are four elements to consider when creating effective slides: content, style, color, and space. Whether you create your own slides or pay someone else to do it, you need to recognize the importance of these elements and to use them to maintain interest.

Keep the content simple and direct. A good slide contains only two colors, has less than 20 words, and includes graphs that have no more than two lines. Material reproduced from medical journals, where the reader has unlimited time to study it, is not appropriate for a slide presentation.

Use stylistic elements. After you have decided where your slide breaks will fall during your speech, you need to write text for them. Here are a few suggestions on when to use slides and how to make them legible and easy to follow:

• Reinforce every major point in your talk with a title or graphic slide.
  
• Dramatize the most important conclusions in your talk with a title or special effects slide.
  
• Never use long sentences. Paraphrase the material in the speech, condensing it to a few words. For example, when I discuss the function of the bladder and urethra for a lay audience, I show a photo of a balloon and clothes pin to demonstrate the function of the detrusor and the urethral sphincters.
  
• Use capital letters for titles. For body copy, capitalize only the initial letter and use lower case letters for the remainder of the text. This style is easier for the eye to follow.
  
• Use asterisks or bullets to emphasize key points. Do not number the points, since this can distract the audience (some of whom may try to remember the sequence).
  
• Limit the slide to 15 to 20 words. If you have more than 20 words on a slide, make two slides.

Choose consistent color combinations. The colors of the background and the type are largely a matter of personal preference. However, graphic artists often suggest a dark background with light-colored lettering (a combination also used to create easy-to-read traffic signs).

I routinely use a dark blue background with yellow text, and I use red or magenta for emphasis. The best slide presentations use a consistent color combination. Using a wide variety of color combinations and graphic styles tends to confuse the audience rather than grab their attention. Use color combination changes only for a purpose (eg, to differentiate sections within your talk or different subjects within a longer talk).

Use space to your advantage. Slides should look well balanced, with lots of space between the lines of text. Double spacing between lines is best. If you use less than 20 words per slide, this will not be a problem. Make sure you use the whole slide. Do not crowd the text in the center, leaving wide margins and borders. Create horizontal slides, known as landscape, whenever possible. Vertical slides, or portrait format, frequently do not fit completely on the screen. Do not mix vertical and horizontal slides in the same presentation.

Graphs should be simple and easy to follow, with two lines or a single point on each slide. Use horizontal writing when labeling the vertical axis. It's impossible to read vertical characters in only a few seconds.

Using a graphics program

Several graphics programs are available for producing slide presentations, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Harvard Graphics, and Persuasion. PowerPoint is a powerful graphics presentation system designed to take advantage of the Windows operating system. This program is very easy to use and allows you to incorporate templates that help create slides and special effects that will hold the attention of your audiences.

At the same time, PowerPoint creates the supporting materials that you need to make your presentation, including an outline and a description of each slide. PowerPoint also allows you to add graphs, diagrams, photographs, logos, and even video segments to your presentation. It also offers the ability to cut and paste graphics, photos, and text from other sources into your presentation. If you have a flatbed scanner, material can be copied and saved as a file to be added to your slides.

To run the PowerPoint program, you will need at least a 386 processor with a clock speed of 66 MHz, at least 8 megabytes of RAM, and a 100-megabyte hard drive. (Always buy as much memory and speed as your budget will allow.) Nearly every personal desktop computer, laptop, and even some of the Palm computers are capable of running PowerPoint.

The best part about using PowerPoint is that you can create an active presentation using the computer as the delivery system. In the latter case, you will need a projection device to connect to your laptop computer so that you can enlarge your slide onto the screen for the whole audience to see.

Active computer presentations can incorporate special effects such as building and flying of text from either the right or left, which elegantly highlights any point you want to make. If you are technically advanced, you can use Power Plugs to create exciting transitions like those used by movie production and television studios. With this technology, you can make the slides flip, rotate, dissolve, and tumble away to the next slide. This is a very high-tech method of capturing the eyes of your audience.

Today, most hospitals, hotels, and convention facilities provide projection devices that allow you to use a standard cable to connect your computer to the projector. Many facilities will provide the computer, and you can e-mail your PowerPoint file or arrive with only your diskette and deliver your presentation using their computer and projector.

Remote infrared "mice" are now available to allow you to walk away from the computer and advance the slides from anywhere in the room. This offers the advantage of mobility and the ability to interact with your audience. I usually place my computer on a small table next to the projector, so I can look at the audience and then read my slides on the laptop computer screen, which functions as a "poor man's teleprompter." Now I don't have to look at the screen or my notes to see what is appearing on the screen. As a result, I can maintain eye contact with my audience.

Learning the basics

Excellent tutorials are available for learning PowerPoint, including the templates that come with the program. The templates contain a unified pattern and color scheme to help you create a uniform appearance of your slides. I suggest that you begin by selecting a template that shows the overall appearance for your presentation and then create a single slide. Once you select the template, you add the appropriate text and graphics. The clip art and other visuals such as video sequences can be added later.

In addition to templates, the program also provides notes and outlines, a convenient way to organize your slides and review your material during practice. The program also permits you to create handouts for the audience that will allow them to follow your talk and take notes adjacent to the slide material that appears on the screen. This handout also can be used in an emergency such as an electronic meltdown or crash, and you can still give a meaningful presentation from your notes.

Others may work with another graphics program, but I have found that PowerPoint is not only easy to learn and use, but it has become virtually ubiquitous in the meeting world.