Slide design, transitions and running a slide show

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. Have you sat through a slide show full of tiny text and spinning effects? It is tiring to watch. Today we will learn how to design clear slides, add transitions and run a slide show like a professional.

First, four words you will hear again and again. A presentation is one file made of many slides, created in software like Microsoft PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress. A slide is one page of that presentation. A transition is the effect you see when one slide changes to the next. A slide show is when the slides fill the whole screen and appear one by one.

Good design means the audience understands you quickly. Keep one main idea on each slide. Write short points, not long paragraphs, because you will speak the details. Use a large font, about twenty four points or more for body text, so the last row can read it. Choose strong contrast, like dark text on a light background. Keep the same fonts and colours on every slide, so the show looks like one piece of work.

Your software gives ready tools for design. A theme is a set of matching fonts, colours and backgrounds applied to all slides at once. A layout decides where the boxes sit on a slide, like Title and Content. A placeholder is a dotted box that says, click to add title, and you type into it.

Let us test ourselves. A slide about school fees has twelve lines of small fourteen point text. It also uses four different fonts, with red text on a green background. Pause and think, which design rules does it break? It breaks almost all of them: too many words, a small font, poor contrast and no consistency.

Here is how we fix it. Split the content into two slides, one for fees and one for due dates. Keep about four short points on each slide. Raise the font size to twenty eight points. Apply one theme, such as dark blue text on a white background.

Now, transitions. Remember, a transition is the effect between two slides. With no transition, the next slide simply appears, and that is fine for most slides. Fade makes the old slide slowly disappear, which suits a formal talk. Push slides the new slide in and pushes the old one out, good for starting a new part. Wipe moves the new slide across the screen, like turning to the next step.

Here are the steps in PowerPoint, and Impress has the same options in its Slide Transition panel. First, select the slide in the left pane. Then open the Transitions tab. Pick an effect and set its duration, which is how many seconds the effect takes. Choose how the slide advances, on a mouse click or automatically after a set time. Click Apply To All if every slide should use the same effect.

Students often mix up two words. A transition works between slides. An animation moves one object on a slide, like a bullet point flying in. Use both lightly, because too many effects pull attention away from your message.

Now let us run the show. Press F5 to start from the first slide, in both PowerPoint and Impress. In PowerPoint, press Shift+F5 to start from the slide you are on. Press Esc at any time to end the show and return to editing.

During the show, you control the slides with keys. Enter, Space, the right arrow or a mouse click takes you to the next slide. Backspace or the left arrow goes back one slide. Type a slide number and press Enter to jump straight to that slide. Press B to make the screen black when you want full attention, and press B again to return.

Presentation software offers different views of the same file. Normal view shows one big slide with small thumbnails, and you edit here. Slide Sorter view shows all slides as small pictures, so you can drag them into a new order. Slide Show view fills the screen for presenting.

Here is a simple checklist drawn as a flowchart. First, apply one theme to the whole presentation. Next, check every slide for short text and large fonts. Then set simple transitions. Now rehearse by running the slide show once. If it went well, save and present. If not, fix the slides and rehearse again.

Let us recap. Good design means one idea per slide, short points and a big, clear font. A transition is the effect between two slides, so use it lightly. In the Transitions tab you choose the effect, its duration and how the slide advances. Press F5 to start the slide show and Esc to end it.