• Prepare visual aids and test them. Visual aids, such as PowerPoint slides or videos, can enhance your presentation. Use a font size that is large enough for the slides to be readable from the most distant seat in the presentation room. Text slides, graphs, diagrams, and tables should be simple and not too busy; there should not be a lot of text, and diagrams should not be too complex. There should be one idea per chart or slide, and no more than four lines of text per slide and eight words per line. Otherwise, the audience will be more focused on reading your slides than listening to what you are saying. Multicolor graphics are more appealing than plain black and white text, but choose colors carefully, because you can overwhelm your audience with too many colors or poor contrasting color combinations that are difficult to read.

If a video is used, it should be brief, usually less than 6 minutes. The audience is not coming to watch a video, they are coming to listen to you; do not rely on a video to be a substitute for you speaking.