Good PowerPoint Gone Bad

Useful, Convenient, Fun; PowerPoint presentations have become an eminent tool utilized by nearly all. From high school students, to professors, and business executives, PowerPoint presentations enable one to efficiently convey a message in a meaningful and entertaining fashion.  Implementing various tools offered by PowerPoint, one is able to dress up a dull and often difficult to visualize presentation into eye appealing narrative.  Although creating a PowerPoint presentation is relatively straightforward and easy, creating a good   PowerPoint presentation seems to be difficult on various accounts.  As the author of the article "Really Bad PowerPoint- and How to Avoid them" Seth Godin proclaims, "Almost every PowerPoint presentation sucks rotten eggs".  However, this by no means is the fault of the creator.  Living in a technologically advance era we tend to rely on technology to complete tasks easily, which is highly beneficial, but often times we forget the intuitive thought that must also be applied to these tasks.  Using the preset templates, fonts, colors, and textboxes we hope to fly through the process of creating a PowerPoint, which often turns out to dull and difficult to conceptualize.  Recognizing the various takes on what makes a good or bad PowerPoint from the articles given, I believe there are 5 major considerations one should make while creating a PowerPoint such as;

1. Keeping it clean and simple

2. Adding vital and major text only

3. Applying a self-created theme

4. Utilizing high quality graphics 

5. Using colors effectively

The degree or amount of text used is often a debatable matter when creating PowerPoint presentations.  The authors of the articles argue that limited text is the best in the case of a PowerPoint.  Arguing that text in PowerPoints should be limited as 6 words per slide or considering 1 figure as "even better" I find the articles guideline questionable.   Although I agree text should be limited as long arrays and bullets of text can make a slide dense and difficult to understand the main points, I find the limit to be too drastic.  The amount of text added should be sufficient enough to not only stand on its own but also not be completely void of detail as this could lead to vagueness.  

Alas my final advice to those seeking to make a good PowerPoint is to have fun or at least be interested while making it.  For in the end those that are personalized and intuitively conceptualized stand apart as the good PowerPoint from the bad.