PowerPoint animations: An ally or distraction?

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The most important thing to remember when using animations in PowerPoint is to keep it simple. While PowerPoint provides a lot of options for animating pictures, shapes, slides and more, over-using them can distract your audience and make your presentations look unprofessional.

– Stick to the same animations throughout your presentation to maintain consistency. Adding too many shows a misunderstanding of what is really important.

– Don’t use animations randomly. A part of useful information on a slide can be introduced first to tell the audience this is what they should remember rather than having crazy animations for each sentence

– Your animations must not be more than 2 seconds. For example, it is unwise to use the spinning animation for multiple bullet points.

– Do not add animations that do not make your point easier to understand.

– Consider adding a slide if you feel you cannot demonstrate the importance of your content with words or images alone

These are classic animations which should be used-

Appear- the object pops on screen

Fade- the object fades in or out in a smooth and measured manner

Wipe- the object is wiped off the slide (not distracting)

Zoom- to add emphasis to important points

REMEMBER! Animations should be used for emphasis and to re-attract your audience’s focus on a particular point.