Being able to use images in PowerPoint can really enrich any slides you put together, enable better visual storytelling, and make for more compelling and memorable presentations. But adding lots of images and video clips can make your presentation file size grow very large very quickly. There are a few tips and tricks we can use to ensure that we make sending presentations to others and presenting elsewhere as easy as possible. But before we get to that we should consider the visual identity for the team and representing LTDS.

How should my slides look? Is there a LTDS template?

We should be using the recommended University PowerPoint templates in the Conference Toolkit for everything we do, so you might like to bookmark these links. The template generally change year on year, so its worth downloading a new template from these links every now and again to make sure you are using the most up to date version.

What if I don’t use PowerPoint?

Online presentation tools such as Google slides. Prezi or the paid for version of Haiku Deck also have options for using PPT templates, so that we can maintain a consistent visual identity for the service, and for reducing file sizes, which can make your presentation load more quickly.

Practice makes perfect

Download the current Key Facts and Figures template. This is a visually rich template that you can play around with. We are going to add some images and video.

Adding, cropping and resizing images

There is a good Microsoft tutorial on reducing file sizes of pictures. Take a read. You might like to bookmark this too.

After reading it, try the following:

• Crop the picture on the last slide to focus on the two figures walking towards you, and delete the cropped areas only for this picture.
• Change the default picture resolution for the whole presentation to 150ppi.

Learning more about using PowerPoint well

• There are 14 Ideas for More Compelling and Effective Presentations in this useful blog post.
• Microsoft has free online training on PowerPoint

which you may find useful in future.