We have gathered the following information from NASPA’s website for your convenience. (The following was written by Kevin Valleire and Lisa Endersby of the Technology Knowledge Community. You can see the original post here .) Around July of last year, we released the information from our survey on technology usage in the profession. Throughout all of the qualitative data we received was a strong persistence in presentation skills and design. For the most part, people simply wanted to learn more. Hearing that, we set out to create a free webinar through NASPA for those people. And here we are. This post will be a brief rundown of a few of the key points in the webinar, as well as an expounding of a few other points. First and foremost, let’s start with this: you should read this article (2010) by Skidmore, Slate, & Onwuegbuzie. We only had an hour to talk about presentation skills and covered a pretty broad range of topics, but we could have spent days talking just about the research in that article. After you’ve read the article and are an expert on all things presentation, let’s go over a few of the specific design resources that we talked about in the webinar. 4 Presentation Design Resources The best thing you can do when designing your presentation is to ditch the pre-loaded theme and create something from scratch. I realize that this is a daunting task. I don’t have a great eye for design or color schemes myself, so learning the resources I needed to achieve this was an uncomfortable process. Below I’ve provided those resources that have helped me most in creating eye-popping presentations: SlideShare is an incredible tool because not only can you upload your own slides to share with others, you can also see what’s popular in presentation design right now. You’ll see bright colors, simple layouts, and more. You’ll also probably stumble across a really popular slide deck layout right now: take a background picture (more on this in a bit) and put big, white text over the top of it. It’s simple, aesthetically pleasing, and it breaks up the monotony of your usual presentation. Color Scheme Designer is a beautiful, beautiful website. Pick how many matching colors you want, pick the first color, and the website does the rest for you. I can’t even begin to say how often this has come in handy for me. It’s great for starting from scratch but it also works really well when you want to find colors that subtly complement that stock slideshow your institution might force you to use. Maybe you do have a great eye for design and don’t need it, but as for me…this is an incredibly useful tool. As I mentioned earlier, a popular slide design right now is to have a background image with big, white text over it. This is where you can find those great, stunning pictures. With Flickr’s Creative Commons search, you can download pictures that require only a cursory attribution. No royalties, no hidden fees, just great pictures to accent your presentation’s content. 1001 Free Fonts is for people who are a touch more comfortable tinkering with their computer. In our presentation, we talk about how fonts should be at least 30-pt font to be visible to all on a presentation screen. Another good tip is to use just two fonts: one fancy header, and one plain body. This website is a great place to find a fancy header to fit the theme of your presentation. Make sure you pick one that is still legible, but don’t be afraid to use some flair as an accent to your content. Just be sure you don’t go overboard and make it cheesy! And don’t forget – keep text to a minimum. Try and limit yourself to six words per slide! 3 Tips & Tricks Awesome! Now that we’ve got design out of the way, let’s talk about three basic rules to make you the star of your presentation. Own your space.Before you present, watch this awesome TED Talk by Amy Cuddy called Your body language shapes who you are Amy (along with, really, most TED presenters) has the importance of body language and owning your space on lock. One of the quickest ways to kill an audience’s engagement is to stand still behind a podium, reading straight off your slides. Move around, be creative! Make people focus on you, too. Utilize technology.Do your homework before you hit the presentation venue. Will you have a clicker? A wireless mic (or even better, a lapel mic)? What about accessibility? There are a lot of small components to a good presentation and each venue will have its own quirks and requirements. Do your best to make sure you have freedom to move around and that your participants are able to hear and see you clearly. If your participants need a copy of your slides for accessibility reasons, be sure to print out a copy of the speaker notes so they don’t suffer as a result of the “less text on your slide” rule. You should be able to give your presentation without your slides, but your slides should never be able to give your presentation without you.Let’s just go ahead and call this my golden rule. In everything you do, make sure that people come to hear you, not read your slides. Be as charismatic as you can muster. Practice the delivery of key points. End on something important that your audience can take away. And whatever you do, don’t just stand there and read off of your slides. It can be a hard habit to break, but by moving around, engaging the audience, and owning your slideshow, you can create a great presentation.