Multimedia Design

PowerPoint Presentation
Since its inception Microsoft PowerPoint has played a major role in business presentations all over the world.  Despite its widespread use it is still very common for people to inflict, what many professionals term, ‘death by PowerPoint’ on their audiences.  This terminology usually describes a presentation that is inundated with masses of text or filled with complex visual imagery. This type of PowerPoint presentation is ineffective and greatly reduces the chances of interesting your audience in your product or service.

Educational psychologist Professor John Sweller has spent most of his working life researching ways to maximise the effectiveness, efficiency and appeal of the instruction process.  During his studies on problem solving Sweller developed the cognitive load theory, which suggested that there was a limit on a brain’s capacity to process and retain information in short term memory. Sweller rationalised that when a person’s attention was split between two different sources of information, i.e. a PowerPoint slide and a speaker, the brain would not be able to focus, therefore retaining significantly less information. Sweller proposed that the most effective educational method would be through integrated instruction; this would mean that presenter would use a combination of words and images designed specifically to guide the audience through a set of key ideas, directing their attention to one single point of information. 
At Cogent, our team of dedicated professionals offer you a bespoke service designed around the specific content of your presentation. We use a combination of applied technical theory and elegant design to produce a PowerPoint presentation that will both educate and entertain your audience, ensuring that they will remember you and your business for years to come.

Things to remember when designing you PowerPoint presentation:
Do

• Rehearse.  The most important factor in any presentation is the speaker. If you are not charismatic and engaging the quality of your PowerPoint presentation will not matter.
• Understand your key points.  Many presentations fail because they are packed with erroneous information.
• Understand your audience.  Too many presentations are filled with what the speaker wants to say rather than what the audience wants to hear.
• Use photos not clip art. Images usually have the biggest impact in a presentation; photos appear more professional and are more likely to produce an emotional response in your audience.
• Display one point per slide.  This ensures that the audience understands the main focus of each slide and makes sure they are not distracted or confused.
• Use very few different fonts and colours.  By restricting your design template you give the impression that your presentation is a single entity.  Presentations which employ a variety of design schemes appear cluttered and unorganised.

Don’t

• Fill your PowerPoint with reams of bullet points. Lists of bullet points are boring and will alienate your audience quickly.
• Attempt to merge different PowerPoint presentations together. When you combine different slideshows it will complicate and disrupt the design template. This will make your presentation look messy and unprofessional and will be tedious and time consuming to fix.
• Give your audience a cop y of the sideshow before you present. This will distract the audience from your presentation. A better solution would be to give a supplementary document to the audience after the presentation, which would explain the main points in greater detail.

At Cogent we offer three levels of PowerPoint design service to cater for the diverse needs of our client base:

Level 1:
This is our most sophisticated and bespoke service.  We will produce an elegant and stylized PowerPoint presentation customized to reflect the specific values of the client for a particular event or product. We will work closely with the presenter to make sure that the slides act as an effective support system for their verbal presentation, utilising an extensive range of high level multimedia platforms, such as incorporated video, flash animation, and voiceover, to ensure that the audience is captivated from the first slide to the last.
Level 2:
At this level of service we develop bespoke design templates for your company, which encapsulate the ethos behind your corporate identity. This package will include five key slides which will emphasise your core values and services. These slides are adaptable and could be used in many different presentations, therefore, amortising the cost over a period of time.
Level 3:
At this level of service we offer our clients a variety of well designed PowerPoint templates that are based around several key presentational styles.  We make sure that these slides are easy to use and update by any member of your company, while still retaining a consistent level of professional quality throughout the presentation.