Powerful Presentations with Microsoft ® PowerPoint ®

You’re a scientist, not a graphic artist. When you give presentations, appropriate software can help you display your ideas and data attractively, without distracting you with fonts, colors or formats. A presentation can be an on-line projection from a laptop computer, a set of overhead transparencies, 35-mm slides or printed handouts for your audience to use for note taking. Have you ever seen a presentation in which the slides were too vivid, there were too many fonts on each slide or there was little visual continuity from slide to slide? Have you spent hours talking to your Graphics Production Department, only to be disappointed with the results? Have you printed out a presentation, only to find that having text and backgrounds of similar intensity will cause unreadability when printed in black and white? Presentation software provides tools for quickly creating readable, eye-pleasing presentations and handouts. Several packages are available (see BioBit: Other Commercial Presentation Software); here we focus on Microsoft® PowerPoint®, part of the Microsoft Office suite of software available for both Macintosh® and Windows®. Many graphics departments prefer presentation files in PowerPoint format for making 35-mm slides.