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August 20, 2008  
A Few Tips on Using Handouts with Slides  
Location: BlogsGeorge Alexandrov's TM Blog    
Posted by: George Alexandrov 10/20/2006
I gave my third speech yesterday. It was speech #8 form the Toastmasters Manual, which was about using visual aids and props. What I had was a printout with some slides. The presentation was about using the members-only tools on our very own web portal and I had prepared a detailed handout for my visual aid. The handout had some screenshots of the site itself.  Here are some of the useful tips I learned from the positive and negative comments about the slide as well as my own observations. Here are my tips for you when using handouts that present a number of slides:

  • One slide per page. Do not try try cram two or more. Otherwise it gets hard for your audience to find the information you are talking about.
      
  • Print only on one side of the page. The audience will not have to flip through the papers and create distraction. This also allow them to type notes on the reverse side.
      
  • Have the slide number with big letters in the same location on every page. This makes it very easy for people to locate the slide that you are talking about.
     
  • Use a color printer. Everyone loves color and the information is easier to comprehend.
      
  • Use the same orientation on the page. If one slide has portrait orientation, and the next landscape and so on, the audience will find it inconvenient and will create a lot of  noise turning the slides as you go form one to the next.
      
  • Guide the audience. Make sure to announce which slide number you are talking about and give the audience enough time to locate it. Monitor the audience.

And the winner advice is: do not use slides printed on handouts if you can get a hold of a projector and a laser pointer!!! This way there is no chance for people to start flipping through papers, getting lost and not knowing what you are talking about, unless of course your topic is boring and you put them to sleep. If your speech has to be boring, I would advise to put a striking image at the beginning and the end of the speech to wake them up a little. Of course be careful about the "striking" part to avoid the audience striking you out of the podium :-)

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