There are two types of presenters who find themselves at two extreme dimensions: the one who use no animation or transition effects and makes their slides deathly boring and the other one is who use too much animation and transition effects, they add every bell and whistle they find to their slides. Animation can be used in a way that both hook audience’s attention and also conveys your message. With the use of modern presentation tools, everything inside the slide can be animated. You can create a visual storytelling experience, instead of simply relying upon the plain text, figures, and statistics.

Animations in a PowerPoint are considered as a great tool for many purposes. In this guide, you will find tons of PowerPoint animations tips and tricks in which you can learn how to enhance the presentation and how to control the transition better with powerful effects.

Why use PowerPoint animations

Let’s understand why we need to use animation in a PowerPoint presentation. Too much animation can create confusion for the audience

1.        It helps you to control the pace of the delivery of your presentation.

2.        Animation can enhance the appearance and interest of the content of your slides.

The above points are achieved by add transitioning in full slides or a number of elements on a slide. The effective animations have an appealing use that matches your message as well as it will help to control the speed of presentation. Usually, the animation is used for enhancing the appearance of slides which tend to become frustrating and overwhelming for your audience.

Principles of animation for presentation

If you want to create a presentation and want to inject it with life then it can only be done by proper animation. There are few things which you need to remember.

Keep the amount of animation to the minimum necessary. You have to be ensured that animation is not overpowering the message or the visual impact. Instead of presentation software, PowerPoint is easy to go overboard with all options, but just make sure you don’t go overboard.

1.        Stay consistent

Stay consisted of your choices while you are adding animation to the elements in your slides. Stick to only two or three types of animation. Don’t apply animation to the title “enter from left” and to the subtitle “enter from the right”, much less ”pop in” to the rest of the text.

2.        Follow a direction

Use animation effects to follow a direction for your content. To call attention to the most important point in each slide, choose a top to bottom, side to another side or any other pattern of effect.

3.        Visualize an eye flow

When designing the slides and adding animation, think yourself an audience to scans information. Imagine yourself as an audience who is looking at your presentation and then add animation effects accordingly. You can easily add animation to the parts which you think the most vital area of attention and less to the larger filling content. Remember, don’t animate too much in the right direction, your audience will thank you for it.

Do and don’ts of animated transitions

When applying transition effects to the PowerPoint slides, it is important to remember a few things. Else, you might overdo it and your presentation will look confusing. Let’s have a look at them.

Do

Here is a run down to the do’s for slide transition.

•          Use the transition if it helps to tell the story.

•           If it guides the viewer through the presentation then use the transition.

•          Use the transition if it helps to add emphasis to a certain point.

•          Analyze if it is “too much”.

•          Use specific animation and transition if they balance each other.

•          Always remember to use the preview function to check your progress.

Don’t

Here is a run down to the don’ts for slide transition.

•          If it doesn’t add anything positive to your presentation then don’t use the transition.

•          Unless you are creating any scene don’t use a different transition. If you want to use them, then be mindful of how you use them.

•          Don’t ad transition which distracts and confuse the audience from the story.

Animating elements inside slides

As we have looked at animated transition ideas now let’s move towards the elements inside your slides. As we said before animation effects have a relation to the transition. But they also have other visual effects. Let’s have a brief look on some of the creative animations of elements inside slides.

1.        Building the story

One creative way of using animated elements in the presentation is to create the construction of a complete image. To do this, you have to design the last slide of the presentation first.

2.        Using animated gradients

To animate your presentation in a subtle way of moving story you can use gradient in this case. Animated gradients can be incorporated in various ways. Gradients can be used to darken any shape as the story unfolds. You can also change the color of the background from green to blue in a progressive way.

Do and don’ts of animating elements inside your slides

Do

Here is a run down to the do’s for slide transition.

•          Consider the balance of the animation.

•          The most important snippets of information must be animated.

•          To maintain a unified design use the same style of animation.

•          To help the timing of your animations, use the timeline.

•          Always remember to use the preview option to check your progress.

Don’ts

•          Not everything in the presentation needs to be animated because it could become overwhelming.

•          Don’t mix too many styles because the movement will lose balance.

•          To move at the same times don’t set all animations.

Conclusion

It is concluded that it is not difficult to use animation in PowerPoint if you consider basic points. The key points to become master in PowerPoint animation is to think about the context and timing of the animation. Less typical work look great when it comes to animation. Overloaded animation in a presentation keeps audience attention away which gives a negative effect on your performance. You may have heard of do my PowerPoint presentation; it is easy for them to understand the frustration of student overwhelmed experience.