You can create PowerPoint presentations in either horizontal or vertical formats. Here are some pros and cons of each approach:
Horizontal:
- PRO – Is the industry standard
- PRO – Looks like a Powerpoint (is familiar to the viewer)
- CON – Looks like a Powerpoint (some viewers are biased against Powerpoint presentations)
- PRO – Will project better on a wider range of projectors for presentation
- PRO – Can fill a larger portion of a regular monitor: can be viewed bigger
- PRO – The presets in PowerPoint are set for horizontal slides (image formatting, chart/graph formatting will be easier)
- PRO – Offers a longer line length – this is good for making bullets that don’t flow into too many lines
- CON – If you have existing materials in workbook or vertical format, these will need to be reformatted
- PRO – Flow charts and timeline illustrations are often horizontally formatted, and they will be able to fill the full slide.
Vertical:
- PRO – Is unique
- PRO or CON – Looks more like a workbook than a PowerPoint
- PRO – Does not require switching the printer setting to landscape when you print slides
- CON – Would require more customization from PowerPoint’s built in layout templates
- CON – Would wrap text more in titles (2 line titles can take up a lot of slide real estate)
- CON – Will be smaller on monitors, and possibly harder to read.
- CON – To make up for smaller display, you will have to use larger fonts, which means less text on each slide
- CON – Less horizontal space for laying out a picture next to a block of text.
What other issues am I missing? Leave your reply in the comments!
