The Very Best Slide Transition

You can always tell a novice presentation builder by their choice slide transition.  The total newbie doesn’t even know that there are transition options, so their slides always just “cut” (basically there’s no transition) from one to the other.   The naive newbie selects “random” transition (PowerPoint cycles through all the transition options with every new slide) which is just plain distracting.  But the seasoned presenter knows that the very best slide transition is the tried and true “fade.”

And yes, you can and should use it on every single slide in your presentation, unless there’s a really, really good reason to change it up.  Just because you have all those transitions to choose from doesn’t mean that you have to use them.  A fade transition has a nice, simple, feel.  Stick with it and it won’t let you down.

Now, I will admit that I have used other transitions, but I use them sparingly and for very specific effect.  For instance, the push transition works really well if you want to make it appear as if you haven’t moved to a new slide, but instead that text or a graphic on one slide is being pushed off the page to make room for a new text or graphic (just make sure the background is one flat colour).  Duarte Design created a great presentation that’s actually one of the built-in themes in PowerPoint 2010, which demonstrates another very cool use of the push transition (along with some very neat animation).

But for 90% of your presentations, just fade baby… fade away.