Presentation Skills: Presentation Design
Slide Design Principles
If you're new to PowerPoint, there are some principles of design best practice that you can look at to help you get a feel for what makes good slides. Do a Google search for "principles of slide design" and you will get lots of results which will all have slightly different ideas. There are a few that more or less everyone agrees on.
Contrast
Contrast isn't just about using colours that are easily seen, though poor contrast can make it difficult for users to read text. To make information on slides stand out, then if you have an element (text, image, chart, table, etc.) in a slide that is different from other elements in the same slide, use contrast to emphasise the difference. You can use:
- colour
- bold type
- spacing (close together, far apart)
- positioning (isolate the different element).
Repetition
To give slides a consistent look and feel, use the same style in each of your slides - the same colours, fonts, positioning, shapes, style. etc. For example put your text in the same place in every slide. Repetition helps to create a sense of unity on your presentation. It ties all the slides together and makes the presentation look like a unified whole.
Alignment
T
he arrangement of the various elements on your slides also helps to create a better-looking, tidier presentation. By aligning text or other elements, you can create a sense of structure and order.
Design grids and guidelines are particularly useful to keep text and other elements aligned. You can show these by placing a check mark next to “Gridlines” or “Guidelines” under “View”.
Proximity
In PowerPoint, proximity is about the positioning of elements on the slide. You should place related elements close to each other so they will be viewed as a group, rather than as unrelated items. Unrelated items should be placed further apart.
Some Do's and Don'ts
Design principles can be a bit vague, so here are more concrete suggestions:
Don't:
- Don't use a small font size - 24pt minimum. If PowerPoint makes the font size smaller than 24pt, then you have too much written on your slide
- Don't use a fancy, decorative font, stick to something that's easy to read (if you were submitting a typed assignment, you'd use a font that's easy to read, wouldn't you?)
- DON'T USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS - it's harder to read and comes across as SHOUTING
- Don't clutter your slides - don't have too much information on them
- Don't use too many graphs or charts - one chart or graph per slide
- Don't use too many colours
- Don't use many effects, such as sounds or animations - they distract from the content and can be irritating
- Don't use cliched images (e.g., don't use a lightbulb to illustrate having an idea)
- Don't use low-quality (for example, blurred or pixelated) images
- Don't use bullet points on every slide
- Don't use a blank white background for your slides - look at the templates that are available.
- Don't put a lot of text on each slide. Your audience might be distracted from what you are saying
Do:
- Do stick to having one idea or message per slide
- Do use a readable font like Arial, Helvetica or Verdana
- Do use a consistent colour scheme - the same 2-4 colours on each slide (design principle - repetition)
- Do use high contrast colours (design principle - contrast)
- Do think about the 6x6 rule: a maximum of 6 bullet points on a slide and a maximum of 6 words per bullet point
- Do change font size, colour and style if you want to emphasise something (design principle - contrast)
- Do think about using the "Design Ideas" option to change the look of your presentation
- Do keep animations to a minimum
- Do be consistent: use the same look for all titles and use the same theme and background colour for each slide (if you really want to emphasise something, then you can change the slide layout for that) (design principles -repetition/contrast)
- Do not have long screeds of text on a slide; you shouldn't have to read your slides and your audience shouldn't have to spend lots of time reading your slides either.
Good and Bad Slides
The "good" slide has a clean look and not too much text. The "bad" slide has too much information and is difficult to read There's too much text and the images are poor quality or irrelevant. Which of these slides would you rather look at? How would you feel after sitting through an entire presentation of slides like that?
