The design of presentation slides

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The design of presentation slides

• Stephen Bostock

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Summary

• Purpose
• Text, fonts and colour
• Charts
• Automate the style
• Displaying slides
• Handouts
• Web versions

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The purpose of slides

• Slides should
• Augment a presentation not dominate it
• Be easy to see, read and understand
• Illustrate ideas clearly
• But not
• Distract the audience from the speaker or message
• Get in the way

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Text on slides

• Use slides to focus attention on key points
• one concept per slide
• one point per line
• but
• dont distort the natural information structure

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Reading slides

• Allow time for the audience to read
• Unless you read all the slide, stop talking

A Achievement B Breadth C Capability
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Amount of text per slide

• Depending on the purpose and audience, guidelines
  are
• About 6 bullets/points per slide
• About 6/8 words per line
• About 20 words per slide
• No more than 75 of slide area
• Exceptions

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Font size

• The best size depends on typeface, projector,
  screen, and size of room
• Arial 48pt 40pt 32pt 28pt 24pt 18pt 16pt and
  this is probably too small to read on the screen
  or handout at 16 pt
• Body text size
• 24 point is the minimum (this is 24 point)
• Generally use 32 point or 28 point
• Maximum of three sizes per slide
• Should sub-bullets be smaller?

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Legible font faces and sizes (44 point Verdana)

• Some typefaces are best avoided(Beesknees face,
  32 point)some font faces are best avoided!
• Use a maximum of three font faces per slide (32
  point Arial face)

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Emphasis in text

• Use mixed upper and lower case
• CAPITALS SHOUT AND ARE LESS READABLE
• For emphasis use italics or bold or colour
  but not all at once, and be consistent
• Underlining is old fashioned, or a link
• Start lines with a capital? (be consistent)

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Colours

• Colour can add meaning interest
• Keep the main colour scheme simple
• Extra colours add visual complexity
• No more than about 6 colours
• Consider the partially sighted
• Contrast is in colours and intensities
• How would it look in greys?
• Handouts?

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Which colours?

• Colours have their own meanings
• Warm foreground stands out from cool background
• Pure primary colours (red, green, blue) can get
  tiring
• Try shades e.g. light dark green

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Backgrounds

• Busy backgrounds may look fun when designing but
  reduce readability
• Do not switch between dark and light backgrounds
• Experiment

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Backgrounds

• Busy backgrounds may look fun when designing but
  reduce readability
• Do not switch between dark and light backgrounds
• Experiment

But not on the audience!
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Design clear charts

• Charts are easier to understand than numbers
• Bar charts are effective for tabular data
• Pie charts should be large with distinguishing
  colours

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Borders to focus attention
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Automate the style

• Use Master slides for consistency and numbering
• The Design Templates use with caution, and
  customise
• PowerPoint 2000
• resizes body text to fit body field
• Tools, Options, Style Optionssets rules on
  number of fonts, case, punctuation, minimum text
  size, number of bullets, lines per bullet

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Slide presentation features

• Slide transition effects
• for all or some slides
• use just one effect
• With sound?
• Slide building effects
• elements of a slide are added in sequence by
  bullet, line, character
• use with caution it chains a speaker to the
  sequence and irritates the audience

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Designing handouts

• Add administration and contact information in
  headers and footers
• Choice of format, per page
• 1, 2 slides is too bulky except for detailed
  slides
• 3 slides, with lined writing space
• 4 horizontal slides has writing space
• 6 slides, with no writing space

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Versions for printing

• Always end with a blank slide
• But dont print it
• PowerPoint 2000 does it for you
• You may have to keep a different version to print
  and to display, without some details
• Hidden slides
• Remove features before printing
• Custom shows

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Web options

• Put the .ppt file on the web
• Make an Acrobat .pdf file
• Can protect it
• Printer-ready handout
• Save As web pages. Options for
• different browsers
• with or without animation
• with or without speakers notes
• screen sizes

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Summary

• Purpose
• Fonts and colour
• Charts
• Displaying slides
• Speakers Notes
• Handouts
• Web versions

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Reading slides

• Allow time for the audience to read
• Unless you read all the slide, stop talking