A slide deck as a presentation enhancer is a great way to share your knowledge in a way that is quick to absorb and entertaining.
The design must be optimized for in-person projector use as well as for the web or as a PDF to be viewed later.
Designing slides can too often be either an afterthought and rushed or overly done and noisy. Here’s a look at five things to keep an eye out for to ensure your slides are successfully delivering your intended presentation experience.
Focus on Text Reduction
Presentations should not rely on the audience having to read slides and in doing so less attention is devoted to listening. Before populating slides make sure the presentation topic has an outline and the content within the outline is fully fleshed out; the full content will guide the speaking portion of the presentation and the outline will shape slide content.
If a block of text is unavoidable consider introducing gradually through subtle transition effects and breaking up any bulleted lists into multiple slides consisting of 1–3 per slide. Full sentences are difficult to read and take up a lot of space, so list items should capture the topic in as few key words as possible, also allowing you to keep the font size large (around 20pt or higher).
Each slide generally shouldn’t have more than one piece of high-level information and avoid redundancies, such as a single word used many times. The notes feature within many slide deck tools or irl printed notes are great ways to capture text that will help jog your memory without having to include in the slides themselves, visually reducing text but not sacrificing the meat of the presentation.
Empty Space is Good
The power of white space comes from the limits of human attention and memory.
— Jerry Cao, Kamil Zieba, Matt Ellis
“Less is more” seemed a bit too obnoxious, but that’s really what we are talking about here. AKA “white space”, having fewer things on each slide will emphasize the content, allowing the viewer to better focus on and better comprehend what matters most.
There are four areas where white space can be used to create the best experience for the audience:
- The space surrounding graphics and images
- Within margins and padding
- Between lines of text
- Between groups of text
The Law of Proximity declares that images near each other appear similar. To ensure maximum understanding and ease of viewing place captions closest to their corresponding images and group and ungroup items together depending on their relationship.
By having fewer, strategically placed elements on each slide you’ll reduce the cognitive load of the viewer, attracting more attention and better understanding.
Have a Visual Theme
Your slide deck is a mini product and benefits from a brand in the form of a consistent color palette, typography, and layout. Visual design defines a first impression and can determine whether or not the audience trusts your presentation within seconds. A visually appealing presentation is something viewers find comforting, engaging, and desirable.
Even when short on time, try to use a custom design over a stock slide template. The goal here is to appeal to viewers while being an extension of your personality or brand. If you have an existing brand be sure to carry that through, making any necessary edits to optimize for projector use. Using too many colors can make for a busy and incoherent experience, so as a general rule stick with fewer than four or five different colors within the branding of the slides. If a fresh color palette is needed tools like Coolors.co and Color Hunt may provide inspiration.
Fully lean into your chosen theme without generating too many over-the-top, overly animated, too irrelevant visuals, allowing your presentation to stand out amongst others while your true message is still heard.
Show, Don’t Tell
Showing is dramatically more impactful than telling. Properly labeled data visualization, illustrations, relevant high quality images, and even scanned rough sketches will do more for communication than text.
Visuals grab and hold the attention of the audience, allowing them to understand the material faster and makes it more likely to be committed to long-term memory. It also saves you time in regards to not having to format several text slides and makes the experience more approachable and energizing overall.
To know what types of concepts will lend well to visual aids consider and know your audience. What do they like? How likely are they to be familiar with the concept and to what degree? Where would a code snippet be more effective?
As a presenter you are crafting and teaching a mini curriculum. I find that it can be beneficial to have an introductory understanding of instructional design best practices, especially in regards to visuals. Some resources here include Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen and this PDF of checklists from BCIT.
Legibility Above All Else
Last but certainly not least. If the audience cannot read a presentation on that washed out hotel projector than the message may be difficult to follow or even distracting. There’s truly no amount of hilarious GIFs that can make up for a presentation that cannot be read.
The two main areas that will enhance legibility are solid typography and overall contrast within the slide deck.
Typography
Concerning fonts, a sans serif will usually be easier to read over serif as it tends not to look as crowded in this context, with ample space between letters. Select tried and true options over overly adventurous ones, unless you are confident in your selection and the tone of your presentation allows for it.
Use large font sizes and be consistent with heading and body copy styling throughout the slides. Tools like Keynote greatly help in this regard, allowing for key slide layouts to act as templates for reuse throughout the slide deck.
Left alignment will be best for any lengthy bodies of text and being mindful of any excessive rags, widows, or orphans will have a surprisingly significant impact on how comfortably and quickly the audience will be able to read slides, as these can be disruptive to the eye.
Finally, being knowledgable of general typography best practices and rules, such as emphasis, proper quotation, and hyphenation can go a long way. I gave a presentation about this years ago and the summary, with slides, can be viewed here. The very best resource I can recommend on the topic is Practical Typography.
Contrast
Contrast in this context refers to whether or not text, illustrations, and images can be comfortably viewed on chosen background colors. A high contrast will enable viewing from a farther distance, which is especially important through a medium as inconsistent and unpredictable as projectors.
Proper contrast ensures that the presentation is legible but also that it is not physically assaulting the audience. Especially poor contrast can create a visual vibrating effect that can be a migraine trigger for some; example intentionally not included! 😵 Checking background and foreground colors with tools like WebAIM can guide color selection in the right, safer direction.
