Creating Presentation Visuals (Slides)

Generally, Microsoft Power Point is the tool of choice for developing slides to support presentations. Yet, though Power Point is very user-friendly, developing effective presentation visuals involves more than just understanding how to use the software.

There are five common mistakes that are detrimental to any presentation. These include:

1. Poor use of colour
2. Poor use of typography (font choice)
3. Including too much information on each slide
4. Including too many slides
5. Detracting from key messages with unnecessary decorations/graphics.

Using Colour

The use of colour is important to add interest to slides and help to hold audience attention, as well as to maximize readability and minimize eye strain.

To achieve the above, the best choice of slide background is a dark colour, such as blue, with white text. This provides the necessary contrast to give the slides impact. Adding a black shadow to the text helps to further increase contrast and makes the text more easily read. Title text should also be in a contrasting colour such as a dark yellow.

One of the most important factors in using colour is to ensure consistency throughout the presentation. Use of the same background, title and text colour throughout creates a clean, professional presentation. The use of too many colours creates a cluttered, unprofessional appearance and for that reason it is generally recommended to keep the use of colour consistent and understated.

Choosing Typography (Fonts)

Choice of fonts can alter the mood of a presentation. Depending on the purpose of your presentation and its messages, you should choose the font accordingly. As a rule of thumb, point size should not be lower than 24 at the smallest (i.e. for sub-points) to ensure readability throughout the room.

It is important to note some fonts are more easily read than others. "serif" fonts are easier to read than "sans serif" fonts. Serif fonts have 'extenders' on each letter. For example, the Times New Roman font, which looks like this:

is easier to read than Century Gothic, which looks like this:

Uppercase letters are also harder to read than lower case or sentence case letters. For example:

THIS IS HARDER TO READ BECAUSE EVERY WORD IS CAPITALIZED.

This is easier to read because a normal sentence case is used.

This Is Awkward To Read Because Capital Letters Appear At The Beginning Of Each Word.

As with choice of colours, choice of fonts should be consistent throughout the presentation. Since words written in CAPS are harder to read and take up more space on the slide, it is preferable to use bold face and italics for emphasis.

Developing Slides

Remember that visual presentation materials should be designed to communicate your message quickly, and to emphasize the key points you want the audience to retain. The verbal presentation that accompanies the slides, along with the hand out materials, should provide additional detail.

Handouts should be used to expand on the information in the presentation. They can reiterate the key points, but should provide additional detail. They should not duplicate the slide presentation because, if the slides are designed correctly, their usefulness after the presentation will be limited due to the lack of detail they contain. Handouts, by comparison, should be detailed materials that will assist your audience in communicating at a later date the information provided in your presentation.

Text is only one element that can be used to communicate your message - well chosen pictures or graphics can also help to communicate, adding additional interest or humour. Appropriate and professional images and pictures will enhance your presentation and help to maintain audience attention and interest.

Text, diagrams and photo images should be positioned well within the boundary of each slide so that all of the information is well displayed and easily read when projected.

Number of Slides

Confirm the length of time you will have for your presentation. Plan your presentation to run at a relaxed pace that is slow enough for you to be able to clearly communicate all of the key points, but quick enough that it holds the audience's attention by moving from one idea and image to another, fairly frequently. A good rule of thumb is to allow 1-3 minutes per slide, so the number of slides will be determined by the time allotment for your presentation.

Charts, Graphics and Decorations

It's important to know how to work with charts and graphs to effectively communicate data. Often presenters make the mistake of providing charts and graphs that are too small, too detailed and/or too cluttered with images and colour to clearly deliver the desired information. Learn More!