Preparing Presentation Slides: A Tutorial by John Battalio

SECTION 1D: Create a Design for the Slides

A consistent design throughout your presentation will enhance your professionalism and credibility. It will also enable your audience to follow your presentation more easily because listeners will quickly become familiar with the layout of your slides and not be distracted by unusual design features.

The five basic design principles listed below will help you create an effective design. (Section 2 of this tutorial explores in more detail how to apply these principles when creating your slides.)

Use spatial relationships to present information clearly. The design concept of proximity holds that items next to each other appear related to each other. Items distant from each other appear unrelated.
Use alignment to create a visual focus. Place text and graphics on the page so that they line up to create a unified whole. Alignment creates a visual focus that ties the different elements together.
Use repetition to establish patterns. Graphics and headers should appear in the same place on each slide, and they should have the same design features. Footers should also be consistent on every slide.
Use contrast. Make your text stand out against the background. Use graphics or colors to signal important information.
Use moderation. Using too many colors will confuse your audience. Filling every inch of the screen with information will overwhelm your audience. Including meaningless graphics or sounds will annoy your audience.

Before you begin creating individual slides, determine a basic design that you will use as a template for most of the slides in the body of your presentation. Considering your audience and purpose, and keeping the basic design principles in mind, choose type styles for headings and for the various levels of your text, a background color or design, a format for footer information, and a logo or graphic display.

Presentation programs like Microsoft® PowerPoint® provide a choice of template slides, among them title slides; slides for text and bullets, text and graphics, and graphics alone; and blank slides. Be cautious in using software templates that format your presentation for you. Many of these templates violate the principles of good design. If you do choose to use a software template, remember that your audience and purpose should determine how you use and adapt it. Choose a simple template, and then modify it for your situation. You want to focus on delivering information, not on complex design.

Use the master slide of your presentation program to set styles for your text, background, headings, and footer information for all the slides in your presentation. Using the master slide gives your slides uniformity and saves you time while creating your slides.

The slide below uses a template with an effective design. The template is useful because it is legible and simple. The heading is in a highly readable, sans serif type. The body text uses the same typeface in a smaller size. The contrast of dark text on a white background makes the information easy to read. The color graphic is not overwhelming or distracting. Footer information puts the slide in proper context. The slide's simplicity is evident because the viewer's focus is on the information in the slide, not on a background that calls attention to itself or on unnecessary graphics. Most important, the viewer's attention is not pulled in all directions because text and graphics are not crammed into every available space. The blue bullets and the red bullets align the information clearly and provide a visual focus for the information.

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