Slides

Ditch the over-crowded, jumbled, over-coloured, over-bulleted slides. Discover the rules used by the top communication professionals.

The grid

Use your chosen grid for every slide in your deck.
- PowerPoint and Apple's Keynote have guide lines with which you can build a grid.
Align all the elements on the slide. But you can vary the pattern, of course.
- Alignment is very important in bringing order and harmony to how the information is presented.

Fonts

No less than 40 point size. Smaller than that becomes too hard to read.
Don’t use more than two fonts. It looks amateurish.
Don’t use serif fonts. The edges are too fuzzy on screen.
Don’t use Comic Sans. It’s just too corny.
Don’t centre your text. Too hard to read, use only for titles.
Don’t use colour text on top of colour background.

Rule of thirds

Professional photographers and graphic designers have long known about, and constantly use, the rule of thirds.
This is where the screen, canvas or page is divided into three along the height and width, resulting in nine sections.
Place the point of interest of your image where these dividing lines meet.

Bullet points

When used purely for lists, bullets are fine.
But, in many cases, bullets are used in public as short-hand reminders for the presenter.
- They are empty of meaning and, as a result, boring for the viewer.
Instead, write pithy, arresting sentences are much more interesting!
- Just like the stand–first sentences seen below titles in newspapers.

How to Create Good Slides

Here are three steps to follow when creating slides.

Clarify your purpose

As best you can, get to know who your audience is and what bothers them.
Pinpoint their problem and fashion your presentation around that.
Figure out what you would like them to think, feel and do after your presentation.
Acknowledge and integrate emotional and intellectual aspects.

Collect your content

Use either sticky notes to gather and arrange your thoughts.
Or, you can use the built-in light table of your presentation app.
- But that has its dangers. You will probably be sucked into writing too many words on each slide and bothering about what it looks like.
Oliver Caviglioli prefers a fat felt tip with small sticky notes.

Organize a story sequence

The first thing is to cull whatever irrelevant or duplicated points you have collected.
Then, you will need to chunk the ideas into meaningful groups or themes.
And then, you should fashion your narrative, which comes as a sequence.
- If that breaks the tidiness of your categories, then so be it. Story first.

1Dual Coding With Teachers

1.1The Limitations of Working Memory

1.1.1The Limitations of Working Memory

1.1.2To Try in Class

1.2Design Guide

1.2.1Design Guide

1.2.2To Try in Class

1.3Pen Craft

1.3.1Pen Craft

1.3.2To Try in Class

1.4Slides

1.4.1Slides

1.4.2To Try in Class

1.5Documents

1.5.1Documents

1.5.2To Try in Class

1.6Displays

1.6.1Displays

1.6.2To Try in Class

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