Power Point Design Guidelines Guidelines to help avoid common presentation mistakes

Design Guidelines Simplicity is your friend Rule of seven Lots of white Organized Path for the eye Rule of seven Color and contrast Typography Content 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Simplicity is your friend Content is center stage Draw attention to presentation, not special effects Text Graphics Sound Background Colors Consistency - slides, bullets, fonts 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Simplicity Is Your Friend Content (and speaker) is center stage Draw attention to presentation, not special effects Text, graphics and background Sound Colors Consistency - slides, bullets, fonts 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Lots of White Space Too much filler will overwhelm the viewer Makes your eyes tired – You won’t bother to read it If you have a lot of information to share in a slide, consider either using PowerPoint to display the point and you discuss it, or break things up into several slides You need a place for the viewer to focus on as you discuss a point - otherwise, he or she could just read it themselves ... 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Lots of White Don’t want to overwhelm audience Place for focus Keep things short Break up into several slides 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Organized Audience feels movement to a conclusion Easy to see progress Pace of slides (rehearse) Too fast, exhausts them Too slow, put them to sleep 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

This (nothing dominant) Path for the Eye class… Oh, boy, another This versus This (nothing dominant)  GREAT POWERPOINT PRESENTATION I feel so informed! Oh, boy, another class… Confusing PowerPoint Presentation I survived … 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Rule of Seven Thou shall not use more than SEVEN lines Thou shall not use more than SEVEN words per line 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

One to three colors is PLENTY Green Growth and movement Blue Calm Red Power, energy, danger One to three colors is PLENTY Yellow Positive Purple Spiritual Brown Neutral 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

… And Contrast Dark background Light background Black Red Orange Green Blue Purple Yellow White Yellow Orange Green Red Blue Purple 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Typography - Font (44 pt) Smallest font 28-30 points (32 pt) Large for emphasis: Titles Simple fonts - Arial, times Avoid script Limit: 1 or 2 fonts No more than 3 sizes 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Typography - Style Don’t hyphen- ate Errors: check, recheck, someone proof Avoid italics – least likely to be read 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Typography - UPPER CASE DON’T USE ALL CAPITALS FOR LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT. READERS READ FASTEST WHEN SENTENCES ARE PRINTED IN UPPER AND LOWER CASE - THE WAY THEY NORMALLY ARE SEEN IN PRINT. HEADLINES ARE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT REQUIRES THE READER TO SLOW DOWN, GIVING EMPHASIS TO A FEW WORDS. 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Typography - Title Case Don’t Use All Caps for Large Blocks of Text. Readers Read Fastest When Sentences Are Printed in Upper and Lower Case - The Way They Normally Are Seen in Print. Headlines Are in All Caps Because It Requires the Reader to Slow Down, Giving Emphasis to a Few Words. 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Typography - Sentence Case Don’t use all caps Readers read fastest when Sentences are upper and lower case The way they normally are seen in print Headlines are in all caps It requires the reader to slow down 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Content Only the essence Few words Items in order No extraneous data you’ll ignore Relate graphics to content 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience

Design Summary Less is more! Anecdote from Presentations Magazine Any good presentation will have the presenter as its prime focus, he (Nick Morgan – Princeton University professor and former speech writer) says; visuals should be used sparingly and only to reinforce the speaker’s credibility. How sparingly? To answer this question, Morgan tells the story of a client who started at a pace of one slide per minute (not unusual in the corporate world, he says) for a speech that could go up to three hours. After working with him for six months, Morgan gradually pared the client down to one single slide – albeit one with six pictures that could be highlighted in various ways throughout the speech. “It liberated him,” Morgan says. In fact, once the client broke his slide habit, he tripled his speaking fee. 1/2/2019 Hale - Huff - Patience