usable presentation design

Giving Usable Presentations

Wednesday, April 18, 12

Here’s what he says:

PowerPoint is Evil.

PowerPoint is Evil.Makes us stupid.

PowerPoint is Evil.

Makes us boring.

Makes us stupid.

PowerPoint is Evil.

Wastes time.

Makes us boring.

Makes us stupid.

PowerPoint is Evil.

Degrades quality of communication.

Wastes time.

Makes us boring.

Makes us stupid.

Here’s the reality:

1. Powerpoint is here to stay.

2. All visual elements are what you make them.

3. Everything depends on your communication skills.

Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not

a decoration failure.

Function

Always.

(But form still counts.)

Signal vs Noise

You’ve probably been doing traditional PowerPoints all

these years.

Here’s what I want you to aim for in your final

presentation to this class:

Simple.

Few bullets.

Minimal text.

No logos.

No unnecessary elements.

Strong images.

Simple.

Striking.

Humans think visually.

Look at this stock graph:

“Visual” has many elements:

Typefaces

Design

Images

All of these build

Ethos Ethos Ethos!

So, having said that:

Let’s think about document design.

First concern: legibility

• This is 12 point type.

• This is 18 point type.

• This is 28 point type. This is about as small as you ever want to go for projected presentations.

• This is 32 point type -- a bullet size.

This is 64 point. It’s a good size for headers

and statements.

All of that was in sans-serif type.

Examples of sans-serif typefaces:

• This is Arial.

• This is Century Gothic.

• This is Helvetica.

• This is Verdana.

• (All of these are 32 point.)

(Serifs are those little tails on the edges of letters.)

Examples of serif typefaces:

• This is Georgia.

• This is Goudy Old Style.

• This is Palatino.

• This is Times New Roman.

• All of these are also 32 point.

Be wary of novelty typefaces.

• This is braggadocio.

• This is Brush Script MT

• This is Colonna

• This is Curlz

• This is Herculanum

What if you wrote everything in Curlz?

• It would be harder to read, for one thing.

• It also tampers with your ethos.

• This is not a very professional typeface.

Sometimes it can work for you.

Intro to Goth Culture

(That is Blackmoor)

New Football Stadium

(That is Princeton)

• This is a bold font.

• This is an italic font.

• This is a bold italic font.

DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS.

IT SLOWS YOUR READER DOWN CONSIDERABLY.

Sometimes a bit of color is rather pleasant.

Why use color?

Focuses attention.

Don’t make it look like a rainbow blew up on

your slides.

Problems:

Room lighting can be a huge issue.

So is the way colors look when projected.

Also, be kind to your audience’s eyes.

Yellow text on a garish background?

Also, be sure to account for cultural considerations.

Do your best to develop a general sense of these

things beforehand.

So, what should be on a slide?

Ideally, not much.

Keep your text simple and short.

Limit yourself.

• No more than 2 typefaces and 3 fonts in a document.

• Use one size for headers, one for subheads, and one for body text.

• Because huge blocks of texts on a screen confuse the eye and overwhelm the mind. Your audience will be much busier trying to read it all than they will be paying attention to you. You want to minimize the possible distractions, because presentation situations are generally distracting enough. People are cold, people are hot, people are thinking about what’s on TV tonight, and now you’ve got them reading all this text. And it’s a lot, isn’t it?

• What’s even worse is when presenters minimize the font size in order to fit more stuff on the screen. Then people have to squint, and they get headaches, and they wonder what the heck is up with you and your design skills. Why are you ambushing them with all this text? Do you really need for them to read your presentation? No, not really. You need to tell your story and use the PowerPoint slides to provide visual emphasis of you major points.

• Folks who do this sort of thing usually also try to squeeze multiple points onto one slide -- all in tiny type. And they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on with the text because they’re trying to fill up space, because they think that a really full slide is a good and important slide. This is rarely the case.

Be clean.

• Highlight your major points.

• That’s all.

• You just want to drive them home visually.

Use high contrast.

Use clean backgrounds.

Don’t do this:

This is a little better, but still not entirely effective:

Be appropriate.

Your background and font should match your topic.

Kill monotony!

Don’t be afraid to play.

Picture Superiority Effect

(n): Theory that states pictures are better remembered than words.

Which slide is more memorable?

Rolleiflex Camera

PowerfulEfficientDirect

When choosing images, aim for

Big and clear

Interesting

This is a perfectly fine photo of a cow.

But this one is way more memorable:

Strive for clarity.

Grab the largest images possible to avoid pixelation.

At least 800 pixels will give you the clearest

cow possible.

usable presentation design

point type

ethos ethos ethos

sansserif type

examples of serif typefaces

bold font

bold italic font

good size

bullet size

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