Alexei Kapterev's "Presentation Secrets": Chapter 7, The Slides' Unity

Part one of Chapter 7 in Kapterev's Presentation Secrets is about slide design. If you want to learn about design, keep reading.

Slide Design for Non-Designers

If you don't want to learn about design but still have to give presentations, Kapterev recommends the black and white approach--a white background with black Arial text. No colors. No frills. Easy and clean.

But good design can actually help. The point about slide design is to make the presentation work better. To make it more enjoyable. To make it communicate better.

Slides need focus. They also need contrast. And they don't need fluff. Delete all of the stuff that doesn't fit.

Color

Color can communicate, and a good color design will highlight the message in a presentation. The easiest thing to do is to use your company logo and pick colors from it. Paste the logo into Paint or some other program and see what the color is. Then you can use that specific color in your presentation. Or go to a color website like Adobe Color CC and find your logo color's complementary colors.

Fonts

The type of font you use does say something about you. Yes, it may seem silly, but it communicates.

Kapterev seems to recommend the following serif fonts: Garamond, Bodoni, and Georgia. For sans serif fonts, he like Corbel, Franklin Gothic, and Trebuchet. Just remember: avoid all caps, avoid justified text, and don't mix different fonts together unless they truly go together. And if you want to mix to make something stand out, then use completely different fonts and sizes, etc. Don't use more than one script, though.

And don't ever. Ever. EVER. Use Comic Sans. Universally loathed. It has actually become a joke, like in this Weird Al video at 1:20. Hilarious. Seriously. The world needs more Weird Al. But that's from me, not from Kapterev. :)

Pictures

This is some of the best advice I have seen. It's worth the price of the book right here:

"Suppose you have a lot of text about some topic (say, computers). Why not add a tiny picture of a computer to the side?..such an image introduces a distraction and accomplishes nothing. "

I could not agree more.

Pictures should be big, preferably full-screen. Kapterev says that if they get too pixelated, replace them. Don't be content with pixelated pictures. They're difficult to look at. Instead, use Tin Eye Reverse Image Search to find a larger version of the same image. Or choose something similar.

If you're trying to integrate text on top of a picture, increase the contrast of the text by adding a background around it, possibly semi-transparent. Don't just jump the easy route and make the picture smaller.