What is well designed?

I. Advice you often see

Backgrounds  Projecting?  Use a dark background with little variation  Printing?  Use a light or white background to save ink  Showing on a computer screen?  Can use multicolored background, but check background-text contrast

Colors  Contrasting  Complimentary  Function consistently across slides  Show Personality

Pictures  Expected by most viewers  Contribute to the point of the slide  Shouldn’t overwhelm or obscure the text  Should be used consistently through presentation

Animations  Fit the slide’s point  Don’t overwhelm the slide’s point

Transitional animations  Used to make points clear  Consistently done inside a slide  Coherently done across slides

II. Advice you don’t often see

What’s missing from such advice?  Recognition that Audience, Purpose, and Function are key to a presentation’s success -- e.g.,  This bullet is “DUMB” from a design standpoint. Can it ever be appropriate?  Tons of text -- like you find on this slide -- is “TABOO” in most presentation tips sheets. Can you think of when such an approach fits your audience’s needs?

What’s missing from such advice?  Recognition that your presentation design creates an image of you  Suppose you are an avid boater (see wheel) or a person who identifies as a caring person (see heart). Those stylized bullets could be important to your IMAGE  Of course, using BOTH (as we do here) confuses the message of the image, so you need to be careful to make the image SINGULAR and CONSISTENT  You also need to be sure that everyone understands the symbol as you do. What if we read the wheel as “Captain Hook” or the heart as “Red Hot Lover”?

What’s missing from such advice?  Recognition that you might be talking to a group that is “turned off” by corporate look  Can you make the same type of presentation to a gaming company that you make to your marketing professor?  Would you pitch a movie the same way to Kevin Smith as to Steven Spielberg?

III. Building your own sense of “what fits”

Use design principles that make sense Contrast: Repetition: Alignment: Proximity: avoid differences that are similar (if elements -- type,color, size, line weight, texture, space, etc. -- are different, make them very different) repeat visual elements to develop coherence avoid arbitrary placements on slide (e.g., maintain meaningful hierarchies and minimize margins) group related items close to one another See Robin Williams’ Non-designers’ design book

Break design rules when demanded Audience: Purpose & Function: Image: Assess your audience’s needs and potential responses to design, and put those needs first Keep your audience focused on what you want them to do or think after the presentation Design to reinforce your image -- conservative (stay close to design principles) to edgy (keep a few but break them in interesting ways)

What is well designed?