Below are a series of good practices for creating effective, elegant, and creative slide presentations. These "dos and don'ts" are great suggestions, but not absolute principles. If you have a good reason to do a "don't" or avoid a "do," you can still create a great presentation. Our tutorials are geared specifically for use of Google Slides (Available to students, faculty & staff in their Google Drive), but many of the same concepts are available in PowerPoint or Keynote, too.
This slideshow, together with notes, can be viewed outside this wiki by going here.
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Consistancy and Clarity
- Pick a few colors, fonts, and accents. Stick to them across all slides
- slidescarnival.com is a great source of free slide themes.
- colourlovers.com is helpful for choosing color sets or palettes that might make great slide themes.
- graphicriver.net related set of sites useful for comparing different color combinations (as well as graphics and related content.)
- pictaculous will suggest color combinations based on a submitted image.
- Simple Fonts
- Text as big as possible
- Important content toward the top of each slide
Text Content
- Less is better
- Fewer bullets is better
- Use multiple slides or animations to keep minimal text on screen at any time
- Is text necessary at all? Perhaps images alone might make a great compliment to what you say
Images
- Non-topic Specific: helpful if follow a theme.
- Topic Specific: Active learning? Ask audience to analyze image.
- Get Creative
- low-cost tools such as Pixlr and Paper Camera are handy for altering pictures or creating other images.
- Screenshots (with markup) are easy with Jing or Skitch.
- Shaped Crops, Fade animations
- Avoid spreadsheet slides
- Try to simplify charts and graphs, if possible
- A few animations are helpful. Too many are distracting
- Have a specific reason for each animation
Other Helpful Tips
- Contact information on the first and/or last slide
- Header or footer with your name, a means of contact (social media, email, etc.)
- If slides are available to your audience, let them know at the beginning
- Humor can be effective, so long as it is in good taste and appropriate for the occasion.
- Create a faux "Breaking News" Cable-TV style image: http://www.classtools.net/blog/design-a-breaking-news-screenshot/
Other Resources
Quick Guide to Google Slides
TedBlog: 10 Tips for Better SlideDecks