Greetings!
We've all viewed terrible slides that we
couldn't read and listened to the presenter
say: "I know you can't read this, but this is
what it says..."
Here are 3 simple but powerful tips that
will help you look more
professional as a presenter. These
tips are based on excellent research about
web design (see link below), but the same
principles apply to the visual formatting of
slides. (In my last survey, several of you
asked for research-based suggestions, so here
they are!)
1. Use black text on plain, high-contrast
backgrounds. People read black text on a
white background up to 32% faster than
light text on a dark background. And
if you print your slides (like 6 on a page),
the dark slide background on the printed page
makes it impossible for anyone to write notes
on the slides.
2. Use bold text only to draw the reader's
attention to a specific area of text. All
bolded text draws attention to itself, but
most presenters may bold too much text and
reduce the attention-getting impact.
3. Use sentence style in text,
titles, and headings. Text is more readable
when capitalization is used
conventionally:
- To start a sentence
- To indicate proper nouns
- To form acronyms
Notice the title at the top of this page:
It's in sentence style, with only the first
word capitalized. It's a lot easier to read
than this style:
"Format Your Slides So People Can Actually
Read Them."
And it's a lot easier for
you to key
in...no need to shift to capitalize the first
letter of
every word.
To learn how you can create and format more
readable slide text, check out the
research-based readability and usability tips
from the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services
(http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html#2).
You've already paid for this research with
your taxes,
so why not benefit from it!
