Good Design in PowerPoint

1
Good Design in PowerPoint

• The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional
  Communication
• ENGINEERING SERIES

2
Making Use of Design Elements

• Design elements allow reinforcement
• Strategic choices create interest
• Practice develops judgment
• Analyze what you like
• Borrow with what you like
• Use choices coherently

3
Your Design Options

• Templates
• Design rules
• Colors
• Fonts
• Effects and transitions

• Text
• Graphics
• Special effects

4
Choosing a Good Template

• What is the mood/image you want to convey?
• Very dark or very light backgrounds work well
• Simple backgrounds work well

5
To Choose an Existing Template
Step 1
6
To Choose an Existing Template
Step 2
Select the one you want to use
Hit OK
7
To Design Your Own Template

• Write down words to suggest the image you want
  your choices to convey
• Such as technical, professional, strong
• Choose a background color appropriate for the
  room and lighting
• Choose a font and colors that
• match your image choice
• yield strong contrast and legibility
• Follow basic design rules

8
Typical Font and Color Combinations
9
Basic Design Rules

• Rule 1 Use blank space to group or separate
  items
• Rule 2 Use visual balance to please the eye
• Rule 3 Create contrast to make objects stand out

10
Organize with Blank Space
Identify groups of items separated by Blank
Space in this Web Site

• Blank Space An empty area
• Directs viewers eyes
• Pushes or groups items and separates them from
  others

11
Use Contrast to Group, Emphasize
Contrast by font, color, or size Contrast occurs
when 2 elements are different Engineering
contrast should be functional, not decorative
12
Choose Colors for Legibility

• Well-lit room
• use light background/
• dark text and visuals

Dimly-lit room use dark background/
light text and visuals
Strong light reduces contrast on dark background
13
Avoid Vibrating Colors

• Bright complementary colors
• that are close to each other in intensity
• vibrate or reduce legibility

14
Learn Color Basics at Poynter!

• http//www.poynterextra.org/cp/

15
Choose Easy-to-Read Fonts

• Good for print
• E
• Serif (tail)
• Such as Times New Roman

• Good for projecting
• E
• Sans Serif
• (uniform shaft width)
• Such as Arial

16
Font Aspects Affect Legibility

• Contrast between background and text
• Uniform shaft width
• Size of font
• Type treatment of font

S S
32 pts Times Arial
Drop Shadows Reduce Legibility
17
Choose Effects to Support Points

• Avoid slow moving or fancy effects

• Swivel

• Spiral

• Effects should have a point / support your
  concept
• Dont overuse special effects

• Keep effects and transitions consistent

18
Use Text Properly

• Use keywords and phrases instead of sentences
• Avoid orphans
• This is an example of an
• orphan
• Be consistent in your capitalization
• Use grammatical parallelism

19
Design to Match Audience Action

• Your audience...
• Skims each slide
• Looks for critical points, not details
• Needs help reading/seeing text

• So you . . .
• Use only essential info
• Guide their eyes with hierarchy, color
• Use big. legible fonts and framing blank space

20
Displaying Text

• Bullets
• Short phrases
• Grammatical parallelism

21
Bullets Help Audience

• Skim the slide
• See relationships between information points
• For example, this is Main Point 1, which leads
  to...
• Sub-point 1
• Sub-point 2
• (To get back to previous level use promote or
  demote arrows at top)

22
To Use Bullets

• Select the bulleted list or two-column list
  slide (from the 12 pre-designed slide
  formats)
• Type a phrase then hit return
• Type a second phrase, hit return then hit tab
  to indent
• OR use promote or demote arrows at top to
  create a bulleted hierarchy

23
Matching Bullets to Your Image

• Go to format and then bullet
• Select the style, color, and size of the bullets
  youll use
• OR highlight text you wish to bullet and select
  the bullet button at top

24
Text Display Tips

• Use vivid, concise phrases or imperatives
• Write complete sentences only in certain cases
• Hypothesis
• Questions

25
Use Parallelism

• Put similar ideas in similar forms
• Same part of speech
• Same type of clause or phrase
• Complete sentences
• Reinforce with color, type treatment, place on
  screen

26
Use Parallelism Equivalence

• Parallel
• Use keywords
• Avoid wordiness
• Opt for bullets

• Not Parallel
• Use keywords
• Wordiness is bad
• You should opt
• for bullets

• Each verb expresses an action of equivalent
  importance.
• List similar items in the same grammatical form.

27
Revise for Grammatical Parallelism

• Not Parallel
• Criteria to Assess Alarm System
• Price
• Effectiveness
• How easily the alarm could be installed
• Parallel
• Criteria to Assess Alarm System
• Price
• Effectiveness
• Ease of installation

28
Parallelism Your Turn

• Make the following list of sub-points parallel
• Reliable data collection relies on
• Consistent use of techniques (pipetting, making
  solutions)
• Correctly calibrated equipment, such as balances
  and pipettors
• Researcher bias is minimized (expecting data to
  fit model conflict of interest)

29
Displaying Visuals

• Insert needed visuals
• Use color
• Resize appropriately
• Draw attention

30
Resize Images How to . . .

• Click on the visual you wish to resize
• Go to format and then object or autoshape
• Select size
• Change size and scale
• OR simply click and
• drag the corners of the image

31
Simplify and Draw Attention
http//www.indstate.edu/thcme/mwking/tca-cycle.htm
l
32
Animating Tips

• Custom animation allows you to animate text,
  visuals, or line work
• Custom animation should be used purposefully (and
  sparingly!)
• Animating should help audience comprehend your
  message
• Dont animate solely for aesthetic purposes

33
Offer Familiar Images First

• Offer figure or image familiar to audience first
• Technical image next
• Water treatment example simplified for government
  officials

34
Give Technical Images Next

• Build toward technical understanding
• Sequence Photo / diagram/ schematic/
  cross-sections/other technical drawings
• Technical water treatment example

35
Present Images Realistically

• Dont distort images

36
Use Legible Graphics

• Dont stretch Web images to the point of
  graininess
• Dont shrink them to be too small to read

37
Avoid Overused, General Clip-Art
38
Make Choices Work Together

• Blank space and balanced items create meaningful
  organization
• Color, contrast, and point size indicate
  importance and direct viewers attention
• Text reinforces speakers voice but should not
  overload or distract
• Special effects and images indicate relationships
  and emphasize aspects

39
Rehearse with a Coach

• To evaluate how well your visual choices work
  with your spoken presentation
• To make sure images are legible
• To test visual aids under expected room conditions

40
Lead through Excellence in Engineering
Communication

• More resources are available for you
• under Engineering Communication at Connexions
  at http//cnx.org
• at the Cain Project site at http//www.owlnet.rice
  .edu/cainproj
• in your course Communication Folder in OWLSPACE.