Most presentations are accompanied by visuals in the form of slides. When well-designed, they can make a presentation come to life and complement what you say. When designed poorly, they can confuse the audience. On this page, we unpack the elements that make visuals effective.
Less is more
Busy slides take audience members longer to read. The more time they spend reading your slides, the more they have to divide their attention between what you have on the slide and what you are saying.
Therefore:
avoid full sentences in your slides. Instead, use key words and phrases, and give extra detail orally
keep the design of your slides clear and simple. Cluttered slides take longer to read and understand.
Keep accessibility in mind
When preparing your slides, it's important to consider that your audience may have diverse abilities. To ensure that individuals with visual impairments can access the information, you can:
use high colour contrast. Aim for 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. You can use tools such as Web Aim's contrast checker to help you with this.
use a minimum of 18pt font size for body text
choose font styles that are easily readable
consider describing any visual elements on your slides aloud to make the content accessible to everyone.
Design
Your slides should be designed in a clear and consistent way. This means that the colours and styles of visuals and fonts should be uniform throughout the presentation, giving your presentation a cohesive and professional appearance.
Transitions and animation can add movement to your presentation. However, do not overuse them on your slides, as they can become distracting for your audience.
Where graphs and tables are used to represent data, they should be easy to interpret for your audience. Keep the design simple and visually engaging.
