We’ve all been there: being stuck in a boring presentation with seemingly endless slides. I have long had a goal to never do a boring presentation. It has served me well over many years as I have been continuously finessing my presentation skills after each audience.
I have successfully used Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule for presentations:
- No more than 10 slides
- No more than 20 minutes to present
- Nothing smaller than 30 point type
As most of the presentations I do are as either a workshop facilitator or as a teacher, these constraints can be a challenge. But if you have had any design training, you may know that having constraints often guide some of your best work.
Through my design training, I have adapted the 10-20-30 rule to include basic design principles. If you have a professional design background, this may be a review. If you don’t have a professional design background, the following are easy concepts to adapt in your own work, no fine arts degree required.
I use type hierarchies:
Everyone has their own preferred fonts for their presentations, and I’m not here to tell anyone that one font is better than another. That said, I make use of type hierarchies as much as possible: making what I want to emphasize most the largest thing on the page, then scale down from there. Another way I use hierarchies is putting some things in ALL CAPS and SMALL CAPS sparingly, when I really want to make a point.
I also stick to no more than two fonts for easy readability:
- One for headlines and titles
- One for main text that has several variations such as bold, italic, etc. Not all fonts have these options.
I use color contrast:
I have a background in creating accessible websites and apps. This means that I have guidelines for color contrast embedded in my brain. I still use contrast checker websites sometimes, especially when I am working with greens and oranges, as those have been the trickiest colors for me to work with historically :)
I include saturated colors when possible:
A lesson from college that stuck with me was about how the colors in the original version of the Windows interface were influenced heavily by comic books, in layout as well as color. As part of my presentation color palettes, I try to include saturated accent colors (by accent colors I mean colors that I use sparingly) when possible. I use these bright accent colors as part of my storytelling process.
Usually my palette consists of:
- One background color
- One main color for text
- Three or four accent colors that I use for extra emphasis, supporting graphics, charts, etc.
I want to show how I put this all together so I created a FREE themed presentation, with sample content about Object-Oriented UX from past workshops. This file includes both Keynote and Powerpoint versions. Feel free to adapt, templatize, and remix for your own needs, and let me know how they work for you!
