Slide Examples - Good and Bad!
Left: The big headline is strong and the basic layout is clean. However, it has more text, which means you have to read all the words, or they will be reading instead of listening.
Right: easier on the eye, as the icons with simple key words make it easy to understand without having to process the words. The single message from the headline is broken into three pieces.
Left: a LOT of words, and all that's possible to do for the presenter is read the words out, line by line. The template is pretty horrible too! (It;s a real one from a current version of PowerPoint.
Right: the image fits the topic, the text is simple and guides you as a presenter, and guides the audience as well.
Left: too much info, way too long and complex sentences, a bar chart that makes no sense at all - and will take 10 minutes to explain in a way that does make any sense!
Right: three big numbers, nice and easy on the eye, a platform for you to give the explanation as to what those numbers mean.
Left: looks boring, too much text, bullet points, a lot of words to process.
Right: the icons help give an easy visual image, and provide a platform to tell an energetic story, instead of simply having to read the sentences from the slide.
Left: The importance of a high resolution image
Right: Keep it simple - don't overload with visuals, give them one picture and one idea per slide.
Left: watermarks appear on sample images from websites that sell pictures, such as Getty, StockPhoto and iStock. Avoid this - it looks really unprofessional!
Right: keep images in proportion - don't stretch them to fit the screen.
Left: If you have a big announcement, a metric that matters or a piece of data you really want people to keep in mind, make it big and clear, so they don't miss it!
Right: If you have to show a graph, ask yourself what the message is, and whether you can communicate that message with less details. Often you want to show a trend or a key change - that is regularly possible by stripping down the data to something as simple as possible, and making the conclusion clear.
Left: visual elements not aligned or sized consistently, text is at different font sizes, there's a mixture of capital letters and lower case - this all disturbs the eye and the mind.
Right: all aligned - the icons are all at the same height, they are centred in the circles, all text is consistently presented in capitals. This gives the eye and mind a feeling of calm and of being in the hands of the professionals.