How to Make Good Slides for your Presentation

This is a summary of the article 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea, from TED’s in-house expert (Posted by: TED Staff July 15, 2014)

The big picture...
1. Think about your slides last. 
Building your slides should be the tail end of developing your presentation.The slides are just something you layer over it to enhance the listener experience.It’s far more effective when the slides are for the audience to give them a visual experience that adds to the words.
2. Create a consistent look and feel. 
Use the same or related typography, colors and imagery across all your slides. 
3. Think about topic transitions. 
You don’t want each slide to look exactly the same. Create one style for the slides that are the meat of what I’m saying, and then another style for the transitions between topics. 
4.With text, less is almost always more. 
One thing to avoid—slides with a lot of text, especially if it’s a repeat of what you’re saying out loud. If you can’t avoid having text-y slides, try to progressively reveal text (like unveiling bullet points one by one) as you need it.
5. Use photos that enhance meaning. 
Use simple, punchy photos in presentations, because they help what you’re saying resonate in your audience’s mind without pulling their attention from your spoken words. Your photo could be a metaphor or something more literal, but it should be clear why the audience is looking at it, and why it’s paired with what you’re saying.
Tactical tips…
1. Go easy on the effects and transitions.  
If you must use them, use the most subtle ones, and keep it consistent. 
2. Use masking to direct attention in images. 
Follow the technique here
3. Try panning large images.
Rather than scaling the image to an illegible size, or cropping it, you can pan it vertically as you talk about it. In Keynote, this is done with a Move effect, which you can apply from an object’s action panel.
4. For video, don’t use autoplay.
Instead, set the video to click to play. That way you have more predictable control over the video start time, and even select a poster frame to show before starting. 
5. Reproduce simple charts and graphs.
Make it easy on the eyes. You could redraw it to have control over colors, typography, and more. .

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