Designing a presentation

In addition to careful planning of the content (as discussed in Chapter 1), you need to plan the appearance of the presentation. It is best to do this after you have developed an outline, because the outline will determine some of the requirements for the slides’ appearance. For example:

• What color combinations (background and text) will both look good and be easy for your audience to see?

• Would a picture help your audience understand the contents better?

• Do you want a particular picture (for example a company logo) to appear on all the slides?

• Would the audience benefit from having the slides numbered so that they can quickly refer to one of them?

• Do you want a background graphic or gradient? If so, you need to pick something that does not interfere or clash with your content, for example, colors used in charts.

• Will you need one slide master or more than one? If one slide design does not suit all of the content, you might need more than one slide master.

You can change the appearance of slides as you develop the presentation, but planning ahead will save you time in the long run.