12 presentation design tips that actually work

Start with the message

Tip 1: one message per slide. Before you design anything, write down the single thing each slide should say. If you cannot, the slide is either two slides or no slide at all.

Tip 2: write titles that state the point. Replace topic titles like Sales or Q3 Results with full sentences such as Sales grew fastest in the north. Your audience gets the takeaway even if they only read the titles. Michael Alley's assertion evidence approach builds whole slides this way: a sentence headline supported by visual evidence underneath.

Tip 3: cut the words in half. Slides are not your script. Keep the short version on screen and put the rest in speaker notes or say it aloud. If people are reading, they are not listening.

Make text easy to read

Tip 4: use big type. Body text that looks fine on your laptop is tiny on a projector. As a rough check, if you have to lean in to read it on your own screen, the back row cannot read it at all. Guy Kawasaki's advice to avoid fonts smaller than 30 points is strict, but it points the right way.

Tip 5: limit yourself to one or two typefaces. A clean sans serif for everything is safe. If you want character, pair a distinctive heading face with a plain body face, and then stop.

Tip 6: create a clear hierarchy. The title should be obviously the most important thing, then the main visual, then supporting text. Use size and weight to show this, not underline, all capitals and three colours at once.

Use colour with intent

Tip 7: pick a small palette. One or two neutral colours for backgrounds and text, plus one accent colour for the thing you want people to notice. When everything is highlighted, nothing is.

Use the accent consistently. If orange means your product in one chart, it should mean your product in every chart. Check contrast too: light grey text on white, or dark text on a busy photo, is hard for many people to read, especially in a bright room.

Show data clearly

Tip 8: choose the simplest chart that answers the question. Bars compare amounts, lines show change over time, and a single big number is often better than any chart at all. Pie charts with more than a few slices are hard to read.

Tip 9: strip out chart clutter. Edward Tufte coined the term chartjunk for decoration that adds ink without adding information, such as 3D effects, heavy gridlines, shadows and redundant legends. Remove them, label data directly, and highlight the one bar or line that matters in your accent colour.

Let images and space do the work

Tip 10: use fewer, better images. One strong photograph that fills the slide beats four small stock pictures. Make sure images are sharp at presenting size and actually relate to the point, not just to the topic.

Tip 11: embrace white space. Empty space is not wasted space. It gives the eye somewhere to rest and makes the important parts stand out. Garr Reynolds made this case well in Presentation Zen, drawing on ideas of simplicity and restraint. If a slide feels crowded, remove something rather than shrinking everything.

Keep the whole deck consistent

Tip 12: build a system and stick to it. Titles in the same place, the same margins, the same colours meaning the same things, the same chart style throughout. Consistency makes a deck feel professional and lets the audience focus on the content instead of relearning each layout.

Use the slide master or theme in your software to set this up once. Then, before you present, click through the whole deck quickly and look for anything that jumps: a title that moved, a different font, a chart with the wrong colours.

A quick checklist before you present

Run through this list on your final draft.

• Can someone get the story by reading only the titles?
• Is every slide readable from the back of the room?
• Does each slide have one clear focal point?
• Is the accent colour used for emphasis only?
• Are charts labelled directly, with clutter removed?
• Are all images sharp and relevant?
• Do layouts, fonts and colours stay the same throughout?

Getting a designed first draft

Most of these tips are about restraint, which is hard to apply when you are also writing the content. PPTlover can take the design work off your plate: add a document or a short brief, pick one of 76 styles, and it designs every slide with one idea, a clear title and a visual chosen for the content, from charts to process flows and timelines.

You can export to PowerPoint (.pptx), PDF or images, and choose Editable text if you want to fine tune wording and placement afterwards. Your first slide is free.