Newsletter 020
The Symphony Way: Flows and Presentations by Our Designers vol. 3
Having presented you with some tips and tricks on how to make your presentation in the best, but at the same time simplest, way possible, we are ending the first part of this series with a list of examples that aim to improve the details even more. We will present them one by one — practical visual examples followed by their explanations.
The heading needs to be aligned with the text, so we need to be careful about indentation as it can ruin the visual effect.
Also, avoid central alignment. Keeping it that way puts order into our texts and the line that goes from the heading to the end of the text adds up.
In the end, we should not forget to use bold formatting to point out the most important parts of the text, as well as the heading of the section/text itself.
As far as the organization is concerned, we need to start thinking from the very beginning of putting up a presentation together.
The difference is obvious — it takes such a long time for us to read the whole line if we use more than 80 characters. By cutting lines (as it is shown in the lower example), we create an impression that the text is shorter.
Sometimes, writing in a structured way is a far better solution. Not only do we reduce the number of characters/words, but we also make everything visually more appealing.
In the end, we will leave you with some don’ts that need to be taken into consideration along with the dos listed so far.
Although it might seem like a cool thing to do, we should not use too many different fonts. Remember — our readers’ attention needs to be focused on the essence of the text, not the visual effects (and especially not the type(s) of font we used).
While making presentations, we often believe that the viewers will struggle with properly seeing everything we wrote. Although this can prove to be true, using bold and italic formatting options is a far better solution than capitalizing the whole text.
All that is left now is for you to give this rather simple way of presenting a go. With all the ad-hoc meetings, crazy tempo of work, and hectic schedules, the last thing we need is a complex flow we need to prepare. Trusting the simplicity and relying on your empirical knowledge is good enough to fill in the gaps and deliver a clear and engaging presentation of any type; so, KISS.
Oh, and do take a look at the whole presentation — it’s a real beauty!
Take care!
