Would Fred Astaire’s scintillating dance moves have looked as good if he had abandoned his usual suave wardrobe in favor of clothes that made him look like one of the irredeemable low-life characters represented in A Hillbilly Elegy?

We’ll never know, but there is one thing we do know: The best substantive presentation material looks even better if packaged well. Formatting slide shows is an art. Compliance with some basic slide show formatting principles won’t make you Monet, but will put you on the road to being a passable PowerPoint artist.

Glad to see my article Slide Show Formatting Basics is available at LLRX.

Would Fred Astaire’s scintillating dance moves have looked as good if he had abandoned his usual suave wardrobe in favor of clothes that made him look like one of the irredeemable low-life characters represented in A Hillbilly Elegy? 

We’ll never know, but there is one thing we do know: The best substantive presentation material looks even better if packaged well. Formatting slide shows is an art. Compliance with some basic slide show formatting principles won’t make you Monet, but will put you on the road to being a passable PowerPoint artist:

Bullet Points

Bullet points have the salutary effect of improving quick comprehension. However, deploy them wisely. Squeezing too many bullet points on a slide creates a cluttered impression. No more than five bullet points per page is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Avoid having more than two levels of bullets on slides. In other words, you can have a bullet point, and one sub-level below them. If you need more sub-levels to convey complex ideas, it’s better to break them into more slides.

Templates

Good slide show software provides templates (called “slide masters” in MS PowerPoint) to provide a consistent layout. I occasionally see presenters who do not use templates. It’s nearly always a mistake. The templates are designed by pros. The defaults in a decent template will facilitate a professional appearance. A Google search on the phrase using powerpoint templates will find plenty of tutorials to get you started. 

You can:

• Override the template for a particular slide or
• Modify the template (surprisingly easy)

You can even create your own templates. It’s not something I’d recommend to most lawyers. In any event, using templates is an easy way help make a good impression on your audiences.

Logos

Some presenters who have just learned how to edit templates or create their own succumb to the temptation to include their organization’s logo on every slide. This is popular in businesses as a form of branding, but there is a drawback. Including a logo on every slide limits flexibility. 

The best approach is probably to include the logo on the first slide, and maybe the last. If demands of unsophisticated supervisors or an overly doctrinaire marketing department make you feel you absolutely must include the logo on every slide, make it small, except on the first slide and the last, where you can usually get away with more. 

Whatever you do, don’t follow the example of one government conference presentation I saw that included no less than four different agency seals on every single slide, one for each of the four presenters!

Old fashioned transparencies, often referred to as overheads, worked much better as dark text on a light, preferably white background. Modern computer slide show projectors use a different technology. With slides, light colored text works best against a dark background.

What background color is best? Some authorities suggest trying to match colors to the emotional mood you are trying to create. For example:

Purple: Royalty, wisdom, spirituality, mystery

Green: Nature, environment, health, reptiles, insects

Gray: Conservative, practical, reliability, security, staid

See the Think Outside the Slide website for more.

Certainly there might be some benefit to this approach in some situations. However, as a practical matter I usually give these factors little consideration when preparing my own slide shows. I normally use the color combination that is generally acknowledged to have the highest legibility: Dark blue background, with light text, usually white or yellow. The most important thing for me is that the audience be able to read the slides easily. I’ll use methods other than color if I feel I need to maniuplate the audience’s emotions.

Whatever color scheme you choose, to improve legibility try to maximize the contrast between foreground and background. Light grey text on a medium gray background is a recipe for disaster. The Think Outside the Slide website has a color contrast calculator.

Glad to see my latest article on slide shows in the June issue of LLRX.com. An excerpt:

Antipathy toward slide shows is understandable but misdirected. Most are poor. Too many users of slide shows don’t understand what they are doing or don’t put in enough effort, or both. A high percentage of slide shows are painful for audiences. However, the story is not that simple.

A slide show is a tool, an instrument like a hammer, airbrush or violin. A poorly constructed house is the result of bad carpentry. A poor airbrush user makes the classiest model look like a tramp. A poor violinist will make a Stradivarius sound like a hungry cat.

Good carpenters build sturdy houses. Good airbrushing can make ordinary models look glamorous. The gifted Jacqueline Du Prey made Dvorak’s Cello concerto sublime. Good slide shows can help presenters better educate, persuade, and even inspire.

Enhance Training Materials With Font Choices

Accurate, and engaging content is the key to computer slide shows. However, appearance counts, and counts big. Font choice is one subtle but important appearance factor. It’s worth taking some time to understand the basics of font choices for slide shows, and how they compare to other tools ethics trainers use to help their audiences, including printed handouts, transparencies, slide shows and online presentations.

The first step in being able to intelligently select fonts for use in training materials is to understand the key distinctions between categories of fonts: serif vs. sans serif, and print vs. screen, and system vs. professional:

Serif vs. Sans Serif

Serif fonts, like Times New Roman, have small ornamentation at the ends of letter strokes, called “serifs,” or “hinting.” Sans serif fonts, like Arial, lack such ornamentation. Decorative fonts (including script) are a third category that will rarely be useful for lawyers. I have prepared a font chart illustrating the three basic types, serif, sans serif and decorative.

Trick Question: Which style is more legible, serif or sans serif?

Short Answer: It depends on the medium. In general, serif fonts are better for printed matter, like books or newspapers. Sans serif fonts are better for computer displays.

Rationale: Serif fonts are easier to read in big blocks of text. The serifs help readers recognize the shape of a word, rather than decoding each letter individually. Nearly all books are printed in serif fonts, for this reason.

The problem with serif fonts is that they are harder to read at low resolutions, like on computer monitors. For example, laser printer resolution starts at 300 d.p.i., and can go up to 1200 d.p.i. Times Roman, a serif font, works well at these resolutions. By contrast, computer monitors (and projectors) have much lower resolution. The resolutions are so low that the serifs do not show up. Therefore, sans serif fonts are generally your best choice for computer use, though a sans serif screen font (discussed in the next section) may be OK in some situations.

Sans serif fonts are also easier to recognize as single words. This is why serif fonts are used for traffic signs. Professional typographers tend to use sans serif fonts for headings, and serif fonts for text body.

Print Fonts vs. Screen Fonts

Recent decades have seen a new development: Fonts designed specifically for computer display, sometimes called “screen fonts” or “web fonts.”  Verdana (sans serif) and Georgia (serif) are examples. They look better on a computer display. Many screen fonts (including Verdana and Georgia) don’t look as good when printed on paper. 

System Fonts vs. Professional Grade Fonts

Compters come with a selection of built-in “system fonts,” including the ubiquitous Times New Roman and Arial. Some of these are better choices than others. The most commonly used choices provide the comfort of familiarity, but they are often inferior to less common system fonts, or professional grade fonts available as an upgrade. Broadening your horizons is a way of subtly or not-so-subtly improving the quality of your instructional materials.

The Typography for Lawyers book and website both have good practical advice on font selection, including “naming names” of hackneyed fonts and better choices. At the website, look under the “Font Samples” menu choice. The book has much more detailed information.

Summary 

The following simple rules will make your slide shows look more professional:

1. Use serif fonts for large blocks of text.
2. Use sans serif fonts for headings.
3. Use a screen font (either serif or sans serif) for computer slide shows or websites.
4. Rather than fall into the Times New Roman/Arial rut of using only the most common system fonts, follow the guidance of experienced professionals when making your font selections.

Want more information about fonts?  The Typography for Lawyers website and related book are the best resources I’ve found on this topic.