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!