Hello, and welcome back to English for Marketing and Sales. In this video, we will discuss some basic principles of good design and how you can apply them to your future slide presentations. When you think back on the worst presentations you've sat through, what bothered you the most about them? Maybe the slides were full of text and the presenters simply read off of them. Maybe the slides were unattractive and unprofessional looking. Maybe you couldn't figure out what bothered you but you certainly weren't engaged. Your presentation slides should never be the star of the show. Your message is the star but they can help you engage your audience. And they should help you convey your message effectively. So how can you make that happen? I'd like to start with two rules of thumb. A rule of thumb in English refers to a generally accurate guide or principle. Rule of thumb number one, good design is invisible. Think about that. Good design is invisible, what do you think that means? Let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I went to see a play. A good friend of mine had been the lighting designer for the play. And after the performance, I said to my friend, thinking it would make him really happy, the lighting was fantastic. His face dropped, and he said, you aren't supposed to notice the lighting. In other words, good design is invisible. It's there. It serves a purpose. It evokes feeling. But you shouldn't see the lighting. You should see the performance. Rule of thumb number two, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. This is related to rule number one. Just because you can add animations and transitions doesn't mean you should. Just because you can add color and bold and italics and underline doesn't mean you should. Just because you can add five images to a slide doesn't mean you should. Just because you can have five different font styles, or 50, doesn't mean you should. This is a very difficult lesson for my two young daughters, who are just starting to make PowerPoint slides for their schoolwork. Color! Graphics! Transitions! Fonts! All very exciting stuff. But [LAUGH] put it all together and all you see is design. And the message is lost. So how can you create presentations that support you? First off, keep it simple. Don't put all the information you have on your slides. Keep it to one point per slide and force yourself to do the hard work of explaining that point to your audience. Use high quality graphics to help you tell your story. You can use stock photo, which will come with a cost, but with great choice and quality. Or you can find free images at sites like Pixabay, Freeimages.com, or Flickr CreativeCommons. Whatever you do, don't use the clip art or photos offered in PowerPoint. We’ve all seen them a hundred times and we're bored to death of them. If you took our other course, English for Management and Leadership, you might remember we talked about white space. In short, white space is negative space. Or space where nothing exists. In emails we talked about the importance of having enough white space to give the eye a place to rest. In presentations white space is also important. This goes back to the idea of not cramming your slide with information. To keep your slides from getting crowded with text, transform your words into visual sentences. For example, you could have a slide like this, where you use text to explain your point. The audience would have to read that or hear you read it to them to get the point. Or you could create a visual sentence that communicates the message as you discuss it. Be consistent in your use of color, font, size, spacing, and alignment. This goes back to the rule of thumb that good design is invisible. Consistency and careful alignment are unnoticeable, invisible. But make it messy and inconsistent and suddenly that's all you can see. Use proper spacing and alignment to keep everything neat and tidy. Your audience appreciates predictability. Without it, they have to adjust to the change, which distracts their attention from your message. Have a visual theme with no more than five colors. But again, don't rely only on PowerPoint themes. We've seen them too often. Instead, create your own theme and save it as a design template. You'll notice our slides use only four colors, black and white, and Arizona State University's branded colors, maroon and gold. Two quick points on fonts. First, make sure the font is large enough to be read by the person at the back of the room. If you have to reduce the size of the font to fit it on the screen, you have too much text. Instead, break it up into several slides. Secondly, understand the difference between Serif and San Serif fonts. Serif fonts have feet and are designed to be most easily read in print based text. San Serif fonts don't have feet and are easier to read in digital text. A final tip is to use Slide Sorter View to get an overview of your presentation and to easily rearrange the slides for better flow. The main takeaway from this lesson is to keep it simple. The design of your slides should support, not detract, from your message. Clean, tidy, simple slides with high quality graphics will leave behind a professional impression. Thanks for watching English for Marketing and Sales. [BLANK AUDIO]
