Slide Design for Academic Presentations

Slides are a visual aid, not a script. Good slide design helps your audience:

• follow your key points easily
• focus on what you are saying, rather than trying to read a wall of text
• understand data, diagrams and key visuals clearly
• stay engaged without being overwhelmed

Poor slide design can:

• make your presentation harder to follow
• cause accessibility problems, for example text that is too small to read
• look unprofessional and reduce the clarity of your work

Good slide design is also part of making your presentation accessible. For more guidance on readable text, contrast, image descriptions and the Accessibility Checker, see Accessibility in Office Documents.

Watch out for these common slide design problems.

• Too much text. Filling slides with full sentences or paragraphs makes them hard to read and encourages you to read from the slide instead of presenting.
• Tiny text. If your audience can’t read it, it’s not useful. Body text should usually be at least 24pt, and headings even larger.
• Poor contrast. Using pale text on a pale background, or dark on dark, makes content hard to read, especially for visually impaired audiences.
• No slide titles. Slides without clear titles make it harder for your audience to follow and harder for you to stay organised.
• Inconsistent formatting. Changing fonts, sizes or colours between slides makes your presentation look messy and unprofessional.
• Cluttered slides. Too many images, diagrams or blocks of text can overwhelm the audience.
• Low-quality images. Blurry or pixelated images look unprofessional and distract from your message.
• Distracting animations or transitions. Overusing flashy effects can distract from your key points.

Check that:

• text is brief and easy to scan
• font sizes are large enough to read clearly
• colour contrast is strong enough throughout
• slide titles are clear and descriptive
• slides follow a logical order
• visuals are clear and support your message
• slides are not overcrowded
• any required notes, handouts or PDF versions have been prepared