Deane Nettles | Advertising & Graphic Design

Basic Presentation Design Checklist

Are your copy, your images, your fonts and your overall design a good match for your subject matter? (What are you trying to accomplish with this piece?)
What do you think is the most important part of your presentation? How can you get that point across?

Presentation
- Cover page says
  - • Design proposal for [your company name]
  - • Your name
  - • Class
  - • Season and year
- State who your company is and what they provide.
- State what your company's problem is.
- Clearly state your proposal to solve their problem.
- Keep headlines simple.
- Make sure slides are readable.
- Use bullets instead of paragraphs.
- Use short phrases instead of sentences.
- Each slide has only one key idea or point.
- Check spelling, grammar and punctuation.
- Check spelling, grammar and punctuation on all graphics.
- 2nd to last slide is a summation and call to action.
- Last slide is a clean, professional "Thank you" slide.

Design
- Are you using the same look and feel throughout your presentation?
- Are you using the same font family everywhere? Use simple fonts like Calibre.
- Use white space.
- Use margins to consistently keep your type away from the edge of the page.
- Don't cram your text and graphics together — let them breathe.
- Set your type flush-left, NOT justified.
- No hyphenated words.
- No small words at ends of lines.
- No widows.
- No hyphenated words.
- No text on busy backgrounds.
- Make sure text is readable. (Font style, contrast with background.)
- Make sure your graphics say what you mean.
- Make sure your graphics are high-enough resolution (not fuzzy or pixillated).
- Usa animations sparingly or not at all.
- Don't get cutesy unless the client is cutesier.