2.2.3

Designing presentations

Guiding Question

To design a highly effective presentation, what principles should we consider?

Using presentations have become very popular in teaching chemistry in high schools. A presentation designed beautifully, scientifically and meets pedagogical requirements helps attract students' attention and increase teaching effectiveness. MS PowerPoint is a very commonly used presentation tool today. Therefore, this module does not focus on introducing the basic features of the software. Instead, the module's content focuses on some principles of layout, color, font, and effects to help design effective presentations.

Layout

Layout is the coordination and arrangement of objects on a slide. A reasonable layout helps the presentation become clear, attractive, and easy to follow. The video below presents five principles for a well-organized presentation (The video has Vietnamese subtitles).

In addition, MS PowerPoint software also supports the Design Ideas feature to help users save time when choosing presentation layouts. This feature helps generate automatic design ideas with pre-arranged objects based on what users add to the slide.

COLOR

Color plays a vital role in design. If you don't clearly understand the principles of color coordination, your presentation will easily become confusing and eye-sore. The color wheel is a color palette designed based on the colors of the rainbow. The color scheme for the presentation can be based on 06 common color scheme principles in design to increase visual effects (Image source: The Blue).

The 60-30-10 rule is often applied in design to achieve overall color balance. This rule regulates the ratio of color tones in the presentation: dominant color tone 60%; additional tones 30%; decorative tones 10%. The 60-30-10 rule makes the presentation more harmonious, attractive, and professional. This helps viewers feel more comfortable and more accessible to grasp the content. (Source: colorME).

Currently, many free websites such as Color Hunt, Coolors... provide thousands of rich and diverse pre-mixed color palettes. Users can visit the above websites to choose the color palette suitable for design.

Users can use the Eyedropper feature when designing a presentation using MS PowerPoint software and needing to select a specific color in the color palette or any image.

font

Font is an essential element in creating a beautiful, easy-to-follow presentation. To create a presentation that leaves a good impression, the selected font must ensure requirements such as readability, reasonable information hierarchy, and appropriate number of letters/fonts (Source: colorME).

- Regarding typeface: in academic presentations or teaching presentations, sans serif fonts should be used; Serif fonts are often used for titles; Handwritten fonts (script) can be used for decoration but are limited, especially in academic presentations.
- Regarding font size: the font size needs to be large enough for viewers to read (especially those sitting at the back or when showing the presentation on a small TV screen). The title's font size should be 32-42pt, and the body text should be 24-32pt.
- Regarding information hierarchy: information hierarchy helps listeners quickly grasp big ideas, small ideas, and important ideas. Therefore, you should use some ways to emphasize and decentralize information such as changing color, bold, italics...
- Regarding quantity: For the slide to be harmonious, you should only use a maximum of 3 fonts and 4 lines of content/slide.

Font and size

Information hierarchy

Quantity

In addition, to limit font errors and have more font choices when designing presentations, you can refer to 9Slide's free font set and installation instructions.

animations

Animations help make presentations more vivid. However, using too many effects or inappropriately will cause the opposite reaction, causing the listener to focus on the presentation instead of the presenter. Therefore, when using effects in presentations, consider the following:

Are the effects distracting to the viewer? If so, you should use simple effects like Appear and Fade.
Are the timings for the effects too fast/too slow? If so, fast effects should be used, up to a maximum of 0.5 seconds (unless otherwise indicated).
Are important contents emphasized appropriately? If so, appropriate emphasis effects should be used to highlight the content.
Is the order of effects appropriate? If so, the effects should be reordered according to reporting logic.

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