Creating a Presentation: Basic Guidelines
- bkey21
- Feb 19, 2022
- 2 min read
Presentations are a major part of any teaching experience, whether in-person or online. Here is an example of one for use in a lecture introducing some basics of type history. The content will mirror the information in the class textbook, a source of reinforcement of the information.
A few key points in designing the presentation include limiting the number of typefaces used to two -DCC-Ash and Baskerville. The DCC-Ash is a decorative sans serif to add a sense of age or history to the design while still being legible across a room. Baskerville is a transitional serif for the educational feel provided and for contrast in style to the Headline text.
Do not add too much text as it needs to remain large enough to see across a room. Once it gets down to 12-18 point size, it becomes harder for students further back to read. Plus we are not writing a book, just providing some reference points to go with the lecture, not the lecture.
The notes or content on each slide is to give main points of the discussion as a guide or focus for the students as they listen or participate in the verbal part. The students may take notes to correspond or use the information to review which sections of their book to read.
When using images, do not make them distracting for the viewer. This can be from using too many, too large compared to the text, or animated. All images should be available for use in the classroom without violating copyright laws. Even with “educational use”, it is a good idea to have them properly classified as legal for use. The Creative Commons is a good source for identifying images for use in a topic like this.
Several software applications may be used for developing presentations with PowerPoint being a common one. For a design class, I use Adobe InDesign as it fits with many of the design classes. It also allows for adding hyperlinks and other interactive or motion items similar to PowerPoint, while allowing export as a print or interactive PDF which can be opened on most computers.
While there are numerous ways to make a presentation, keeping it simple and easy to read is a good practice. The length should not be too long. After about 30 minutes, I find students get distracted or bored without active points of interaction. Even then, it still needs to be interesting with questions and other opportunities for them to speak and share their thoughts.
A PDF copy can be downloaded here for viewing purposes.
All images were found with creative commons usage rights for reproduction.
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