October 26, 2007
Information Design: How To Make Your Text More Legible
Have you ever wondered how to make your text more legible inside a presentation or business executive report? How can you make your text easier to read? By highlighting, bolding and emphasizing key text sections without a clear plan you risk of making your text less legible than it would have been without any formatting.
Photo credit: Stephen Coburn - Mashed up by Nicolo' Canali De Rossi
As you have probably noticed yourself, restrain alone is not either a sufficient cure.
PowerPoint expert, Ellen Finkelstein explains clearly, in this excerpt from her latest book, How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007, how to best format text in your PowerPoint Presentations, as to make it most legible for anyone you will present it to.
How to Make Text Count
By Ellen Finkelstein
Photo credit: James Warren
The first rule for making text count is readability. Here are some pointers that will help you ensure your text is legible:
- Shadowed text can make text stand out, but make sure it looks good on your background color. The shadow needs to be subtle and the text needs to be large, or legibility suffers.
- When you place text over a full-color graphic, be sure that the text is readable everywhere on your slide. If the graphic has many colors, some of its areas may blend in too well with your text. A possible solution is to use a semitransparent fill for the text's placeholder or shape.
- Be careful about rotated, vertical, and 3-D text—it can be hard to read.
- To get text to stand out, concentrate on the right font, the right size, the right color, and a contrasting background instead of using all capital letters or a very fancy text effect. One of the text styles (bold, italics) or a subtle effect (such as a shadow) can also be effective.
- Don't use more than two fonts on a slide. The effect is chaotic and therefore distracting. A better choice is to limit yourself to one font. Sticking to the theme fonts is a good way to keep fonts clear.
- Associate a font with a type of element. For example, make all your slide titles the same font.
- Keep the font type fairly simple for legibility.
- Have someone else read your presentation, on paper or onscreen, to make sure the flow of ideas is clear. For example, if you set up two columns and three rows of text, in which direction are readers supposed to look first—down the first column or across the first row?
- Animating text is another way to emphasize it. You can make text appear when you want it to, as well as have lines you've already presented dim or disappear.
About the author
Ellen Finkelstein is the author of How to Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 (and editions on previous versions). This book thoroughly covers all PowerPoint features, as well as best practices, design concepts, content techniques, delivery tips, and more. It includes a companion web site with free downloads. Her latest book is PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic Presentations and Interactive Classroom Projects, which shows teachers how to use PowerPoint to improve educational outcomes in the classroom. She publishes the free PowerPoint Tips Newsletter monthly, available at www.ellenfinkelstein.com, where you can go to find many excellent tips and techniques.
posted by
Robin Good
on Friday, October 26 2007
Saturday, December 1 2007
URL of this article:
http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com/2007/10/26/information_design_how_to_make.htm
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