Twelve principles for better slides
Twelve recurring problems on slides — and what to do instead. Most people will recognise themselves in several of them. The text is deliberately without images; the visual examples are in Module 3 and in the slides you encounter every day. Read through the list and stop at the three or four that give you something to act on right now.
1. Wall of text → quote or highlight
A page of curriculum text projected on a slide is a request to the audience to switch off and start reading. You can't read and listen in parallel — and when forced to choose, the audience reads.
The best solution is not to have the entire text on the slide at all — quote the key sentence, cite the source, talk about what it means. The middle path, when you really do have to show the whole paragraph, is to highlight what matters and dim the rest. Then the text works as a reference and your voice leads the reading.
2. The bullet list → one core message or images with labels
Eight bullets is not an agenda — it's a list the audience won't remember anything from. Two questions to ask yourself: is there only one of these points that actually matters? Then show that one and say the rest. Or: does each point genuinely deserve an anchor? Then swap bullets for images with short labels — it becomes something to look at, not something to read.
3. The full table → focus and dim
A complete table belongs in a document where the reader has time and can zoom in. On a slide there are two solutions that work: show only the three numbers that drive your conclusion — or show the whole table as a reference background and let one column or one row keep full contrast while the rest is muted. Either way, you control where the eye lands.
4. Template chrome → clean slide
Logo in three corners, date in the fourth, page number in the middle — every template is full of "who's speaking" information that the audience already knows. It steals visual real estate from what actually has something to say: your message. Strip out any template chrome that isn't needed on this particular slide.
5. Stock photo collage → one relevant image
Three stock photos side by side — people shaking hands, a lightbulb, an upward arrow — say nothing specific about anything. They just fill visual space. A single image that genuinely connects to your topic says more than four images that could have been on any slide.
6. Fly-in animations → simple reveal
Animations that come in from different directions, spin or bounce give the audience something to watch while they're not listening to you. The effect you actually want is usually a clean "fade in" — the content appears when you need it, but the effect itself draws no attention.
7. Three Y-axes → one simple chart
Three Y-axes on the same chart is a signal: the presenter hasn't decided which point is most important. The audience shouldn't have to make that call either. Show only the thing you want them to see. The other axes are reference information — they don't belong here.
8. Messy icons → one simple chart
Icons are meta-information about information. Three icons with arrows between them become a "simplified" diagram that's actually less clear than a hand-drawn one. If you need to show a relationship, draw the relationship — it isn't complicated, and it actually says something.
9. Bullet + image + quote → two slides
When a slide carries three different types of content — text, image and quote — they compete with each other for the audience's attention. The result is that none of them lands. The solution is the two-slide principle: split the content across two slides where each one does its job properly.
10. 12pt text → big keyword
If the audience in the back row can't read what's on the slide, the text serves no purpose at all. 12 point works in a document. On a slide, 28–44 point is the minimum. If the text doesn't fit, the problem is the amount of text, not the size.
11. Three typefaces → one family, two weights
Three typefaces on the same slide signal disorder, not variation. One typeface family with two weights (e.g. regular and bold) covers all the hierarchy a slide will ever need. More creates visual stress without adding any information.
12. Vague heading → concrete conclusion
"Inflation, economy, costs" is not a heading — it's a category. A heading that actually says something gives the audience the conclusion straight away: "Food costs 23 percent more than in 2021". A conclusion in the heading is the single biggest improvement you can make on a slide.
A closing thought
What makes a makeover effective isn't that the slide gets prettier — it's that the message gets clearer. Pretty is a by-product of clarity, not the other way around. When you look at your own slides, ask: what is the audience here to understand? Anything that doesn't serve that answer is noise.