Yes, visual slides with stunning images are more powerful than boring lists of long bullet points. But that does not mean that designing good presentations is the equivalent of finding a stunning image for every page (sorry).

• A powerful quote can look beautiful on its own, in naked typography. The image of the person might distract the audience, especially if it is a relatively unknown author of an airport book best seller.
• A simple information slide (here are the 3 priorities for next year), but just be best visualised with a simple list of 3 priorities. 
• Section breaks can be done in 2 ways: a dramatic visual to show the transition, or an almost blank page that brings the attention of the audience back to you
• It is very hard to find dozens of images that are more or less similar in style or look and feel. As a result, presentations with lots of images look inconsistent.

It does require though that you find a way to make a typography-only slide look good. A nice full colour plain background, and some elegant stealing from the Swiss graphics design masters in the 1960s is a good way to start.

Art: Brice Marden, The Dylan Painting, 1966/1986

Click here to subscribe to this blog