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PUGET SOUND REGIONAL COUNCIL

PowerPoint Presentation Style Guide

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Contents

PSRC PowerPoint Presentation Style Guide Introduction PSRC PowerPoint Templates Presentation Title Slide Presentation Overview Slide Chapter Title Slide Content with Navigation Content without Navigation Presentation Structure Writing Your Presentation Slide Layout Copying and Pasting Content Formatting Bulleted Lists Color Palette Photos Changing Corner Photos Changing Wide Photos PSRC Slide Examples 4 5 5 6 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 23

Adjusting Presentation Title Slide Photos 20

Introduction
PSRC

A series of PSRC PowerPoint templates have been developed to provide a more consistent visual style across agency presentations. The basic design and structure of all presentations will be the same but the color palette will change to represent each major department within PSRC. The style of the templates reflects the design of the new PSRC web site and the work already done in the PSRC Data Presentation Style Guide.

Transportation

growth management

prosperity partnership

data and statistical analysis

PSRC Funding

PSRC PowerPoint Templates


Six Master PowerPoint documents have been created: Master_PSRC Master_ Growth Management Master_Data Master_ Transportation Master_ Prosperity Master_Funding

Each file contains five slides formatted for each department: Presentation Title, Presentation Overview, Chapter Title, Content with Navigation and Content without Navigation. These five slides are the building blocks for all presentations. Lets take a look at those five slides:

Presentation Title Slide

The Theme of Presentation headline should reflect the overall theme of the presentation such as Transportation 2040, Project Funding, Regional Growth, etc.

More detailed information about the specific aspect of the overall theme goes in the Presentation Title area.

Audience name and date of presentation are listed in smaller type below the Title.

An image has been placed on the Title Presentation slide of all templates. This image is a placeholder and can be replaced easily. More information on how to replace photos is provided on page 17.

Presentation Overview Slide

The Title of your presentation should be repeated here.

The Slide Title reflects the content on your slide.

The Presentation Overview slide lists the sections or chapters of your presentation and should be a brief, bulleted list.

Chapter Title Slide


At the beginning of each new section or chapter of information, a chapter slide can be used to clearly define the change of topic. The Chapter Title should be consistent with the Chapter Titles listed on the Presentation Overview Slide.

Content with Navigation


The Navigation Menu on the left side of the PSRC Content slide template can be used to help your audience keep track of what topic is being covered and where you are in the overall presentation. This should mirror the information on your Presentation Overview slide and your Chapter Title slides. If your presentation is short, the navigation text box can be deleted. Each slide should have a different corner image. The image should match the content on the slide as closely as possible. More on Photos on page 17.

Every content slide has a Slide Title. These should be brief, descriptive and engaging. They should not be full sentences. The font size should not be changed to squeeze in more words, the number of words should be edited.

The Main Content Area on all Content slides is the same across all department templates. Therefore, when copying content from one departments presentation into your own, there should be no need to resize or reconfigure the elements. They should fit perfectly in the space allotted for content. For more on Copying and Pasting Content see page 13.

Slide numbers are located in the upper right corner of every Content slide. The slide number is part of the Master Slide and will update automatically as you move slides around in your presentation.

HOW TO USE THIS SLIDE


It is recommended that when you begin a new presentation, you fill out the Navigation Menu and the Presentation Title on a Content with Navigation slide before adding any content to the slide. Then insert several duplicate slides and begin building your presentation. That way, you only have to type that information in once.

Adjusting the navigation menu


The font color of the Navigation Menu text is a lighter version of the main color of your presentation. As mentioned earlier, presentation colors vary by department. Once you have entered your navigation information and inserted several duplicate slides, you will need to highlight individual sections or chapters in the Navigation Menu for each chapter of your presentation.

The Navigation Menu is 12 pt. Arial Bold and has a line spacing of 1 Lines. The space before a paragraph is set to .9 Lines.

Select the line of text you want to highlight and change the font color to white. Soft Line Breaks can be used to force a word onto another line.

SOFT LINE BREAKS: There may be times when you want to force a word onto the next line without creating a new paragraph. If you hit the Return key and have Before Paragraph or After Paragraph Line Spacing formatting applied, that space will appear between your two lines. If you hold down the Shift key and then hit Return, you will get what is called a Soft Line Break. PowerPoint will not read this as a new paragraph and will not add any line spacing before or after the Soft Line Break.

Content without Navigation


There will be times when you need more room on a slide. In that case, a Content without Navigation slide has been created. These can be used in any combination with Content with Navigation slides.

The six PSRC PowerPoint template files listed on page 5 are located here:

X:\TEMPLATES\Master_PPT_Templates
Please copy a version of your departments master file to your computer and work with that file.

Presentation Structure
Chances are you will have a lot of information to cover in any given presentation. Developing an outline or structure for your presentation will help you communicate a clear, thoughtful message to your audience. The overall structure may vary from one presentation to another but many basic elements should be included in all.

Sample presentation outline


Introduction Define the subject of the presentation. Provide a general overview of what the audience will learn. Give background information about the topic and tell how it relates to the audience. List the topics to be covered. Explain your objective for the presentation. Explain details. Give examples. Explain details. Give examples. Explain details. Give examples. Review what has been covered. Describe ways to apply what has been learned. Contact person Web site, Documents, etc.

Overview/Agenda

Topic One

Topic Two

Topic Three

Summary

For More Information

How many slides?


A general rule of thumb is one slide per minute. If you have a 20-minute presentation, you should include about 20 slides. You dont want to overwhelm your audience with too much information. Focus on the key concepts you want your audience to remember.

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Writing Your Presentation


Emphasize THE key concept
Decide what is the main point of each slide and emphasize that point clearly. Remove extraneous information that can distract.

Writing SLIDE TITLES


In the new PSRC PowerPoint templates, every Content slide has a Slide Title. The Title is big and bold and meant to be the first thing your audience reads. Therefore, it is important that your titles are descriptive and engaging. Rather than technical, your titles should be conversational. Some examples: Technical
PSRC Leadership Central Puget Sound Region Contact Information Forecasted Growth Implementation Multicounty Planning Policies

Conversational
Who We Are Who We Represent Were Here to Help You Our Region is Growing Achieving Our Goals Planning for the Region

Avoid too much text


This is one of the biggest mistakes people make with PowerPoint: They cram too much text onto their slides. Your text-only slides should be short, quick-hit highlights written as phrases rather than complete sentences. If your audience is busy reading your slide, they arent going to be paying attention to you. Or they may not read the slide at all, which renders your PowerPoint presentation useless. A general rule of thumb is that text should be limited to: Six words per bullet point and six bullets per slide. At right is an example of a slide that contains a reasonable amount of text.

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Slide Layout
It is important to make sure that the text on your slide is large enough to be read by everyone in your audience. Main Body Copy should be 20-24 pts. Remember your bullet points should be short, quick hits around six words long and try to keep the number of bulleted item around six per slide.

All fonts on your slide should be Arial and the font color should be black.

Bold orange text can be used occasionally to highlight important information but should be used sparingly.

Make sure to leave some white space around the main content on your slide. This helps to focus the readers attention on the key information.

Dont try to cram too many images or too much text on to one slide. As a general rule, each slide should have one main point and one main image.

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Copying and Pasting Content


At some point, you will likely need to include content from another PSRC presentation in one of your own. Rather than inserting a slide from another presentation, you will open the other presentation and copy and paste the main content into your presentation.

Go to the other presentation and find the slide you would like to use. Select just the main content elements you would like to include in your presentation. Then select Copy.

Toggle to the appropriate slide in your presentation and select Paste. The copied content will appear in the exact same format and location as the original. Since all departments will be using the same fonts and presentation style, minimal tweaking should be needed for this content to work within your presentation.

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Formatting Bulleted Lists


Heres a look at how to create clean, easy-to-read bulleted lists:
Draw a text box on your slide and type in your list items. Make sure your font is Arial Regular and 20-24 pts. in size. Select all the text in your box and then click on the bulleted list icon:

PowerPoint will place a bullet at the beginning of each line but does not insert a space between the bullet and your text. It doesnt automatically indent the second line of a bulleted item either.

To add space between the bullet and your text and to make all of your text line up along one indentation, you will need to adjust the indent markers on your ruler.

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Sliding the top text indent marker will adjust the indentation of the first line of each paragraph or bulleted item. Bullets will not move. Moving the bullet indent marker will shift everything, text and bullets.

Adjusting the bottom text indent marker will adjust the indentation of all lines of text. Bullets will not move. Make sure you are clicking on the triangle-shaped part of the slider rather than the square part (bullet indent marker) below. Note that the bullet indent marker will move with the bottom text indent marker.

Here you can see that the bottom text indent marker has been adjusted and all lines of text below have a matching indentation.

Dont forget to add some line spacing between your bullet points for easier reading. Go to the Format menu and select Line Spacing. Adjust the Before Paragraph space to 0.5 lines.

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Color Palette
The colors chosen for this project relate closely to the colors used in the new PSRC web site and in the Data Presentation Style Guide. The top row of dark colors shown below represent the background color of each department template. The bottom row of lighter colors are in the text of the Navigation Menu and the Presentation Title on Content slides.

RGB COLOR MIXES


PSRC 98,118,128 TRANS 125,143,48 GROWTH 200,85,27 PROSPERITY 0,56,100 DATA 117,73,114 FUNDING 119,119,119

179,195,209

202,216,140

240,176,144

155,212,255

215,191,214

207,207,207

Lighter colors are used in the Navigation Menu and the Presentation Title.

If you would like to highlight some text, use the dark orange color mix from the Growth Management template: 200, 85, 27.

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Photos
Two PowerPoint documents have been created that contain a collection of photos for use in the new PSRC PowerPoint Template slides. The images have been cropped to fit the template and have been color-corrected. The files are called: PSRC_PPT_Corner_Photos PSRC_PPT_ Wide_Photos They are located here: X:\TEMPLATES

Wide Photos
10 wide by 3.25 tall, 200 dpi

CORNER Photos
1.8 wide by 1.9 tall, 200 dpi

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Changing Corner Photos


The PSRC_PPT_Corner_Photos file contains more than 100 images of a wide variety of topics and locations. There are transit, housing, park, people and nature photos in addition to regional photos. The corner picture you choose should match the content of your slide as closely as possible, giving a quick indication of the topic of the slide.

Scroll through the PSRC PowerPoint Corner Photos file to find an image. Select that image. Select Copy. Toggle to your presentation and select Paste. Then move the photo to the upper left corner of your slide and it should fit perfectly.

Note: If you have a photo that you would like to add to the current collection, please ask the Graphics Department for help. They will crop, size and color-correct your image and add it to the appropriate file so that everyone can have access to the image.

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Changing Wide Photos


The PSRC_PPT_Wide_Photos file contains more than 70 images of a wide variety of topics and locations. There are transit, housing, park, people and nature photos in addition to regional photos. The wide pictures should match the topic of the presentation or chapter as closely as possible.

Chapter Title Slide


Please note that the wide photos are taller on the Chapter Title slide than on the Presentation Title slide. All wide photos are cropped to fit the Chapter Title slide and will need to adjusted when used on a Presentation Title slide.

PRESENTATION Title Slide

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Adjusting Presentation Title Slide Photos

Presentation Title slide with photo that needs to be replaced. First, select photo. Then, hit delete.

The photo will disappear and you will see some shapes in the background that look like the Slide Title boxes on Content slides. Thats exactly what they are. These are elements that have been placed on the Master Slide. The color boxes can not be deleted, moved or changed in any way because they are locked on the Master Slide. Dont worry about these elements, they will be hidden by a photo in the end.

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Next, go to the PSRC_PPT_Wide_Photos file and find a replacement photo. Copy the photo and toggle back to your presentation. Select paste and the photo will appear. It may need to be moved to the top of your slide. You will notice that the photo covers up the Theme of Presentation headline. Thats because the wide images were cropped to fit on the Chapter Title slides and need to be adjusted to fit on the Presentation Title slides.

Select the photo and go to your Drawing Toolbox. Select Order and then Send to Back.

This will send your photo to the back of the document, behind the Theme of Presentation headlines black box. Note that the elements on the Master Slide are behind the photo. Master Slide elements are locked on the back layer of all slides.

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If your photo is being cut off by the main title bar, you may need to crop the image a bit. Select the image and double click on it. This will bring up the Format Picture dialogue box. In the Crop from section, you will need to adjust the Top anywhere from 0.1 to 0.6. The top edge of the photo box will move down the photo. You will see the Master Slide elements are still there in the background.

Just slide the photo up to the top of your page and your image is cropped.

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PSRC Slide Examples


Use these examples as your guide when creating PSRC PowerPoint presentations.

Note the placement of the chart on this slide. It is placed to the left of the Main Body Copy. This helps separate the Main Body Copy from the Navigation Menu and creates a sense of balance.

Note the placement of the map on this slide. It is placed to the right of the Main Content Area and is touching the edge of the slide for maximum size. In this case, giving the map as much space as possible and having it touch the edge of the slide is more important than separating the Main Body Copy from the Navigation Menu.

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Note the overall design of the Main Content Area. The two logos have vastly different shapes but both need prominent play on the slide. In an effort to keep the logos similar in size, a staggered, two-column layout was used.

Note the headshots on this slide. Each person is about the same size in the picture window and the crop is the same for all. This gives your images a consistent, professional look and gives equal weight to each image.

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If you have a text-only slide that contains an important number or statistic, pump the number up for higher impact and to improve visual interest.

Note that the Main Body Copy helps focus the readers attention on the main point of the chart.

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