VISUAL REPRESENTATIONIntroduction: like/dislikeAlthough admission committees say that design is not important, it's mostly true unless you mess it up. So, how not to mess it up without even knowing it? First of all, it has to be visually pleasant or at least okay. We like flowers but don't like, let's say, garbage. We like fresh red-ripe apple but dislike rotten apple. Let's see example,
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I think second slide does not induce positive feelings.
ColorsThere are a few ways how to represent color. One of the popular ways is RGB (red, green, blue) representation. But in a presentation it is better to think about HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness).
Omitting details, it is important to know a few rules:
1) In most cases using colors with slightly different hue is not recommended, unless you use them in gradients and know what you're doing. So, if you need 4 different types of blue, use one hue for all. It's just safer.
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You can visually see that second set of colors is unmatched.
2) Black, white and gray colors have no hue and fit all other colors. So, Black-Gray-White-Color is 99% working scheme. Examples of the most popular color schemes:
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When I say B/G/W - Color scheme, I mean you can use all types of gray and all types of the color (hue=constant)
3) It is possible to use a color scheme with two colors that differ from each other: Black-Gray-White- 2 Colors scheme examples:
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StyleAlthough all 4 slides represent different ideas, they should have something in common. You need to do so to make smooth transition from one idea to next idea and do not force your viewer to understand each time what style you use to express headers, comments and so on. So, if you use top right corner of slide for title of a slide, use it for all slides. See examples,
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It is possible to change style, at least a few elements for first slide.
HighlightingOften we need to highlight something to show that we stand out.
Follow general rule: set of the same objects + object with ONE different attribute. See examples,
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When I wrote this post I found google advertisement at the bottom of the page with templates for presentations. They are good. Although I would not recommend to use it for MBA application (You need to be personal and unique) but it is good illustration of almost all principles and rules I describe here (You can see black-gray-white- 1 color scheme in all slides). site:
https://www.presentationload.com BackgroundBackground helps us to make our presentation more attractive. At the same time, wrong background can essentially hurt presentation. What is a general rule? Simple: Background must be secondary element of presentation. In other words, background helps to attract attention to main elements but does not catch attention itself. So, a few rules:
1) low contrast
2) size of details should be essentially larger or smaller than that of main elements.
Let see examples,
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I used red frame to show wrong backgrounds.
HeadersMain rule is simple: Header is the SHORTEST possible phrase or word that conveys undistorted idea. Let's see an example of evolution of a header:
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This slide is dedicated to my style of leadership. Hm, first 5 words do not convey any useful information, they are fluff.
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My style of leadership. It is my presentation! So, "my" is useless.
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Style of leadership. Do I really need "style of"? I don't think so.
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Leadership - Great.
Now, see why we need short headers in presentation:
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Do you see now why we need short headers? To make them big and attract attention. In the last slide I used upper case characters to make the header even visually bigger in the same space. Do you have OG12? Look how GMAC writes word "Review". But let's talk about fonts in the next section.
TextFor simplicity I would say text can be characterized by two general attributes: size and style. You can play with style (different fonts, weight, spaces and so on) as you want but keep in mind a few bold rules:
1) Size of text must corresponds to place of text in hierarchy
2) Use the same size&style for texts of the same hierarchy level.
And one more advice: Use Arial as the most typical font.
Supporting elementsIn most cases we can increase attractiveness of presentation by adding supporting elements. The elements can be different graphical elements that support or add small part of information to presentation. Let see how we can use support elements for first slide of presentation of the girl who want to work for non-profit organizations.
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if you find this information useful and want to give me kudo, please, give it to the first post in the thread.to be continued....See also information posted by [
rhyme], [
terp26]
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28 Jun 2009, 12:40
