Visual Design

Visual design can negatively impact a presentation, regardless of the content. Three PowerPoint presentations are posted below that show how I have transformed a PowerPoint presentation I created into a nonexample of positive visual literacy and an example of positive visual literacy.

Original PowerPoint
This is my original PowerPoint on students with Mild Mental Retardation. This presentation was created prior to this semester. It was shared with students who have taken the course on working with students with high incidence disabilities.


Positive

  • Simple design: The white background with black font makes each slide easy to read.
  • Color:
    • The red titles on each page highlights the topic of each page
    • Slide 10 uses a blue font to identify key terms
  • Uses aspects of the three principles of visual literacy discussed by Lohr
    • Selection: Helping the learner notice important information
    • Organization: Concepts presented began at introductory level and progress to providing detail
    • Integration: General information that only introduces concepts was presented. Limited details and no examples were provided. The learner was not asked to reflect on information or use higher order thinking skills, thus reducing the cognitive load.
  • Instructional Visuals
    • Contrast: contrast of text was used appropriately
    • Alignment: consistent left alignment made the slides easy to read.
    • Repetition and proximity were not used

Negative


  • Color and Figure Ground: The image on slide two is slightly difficult to read. The light green font on light blue background does not provide the best option for contrast.
  • Wording: Many of the slides contain too much text.

Nonexample PowerPoint

I altered my original PowerPoint to demonstrate inappropriate visual designs.



  • Color: Overall, there are many aspects of color that make this PowerPoint difficult to read. Here are a few specific example
    • Slide 3: The image on slide 3 is hard on the eyes to due to the many, vivid colors.
    • Slide 5: The font color and background make it difficult to read the slide. There is little contrast.


  • Instructional Visuals
    • Contrast
      • Slides 3, 4, and 5 do not provide contrast that is visually pleasing.
      • Slide 10 demonstrates inappropriate use of figure ground and contrast.
      • The viewer is unsure what to focus on when viewing slide 11.
    • Alignment: Slide16’s alignment makes it difficult to read the material.
    • Repetition: Slides 14 and 15 repeat the same information. This is not an effective use of repetition
    • Proximity: Many slides contains nonexamples of the use of proximity

  • Font: The size and style of the font can negatively impact an reader’s ability to view a presentation. Here are a few specific examples
    • Slide 7: Inappropriately uses variations in font, depth and contrast to highlight nonessential information.
    • Slide 12: The variety in font style makes this slide difficult to read.
    • Slide 13: The small font makes the slide difficult to read.

Improved PowerPoint



This PowerPoint has aspects of visual literacy that I learned from this course. This includes:

  • Contrast: The white font on black background for the headers draws the viewer’s attention to the header, which tells the purpose of the slide. The simple black text on white background for the content does not distract the viewer from the information. Subtitles and key terms in red alert the viewer to important terms and phrases.
  • Alignment: all headers are centered
  • Repetition: two slides contain the IQ of each level of MR. This repetition will show viewers that this is information that is considered important.
  • Proximity: Proximity and spacing is considered to create slides that are visually appealing
  • Visuals: Images and charts are simple in terms of font, background, and style. There is no concern regarding figure ground perception.
  • Font: The font style and size is consistent throughout the entire presentation. Slides that previously would not show all the content unless a small font size was use, was separated onto multiple slides. The reduction in information presented is visually appealing while introducing small amounts of information at a time.