Principles of Good Design

Creating visually balanced PowerPoint templates can be challenging. Between all the text, graphics, arrows, and diagrams, how can you be sure that you are creating a slide deck that looks clean and organized? Once you understand the basics of four simple design principles, it's actually rather simple. Those principles are: unity, variety, focal points, and space.

Unity

Unity is the most important aspect of good visual design, because your template is seen first as a whole before all the individual elements are noticed. Defined in the most simplistic way, unity creates an integrated snapshot in which all of the elements work together to support the design as a whole. Unity can be achieved several different ways:

Proximity: Proximity is based on grouping by closeness; the closer elements are to each other, the more likely we will see them as a group. Proximity is one of the easiest ways to achieve unity.


Repetition: In the most basic sense, repetition is based on grouping items by similarity. Elements that are visually similar appear to be related. Repetition is also considered on of the most effective ways to unify a design, as it helps to naturally create similar elements.

Alignment: Alignment consists of arranging elements together so that their edges and borders are lined up. This common alignment allows the eye to group those elements together.

Continuation: Continuation means that something (a line, an edge, a curve, or direction) continues from one element to another. This continuation creates a path in which the eye can follow, and the eye will automatically group these elements together.

Variety

Variety is the compliment to unity and is needed to create visual interest - good design is achieved through the balance of unity and variety. Varied objects may take some trial and error to arrange correctly. This is because the elements need to be alike enough so we perceive them as belonging together and different enough to be interesting.

Focal Points

Every design has an element or two that is the most important - this should be your focal point. This is crucial for presentation templates, because without a clear focal point, effective communication cannot occur. You can create focal points very easily through the use of color, size, and contrast. Images also work well for creating focal points.

Generally speaking, there should only be one or two focal points in a single design. An overabundance of focal points will make your presentation slides more confusing to your audience.

Space

Space, in two-dimensional design such as presentation templates, is essentially flat; it has height and width, but no depth. This can seem very limiting if you wish to create a slide deck that appears to have a lot of depth. However, through the use of size, overlap, and transparency, a presentation designer can easily expand that 2d space into three dimensions: