# Presentations A presentation anchors what matters most so that the audience remembers it and can act on it, with slides that support what the speaker says. ## Fixed and yours to adapt ### Fixed - **Arial, in two weights.** Regular 400 for body text and bold 700 for headings, because Arial is the default in Office files wherever Museo Sans is not installed. - **Sentence case throughout.** Slide titles, headings and labels included, never all caps; abbreviations such as MRI are outside the rule. - **The named palette colours and no others.** No arbitrary colour, and no "nearly petrol" or slightly lighter orange. - **The background is a light sand.** Cards and sections can have other colours, and they all sit on top of the sand. - **No text below 14px or its equivalent, and contrast that meets WCAG AA.** That is 4.5:1 for normal text and 3.0:1 for large text. - **Start from the Aleris template.** [Download the presentation template](/downloads/aleris-presentation-template-sv.pptx); Arial, the palette as theme colours and the 16:9 format are already set. - **Every slide starts from one of its layouts.** Choose New slide and pick a layout, then type into the placeholders and keep their built-in formats. - **Colours come from the top row of the theme colours.** The lighter and darker shades under it are calculated by PowerPoint and fall outside the palette. - **The sender is Aleris.** The full logo sits in a corner, with no product, unit or specialist-area name added to it. - **No weapons, logos and trademarks, religious symbols, or anything aggressive or alarmist.** These motifs are out in every context, however permissive. ### Yours to adapt - **Museo Sans, when you know it is installed.** Use it if it is on the machine the file will be opened on, and otherwise keep to Arial. - **The icon style.** Outline, solid and duotone are all allowed in presentations, and an icon may illustrate as well as function. - **The duotone pair.** Duotone keeps to two petrol steps, and the default pair is petrol-500 with petrol-100. - **Icons as illustration.** An icon can enrich a slide visually: modified, filled with images or used as it is. - **A gradient on a heading or an icon.** The petrol gradient may fill the heading of the title slide or a section slide, and icons on white, sand and petrol-100 grounds. - **Which corner the logo sits in**, most often top left or bottom right. ## Voice A slide points to what the speaker explains. A heading and one key idea leave the speaker room to explain, add nuance and respond to the room, while ten bullet points make them read out what the audience is already reading. Open with the purpose and what the audience should take away, order the content by what the audience needs, and close with a concrete next step or a clear conclusion. The tone is the same as in writing: direct, warm and without needless formality. - **Do · A slide titled "Seven checks that prevent errors".** The heading carries a message even for someone who is not listening. - **Don't · A slide titled "Safe routines".** A category heading carries nothing on its own. - **Do · A slide with a heading and one key idea, which the speaker then explains.** The audience remembers the idea, and the speaker's knowledge stays with the speaker. - **Don't · Raw notes pasted onto a slide as ten bullet points.** A slide that is a complete document competes with the presentation instead of supporting it. ## Colour The colours stay the same, and their composition changes with the reader's state, the conditions of the channel and the nature of the content. Gradients add character where solid petrol or orange would feel heavy. Keep them to petrol or orange, two steps at most, with low-contrast transitions, and use flat colour in charts. - **Do · The petrol gradient filling the heading of the title slide, on a white or sand ground.** Its light stop clears the 3:1 that large text needs on those grounds. - **Don't · The orange gradient filling a heading.** Its light stop fails the large-text floor on every Aleris ground. - **Do · A chart in flat palette colours.** Flat colour reads more clearly in a chart than a gradient does. - **Don't · A blue taken from the presentation software's default theme.** A colour that is nearly petrol is still an arbitrary colour, and the palette is the brand. ## Typography An internal PowerPoint presentation uses Arial with 400 and 700 as the weight pair. The hierarchy, the accessibility floor, sentence case and at least 8pt between text levels stay as they are everywhere else. Use few sizes and weights in one presentation. Two or three sizes are usually enough, and a layout that needs more is a sign the structure should be simpler. - **Do · A slide title and body text at least 8pt apart.** The step between them reads as a deliberate choice. - **Don't · A slide title in capital letters.** All caps makes the letters uniform, so the eye loses the word shapes that help it read quickly. - **Do · Bold for the one phrase that matters most on a slide.** Bold 700 has the contrast against regular that italics lack. - **Don't · Italics for emphasis.** Italics barely stand out from regular, especially at small sizes. ## Icons Workshop decks, internal documents and working material are the presentation context, where the cost of a mistake is low. A patient brochure built in PowerPoint belongs to the patient-facing context, because the rules follow the context the material is used in. Icons come from one family, Font Awesome Pro, with one style on the same surface. An icon that carries a specific meaning has a label, and a decorative icon in a presentation does not need one. - **Do · A petrol gradient icon on a white slide.** Its light stop reads 4.09:1 on white, above the 3:1 an icon needs. - **Don't · A petrol gradient icon on a petrol slide.** On a petrol ground the dark stop reads 1:1, and the icon disappears. - **Do · Outline icons in one weight, each with a label, in a patient brochure made in PowerPoint.** The brochure is patient-facing material, where icons are functional. - **Don't · Decorative duotone icons in the same brochure.** Duotone and decoration belong to the presentation context, and the patient reading the brochure is in the patient-facing one. ## Check before you present - **Read the headings on their own.** Each one states a claim, so the audience gets the message from the headings alone. - **Look for the same heading on consecutive slides.** It signals that the content is not structured for the audience. - **Read the opening slide.** It says the purpose and why the subject matters to the audience, beyond naming the subject. - **Search for "It is important that".** If something is important, say directly what applies. - **Delete the instruction slides.** The template's three instruction slides, and any example slide you have not used, come out before you present. - **Read the smallest text.** Nothing is set below 14px or its equivalent, in print as well as on screen.