Text Guidelines

• Create a consistent look and feel and maintain it throughout.

• Be consistent in your choice of font, as well as in your choice of case.

• Keep font size to a minimum of 24 or 28 points.

• Avoid abbreviations at all costs.

• Add shadows and bolding to make all text more legible.

• Use sharp contrast: light text on a dark background, or vice versa.

• Insert your company logo, but don't make it look like a neon sign; treat it instead as a watermark, with a subtle, embossed effect.

• Avoid the clutter caused by recurring slogans, datelines, copyrights, and the ubiquitous "Company Confidential" warning in the periphery of every single slide.

• Use blank space. You don't have to fill every nook and cranny of every slide with information. Newspaper advertisements use white space to set off text. Look at them, see the difference, and follow their example.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned the differences between serif and sans serif fonts, or text justification right, left, or center. These typographic fine points are matters of individual taste, and as the Latin proverb tells us, De gustibus non est disputandum (There's no arguing taste).

Follow the guidelines above, and your text graphics will be simple, consistent, and logical, reinforcing the subliminal message of Effective Management .

In the next chapter, you'll see how the same basic principles that create winning text graphics also apply to numeric graphics.