How to make your slides look professional

Professional slides are not about fancy effects. They come from a handful of rules applied every time: one idea per slide, strong contrast, consistent alignment and fewer, bigger things. Here are the rules and how to apply them in PowerPoint and Google Slides.

1. One idea per slide

The most common reason slides look amateur is that they try to do three jobs at once. Decide the single point of each slide and write it as the title, as a full sentence. If you find yourself adding a second chart or a second list, that is a second slide. More slides with less on each is almost always better; you click faster, and people follow.

2. The 6x6 rule is a starting point, not a law

The 6x6 rule (no more than six bullets, no more than six words each) is useful as a warning light, but following it strictly can produce slides full of cryptic fragments. A better test: can someone in the back row read and understand the slide in about five seconds? A slide with one sentence and a photo passes. A slide with six six-word bullets often does not.

3. Contrast you can read on a bad projector

Projectors and shared screens wash out colour. Dark text on a light background, or light text on a dark background, with a big difference in brightness between them. Avoid mid-grey text, text on busy photos, and red and green as the only difference between two things (about one in twelve men has some red-green colour blindness).

• PowerPoint: Review > Check Accessibility flags hard-to-read text contrast.
• Text over a photo: put a solid or semi-transparent shape behind the text, or darken the image (Picture Format > Corrections, or Format options > Adjustments in Google Slides).

4. Align everything to something

Things that almost line up look like mistakes. Pick a left margin and use it on every slide; line up the tops of columns; space items evenly.

• PowerPoint: select several objects, then Shape Format > Align (or Arrange > Align on the Home tab) and choose Align Left, Align Top, Distribute Horizontally and so on. Turn on View > Guides for a visual margin.
• Google Slides: select objects and use Arrange > Align and Arrange > Distribute. Red guide lines appear while you drag to show when things line up; View > Guides > Show guides adds your own.

5. Two fonts at most, and big sizes

Use one font for headings and one for body text, or one font in two weights. Plain sans-serif fonts are the safest on screens. Sizes: about 36 pt or more for titles, 24 to 28 pt or more for body text, and never below 18 pt for anything you expect people to read. Set fonts in the theme so every slide follows:

• PowerPoint: Design > Variants > Fonts, or View > Slide Master for full control.
• Google Slides: View > Theme builder, then edit the text styles on the master.

6. A small colour palette

One background colour, one text colour and one accent colour cover almost everything. Use the accent only for the thing you want people to look at: the bar that matters, the key number, the step you are on. If everything is highlighted, nothing is. Take the colours from your logo or brand guide if you have one.

7. Fewer, better images

• Use one large photo instead of four small ones.
• Let photos fill the slide edge to edge, or place them at a clear, consistent size.
• Never stretch a photo; hold Shift while resizing, or crop instead.
• Avoid generic stock clichés (handshakes, people pointing at screens). A real photo of your product, place or team beats them.
• Cut out distracting backgrounds on product shots and headshots; see how to remove an image background.

8. Charts with a point

A professional chart has a title that says what it shows, no chart junk (3D effects, heavy gridlines, legends you do not need), and colour on the one series that matters. Step-by-step instructions are in our guides for PowerPoint charts and Google Slides charts.

9. White space is not wasted space

Empty space around a headline makes it easier to read and makes the slide look calm and confident. Leave generous margins (at least half an inch or roughly 5% of the slide width on each side), and resist filling every corner with a logo, a date, a page number and a footer. One small logo on the title and closing slides is enough for most internal decks.

10. Consistency beats creativity

Use the same layout for the same kind of content every time: all section headers look alike, all quote slides look alike, all charts sit in the same place. Build these once as layouts in View > Slide Master (PowerPoint) or View > Theme builder (Google Slides), then apply them. Use one transition for the whole deck, and animation only to reveal points in order.

Before and after: one slide, fixed

A typical "before" slide: the title "Q3 Results", six bullets of full sentences, a small clip-art chart in the corner and the logo in the footer. The fixed version keeps the same information but splits the job. The title becomes "Q3 revenue beat plan by 12%". The chart grows to fill most of the slide, with the Q3 bar in the accent colour and everything else grey. The six bullets become two short labels on the chart and a paragraph in the speaker notes. The logo stays on the title slide only. Nothing was lost, but now the slide can be understood in five seconds.

A five-minute polish pass

1. Read only the slide titles in order. Do they tell the story? Fix the ones that are just topics.
2. Delete every word that you will say out loud anyway.
3. Check every slide for something that almost lines up.
4. Make the smallest text on any slide at least 18 pt.
5. Remove one thing from the busiest slide.
6. Run the slideshow on the actual screen or a TV if you can, and look from across the room.

Or start from slides that already follow the rules

Type a sentence and InstaPresentation designs a clean, consistent deck with real images, readable charts and animations. Browse free PowerPoint templates at /templates too.