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For everyone Creating Powerpoint presentations

Overview

A well-designed presentation will keep your audience engaged throughout your talk. It should:

  • support what you are saying
  • offer supplementary information
  • draw your audience in
  • not be distracting or complex

Our corporate PowerPoint template follows best practice and accessibility guidance and meets most needs for presentations. It is for use within the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and internal colleagues can download the template from the ONS intranet, Reggie (opens in a new tab) 

It should be used for presenting information simply during an event or meeting. If you need to present more detailed information, consider writing a supporting blog post.

If the template does not contain layouts that meet your needs, submit a design request form to the Design team (opens in a new tab) 

Designing your presentation

Before designing your presentation, consider the:

  • main points you want to highlight
  • information you need to include
  • supporting graphics or charts
  • type of screen it will be displayed on

Your slides should not be the main way your audience understand your presentation. They are there to emphasise the point you are making and should only contain essential information.

Layout

When creating your presentation, always use the ONS PowerPoint template from the ONS intranet, Reggie (opens in a new tab) 

The template has a range of slide layout options, including:

  • bulleted list
  • two-column text
  • text and image

This means you can display content in different ways, while maintaining consistent font, colours, and backgrounds.

To fit most screens, text and graphics should be placed within 95% of the slide. Our template includes yellow guides highlighting the safe area to place content.

Section slides can be used to introduce your audience to a new topic, or as a bold statement slide within your presentation.

All headings, subheadings and body text should appear in the same spot from slide to slide.

Embrace the use of white space. It helps create balance, emphasises your main points, and ensures your audience are not overwhelmed.

Colour

All presentations should use our brand colours.

Use contrasting colours for text and background. Bright white backgrounds can make text harder to read on screen, so our template uses Grey 5.

Warning:

Do not use patterned backgrounds

Text

Text in slides should:

  • be left-aligned
  • use Open Sans font, or Arial if it is not available
  • use a minimum of 18-point font size, consider the size of the room or screen you are presenting to and increase accordingly
  • not use all capital letters as it is difficult to read

Lengthy text means your audience may not read to the end of your slide before you move on, causing them to feel disconnected.

Limit your slides to 50 words or less, written in Plain English. There is further guidance available on how to write for your users (opens in a new tab)  in our content style guide

Images and graphics

Images and graphics should only be used to support content, not replace it. They should help make your message clearer, and not be used as decoration.

Use high-quality images that fit with our photography style.

Images should not be:

  • stretched
  • manipulated
  • pixelated
  • used in isolation

Each image should maintain its impact and resolution when projected on a larger screen.

Warning:

Avoid the use of special effects and transitions as they can be distracting

Icons can also be used to support content and are available to download from our icon set.

Charts and data visualisation

Charts in slides should:

Testing your presentation

Always test your presentation with the Microsoft PowerPoint accessibility checker. This will highlight any issues with the slides that can be fixed before you present.

There is Microsoft 365 Support guidance available on how to use the PowerPoint accessibility checker (opens in a new tab) 

Rehearse your slides on the screen you will be using to make sure they can be read by everyone. Text and images should be large enough to see and read, but not so large as to appear “loud.”

Internal ONS colleagues can view guidance on how to deliver your presentation on Percipio (opens in a new tab) 

Help improve this page

Let us know how we could improve this page, or share your user research findings. Discuss this page on GitHub (opens in a new tab) 

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