How to Improve Presentation Readability [Step-by-Step Guide]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
Our client Jarrod asked us an interesting question while we were making his presentation:
“How can I make sure people actually read and understand my slides?”
Our Creative Director answered,
“Keep it simple, structured, and visually guided.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on improving presentation readability throughout the year and in the process we’ve observed one common challenge: most slides try to say too much at once, leaving the audience overwhelmed and disengaged.
In this blog we’ll talk about practical, step-by-step ways to make your slides readable and easy to follow, so your audience actually absorbs your message.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
What Happens When People Can't Read Your Presentation Slides
When your slides are hard to read, the audience doesn’t just struggle—they check out.
Confusing layouts, tiny fonts, and overcrowded text leave people squinting at the screen or scrolling through their phones. Your carefully prepared message gets lost, and engagement drops fast.
Here’s what we’ve observed:
Lost comprehension
Overloaded slides make it impossible for people to grasp your main points. They catch a word here or there but miss the overall message.
Disengagement
If reading feels like work, your audience mentally opts out. Interest disappears, and even the most charismatic speaker can’t recover it.
Credibility loss
Slides that are messy or illegible reflect poorly on you. It signals lack of preparation or understanding, even if your verbal delivery is strong.
Unreadable slides aren’t just inconvenient—they actively harm your presentation. Think of slides as your visual guide. If people can’t follow it easily, they won’t follow you. The result is wasted effort and a message that fails to stick.
How to Improve Presentation Readability
Improving presentation readability is not about making slides look pretty. It’s about making your ideas crystal clear, guiding your audience’s attention, and making it impossible for anyone to get lost in your content. From our experience working on hundreds of client decks, readability boils down to a few practical principles. Let’s walk through them.
1. Simplify Your Content
One of the most common mistakes we see is overloading slides with text. Your audience doesn’t want to read paragraphs—they want to understand your point quickly. A slide should highlight one idea at a time. If you have multiple ideas, split them into separate slides.
Start by asking yourself: “What is the single thing I want someone to remember from this slide?” Everything else is a distraction. Use bullet points sparingly and avoid full sentences when possible. Short, punchy phrases work better than long, complex sentences.
2. Use Hierarchy to Guide the Eye
Human eyes naturally look for patterns. If you create a clear visual hierarchy, your audience knows where to focus first. Titles should be bold and larger than the supporting text. Subpoints should have a slightly smaller size and maybe a softer color to differentiate them.
Contrast is critical. Light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background ensures readability. Avoid colors that clash or are too similar, because they force your audience to strain. Use size, weight, and color consistently to indicate importance.
3. Limit Text Density
If a slide looks like a wall of text, it’s unreadable. A general rule we follow is no more than six lines per slide and six words per line when possible. This isn’t a hard rule but a guideline to prevent cognitive overload. People can only process so much at once.
Remember, slides are a visual support for your words—not a script. If you must include more details, provide them in handouts or notes rather than crowding the slide.
4. Break Up Information with Visuals
A chart, infographic, or image often communicates better than words alone. People process visuals faster than text, so replace long paragraphs with graphs or icons whenever possible. But here’s the catch: the visuals should clarify, not confuse. Avoid complex graphics that require explanation. Each visual should make the idea obvious at a glance.
5. Align and Space Elements Properly
Alignment and spacing are subtle but powerful readability tools. Left-align text for easier reading. Give enough breathing room around text and images. Crowding makes your slides look messy and makes it harder for the eye to follow. Use consistent margins and spacing throughout the deck to create a clean, professional flow.
6. Stick to a Readable Font
Fonts are more than aesthetic—they affect comprehension. Sans-serif fonts like Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri are easier to read on screens than serif fonts. Avoid overly decorative fonts, especially for body text. Maintain consistency across your deck. Using multiple fonts can create a chaotic feel that makes slides harder to read.
Font size matters too. Titles should be at least 30 points, and body text should not go below 18 points for on-screen presentations. Smaller fonts force the audience to strain, which quickly leads to disengagement.
7. Use Color Purposefully
Color is a double-edged sword. It can highlight key points or make your slide illegible. Stick to a simple palette of two to three colors, using contrast to your advantage. Reserve bright colors for emphasis and avoid clashing combinations. Backgrounds should remain neutral if your text is colorful, and vice versa.
Color coding can also help organize information. For example, in a process slide, using the same color for related steps makes it easier to follow. But don’t overdo it. Too many colors overwhelm the eye and reduce readability.
8. Be Mindful of Slide Layout
The arrangement of elements affects how easily your audience reads a slide. Follow a consistent layout template. Place titles at the top, visuals in the center or alongside supporting text, and avoid scattering elements randomly.
A clean layout creates predictability, which the brain appreciates. When people know where to look, they focus on the message rather than figuring out the structure.
9. Reduce Clutter
Clutter kills readability. We often see slides filled with logos, extra lines, or unnecessary icons. Every element should have a purpose. If it doesn’t, remove it. White space is your friend. It doesn’t just look cleaner—it improves comprehension.
Think of your slides as a stage. Every element you put on it should either support your story or disappear. No exceptions.
10. Test for Readability
After designing your slides, step back and view them from a distance. Can you read the text without leaning in? Show your slides to someone unfamiliar with the topic. If they struggle to understand, it’s back to the drawing board.
We’ve also found that presenting slides in smaller windows or on a projector can reveal readability issues you didn’t notice on a laptop screen. Test early and adjust before your presentation day.
11. Use Animations Wisely
Animations can guide the audience’s attention, but too many transitions or moving elements become distractions. Simple fade-ins or appear-on-click effects are enough. The goal is to reveal information progressively without overwhelming the viewer.
12. Consistency is Key
Finally, consistent styling across your presentation makes it easier for the brain to follow. Use the same font sizes, color palette, alignment, and spacing throughout. A consistent visual language eliminates confusion and makes your slides instantly more readable.
13. Emphasize Key Points
Highlighting what matters most helps your audience remember it. Use bold text, contrasting colors, or boxes around critical points. But do this sparingly. Too many “highlights” dilute the effect.
14. Think Like Your Audience
Ultimately, readability isn’t about how much you like your slides—it’s about how easily someone else can understand them. Imagine seeing your slides for the first time. Are they intuitive? Can you grasp the message in five seconds? Designing with the audience in mind separates a good presentation from a great one.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.