Slide Design Principles and Visual Hierarchy
Domain focus: whether a viewer's eye lands on the intended message first, and whether the slide reads as one composed object rather than scattered boxes.
The four levers
Contrast (size, weight, colour, space) tells the eye what matters. Alignment puts every element on a shared edge or margin. Proximity groups related items and separates unrelated ones. Repetition keeps type, colour and position consistent across the deck. A slide that violates one lever usually fails all four.
Building the hierarchy
Give each slide exactly one focal point - usually a claim-style title or the visual, never both competing. Establish a type scale (for example 40 pt title, 28 pt subhead, 20 pt body) and never introduce a size between steps. Use a simple grid: one left margin, a consistent title band, and a footer zone. Deliberate white space is structural, not wasted area; crowding lowers comprehension more than small type.
Worked example
A slide holds a title, three dense bullets and a bar chart. Fix: rewrite the title as the claim ("Churn is concentrated in month one"), make the chart the hero at roughly 60 percent of the content area, cut the bullets to three phrases of six words that annotate the chart instead of repeating it, snap everything to the left margin, and remove the background gradient behind the chart. Reasoning: the eye needs one entry point, and the evidence should sit next to the claim it supports.
Traps that cost marks
Centring every element; decorative clipart that outranks the message; three accent colours used at equal weight; pale grey text on white; full-bleed busy photos with no text scrim; a different layout on every slide.