Use icons to create a list

Research shows that people pay more attention to images than to text, but sometimes you want people to focus on the text, not on an elaborate or complex photo.

A nice compromise is to use icons and they are VERY common on slides these days. PowerPoint 365 includes icons in its collection of images (choose Insert> Pictures> Stock Images and click the Icons tab), and you can find icons in lots of other places, as well.

One simple way to use an icon is to put it in place of a bullet point, as you can see here:

Make icons bigger!

You can make your slides more engaging by using bigger icons. These slides don’t have much room for text on them. If you want to elaborate, create a subsequent slide for each of the items and use these examples as menu slides or section slides.

You can use multiple bigger icons or stick with one really big icon that represents the entire concept

Here is one example…

Each item could be animated along with its corresponding text.

Here’s another example…

In this example, there is one big icon at the center and smaller icons next to each item.

Finally, a 3rd example…

This last example is easier to create because the text is all lined up. The big icon is at the left. I could have used numbers instead of letters in front of each item. Again, each item could be animated.

Using icon slides as sample slides

Once you create a slide like this, you can use them over and over. They can go in a portfolio folder on your computer and you can just change the icon and text.

You can create samples with 3, 4, 5, or more points.

What’s next?

If you’re looking for design principles for slides, check out my Slide Design for Non-Designers here.