EN.663.618 Chap.2 Slide Design with Presentation Zen and CRAP
Slide Design with Presentation Zen and CRAP
Why slide design is graded
Every slide-based speech in Professional Presentations carries a SLIDES section worth 25% of its grade. The lines inside it are the same each time: use Presentation Zen style effectively, use click delay effectively, stay consistent and congruent with the subject, choose relevant visual elements that are easy to decipher, and avoid AI tools for the slides themselves.
The syllabus lists visual rhetoric as a course objective, describing good slides as ones that avoid heavy text and use images to support the message of the speech.
Six failures to recognise
The Week 3 lecture teaches design by naming what goes wrong. Script syndrome puts the whole talk on screen. CRAP, HATS and EEE issues break the design rules for legible, effective and ethical graphics.
Outline syndrome turns a deck into nested bullet points. Gimmickry drowns the message in animation and sound. Inaccessible data hides the point of a chart. Boring minimalism strips a slide so far that it no longer engages anyone.
Most of these are forms of excess, but the last one is a warning against overcorrecting.
The four principles behind a readable slide
CRAP stands for contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. The lecture pairs each with the message it sends: contrast signals importance, alignment signals order and hierarchy, repetition signals uniformity, and proximity signals that items belong together.
Contrast can come from size, typeface, weight or shape as well as from colour. Colour itself can set up contrast, show relationships and create a theme, though weak colour pairs are hard to read and pure black on white can tire the eye.
The Presentation Zen speech
The first slide speech asks each student to teach one chapter or excerpt of Presentation Zen in five to seven minutes, worth 5% of the grade.
Its speech-specific criteria reward understanding and deploying the design style, familiarity with the whole book, a personal treatment without regurgitation, and creative or personal risk. Your own slides become the demonstration of whatever principle you are teaching, so a deck that ignores it undercuts the lesson.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The SLIDES section that recurs on every slide speech rubric
- 02
Six slide pitfalls from script syndrome to boring minimalism
- 03
Contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity
- 04
What each CRAP principle signals to a viewer
- 05
Using colour for contrast, relationships and theme
- 06
When a text-heavy slide is acceptable
- 07
Teaching one chapter in the Presentation Zen speech
Worked example · free
Rebuild a bullet-heavy slide with CRAP
- 2Name the pitfalls the slide shows.
- 1Choose the one idea the slide must carry.
- 2Rebuild the slide using contrast, alignment and a strong colour pair.
Key terms
- Script Syndrome
- Puts every word the presenter plans to say on the slide, so the audience reads instead of listening.
- Outline Syndrome
- Turns a slide deck into an outline of complex bulleted lists rather than a set of visual aids.
- Boring Minimalism
- Strips slides so far that they stop engaging the audience visually, an overcorrection of the less-is-more rule.
- CRAP Principles
- Contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity, four design rules that tell a viewer what matters and what belongs together.
- Click Delay
- Reveals parts of a slide one at a time so the audience follows a chart or diagram in steps.
Slide Design with Presentation Zen and CRAP FAQ
Can I ever use a slide with a lot of text in a Presentation Zen style deck?
Occasionally. The Week 3 lecture accepts a text-heavy slide when it presents one clear idea and still follows good design principles, and it names a quotation as the obvious case. What it rejects is paragraphs or bullet lists that force listeners to choose between reading and hearing you.
Am I allowed to use AI to make my presentation slides?
No. Every slide rubric includes a line for eschewing AI tools for slides, and the syllabus treats AI-generated slides, scripts or content as an academic integrity violation. You may use an AI design tool to create images, cited with its prompts on your references slide, and light AI-assisted brainstorming or preliminary research is permitted.
Where can I find images I am allowed to use on my slides?
The syllabus points to Pexels and Unsplash for royalty-free photos and permits paid stock footage or copyrighted images used with attribution in class. Illegally downloaded pictures, watermarked comps and proprietary images are forbidden, and every deck needs a final references slide placed after your concluding slide.
Assessment move
Print or screenshot your current deck and audit each slide twice: first name any of the six Week 3 pitfalls it shows, then mark which CRAP principle signals its main point. Rebuild the weakest three slides, rehearse them with click delay, and check that nothing on screen duplicates your spoken script.
