Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations (Voices That Matter)

by Garr Reynolds

In Gestalt theory, you can think of white space as something called “ground,” basically the background of the slides. Elements we put on top are known as the “figure” in Gestalt. The Gestalt principle of “figure/ground” suggests that, because we have limited capacity for perceiving many elements at the same time, we naturally tend to visually simplify our world by focusing on one thing at a time. As we scan images, we unconsciously differentiate between ground (what’s in the back) and figures (elements in front). This is one way we make sense of the world. As presenters, our job is to make it easier for viewers to get the most important points by making them pop out from the less important points. For the most part, the key elements we want to communicate are the figure elements; less important objects are ground.