Quiz — Chapter 30: Slide Design: Visual Communication for Presentations
Target: 70%+ before moving on.
Section 1 — Multiple Choice
1. The threshold concept of this chapter is best stated as: - A) Slides should be visually attractive and on-brand. - B) A slide is a visual aid for a talk, not a document; the audience reads OR listens, never both. - C) Every presentation should have exactly ten slides. - D) Animation makes presentations more engaging.
Answer
**B.** The whole chapter rests on the read-or-listen constraint: text on a slide competes with your voice for the same verbal channel, so the slide should carry the picture and your voice the argument. A is decoration (and [Chapter 10](../../part-02-building-blocks/chapter-10-design-and-layout/index.md) already warned design isn't decoration); C confuses a rule of thumb (10/20/30) with the core idea; D is false in general — most animation distracts. (§30.1)2. In the assertion–evidence approach, the title of a slide should be: - A) A single noun-phrase topic, six words or fewer. - B) The agenda for the talk. - C) A full-sentence claim — the one thing you want remembered. - D) Omitted, so the visual speaks for itself.
Answer
**C.** The defining move of assertion–evidence is a full-sentence *assertion* as the title. A describes a *topic* title (the failing default; the six-word ceiling applies *to topic titles*, not to assertion titles, which run a dozen words). B wastes the most valuable slide on administration. D is the "a figure does not speak for itself" mistake from [Chapter 9](../../part-02-building-blocks/chapter-09-visuals-and-data/index.md) — the title is the slide's caption and must state the meaning. (§30.2)3. Why does a topic-and-bullets slide cause death by PowerPoint? Choose the best, most complete reason. - A) Bullets are unprofessional. - B) The title names a topic (no point), the bullets are text (trigger reading and shut off listening), and fragments are ambiguous — worst of both worlds. - C) There are too many slides. - D) The font is usually too small.
Answer
**B.** The chapter names exactly these three compounding failures. A is a style judgment, not the mechanism. C is unrelated (slide count is free; the disease is points-per-slide). D is *a* problem but not *the* reason bullets fail — even large bullets would still trigger reading and compete with the voice. (§30.2)4. The "six-word ceiling" on a slide title is best understood as: - A) A hard maximum for all titles, including assertions. - B) An aesthetic preference. - C) A diagnostic tripwire: a topic title that won't fit in six words is hiding more than one point — split the slide. - D) A rule that means you should use abbreviations to fit more in.
Answer
**C.** The ceiling applies to *topic* titles and works as a diagnostic: overflow signals that the slide contains multiple ideas, so the fix is to split, not to shrink the font or abbreviate. A is wrong — assertion titles are full sentences and may run a dozen words. D defeats the purpose (cramming via abbreviation hides the same overload). (§30.3)5. "I only have 20 minutes, so I'll use fewer, denser slides to save time." What's wrong with this? - A) Nothing — fewer slides is always better. - B) Talk length is governed by what you say, not by slide count; dense slides just force the audience to read instead of listen, and you lose them. - C) You should use more animation to fill the time. - D) 20 minutes is too short for any real talk.
Answer
**B.** Time is paced by your script, not your slide count; a clean slide costs the same time whether it's slide 5 or 25. Cramming guarantees density that defeats listening. A confuses "fewer" with "better" (the chapter explicitly warns against this). C and D are irrelevant. (§30.3, and the Warning box)6. The "back-row test" checks whether: - A) The slides are colorful enough. - B) You can read the title and visual labels from the back of the room (or a shrunk slide from six feet) without squinting. - C) The deck has fewer than ten slides. - D) The animations play smoothly.
Answer
**B.** It's a legibility check from viewing distance — type size and contrast. A, C, D test other things. The chapter notes almost nobody runs this test, though it catches most legibility failures instantly. (§30.4)7. Which contrast practice does the chapter recommend for slides? - A) Light-gray text on white looks modern and works fine. - B) Trust your laptop screen; if it looks good there, it'll look good projected. - C) Aim for ≥4.5:1 and check it with a tool, because a projector washes out contrast that looked fine on your bright laptop. - D) Contrast doesn't matter for slides, only for documents.
Answer
**C.** This is [Chapter 10](../../part-02-building-blocks/chapter-10-design-and-layout/index.md)'s standard, made *more* important by projection. A is the exact failure mode (gray-on-white vanishes on a dim projector). B is the trap — the bright laptop lies. D is backwards; contrast matters *more* on a projector. (§30.4)8. When does animation earn its place? - A) When it makes the presentation feel dynamic and modern. - B) When it builds a complex visual (e.g., a multi-part diagram) one piece at a time, in sync with your narration, so attention follows your words. - C) When every bullet flies in so the audience doesn't read ahead. - D) When you use a fancy transition between every slide.
Answer
**B.** The one job animation does well is the build — assembling a visual in sync with what you're saying. A is decoration. C is animating text the audience shouldn't be reading at all (fix the bullets, not the animation). D adds zero meaning and signals software-fiddling. (§30.5)9. The 10/20/30 rule (Guy Kawasaki) says a presentation should: - A) Have 10 sections, 20 figures, and 30 references. - B) Use about 10 slides, run no more than 20 minutes, and use no font smaller than 30 point. - C) Take 10 minutes to prepare, 20 to rehearse, 30 to deliver. - D) Have a 10:20:30 ratio of text to images to white space.
Answer
**B.** Ten slides, twenty minutes, thirty-point font — a blunt rule of thumb aimed at pitches but useful broadly. The exact numbers bend (a visual-heavy talk may exceed 10 slides while making ~10 points), but the spirit — *few points, tight time, big type* — is a sound final audit against overload. (§30.6)10. "Templates that don't look like templates" means: - A) Never use a template; build every slide from scratch. - B) Use the template's surface (font, color, spacing, layout grid) but override its content structure (the prefab agenda, the bulleted-content layouts) with assertion–evidence. - C) Buy a premium template so it looks custom. - D) Change the template's colors so nobody recognizes it.
Answer
**B.** This is "template, not theme" — the [Chapter 10](../../part-02-building-blocks/chapter-10-design-and-layout/index.md) idea applied to slides. "Generic" comes from filling a template thoughtlessly, not from using one. A wastes the gift the template provides; C and D miss the point (the problem was never the colors, it's accepting the bulleted *structure*). (§30.6)11. On a slide chart, the chapter says you should: - A) Keep the legend and the gridlines so it looks complete. - B) Strip it to data-ink, label directly (kill the legend), start bars at zero, use one accent color, and use big type — cleaner than the same chart in a document. - C) Use 3-D effects so it stands out from the back. - D) Paste it straight from your analysis tool to save time.
Answer
**B.** [Chapter 9](../../part-02-building-blocks/chapter-09-visuals-and-data/index.md)'s Tufte principles apply with *extra* force on a projected chart, because the viewer has less time and worse resolution. A keeps chartjunk (legend, gridlines). C is the canonical chartjunk the chapter names. D ("pasted, not rebuilt") is one of the named common mistakes — the exploratory chart is rarely the explanatory one. (§30.4, §30.7)12. A colleague keeps detailed slides because "people who miss the meeting need to read the deck later." The chapter's recommended fix is: - A) Make the slides even more detailed so they fully stand alone. - B) Separate the artifacts — clean assertion–evidence slides for the room, a separate written memo/one-pager (or exported notes) for people who weren't there. - C) Record the meeting and skip slides entirely. - D) Email the dense slides only to absentees.
Answer
**B.** One artifact can't be both a clean visual aid and a self-contained report; trying makes it fail at both. Build for the live audience, and produce a *separate* document for readers. A doubles down on the "deck that's secretly a document" mistake. C and D dodge the design question. (§30.1, §30.7)Section 2 — True/False with Justification
For each, mark T/F and give a one-sentence reason.
T/F 1. Because the audience can't read and listen at once, a well-designed slide should be able to stand on its own as a complete document.
Answer
**False.** It's the opposite: *because* they can't read and listen at once, the slide should *not* try to stand alone — it should be a visual aid that needs your voice. A slide built to stand alone is a document, and performing a document aloud causes death by PowerPoint. (§30.1)T/F 2. An assertion title may run longer than six words.
Answer
**True.** The six-word ceiling applies to *topic* titles; an *assertion* is a full sentence and routinely runs a dozen-or-so words, because it's carrying the claim. The constraint on an assertion is "readable in one glance / about one line," not six words. (§30.2, §30.3)T/F 3. Using more slides always makes a talk longer and is therefore something to minimize.
Answer
**False.** Talk length is set by what you *say*, not by slide count; 25 clean one-point slides are easier to follow than 10 dense three-point ones and take the same time to deliver. Ration points, not slides. (§30.3)T/F 4. A chart that distinguishes "good" from "bad" only by red versus green is acceptable as long as the colors are bright.
Answer
**False.** Meaning must never ride on color alone — roughly 1 in 12 men is red-green color-blind, projectors shift colors, and grayscale handouts erase hue. Pair color with a label, shape, or position. Brightness doesn't help the color-blind viewer. (§30.4)T/F 5. The 10/20/30 rule's specific numbers must be followed exactly for the rule to be useful.
Answer
**False.** The numbers are deliberately blunt rules of thumb; their value is being "usefully biased" against the universal error of *too much*, not being precisely optimal. A visual-heavy assertion–evidence talk can exceed 10 slides while honoring the spirit (few *points*, tight time, big type). (§30.6)T/F 6. A dense "reference" slide you only flip to if someone asks a detailed question in Q&A violates the assertion–evidence rule.
Answer
**False.** Assertion–evidence governs slides you *narrate* in the flow of the talk; a reserved reference slide is effectively an appendix, not part of the narrated sequence, so it can legitimately be dense. The rule is "a slide you narrate should aid listening," not "no slide may ever hold detail." (§30.7)Section 3 — Short Answer
SA1. In one or two sentences, explain why putting the claim in the slide's title (rather than letting the audience infer it from the chart) reduces the audience's cognitive load.
Model answer
A bare chart forces the viewer to interpret it *while* also listening to you — double work on the same overloaded attention — so they default to not interpreting and leave with shapes, not conclusions; an assertion title does the interpretation *for* them, so they read one sentence and then see the chart already knowing what it means. **Rubric:** names the interpretation-while-listening load and that the title offloads it. (§30.2)SA2. Name the one question that decides whether any given animation should stay or be cut, and give one example of each verdict.
Model answer
The question: *does the motion help the audience understand, or is it there to look interesting?* Keep: a multi-part diagram that builds in sync with your narration (each box appears as you introduce it). Cut: bullets flying in from the left, or a checkerboard transition between slides. **Rubric:** states the meaning-vs-decoration test plus one keep and one cut example. (§30.5)SA3. Explain the relationship between Chapter 9's "a figure does not speak for itself" and this chapter's claim that "the slide's title is its caption."
Model answer
They're the same principle: a visual alone leaves the audience with shapes, not meaning, so something must supply the interpretation — in a document that's the caption/prose, and on a slide that's the *title* (an assertion that states what the visual means). The implication: a bare chart under a topic title is the slide version of an uninterpreted figure, the most common slide failure. **Rubric:** identifies that the title performs the caption's interpretive job. (§30.2, Spaced Review Q2)SA4. A presenter's text won't fit on a slide at a readable size. Give the chapter's prescribed response, and explain why the other obvious option is wrong.
Model answer
Cut the text, not the font. The font floor is non-negotiable and exists precisely so that "it doesn't fit" becomes a signal to remove text; shrinking the font (the font-size death spiral) just produces an unreadable slide that fails the back-row test, which defeats the slide's purpose. **Rubric:** "cut text, keep font floor" plus why shrinking fails (legibility). (§30.4, §30.7)SA5. Why is the opening slide a bad place for an agenda, and what should it be instead?
Model answer
The opening is the most valuable real estate in a talk — it's where you earn attention — and an agenda spends it on an administrative list the audience could have guessed; instead, open on your *point* (a hook or the promise/claim of the whole talk), e.g., an assertion title with one striking visual or number. A roadmap, if truly needed for a long complex talk, can come after the hook. **Rubric:** names the opportunity cost of the opening and "open on the point/hook." (§30.2)Section 4 — Applied Scenario
AS1. You're given this slide and 90 seconds to fix it. Rewrite it as assertion–evidence: give the new sentence title, describe the single visual, and name two things you cut.
Title: "Server Migration Results." Body: "• Migration completed on schedule (3 weeks) • Downtime limited to 12 minutes during cutover • Page-load times improved from 2.1s to 0.7s • Monthly hosting cost reduced from $8,400 to $5,100 • Zero data-loss incidents • Two minor configuration bugs found and fixed post-migration."
Model answer & rubric
**One strong answer.** This slide holds at least two real points (it got *faster* and *cheaper*); the honest move is usually to split it, but if you must keep one slide, pick the headline that matters most to the audience. For a leadership audience: **Title:** "The migration made the site 3× faster and 40% cheaper." **Body:** a two-panel before/after — one bar pair for page-load time (2.1s → 0.7s) and one for monthly cost ($8,400 → $5,100), each pair labeled directly, the improvement called out. **Cut (spoken instead):** the 3-week schedule, the 12-minute downtime, the zero-data-loss and the two config bugs — all reassurance details a listener absorbs by ear. (For a technical/ops audience you might instead headline reliability — "Zero data loss, 12-minute cutover" — and show a timeline. Audience decides the assertion.) **Rubric (0–6):** sentence title that states a claim, not "Results" (2); single visual chosen as evidence, labeled directly (2); explicitly moved minor details to spoken narration rather than keeping all six bullets (2). Reproducing all six points in a prettier layout scores 0 on the last criterion — the test is whether you *chose*.Scoring & Next Steps
| Score | What it means | Do next |
|---|---|---|
| < 50% | The core distinction (visual aid vs. document) hasn't landed. | Re-read §30.1–30.2; redo Exercises C1 (the 5 bad slides). |
| 50–70% | You get assertion–evidence but miss the limits/exceptions. | Redo Exercises Part B; re-read §30.3–30.4 and the "it depends" part of §30.7. |
| 70–85% | Solid working grasp. | Proceed to Chapter 31 (delivery). Build the Project Checkpoint deck if you haven't. |
| > 85% | Strong. | Try Extension E1 (full slide audit) on a real deck, then move on. |