Barbara Coultry

www.theframelocker.com

Barbara Coultry has had dual careers in art and writing, but her favorite is being the owner of The Frame Locker.

Captions have two equally important characteristics: meaning and design. Ignore one in favor of the other, and a caption may fail. In view of this, here are some considerations:

Before you read a caption, you see it. Treating it as an image helps you choose its size, shape, placement, and color so it becomes an integral part of a slide’s composition.

Fancy fonts are fun, but not when they’re difficult to read. You know what the caption says, but your audience doesn’t.

A caption is there to be read, but if the audience squints at it, they may not read it at all. The words need not leap off the screen, but there should be enough contrast for the eye to be drawn to them.