Presenting your work to higher management is an essential and integral part of a corporate job. They are extremely effective in gathering ideas and gaining personal connections. More often than not, many people fill with immense dread when they are chosen to give a good presentation in front of an audience. Only a handful of them relishes the spotlight on them.
Also, there is no denying that we have all sat through bad presentations at some point in time in life. Presentations that come with messy PowerPoint designs and long boring speeches completely take away the appeal of visual presentations.
So how to design an amazing presentation that can appeal to your audience simply by the look and feel? The two major pillars that can make or break your presentation are design and content. While you can perfect your speech with practice, the designs and the images on your presentation slides can either greatly convince your audience or simply let them feel disappointed and bored.
Let’s learn how to design a good presentation. Here are some quick and effective tips that you can follow to design a great presentation for your next audience meet.
5 Amazing Tips for Designing a Great Presentation
There are certain basic principles for designing a good presentation. Learning about them and implementing them in your next presentation will add credibility to your profile. Here is a quick presentation design guide that will help you design your next slides and will do you a world of good.
1. Outline a solid framework for your presentation
To start a new presentation from scratch, the first thing you need to think, decide and put down on paper is a framework for the presentation. It should have the details about what message you want to present to your audience in your presentation.
Designing a framework helps you make a clear idea about the kind of text you should use in your slides and what visuals would go with those texts. Unless you know the type of information you plan to share; it can be difficult to choose the slide design, fonts, and other elements that can support your presentation well.
A good layout with spaced content makes for an effective presentation that can control the data and the hierarchy of the information flow.
Once the framework is ready, you can start putting your thoughts on placing your text, setting the tone of the presentation, the context, and how the text will hold on to each other on the slides. All these small tasks together will give you a good start towards amazing presentation slides.
2. Ensure the Readability of your Presentation
Often we come across such presentation slides that are filled with loads of information. Most of the time, people do not even make an effort to read through it. Do you know why? Because there is too much information in too little space. It cramps not only the slide but your audience’s minds too. So the audience chooses to skip the text completely.
Unless your audience can read through the message you wish to share with them, there is no point in creating and sharing a presentation. A good-looking presentation, thus, is not enough. You need to ensure that your audience can read through it and digest the information.
Focus on the font
The first thing that you have to focus on in your presentation is the text font. The font should not be large, nor should it be tiny. They must not be painful for the audiences’ eyes. Always put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. How do they see it? Do they find the text too small? Does the text look too large and cramps the slides? Presentations are meant to share information with your audience. So you must give priority to their comfort.
Use fonts that are legible on the big screen and even from a fair distance. Do not use two different fonts on your slides. Stick to a single font style throughout to maintain consistency. The best and the most popular font used for presentation slides is San Serif. The font size ideally should be 30 points.
Add good margins on both sides of the slides.
To make the text of the slides look spaced out, use margins on both sides of the slides. Also, lots of text on a single slide can make it look intimidating. Limit each line to a maximum of 8-10 words for best readability. Long paragraphs are often overlooked by people simply because they cause exhaustion to the eyes.
Follow the 6 X 6 rule.
To make your content spaced out equally, you can follow the 6X6 rule. It simply means add a maximum of 6 sentences on a single slide. Remember what works here is the popular saying- “less is more.”
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3. Present your Information Effectively
Most corporate employees feel presentation means documents compiled with loads of charts and graphs that are complicated to understand. But on the contrary, a presentation is supposed to ease out the complex data into visually appealing information that is easy to understand and digest.
These days, several presentation design guides are available that offer various ready templates that can be used for presentations. You can also embed videos and use memes and gifs on these ready presentation templates. Nonetheless, these presentation design guides make your life much easier for sure.
Infographics are an excellent way to get the desired attention from your audience. You can add infographics to your presentation to make it look more attractive and interesting.
Organize the information on the slides
The thumb rule is to break any information into three basic parts. Arrange them in order of their importance. This simple task will help you turn a slide full of text into a well-designed, organized visual that is informative and appealing in all aspects.
Emphasize the important points
Highlight the important points in bolder fonts or by using a different colored font. It will emphasize the points and make it easier for your audience to understand the gist of your presentation.
Add visuals only where it is necessary.
Do not add visuals to make your presentation look appealing. It can turn the table down and make your slides look cluttered. Only add visuals when necessary. It is a good idea to add gifs as reaction slides. For instance, if you add data charts in your slides that present shocking data, you can also add funny reaction gifs to those slides. It will add a fun factor to your presentation and give your audience a thing to smile about.
No one wants to read boring presentations that are cluttered with a lot of data. Make the ambiance a little lighter for your audience with infographics, visuals, and even memes that look relevant for your presentations.
4. Choose an Appropriate Theme for your Presentation.
The best way to choose a good color for your presentation slides is to keep in mind how they will be shared. If you want to show your presentation on a big screen, use high contrasting colors for your slides. For instance, if you choose dark backgrounds, use light-colored fonts and bright accent colors to bring contrast to your design. But don’t forget to choose colors that are soothing to the eyes of your audience.
Your content on the slides will often be judged by your audience for the design elements used in them. So it is important to choose the colors, design, and fonts rather carefully. But what can be the best color to use for your presentation? Well, the simple answer is every color has its space in presentation. Depending on the content of the presentation and the ambiance in which it is presented, you can make your color choice.
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5. Set the tone, Context, and Visual Consistency
Visual consistency is extremely important for a presentation. You might design several slides, and individually they might all look great. But unless they work together to make a cohesive unit, they won’t make sense with your audience.
How to build consistency and keep up with it?
The slide frames and, of course, the slides’ background can help you create certain consistency for your presentation. Keep all the slide backgrounds the same across the presentation. You can also add a top bar to all the slides to maintain consistency.
All these will matter once you have set the right tone and context for your presentation. Depending on your audience, data and context, you must set the tone of the content. The tone should not be light-hearted, neither should it be curt or informal. Maintain a formal and professional tone that makes an impact on the minds of your audience.
Follow a single style on all the slides. You can also choose a readymade template from the presentation style guide. There are hundreds of them available, and all of them look equally amazing. Simply add your brand logo, brand colors, and custom fonts. It makes your task much easier with minimum effort. It is a good way to at least start building your presentation and incorporate various data into it.
The best way to style your slides is to add texts that are either bold or in italics. Only these fonts can stand out on the slides and catch the eyes of your target audience easily. But make sure to use these tricks sparingly, as any over-styling of the slides can make it look cluttered.
The context of your presentation is yet another crucial factor for a good presentation design. Not everything goes well with everything. For instance, you might use bright font colors like fluorescent green and hot pink if you present retailer products. But when it comes to presenting an annual report for a Fortune 500 company, would you use the same colored fonts? Will they go with the context of the data? Of course not. To make it more suitable for the context and the ambiance, you must choose font colors like black and navy blue.
Here is another bonus tip just for you. Do not use bullet points for your slides. You must have come across numerous presentation slides over the years that are covered with bullet points. But if you want your presentation to stand out, stay away from adding bullets to your slides. There are many different ways to create visually appealing and engaging slides, and bullets need not be necessarily in them.
Check Out the Quick Video Review On How Do You Design A Good Presentation
Source: Rule The Room
Conclusion
There is often a misconception that a presentation is meant to deliver information concisely. However, it is not always true. You can call your presentation skills successful when you engage your audience with your speech and the dataset. A great presentation can also be inspirational and motivational for your audience.
Make your presentation an interactive one. Your audience must remember the key takeaways from your presentation once you are done with it. They must be asking questions to you about what they just learned from you. To make an impact in their minds, use high-quality images in your slides.
And finally, “research and rehearse” should be the mantra for your presentation. Research your content well, design them well and rehearse them all before performing in front of your audience.
It might take you some more time and effort to design a great presentation. But with these awesome design tips, you can do it for sure. Also remember, a great design is an integral part of the presentation slide. Presenting it with meaningful and valuable content is also equally important.
Make your audience simply go wow with your presentation. They should talk about your presentation long after you are done with it. Follow the above tips and rock your next presentation.
Here are few more topics that you shouldn’t miss:
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