Creating amazing presentations is all about crafting innovative content. PowerPoint presentations aren’t meant to be read and remembered. Instead, it should fall perfectly in the background and support the message you’re trying to pitch. No matter how compelling your message or oral content is, if you can’t project your thoughts out of your brain to the screen in a simple way, your session might end up with blank faces.
Simply, what and when to say to the audience should be figured out in well-advance and with that in mind, your presentation must be visualized. Now, this doesn’t mean you gear up and stuff your presentation with unnecessary animations, colours, fonts and other features, this practice doesn’t always make a decent presentation. Your audience has already experienced the pain of bad PowerPoint presentations, you shouldn’t add one more to it. Almost everybody falls prey to common design pitfalls when crafting a PowerPoint presentation. But, worry not, your presentation doesn’t have to be an ordinary one. In this post, we will discuss a few guidelines which can be used to create presentations to stand above the crowd.
1. Use Simple & Consistent Backgrounds
Great presentations illustrate the content with backgrounds which doesn’t deter the flow of the on-going presentation. People often use multiple backgrounds for multiple slides. This can be distracting for your audience. Even blurred backgrounds are really helpful when it comes to putting text over the image. Keeping consistent backgrounds will help your audience correlate easily with the information displayed. You can use pre-designed PowerPoint templates provided by SlideModel.com for consistent backgrounds. Not only this would help you maintain content integrity throughout the presentation, but this would also lead to a superior brand building. Background templates such as Paradigm, Plasma, 1-20 Multi-Chapter, Invidia, etc. can be resourceful.
2. Never underestimate the Font
When it comes to attracting and holding your audience’s attention, Typography plays a huge role. This is something many people overlook. However, fonts play an essential part in the whole presentation process. Do you know each and every logo out there is specifically designed with a font to suit that particular brand? Fonts can change the entire appeal and aesthetics of your presentation. Not only are amazing fonts reader-friendly, they help to build recognition and also help in unifying the presentation. SlideModel provides amazing ready to use templates which encompass out of the box Font styles. When a consistent font is used in your presentation, it boosts simplicity and continuity while keeping the slides uncluttered. Helvetica, Verdana, Poppins, Open Sans, Lato and Futura are some of the fonts with the best readability.
3. Use diagrams
It can be said that a diagram comes handier to describe data rather than saying it out loud in words. A picture can paint a thousand words, it is true. Even if you’re having slides with considerable words, you should try sketching out alternative ways to reduce the content and inculcate relevant graphics. SlideModel has a great repository of high-quality diagrams and images.
These diagrams can help you reinforce the words present in the slide in a different way. Diagrams also symbolize the design process of any presentation. When a presentation’s design process is recognizable by the audience, it becomes easy to engage with your audience on a personal level. Your design should be put front and centre. Diagrams having words of impact can be a game-changer.
4. Use relevant graphs and charts
Let us say you’re creating a business presentation and you wish to pitch quarterly gains to your C-level audience. Now, you can’t just walk-in to the conference room and read it all out. Charts and graphs can be of great use when it comes to depicting numbers or analytical data. You should understand that the audience won’t spend their entire time deciphering the numbers. You’ll have to make it simple, attractive and digestible for them. In addition to the graphs and charts, in some occasions the tables can also help. It doesn’t need to be created with PowerPoint tables, you can also use shapes in Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides to re-create your graphs or tables, and produce a visual appealing slide that helps to deliver your message. The RACI Matrix templates are a possible application of these techniques. The best approach can be using Charts and Graphs templates. SlideModel caters detailed charts and graphs templates which are 100% editable. You can easily fill-in numbers, set the axis and you’re done. Fresh graphs and charts can engage your audience better and thus, your presentation goals can be boosted.
5. Be design-savvy
An amazing design can make or break a presentation. Design is the soul of your presentation. For instance, you should consider using colours sparingly. It is perfectly fine to use bright colours. However, too much of it can be off-putting as well. Consider using colours which are most relevant to your message. You can find presentation templates online with slides that have been formatted for perfection. With one set of font type and colour, these slides help you stick to one style.
Best presentations are expected to amaze their audiences early and then reel them in slowly. Starting your presentation with something intriguing can get you all the attention of your audience. Making them sit up and take notice is easy when your slides are out of the box and when the slides appeal directly to your audience’s emotions.