Last updated on October 31st, 2023
PowerPoint presentations are great for businesses and marketers to educate, inform, motivate and influence audiences. They create presentations for training, sales, and internal communication programs using persuasive content, including relevant images, to keep audiences engaged. Thus, focusing on your slideshow’s structure, content, and design will help you prepare presentations that genuinely stick with your audience. This blog talks about 10 effective design tips you can consider to make it easily digestible and workable.
It goes without saying — presentations are enticing, engaging, entertaining, impactful, and effective. They are one of the best ways to communicate your point to the audience, whether you are presenting in a conference room, auditorium, webinar, or seminar. But unfortunately, most people are not equipped with the knowledge and know-how to get the best returns from this great aid.
A slideshow works best if its design is awe-inspiring. But, to elaborate, a well-designed presentation is not measured by the number of photos, graphics, or other elements it includes. Instead, the qualities it does require are simplicity, proportion, and elegance.
This blog post aims to separate you from that crowd and enable you to make the most out of PowerPoint and open the doors to presentation excellence for you. More specifically, this blog post will help you improve the design of your PowerPoint presentations. So, keep reading!
Design Tips To Improve Your PowerPoint Presentations
01. Be Mindful Of The Readability
Presenters aim to ensure clarity and elevate the audience’s experience. This aim is wholly undone when you insert text which cannot even be read properly. Thus, first of all, your focus should be to make your presentation easy to read and understand. There are multiple ways to accomplish this.
One way you can try is by using contrasting colors for the text and background, thus creating a clear space and difference, helping the audience comprehend everything properly. You can also make sure that you are not adding text to images.
To avoid unreadable text and make the presentation more visually appealing, try creating text boxes with the help of slide templates. Use apt and clean fonts, and pay attention to the font size. And above all, the most effective way to maintain readability is to avoid filling the entire slide with text. Instead, write a maximum of 5 lines per slide, with 7 words per line.
02. Effectively Present The Information
As we said, the primary focus of presentations is to assist you in communicating well. And one of the best ways to do so is to utilize the space provided in slides optimally. For example, you can present complex content, such as numerical data or statistics, using diagrams, charts, and infographics.
Furthermore, instead of lengthy and tedious paragraphs, use clearly demarcated bulleted points, thereby increasing the clarity of your message. You should also leave white spaces throughout the slides to make your presentation look uncluttered and information organized. All these tips will make your PowerPoint design visually pleasing and informative.
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03. Don’t Use Lengthy and Complex Sentences
Filling the slides with comprehensive sentences is people’s most common mistake while creating a presentation. Their thought behind doing this is that the slides should communicate the whole point across.
However, the purpose of a slide in a presentation is not to communicate on its own; instead, it is there to support the speaker and add to their stage presence.
The slides are an assistant to fill the gaps you may leave while speaking and capture the audience’s attention so that their mind does not wander here and there. If your audience ends up reading your presentation rather than listening, you have failed as a presenter.
Therefore, to keep the audience engaged, include essential information and create visually appealing slides. We advise you to do your best to insert only key data points along with phrases, including keywords, that keep the flow of the presentation going while avoiding overwhelming slides.
04. Use Exquisite Templates
Most people who create presentations are not designers, nor have they learned any design or visual principles of communication. They rely on their own understanding and ability to make the best they can. They won’t mind using readymade templates, such as PowerPoint flowchart templates, to create professional presentations. Why readymade templates? You may think.
When looking for PowerPoint presentation templates, you may find that these templates are beautifully designed by experts who have a complete understanding of visual communication, colors, fonts, styles, and layouts that look appealing to the human eye. These templates allow you to customize them per your brand identity.
05. Use Engaging Visuals
To create engaging visuals in your presentation, you should incorporate the following elements in your slides; pictures, illustrations or graphics, infographics, and videos. Adding beautiful images related to the topic of your presentation amps up the overall visual quality of your entire deck.
As an alternative, you can also incorporate illustrations, which add an extra layer of customization. And as you know, the purpose of a slideshow is effective communication; thus, integrating infographics to elucidate the crucial data better is a great option.
In addition, if you want to make your presentation memorable, you can include suitable videos to increase the audience’s interest. You are also advised to use a particular set of fonts, colors, and visuals to better design the deck.
06. Structure Your PowerPoint Presentation According To The Context
This may seem like a continuation of the previous point; however, there is a key difference. In the previous point, we told you to prepare a set of colors, fonts, and other visual elements. This tip will help you decide how to prepare the set and which criteria to use to prepare it in the most suitable way.
Let us say that your presentation is about a regular status update; in that case, your job is to present the collected data, give a proper comparison from the past results, and also set a plan of action for the future. Thus, your context is comparative and forward-looking.
You should use infographics for comparison and illustrations to emphasize the plan. Avoid quirky fonts and designs if you have to create your presentation for an old and established brand. On the other hand, do not create a monotonous and conventional presentation for an upcoming startup.
To reiterate, your presentation should acknowledge your audience’s feelings and extend the same emotions through the visuals.
07. Design According To The Color Wheel
The most common issue non-designers face is when, where, and how to use colors. The color wheel is a fundamental concept that designers use to determine which colors go together and create magic and which colors create a visual catastrophe.
As you may see in this color wheel, the three primary colors have complementary colors that look best on them. For example, yellow creates an appealing image when used to write on the color purple, as they create a contrast, thus improving clarity. Likewise, the colors blue and orange create a contrast, while green goes with red. Just by keeping these three relationships in mind, you can surpass most of the presentations created daily!
08. Align All Objects Properly
Have you seen a presentation where you do not know where to look? Was the entire slide filled with unorganized and confusing text causing confusion and taking away your interest? Remember, once you lose the audience’s attention, it is an arduous task to get it back. Here the big question is – how can you avoid creating chaotic slides?
The answer is simple; align everything. Aligning refers to arranging elements according to a straight line. You may have seen this for aligning text as three options: left align, center align, and right align. However, you also have the option to align all objects, such as your logo, concerning the slide or for each other.
For example, for headings and titles, you can use center alignment, which will place them at the center of the slide. If you have multiple text boxes for the body text, you can align them all for each other. Deciding where to place your elements depends on your use case, but wherever you place them, use the align function to clean up the edges and create symmetry.
09. Don’t Use Too Many Special Effects
One of the best parts of using PowerPoint is its special effects and cool features. Further, you are also given the option to animate some of your elements and choose transitions for your slides. Often we get so excited by these offerings that we try each feature, and the end product is less like a presentation and more like a dated indie TV show.
Steer clear of this by not giving special status to these special effects. You may have heard, “highlight everything, and you are not highlighting anything.” If you need to see every little effect, you can use it, have a look, and try out everything, but do not put it all into your presentation. Use these special effects sparingly so that it truly stands out and makes an impact.
10. Use High-Resolution Images
Not everyone in the audience might appreciate the quality of high-resolution images from a distance; however, the difference between a blur and a low-resolution image is massive compared to a higher-resolution one. There are several reasons to use high-resolution images in PowerPoint presentation designs. First, high-resolution images are generally more visually appealing than low-resolution images.
This can help engage your audience and keep their attention focused on your presentation. Second, high-resolution images can also be used to make a more professional-looking presentation. This can be important if you are presenting to potential clients or customers. Moreover, high-resolution images can help to ensure that your presentation looks its best when projected onto a large screen.
(Bonus Tip: First impression matters; thus, strive to begin your presentation in the most visually appealing and impressive manner possible. On top of that, keep your tone energetic and show excitement to help the audience feel the same about you!)
Conclusion
Unique upside of creating and presenting slideshows is to form a connection with your audience and deliver a meaningful message. No matter how much you try to talk to them, the general audience will not pay attention to you unless they’re not entertained. This purpose is to employ the much more versatile, subtle, and professional way, i.e., beautifully designed slides. A dull presentation can dampen your communication considerably, and thus the listener’s interest. That’s why you must pay attention to your slideshow’s structure, content, and design while creating presentations to have great impact on the listeners. You can choose from many readily available pre-made, high-quality slide templates, which will help simplify the process.
