A guide to strong presentation design
Creating a good presentation is vitally important for your business’s reputation. Whether you are providing a presentation to current or prospective clients, making a good impression is key and a carefully crafted presentation can help you achieve this.
As professionals dedicated to adding value to our client’s business through innovative presentation design, we know a thing or two about how to do this. Here are our top tips for making a powerful presentation.
- Create a strong presentation outline
- Be consistent with frames
- Focus more on visuals
- Create visual focal points
- Keep your design in check
- Mix up slide layout
- Remove unnecessary information
- Place images in grids
Create a strong presentation outline
Spend time creating a strong presentation prior to getting down to the nitty-gritty elements, so you know you are nailing the main points in your slides.
An example of a great presentation outline would be:
- Introduction
- Visual proposition
- Value proposition
- Financial profit
- Cash flow
- The investment
- Questions
Be consistent with frames
Using frames consistently is important when it comes to good presentation design, as well as being an effective way to contain information. Use a style and then stick to it, as darting from one frame design to another may end up inadvertently diverting attention from the main point – the presentation itself.
Focus more on visuals
Using less text and adding more visuals to your presentation has been shown to lead to better levels of audience engagement. Don’t make the error of putting the speaker’s entire script on the slides.
Instead, opt for keywords, icons, and large numbers to better get your point across rather than long blocks of script.
Create visual focal points
Another pillar of strong presentation design is creating a visual focal point for each slide. Every slide should always have something that immediately grabs the audience’s attention. This can be things such as the title, a keyword or a particular statistic. Once you have established the key point of the slide emphasize it visually by varying things such as the:
- Colour
- Size
- Weight
Keep your design in check
Messy slide decks will not impress your audience, so this is why it is important to keep to a design outline and colour palette throughout. You always want the spotlight to be on the message you are trying to get across in your presentation, not on distracting, inconsistent design choice.
Mix up slide layout
Whilst the design of your presentation should be consistent, it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t chop and change the layout between slides. In fact, repeatedly using the same slide layout is to be avoided – it makes the presentation dull.
Remove unnecessary information
Once you have identified the core message of your presentation, your next step is to remove anything that is not relevant to this topic. This is a key aspect when it comes to designing a good presentation, as it helps your audience to understand the fundamental message by channeling their attention.
Place images in grids
By placing presentation images in a grid, you have more white space to put text which means that the main focus will be your content. You should always avoid naked images as it does not come across as particularly professional.
