There is no doubt in the fact that presentation plays a vital role in effective mass communication. Be it business, education, or other domains; effective communication is the key to successful teamwork. In this article, you’ll learn how do you design a good presentation.
The problem is creating an effective presentation is more than just stunning visuals, design, and a lot of content. At the core, you need to make all of these elements cohesive enough to get it right.
So how can you say your design is appealing to the audience? How do you go about eliminating a shallow presentation and ensure you have an engaging and interactive one?
Here’s the answer.
This post brings you presentation tips that can help you achieve a long-lasting effect on your audience.
Top 6 tactics to design a good presentation in 2021
How can you say that a presentation is good or bad? Are there any rules or criteria we follow? Creating a stellar presentation starts from getting your fundamentals right.
To make a good impression on your audience, you need to empathize with them.
With designing skills, you need tone modulation. Good presentations contain less data and more design visuals, as it is said that a picture speaks faster than text and words. This means you need to tell a story to your audience. So how exactly can you do so? We will be discussing all tips you need for your presentation skills.
Following are the top areas that you should be watching out for to create a compelling presentation.
1. Presentation templates
There is a wide variety of templates available that can help you build your presentation in modern and classic design. In fact, presentation templates are easy to use, save time and, more importantly, make your presentation look creative. That’s where the real power comes in.
Using basic themes that are predefined and readily available makes your presentation look average. Find and create designs that make your pitch stand out. Your aim should be to create a presentation that communicates your ideas to your audience with maximum clarity and comprehension.
To do this, you can use different types of presentation templates provided online that are predefined and can be customized up to a certain level based on your presentation text, image size, and type. But if you are confused as to which one to use, we have got your back. Here is a free resource of some of the best-performing presentation templates for this year. However, your choices aren’t limited to this.
You can always come up with templates that are customized and personalized to your unique needs. All you need to do is be strategic and put your content contextually and create a logical flow from one slide to another.
2. Use contextual design for a good presentation
Choosing a suitable template for your presentation is like putting the foundational pillar of success. But this is almost impossible without the right design. The problem is choosing the template that would add to the bottom line of your presentation needs some amount of consideration.
You will find many types of designs. Some will be super fancy with ornamental decorations and excessive visuals, while others would be neat and minimal. But your ideal template design depends on the occasion, audience, and channel of your communication.
For instance, most presentation designs on presentation templates rely on excessive use of heavy shapes, too many images, and illustrations. They are a good idea if you want your presentation to be too engaging with visuals and distract the audience from the core content and what you are trying to convey.
On the contrary, use easy-to-understand and straightforward designs that convey your message in the best way, plus keep a balance between your speech and presentation.
Too much decoration in slides takes away from the core message. As a result, you end up losing your voice and message more than they add to it. Thus, you should integrate presentations that are purpose-driven. They tend to perform better.
3. Less is the new more
If you have to draw your audience’s attention to certain elements in your presentation, designing your content to meet the expectations is critical.
But here’s the thing.
If you put too many elements in one single template, chances are you are taking away the chances to draw attention. Your message gets lost in the visual clutter you create and becomes difficult for your audience to process. What follows are under-performing decks where your messages are half-baked, and your audience is just half-convinced of your ideas.
On the contrary, creating a minimalistic design for your presentation will just help you hit the bull’s eye. But the question is, how can you do this effectively.
Create every single slide with one single takeaway message. Do not wander around every topic you want to say.
Again, your design, photos, and text should be cohesive enough. Each of the elements should complement each other and build on each other’s work.
Try to keep all text and a readable font family as simple as possible, making the audience stay engaged in the spoken presentation. This way, you will be able to keep a balance with your presentation design and storytelling.
4. Restrict your color usage to design a good presentation
A combination palette of some colors can save your presentation from looking too much. Don’t go for complex textures and graphic features; instead, find your right colors, and you are good to go. Restrict your color usage to a maximum of five.
All you need to do is invest in finding the right colors that convey the best about your presentation. Pick the best color that defines the topic and theme of your presentation. Use different tools present in templates to accelerate your color combination and design. You can find the best suit color palette for your design. Keep it simple.
Using a single color palette is always advisable to spotlight your central focus, the content. A great way is to highlight your core message. You can do this by marking a different shade behind the text, make the text bold, or change the font family. However, ensure you are not overdoing it.
5. Deploy multi-level strategy
Sometimes, it helps to look at your presentation from multiple angles when you start designing it. It improves your presentation design dramatically.
Remember, the more cohesive and 360 degree your point of view is, the more difference it will make. However, to understand how to approach this, there is one vital question to answer.
How will my target audience react to the presentation? What key problems or doubts can they have regarding the content to be presented?
Answering these questions will help you plan better. So, an excellent strategy to do this right is to develop an audience persona for reference.
Again, setting up ground rules for the font family and its size for headings, subheadings, numbers, and body text is essential for effective presentation. Consult a brand guide near you if available. Keep it simple but interesting. But this is not all.
Most presentations are a quick introduction to an idea or business. This makes creating presentations that are on point and slides ready to scan critical. So, split up slides into smaller pieces of information focused on a central topic.
6. Clarity and cleanness
The trick to winning designing presentations lies not just in its simplicity but also in clarity. Moreover, one of the best ways to ensure this is to create enough white space. You need to understand the right place for all your components like color combinations, graphic designs, shapes, and illustrations. When you understand how these should complement your presentation’s text, you’ll be better able to design winning presentations.
While creating a new slide, think of ways to place your information in the most logical and exciting way. Visual design is an essential part of this.
Don’t underestimate the potential that your graphic holds over your target audience. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand times more than words. But a word of caution here. Graphic design created utterly based on creating something creative and beautiful will not work unless you have an anchor.
Design and goal are two sides of the same coin that need to be balanced to create your masterpiece. So, as Paul Rand says, ‘Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.’
Conclusion
In this complex digital world, presentation plays a vital role. It is the first impression of what you have to offer. Do it right; you will keep your audience engaged, while done wrong can sabotage the complete goal of your presentation.
But creating an extraordinary presentation would need more than just the above tips. It would require a deep understanding of your audience and the quality of content. If your content value is low, it won’t be successful no matter how good your presentation is.
In conclusion, this means you need to focus on building your story along with presentation skills for an effective presentation.
Now, when you know the secrets to create high-impact designs, let us know in the comments section below when you plan to deploy these strategies.
Author bio
Works full-time as an Instructional Designer and is passionate about writing. Helping many small and medium-scale businesses achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted and compelling content. She lives in Bangalore, India with her husband and parents. She loves to read, experiment with different cuisines, travel, and explore the latest content marketing and L&D trends in her free time. You can reach her on Linkedin or write to her at atreyee.c@gmail.com to discuss your content marketing requirements.
Atreyee Chowdhury
