How To Prepare For Your PowerPoint Presentation
Are you looking for some cool tips and tricks to add the ‘wow’ factor into your presentation? Then, you have come to the right place. There are many ways to design a presentation. One of the most popular platforms to design a presentation is PowerPoint. Apart from Microsoft PowerPoint, people use Flash to come up with an impactful deck of slides too. Whichever software or application you use, you need to keep your audience glued to the presentation by adding oomph to your deck of slides. We have compiled several tips from a professional presentation designer, which will help you ace your upcoming presentation, with a thorough preparation.
What is the theme of your presentation?
Before designing your PowerPoint slides, it is important to understand the underlying theme of your presentation. What is the purpose of your presentation? Is it a presentation for a business meeting or for an informal corporate event? Based on the purpose of the presentation, choose the right background, colors and font, which complement your content. Once you get the underlying theme right, your presentation will flow smoothly, and the deck of slides will look connected. This will ultimately make your presentation consistent. Here are design tips from a presentation designer.
Use a maximum of four colors
People have the wrong perception that colors will add life into a presentation. However, adding too many colors ruins your presentation. A colorful presentation looks like a child’s coloring book and is not at all professional. The rule of thumb is to have a maximum of four colors throughout your presentation. Ensure consistency in the usage of colors by choosing a dark color for the headings and another dark color for the text of the body. As far as possible, choose a light color for the background of the presentation. Last but not least, if you have bullet points in your slides, you can highlight them in another color too.
The right font speaks volumes
Based on the purpose of your presentation, choose the font that matches the theme of the slides. Let us say you are preparing a presentation for a business meeting, you should stick to fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman which add a level of professionalism to your deck of slides and get your audience serious about your presentation.
Images and theme should match
There has to be some purpose behind adding images on the slides. They are not just for decoration. So, understand the message you want to convey to the audience and pick the right images accordingly. For example, if you are preparing a presentation for an anniversary celebration, add images like champagne glasses and balloons to signify a celebration. On the other hand, if you are preparing slides for an important financial meeting, you can add a dollar sign and pictures of Wall Street.
Alignment of images is important
Often, we see presentations with images all over the place. It makes the slides messy and cluttered. Align the images properly with the text so that your presentation appears neat. Ensure that there is enough space between the text and the images on a slide. If you have text on the right side of a slide, keep the images on the left side for consistency. If you are preparing a presentation for a business meeting or a client meeting, ensure that your corporate logo appears on every slide. Also, make it a point to align the corporate logo properly, in the same position on every slide. For example, if you place the corporate logo at the top right hand corner of a slide, maintain that position throughout.
If you have images on your slides, it is also important to scale them properly so that they don’t become blurry or pixelated. For example, if you must enlarge an image, ensure that it is not enlarged too much, as this may cause the image to become pixelated. Blurry images look unprofessional and will reduce the impact they are meant to have on your presentations.
Add graphs and charts to simplify your content
If there is data that you want your audience to see, do not throw an array of numbers on the slides. Organize the data into graphs and charts so that it reduces the clutter on the slides and makes it easier for the audience to understand what you are saying. Your graphs and charts should complement what you are saying, not confuse the audience.
Be consistent
Be it in the usage of images, logos, colors, background, font type or font size, you have to be consistent throughout your presentation. For example, use a font and stick with it. Keep titles in the same location and same color from slide to slide. This will help your audience engage with your presentation, and they will take your presentation seriously. Good design leaves an impact on an audience!
Now that you have learned the tips and tricks of making your presentation stand out, your can be rest assured that you will indeed ‘wow’ your audience with a thorough preparation of your presentation.
