No matter if you are making a high-powered business pitch, highlighting data trends for a group of investors, or making a presentation to your college class, your goal is to inform and persuade your audience. Even with a large number of presentation tools and software available, however, many presentations fall flat. The problem with many presentations is that they don’t engage the audience and fail to highlight key points effectively. If you find that your audience members are doing something other than listening to you, your presentation might need some help.
Effective presentations include well-designed slides that bring in numerous elements to engage and inform the audience. As the presenter, your job is to offer a compelling message. The role of your presentation is to back up what you are saying. An effective presenter creates custom presentations that highlight key points and serve as the vehicle for moving messages along. Your audience is on the line with your very first slide, and you will either grab them or lose them in a few moments.
Presentation design, format, and content all work together to deliver points. A custom presentation that engages and informs the audience balances graphics, illustrations, text, fonts, and colors to create a simple and compelling argument. To create a useful presentation, there are some basic design principles and tips to consider. Let’s take a look at some things that you do to improve the quality and effectiveness of your custom presentation.
Tell a visual story.
A key element of any PowerPoint presentation or other custom slide show is visuals. Graphs, charts, illustrations, and other visual elements aid with learning and help your audience visualize your points. If you have ever heard of death by PowerPoint, it is the act of boring your audience to death with slides that present too much data and information. One way to avoid this is by turning your data into compelling visual elements.
If your goal is to show steady increases in profits for the quarter, it makes more sense to demonstrate it with a stark line graph than with a list of figures and returns. Visual elements can also be overused and have a negative impact on your audience as well. The key to success will be to find a healthy balance between text and infographics.
Maintain slide consistency.
Theme and consistency in your presentation design will help to unify your slide deck. Instead of creating a patchwork quilt of slides with varying text, colors, and fonts, your goal should be to create a custom presentation that has visual unity. If your presentation is a rollercoaster ride of animations, transition animations, backgrounds, fonts styles, the audience will have difficulty paying attention. Engaging the audience means keeping their attention, not distracting them with colorful slides.
Consistency with design elements across all slides will help you create a brand for your presentation and content. Be sure that you commit to a color palette, font family, and basic background design to create a uniform presentation that is both professional and effective.
Keep it simple.
No matter who you are presenting to, all audiences want the same thing. Audience members want you to get to the point and tell them what they need to know. If your presentation is complicated by too much information and ancillary material, you will lose your audience. One of the most important points for creating powerful slides is to keep your presentation simple. Focusing on key points and essential information will help you craft slides with a clear and concise message.
If you want to create an effective and powerful custom presentation, you need to focus on the design and content. Your goal should be to create a consistent, simple, and visually appealing presentation so that it will speak to everyone in the room.
