why is presentation design important

• Utility Menu

de5f0c5840276572324fc6e2ece1a882

• How to Use This Site
• Core Competencies
• Fundamentals of Slide Design

Learn about slide design, its importance, and principles and strategies for designing strong slides.

What is Slide Design?

Through the use of different elements, including visuals, colors, typography, style, layout, and transitions, slide design provides a visual representation of the important points of your presentation. It not only complements your research, but can also enhance your presentation. Slide design can impact how much an audience understands and retains the content that you present.

Slide design strategies that thoughtfully consider and prioritize the experience of the audience can result in stronger presentations. Melissa Marshall —an expert in understanding how technical presentations can be transformed—advocates for an innovative approach to slide design. Her well-researched methods have been successful in the scientific community and we recommend her strategy.  In an article on how to transform your technical talks , Marshall discusses the science behind the impact of slide design and how the overuse of text on slides while engaging in verbal communication during presentations increases the chances of cognitive overload for audience members. Marshall advocates for an “audience-centered speaker” approach, a technique in which you shift your focus from the speaker to that of the audience.

-Melissa Marshall

Audience engagement is an important indicator about the level of success of a presentation. Marshall argues that “a critical insight is to realize that your success as a speaker depends entirely upon your ability to make your audience successful.” In order to prioritize the experience of your audience and how they receive your presentation, Marshall advocates for a design strategy called assertion-evidence design which uses a succinct headline in the slide with the key assertion in the form of a sentence that is accompanied by visual evidence, such as charts, graphs, and flowcharts. This method prioritizes the utilization of strong visuals and minimizes the amount of text on slides. As needed, presenters can provide the audience with a handout of their slides that contain more detailed notes from their presentation as a reference. If you have not used assertion-evidence slides before, it is a good technique to further explore and consider as its approach can enhance a presentation when carried out effectively. Examples of strong assertion-evidence slides and a self-assessment checklist for this design strategy can be found on Create and Assess Your Slides , and a template can be accessed below.

(Click to Enlarge)

An assertion-evidence slide template that includes tips and layout suggestions by melissa marshall. .

To learn more about creating strong visual representations of your data and the importance of forming a mutual exchange between you and your audience, visit our pages on Data Visualization , along with Consider Your Audience which is part of the section on how to Deliver Authentically . 

Watch these short videos by Marshall to further explore the impact of slide design, strategies for fostering audience engagement, and helpful ways to approach the scope and focus of your presentation.

Learn more about the impact of slide design.

Further explore how to analyze your audience.

Consider scope and focus of your slides and talks.

For additional resources to help you think about the organization and framing of your talk visit Deliver Authentically and Prepare for Any Talk .

What Does it Look Like to Design Effective Slides?

There are techniques and tools that can be utilized to strengthen the design of your slides in order to enhance the quality of your presentation. The following section presents one approach. Review this list and explore how each strategy can improve your slide design.

A more comprehensive slide design checklist and other resources can be found on Create and Assess Your Slides .  

Inclusive Slide Design

Creating slides that are inclusive and accessible for different learners is a critical part of the design process. Consider the implications of your design on the viewer’s interpretation, including visual representation, language and color choice. As you engage in this process, explore the role of slide design in creating an inclusive environment that considers multiple perspectives, values, beliefs, identities, disciplines, abilities, experiences, and backgrounds. To learn more about what it means and looks like to design visuals that are inclusive, visit Visual Storytelling as part of the section on Data Visualization and Preferred Terms for Select Population Groups & Communities from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Are You Ready to Create Your Own Slides?

To begin the process of designing your slides or to improve an existing deck, visit Create and Assess Your Slides . Use the provided resources to learn more about helpful design strategies, how to create effective slides and ways to assess them.

• Data Visualization
• Create and Assess Your Slides
• Visual Design Tools

The Golden Rules of Presentation Design

You don’t have to be a professional graphic designer to master the ins and outs of what makes a visually enticing presentation. While building a super-polished template from scratch might seem daunting, all you really need to know are a few basic principles of presentation design to take your slides from messy and unprofessional to clean, informative, and on-brand.

These days, presentation slide templates and tools abound – from the default options in Powerpoint and Google Slides , to services like SlidesCarnival , Canva , Envato and more that specialize in compiling eclectic template options. While these resources can take the guesswork out of creating sleek and professional deck designs, it’s still up to you to optimize each slide to communicate your ideas as clearly as possible. Furthermore, just because a presentation template looks nice, doesn’t necessarily mean it fits your brand aesthetic and message – and seeing the same common templates reused repeatedly can make yours more forgettable. 

No matter what program you use to build your presentations, there are a few principles of presentation design you should always bear in mind.

The Most Important Rule: Less is More

We’ve all heard this one before, yet it’s still tempting to try and cram as much information as you can onto a slide. Remember that the focus should always remain on the presenter and the story they’re telling – your presentation is an accompaniment to help you illustrate the ideas you’re communicating, not a textbook to be studied. 

Let’s break down a few of the easiest ways to declutter your slides:

• Use key words, not full sentences What’s the main idea for each slide? Try to distill it into a single word or short phrase, rather than spelling out the complete thought as a sentence. When in doubt, use the 6×6 rule: no more than 6 bullet points per slide, with less than 6 words per line.
• Utilize white space – balance is your friend! Afraid that you’re wasting real estate by not filling every corner of your slide? The eye naturally needs a place of rest, so don’t be afraid of white space. This also helps funnel and direct the viewer’s attention where you want it to go. Avoid the temptation to blow your content up to fill all the available space on your slide. Even if it’s still just a couple sentences of information, this can make it look overwhelming. 

• Break up your ideas if needed Don’t be shy about spreading out information between multiple slides, and pace yourself! A “title slide” to introduce a new topic can provide a nice (and necessary) breather that balances out the pace of your presentation, preventing audience exhaustion.
• Use fewer fonts (aim for 2 or maybe 3 max) Mixing and matching typefaces takes a fairly well-trained eye, but there are a couple of handy resources on the web to help: FontJoy and Typ.io will both auto-generate a pairing of fonts that go well together visually. Other rules of thumb: keep body copy typefaces simple and sans-serif (using too much of a display typeface hurts legibility), use caps lock only for emphasis and visual contrast, and understand how typefaces can help convey brand sentiments.
• Choose colors and fonts wisely You may be designing a presentation for work, in which case you likely have a couple established brand colors to use throughout your presentation. If you’re making up a color scheme from scratch, bear in mind: (A) Don’t use too many colors. Using too many different colors will make the presentation look messy, busy, or incoherent – so focus on one or two key, recurring colors that’ll lend a sense of cohesion throughout all your slides. (B) Try to get one or two vibrant, saturated colors to energize your presentation with a more youthful energy – muted and neutral tones run the risk of boring your audience or looking overly corporate.

Use Visual Hierarchy

Create a clear delineation between the most and the least important information. This can be done in a few ways:

• Contrast Don’t let your text or other elements disappear in a monochromatic fog; up the contrast to make things pop off the page.
• Background vs. Foreground images If you want to overlay text on top of an image, make sure to use photos with copy space and more subtle, uncluttered background elements. Can’t find enough white space in the pic to give your text breathing room? Consider adding a photo filter, color block, or even a gentle and more subtle gradient block to put beneath your text.
• Size Use 30+ pt. text sizes to keep your copy legible even from a distance – and keep it bolder for titles, headings, and key words. Be sure that the size you use for headings is at least 50% larger than the size you’re using for body text to better call out your main ideas.
• Alignment One of the single biggest threats to legibility – and your professional credibility – is a “scattershot” slide with text and images thrown together with no rhyme or reason. Instead of combining alignments (center-aligned with left-aligned headers or body copy, for example), stick with left-alignment for quick scanning. Your best bet? Use a grid system instead of plopping elements on the page and hoping for the best. Align similar elements along vertical and horizontal lines to give each slide a sense of rhythm and repetition. Tidy groupings of similar items (e.g. having all your headings, descriptions, pictures and icons along the same lines) bolsters scannability.

Use Icons to Get Your Message Across Faster (and More Beautifully)

Icons are a critical component of presentation design, as they help your audience digest the ideas you’re covering quicker than words alone. In fact, studies have shown that audiences will remember an image paired with a verbal cue 55% better than a verbal cue alone – a phenomenon known as the Picture Superiority Effect (and a critical component of Dual Coding Theory ).

Some may even argue that icons can (and should!) take the place of bullet points.

It’s especially critical to bring in visual aids like icons when you’re covering topics that are more abstract or technologically complex – consider how much words on a page can fall flat and fail to “click” in your audience’s minds, vs. bringing in a quick and concise visual that will help people place the key ideas in a clear, real-world context.

Visual cues like this “deliver the punchline” for your viewers before you even need to – so your ideas can not only jump off the page, but stay in your audience’s memories for longer.

Nonetheless, you’ll need to make sure you’re using your icons as effectively as possible. 

Using Noun Project Icons in Your Presentations

• Search Icons Get all the icons you could ever need from Noun Project . Our collection is literally millions of icons deep – and each one can be customized, colored, and downloaded as a PNG or SVG.
• Use Apps & Plugins Instantly insert icons without leaving your workflow – Noun Project has apps and plugins for Google Slides , Powerpoint , Adobe Products and more. (Plus, Noun Project apps now support SVG icons – so you can use and customize vectors directly inside apps like Powerpoint).
• Go Pro for Royalty-Free Downloads Customize and insert unlimited icons royalty-free with a Noun Pro account. When you go Pro, you can instantly recolor and click-and-drag icons straight from the Noun Project window without needing to worry about attributions.

Tip: Icons are essential to help an important point “click” in people’s brains more quickly. The Noun Project Add-On for Powerpoint lets you instantly search, recolor, click and drag icons instantly all without having to leave your window (and a Noun Pro account lets you insert unlimited icons).

Use Icons to Make Your (Bullet) Point

• Condense & Summarize Your Big Ideas with Icons Use icons as a direct translation of your information – or an obvious metaphor that won’t leave people guessing. Noun Project offers a dazzling range of icons, from the extremely literal (bar graphs, money, medical icons and more) to more broad and abstract concepts (gerrymandering, sanctuary city defunding, you name it)…. But with any icon you need, choose one that doesn’t need too much deciphering, or provide an explanatory caption where necessary. As with all things design, go by the famous maxim “ Don’t Make Me Think .”

• Aim for Visual Consistency Icons come in numerous styles: thin line icons, thick “glyph”-style icons, sharp, rounded, pixel-perfect or hand-drawn. Pick a style that suits your brand and message, then stick with it. Selecting icons from the same collection, or the same creator, will help maintain visual consistency – whereas a mixing and matching of styles will appear messier and less professional.

Tip: Try to select icons from the same collection so that they have a consistent visual style. ( Basic Interface icon collection by Caesar Rizky Kurniawan ).

• Use Icons to Accentuate Your Theme Icons don’t need to be used merely to reinforce your statistics – they can usher people through your narrative and play off your visual theme as well. Think about the stylistic possibilities of your overall presentation – e.g., bringing in a nostalgic ‘80s theme with 8-bit pixel icons or discussing holistic health with naturalistic, ecological icon collections. 

Tip: Browse the latest topical icon collections on Noun Project .

Use Photos to Suit the Mood

Icons aren’t the only must-have in packing a visual punch. While we’ve already written dedicated articles about the best ways to use stock photos in Powerpoint or even in social media campaigns , here are a few quick rules of thumb:

• Use photos that are natural, authentic, diverse, and inclusive Ditch the overly-posed and unnatural corporate stock photoshoots of bygone eras. It’s important to make sure your photos feature a variety of ages, ethnicities, body types, sexualities and more so that no matter who your audience, they’ll feel included (Hint: check out photo collections like Diversity in Tech and Empowered Women on Noun Project).

Tip: Search for diverse stock photos that don’t feel too “stock-y.” Relaxed poses and natural lighting and textures will look more suitable than the overly staged corporate photo shoots of yore. Explore the Diversity in Tech or Empowered Women collections on Noun Project for inspiration.

• Focus on single background images – not a whole album. Usually one supporting image is enough – there’s no need to include multiple images on a single slide as this muddles your message. If, perhaps, you want to show multiple photos to recap an event or show steps in a process, be sure to align your photos, use a grid system, or give each one even dimensions through thoughtful cropping.
• Visually unify your photos using color overlays Apps like Powerpoint will typically let you adjust brightness and hue or overlay a color so that multiple disparate photos can appear unified – and reinforce your brand.

Tip: While a full-color photo may be eye-catching, consider using a color overlay (at right) with your brand or theme colors to give a stronger air of sophistication and cohesion to disparate photos. (In Powerpoint, with an image selected, go to Picture Format > Color > More Variations to set your own color).

Get Started on Your Next Presentation Design With Noun Project.

Explore icon and photo collections, and unlock unlimited royalty-free icon downloads with Noun Pro .

Ready to try out different types of presentation design apps? If you’re looking for friendly, web-based alternatives to the classic Powerpoint, try out free options like Google Slides or even Canva .

Hungry for more design tips? View more on our blog at blog.thenounproject.com .

Marketing Communications Manager at Noun Project, Designer and Illustrator.

Related Articles

Graphic Design Principles: Rhythm, Repetition, and Pattern

by Jeremy Elliott | May 21, 2024 | Graphic Design , Creative Inspiration , DIY , Featured

Learn how rhythm, repetition, and pattern can make your designs both more digestible and more dynamic.

Design Icons: Dan Goods, Artist & Creative Director

by Lindsay Stuart | May 7, 2024 | Featured , Creative Inspiration , Graphic Design

In this series, we’re sharing conversations about work, life, and the future with some of today’s most influential designers and artists.

How to Use Inclusive Language for Image Titles and Tags

by Suzanne Strong | Apr 30, 2024 | Featured , Photography Tips

Learn how we approach photo tagging at Noun Project and get tips for implementing inclusive language in your work.

We use essential cookies to make Venngage work. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

Manage Cookies

Cookies and similar technologies collect certain information about how you’re using our website. Some of them are essential, and without them you wouldn’t be able to use Venngage. But others are optional, and you get to choose whether we use them or not.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are always on, as they’re essential for making Venngage work, and making it safe. Without these cookies, services you’ve asked for can’t be provided.

Show cookie providers

• Google Login

Functionality Cookies

These cookies help us provide enhanced functionality and personalisation, and remember your settings. They may be set by us or by third party providers.

Performance Cookies

These cookies help us analyze how many people are using Venngage, where they come from and how they're using it. If you opt out of these cookies, we can’t get feedback to make Venngage better for you and all our users.

• Google Analytics

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set by our advertising partners to track your activity and show you relevant Venngage ads on other sites as you browse the internet.

• Google Tag Manager
• Infographics
• Daily Infographics
• Popular Templates
• Accessibility
• Graphic Design
• Graphs and Charts
• Data Visualization
• Human Resources
• Beginner Guides

Blog Data Visualization 18 Presentation Design Tips For Success

18 Presentation Design Tips For Success

Written by: Midori Nediger May 15, 2023

Bad presentations. We’ve all had to sit through them.  Heck, we’ve probably all given one or two. I know I have.

You know the type: twice as long as they need to be, slides chock-full of text, no visuals in sight. 

How can you ensure you don’t fall victim to these presentation faux-pas when designing your next presentation for your team, class, or clients?

In this blog, I’ll walk you through tips on how to design an impactful presentation along with presentation templates that can help you deliver it with style to leave a lasting impression.

Tips for designing and delivering an impactful presentation

What makes a presentation memorable?

It usually comes down to three things:

• The main idea.
• The presenter.
• The visuals.

All three elements work together to create a successful presentation. Just like how different presentation styles serve different purposes, having a good presentation idea will give the audience a purpose for listening.

Here are some top tips to consider to help you design and deliver an impactful presentation:

• Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design
• Identify one core message to center your presentation design around
• Eliminate any information that doesn’t immediately support the core message
• Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused
• Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying
• Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide
• Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide
• Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged
• Use text size, weight, and color for emphasis
• Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction
• Split a group presentation by topic
• Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest
• Use presentation templates to help you get started
• Include examples of inspiring people
• Dedicate slides to poignant questions
• Find quotes that will inspire your audience
• Emphasize key points with text and images
• Label your slides to prompt your memory

1. Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design

According to David Paradi’s annual presentation survey , the 3 things that annoy audiences most about presentations are:

• Speakers reading their slides
• Slides that include full sentences of text
• Text that is too small to read

The common thread that ties all of these presentation annoyances is text. Audiences are very picky about the text found in presentation slide decks .

In my experiences speaking at conferences and in webinars over the past few years, audiences respond much more positively to presentations that use visuals in place of text.

Audiences are more engaged, ask more questions, and find my talks more memorable when I include lots of visual examples in my slide decks. 

I’m not the only one who has found this. We recently surveyed nearly 400 conference speakers about their presentation designs and found that 84.3% create presentations that are highly visual.

A great example of a high visual presentation is the iconic AirBnB pitch deck design , which includes no more than 40 words per slide. Instead of repeating the speaker’s script on the slides, it makes an impact with keywords, large numbers, and icons:

Learn how to customize this presentation template:

To help you take your presentations to the next level, I’d like to share my process for creating a visually-focused presentation like the one above. I’ll give you my top presentation design tips that I’ve learned over years of presenting:

• Class presentations
• Online courses

You can then apply this process to our professional presentation templates  or pitch decks , creating unique presentation decks with ease! Our user-friendly editor tools make customizing these templates a breeze.

To leave a lasting impression on your audience, consider transforming your slides into an interactive presentation. Here are 15 interactive presentation ideas to enhance interactivity and engagement.

We’ll cover the most important steps for summarizing lengthy text into a presentation-friendly format. Then we’ll touch on some presentation design tips to help you get visual with your slide decks. Read on for the best creative presentation ideas .

2. Identify one core message to center your presentation design around

We know from David Paradi’s survey that audiences are easily overwhelmed with lots of text and data, especially when presentations are long.

(You when you see a presentation with lots of text and data and it’s long)

So unlike in a white paper , report , or essay , you can’t expect to tackle many complex ideas within a single presentation.

That would be a recipe for disaster.

Instead, identify a single central message that you would like to communicate to your audience. Then build your presentation around that core message.

By identifying that core message, you can ensure that everything you include in your presentation supports the goal of the presentation .

As seen below, a great presentation tells you exactly what you’re going to learn (the core message), then gets right to the facts (the supporting information).

To ensure you create an asset that’s clear, concise, impactful, and easy to follow, design your presentation around a single core message.

3. Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused

Think of your outline as a roadmap for your presentation. Creating a strong presentation outline straight away helps make sure that you’re hitting all of the key points you need to cover to convey a persuasive presentation .

Take this presentation outline example:

• Introduction and hellos
• Vision and value proposition
• Financial profit
• Your investment
• Thanks and questions

These are all things that we know we need to talk about within the presentation.

Creating a presentation outline makes it much easier to know what to say when it comes to creating the actual presentation slides.

You could even include your presentation outline as a separate slide so that your audience knows what to expect:

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

4. Eliminate any information that doesn’t support the core message

Next, use that core message to identify everything that doesn’t belong in the presentation.

Aim to eliminate everything that isn’t immediately relevant to the topic at hand, and anything remotely redundant. Cut any information that isn’t absolutely essential to understanding the core message.

By cutting these extra details, you can transform forgettable text-heavy slides:

Into memorable slides with minimal text:

Here’s a quick checklist to help you cut out any extra detail:

Get rid of:

• Detailed descriptions
• Background information
• Redundant statements
• Explanations of common knowledge
• Persuasive facts and figures
• Illustrative examples
• Impactful quotes

This step may seem obvious, but when you’re presenting on a topic that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to get carried away with extraneous detail. Use the recommendations above to keep your text in check.

Clarity is key, especially if you’re presenting virtually rather than in-person. However, Lisa Schneider (Chief Growth Officer at Merriam-Webster) has had plenty of experience making that adjustment. She recently shared her tips for adapting in-person presentations into virtual presentations on Venngage that you can check out. 

Watch: How to design a presentation [10 ESSENTIAL TIPS]

5. Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying

According to presentation guru  Nancy Duarte , your audience should be able to discern the meaning of your slides in 6 seconds or less.

Since your audience will tend to read every word you place on each slide, you must keep your text to an absolute minimum. The text on your slides should provide support for what you’re saying without being distracting.

Never write out, word for word, what you’re going to be saying out loud. If you’re relying on text to remember certain points, resist the urge to cram them into your slides. Instead, use a tool like Venngage’s speaker notes to highlight particular talking points. These can be imported into PowerPoint — along with the rest of your presentation — and will only be viewable to you, not your audience.

For the actual slides, text should only be used to reinforce what you’re saying. Like in the presentation design below, paraphrase long paragraphs into short bulleted lists or statements by eliminating adjectives and articles (like “the” and “a”).

Pull out quotes and important numbers, and make them a focus of each slide.

6. Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide

As I mentioned above, audiences struggle when too much information is presented on a single slide.

To make sure you don’t overwhelm your audiences with too much information, spread out your content to cover one major takeaway per slide.

By limiting each slide to a single simple statement, you focus your audience’s attention on the topic at hand.

My favorite way to do this is to pick out the core message of whatever I’m talking about and express it in a few keywords, as seen in this presentation slide below.

This helps ensure that the visuals remain the focus of the slide.

Using the text in this way, to simply state a single fact per slide, is a sure-fire way to make an impact in your presentation.

Alternatively, pull out a significant statistic that you want to stick in your audience’s minds and make it a visual focus of the slide, as seen in this popular presentation by Officevibe .

This might mean you end up with a slide deck with a ton of slides. But that’s totally ok!

I’ve talked to many professionals who are pressured by their management teams to create presentations with a specific number of slides (usually as few as 10 or 15 slides for a 30-minute presentation).

If you ask me, this approach is completely flawed. In my mind, the longer I spend sitting on a single slide, the more likely I am to lose the interest of my audience.

How many slides should I use for a 10 minute presentation?

A good rule of thumb is to have at least as many slides as minutes in your presentation. So for a 10 minute presentation you should have at least 10 slides .

Use as many slides as you need, as long as you are presenting a single message on each slide, (as seen in the lengthy presentation template below). This is especially important if you’re presenting your business, or delivering a product presentation. You want to wow your audience, not bore them.

7. Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide

As important as having one major takeaway per slide is having visuals that highlight the major takeaway on each slide.

Unique visuals will help make your message memorable.

Visuals are a great way to eliminate extra text, too.

You can add visuals by creating a timeline infographic to group and integrate information into visual frameworks like this:

Or create a flowchart  and funnels:

Or by representing simple concepts with icons, as seen in the modern presentation design below. Using the same color for every icon helps create a polished look.

Using visuals in this way is perfect for when you have to convey messages quickly to audiences that you aren’t familiar with – such as at conferences. This would also make the ideal interview presentation template.

You can alternatively use icons in different colors, like in the presentation templates below. Just make sure the colors are complimentary, and style is consistent throughout the presentation (i.e. don’t use sleek, modern icons on one slide and whimsically illustrated icons on another). In this example, presentation clipart style icons have been used.

Any time you have important stats or trends you want your audience to remember, consider using a chart or data visualization to drive your point home. Confident public speaking combined with strong visualizations can really make an impact, encouraging your audience to act upon your message.

One of my personal favorite presentations (created by a professional designer) takes this “key message plus a visual” concept to the extreme, resulting in a slide deck that’s downright irresistible.

When applying this concept, don’t fall into the trap of using bad stock photos . Irrelevant or poorly chosen visuals can hurt you as much as they help you.

Below is an example of how to use stock photos effectively. They are more thematic than literal and are customized with fun, bright icons that set a playful tone.

The content and visual design of a presentation should be seamless.

It should never seem like your text and visuals are plopped onto a template. The format and design of the slides should contribute to and support the audience’s understanding of the content.

8. Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged

It’s easy for audiences to get lost during long presentations, especially if you have lots of slides. And audiences zone out when they get lost.

To help reorient your audience every once in a while, you can use something I like to call scaffolding slides. Scaffolding slides appear throughout a presentation to denote the start and end of major sections.

The core scaffolding slide is the agenda slide, which should appear right after the introduction or title slide. It outlines the major sections of the presentation.

At the beginning of each section, you should show that agenda again but highlight the relevant section title, as seen below.

This gives audiences the sense that you’re making progress through the presentation and helps keep them anchored and engaged.

Alternatively, you can achieve a similar effect by numbering your sections and showing that number on every slide. Or use a progress bar at the bottom of each slide to indicate how far along you are in your presentation. Just make sure it doesn’t distract from the main content of the slides.

You can imagine using this “progress bar” idea for a research presentation, or any presentation where you have a lot of information to get through.

Leila Janah, founder of Sama Group, is great at this. Her  Innovation and Inspire  talk about Sama Group is an example of a presentation that is well organized and very easy to follow.

Her presentation follows a logical, steady stream of ideas. She seems comfortable talking in front of a crowd but doesn’t make any attempts to engage directly with them.

9. Use text size, weight and color for emphasis

Every slide should have a visual focal point. Something that immediately draws the eye at first glance.

That focal point should be whatever is most important on that slide, be it an important number, a keyword, or simply the slide title.

We can create visual focal points by varying the size, weight, and color of each element on the slide. Larger, brighter, bolder elements will command our audience’s attention, while smaller, lighter elements will tend to fade into the background.

As seen in the presentation template above, this technique can be especially useful for drawing attention to important words within a long passage of text. Consider using this technique whenever you have more than 5 words on a slide.

And if you really want your audience to pay attention, pick a high-contrast color scheme like the one below.

When picking fonts for your presentation, keep this technique in mind. Pick a font that has a noticeable difference between the “bold” font face and the “regular” font face. Source Sans Pro, Times New Roman, Montserrat, Arvo, Roboto, and Open Sans are all good options.

The last thing to remember when using size, weight, and color to create emphasis on a slide: don’t try to emphasize too many things on one slide.

If everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.

10. Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction

Audiences are quick to pick out, and focus on, any inconsistencies in your presentation design. As a result, messy, inconsistent slide decks lead to distracted, disengaged audiences.

Design choices (fonts and colors, especially), must be applied consistently across a slide deck. The last thing you want is for your audience to pay attention to your design choices before your content.

To keep your design in check, it can be helpful to create a color palette and type hierarchy before you start creating your deck, and outline it in a basic style guide like this one:

I know it can sometimes be tempting to fiddle around with text sizes to fit longer bits of text on a slide, but don’t do it! If the text is too long to fit on a slide, it should be split up onto multiple slides anyway.

And remember, a consistent design isn’t necessarily a boring one. This social media marketing presentation applies a bright color scheme to a variety of 3-column and 2-column layouts, remaining consistent but still using creative presentation ideas.

11. Split a group presentation by topic

When giving a group presentation it’s always difficult to find the right balance of who should present which part.

Splitting a group presentation by topic is the most natural way to give everybody the chance to attempt without it seeming disjointed.

When presenting this slide deck to investors or potential clients, the team can easily take one topic each. One person can discuss the business model slide, and somebody else can talk about the marketing strategy.

Top tips for group presentations:

• Split your group presentation by topic
• Introduce the next speaker at the end of your slide
• Become an ‘expert’ in the slide that you are presenting
• Rehearse your presentation in advance so that everybody knows their cue to start speaking

12. Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest

Page after page of the same layout can become repetitive and boring. Mix up the layout of your slides to keep your audience interested.

In this example, the designer has used a variety of combinations of images, text, and icons to create an interesting and varied style.

There are hundreds of different combinations of presentation layers and presentation styles that you can use to help create an engaging presentation . This style is great for when you need to present a variety of information and statistics, like if you were presenting to financial investors, or you were giving a research presentation.

Using a variety of layouts to keep an audience engaged is something that Elon Musk is an expert in. An engaged audience is a hyped audience. Check out this Elon Musk presentation revealing a new model Tesla for a masterclass on how to vary your slides in an interesting way:

13. Use presentation templates to help you get started

It can be overwhelming to build your own presentation from scratch. Fortunately, my team at Venngage has created hundreds of professional presentation templates , which make it easy to implement these design principles and ensure your audience isn’t deterred by text-heavy slides.

Using a presentation template is a quick and easy way to create professional-looking presentation skills, without any design experience. You can edit all of the text easily, as well as change the colors, fonts, or photos. Plus you can download your work in a PowerPoint or PDF Presentation format.

After your presentation, consider summarizing your presentation in an engaging manner to r each a wider audience through a LinkedIn presentation .

14. Include examples of inspiring people

People like having role models to look up to. If you want to motivate your audience, include examples of people who demonstrate the traits or achievements, or who have found success through the topic you are presenting.

15. Dedicate slides to poignant questions

While you might be tempted to fill your slides with decorative visuals and splashes of color, consider that sometimes simplicity is more effective than complexity. The simpler your slide is, the more you can focus on one thought-provoking idea.

16. Find quotes that will inspire your audience

A really good quote can stick in a person’s mind for weeks after your presentation. Ending your presentation with a quote can be a nice way to either begin or finish your presentation.

A great example of this is Tim Ferriss’ TED talk:

Check out the full talk below.

17. Emphasize key points with text and images

When you pair concise text with an image, you’re presenting the information to your audience in two simultaneous ways. This can make the information easier to remember, and more memorable.

Use your images and text on slides to reinforce what you’re saying out loud.

Doing this achieves two things:

• When the audience hears a point and simultaneously read it on the screen, it’s easier to retain.
• Audience members can photograph/ screencap the slide and share it with their networks.

Don’t believe us? See this tip in action with a presentation our Chief Marketing Officer Nadya gave recently at Unbounce’s CTA Conference . The combination of text and images on screen leads to a memorable presentation.

18. Label your slides to prompt your memory

Often, presenters will write out an entire script for their presentation and read it off a teleprompter. The problem is, that can often make your presentation seem  too  rehearsed and wooden.

But even if you don’t write a complete script, you can still put key phrases on your slides to prompt jog your memory. The one thing you have to be wary of is looking back at your slides too much.

A good presentation gets things moving! Check out the top qualities of awesome presentations and learn all about how to make a good presentation to help you nail that captivating delivery.

Audiences don’t want to watch presentations with slide decks jam-packed with text. Too much text only hurts audience engagement and understanding. Your presentation design is as important as your presentation style. 

By summarizing our text and creating slides with a visual focus, we can give more exciting, memorable and impactful presentations.

Give it a try with one of our popular presentation templates:

Discover popular designs

Infographic maker

Brochure maker

White paper online

Newsletter creator

Flyer maker

Timeline maker

Letterhead maker

Mind map maker

Ebook maker

• About Deck Sherpa
• Why Deck Sherpa
• Sherpa Wisdom

Presentation Design: Everything You Need to Know! [+Tips]

PowerPoint Design PowerPoint Presentation Presentation Design Professional Presentation Design

Whether you're new or experienced in making slides, it's important to learn how to make a great presentation. You must keep your audience interested and listening.

In this guide, we're going to dive into everything about making great presentations. You'll get to know what presentation design is all about, and we'll show you how it's both an art and a bit like science too.

This article is like your go-to guide for all things about designing presentations. We'll explain different presentation styles, offer simple slide tips, and share the newest design ideas.

Presentation design is always changing and growing. This means that there's a lot of important information you need to know. By the time you're done reading, you'll have all the tricks up your sleeve to create presentations that look amazing and get your point across.

What is Presentation Design?

Presentation design is about making slides with pictures, words, and colors that help share your ideas.

You pick just the right mix of these things to make slides that teach people and look great. A good presentation provides a clear message while keeping people interested from start to finish.

A skilled presentation designer is integral to this process. They work to understand the core message and the target audience to create a cohesive set of slides. There are special design principles put in place to organize information so it's easy to understand and make an impact. A presentation designer's job is two-fold. He or she must simplify information and make it interesting in a presentation.

In a world where attention spans are short, effective presentation design is crucial. It's not only about aesthetics; it's a critical tool for communication. Presentation designers turn your spoken ideas into compelling graphical stories. This way, they make sure your presentation connects with people and sticks in their minds.

Is Presentation Design Important?

Yes, presentation design is essential for several reasons:

Presentation design organises your thoughts and data visually, preventing confusion. It helps you simplify information into digestible pieces, ensures that your main points are easy to grasp, helping your audience understand your message quickly and accurately. This is especially helpful when you sit through business presentations or even financial presentations.

Engaging presentation design goes beyond words; it uses visuals, diagrams, and animations to keep your audience interested. A visually stimulating PowerPoint slide design can transform a mundane talk into a dynamic experience, encouraging viewers to pay attention from start to finish.

Brand Consistency

Consistent branding in your PowerPoint design reinforces your identity. It allows every slide to resonate with your corporate colors, logos, and themes, fostering brand recognition and professionalism in the minds of your audience.

Professionalism

A polished presentation design speaks volumes about your attention to detail and dedication. It suggests you value your audience's time by providing a well-thought-out, aesthetically pleasing, and organised presentation.

Humans are visual creatures or rather, lean towards visual thinking . A PowerPoint design that uses compelling imagery and key points is memorable, helping your audience remember the presented information long after they've left the room.

In a pitch deck design, every slide is an opportunity to persuade. When you show data and ideas in a way that's clear and attractive, you have a better chance of convincing your audience.

Differentiation

Unique presentation design sets you apart. It shows you're not another voice in the crowd but an innovator who takes the time to present creative and effective ideas.

Using various colors , pictures, and fonts in your slides can make people feel things, helping you connect with them better. This can help get your message across faster.

Presentation design conveys information fast. A well-designed chart or graph in your PowerPoint can simplify tricky data, giving you more time to talk and answer questions.

Storytelling

A great presentation tells a story. With a well-planned PowerPoint, you can take your audience on an adventure, telling your story in a way that sticks with them.

In summary, presentation design is an essential part of any presentation. Great presentation makes it easier to share what you want to say. It also makes your presentation more fun to watch. Plus, it makes your brand or business look professional. Taking time to make your PowerPoint or any presentation great is a smart move. Spending time on making your PowerPoint, pitch deck, or any presentation really good is worth it.

Types of Presentations

Various presentations exist, each designed with a distinct goal and approach. Here are a few of the most common types of presentations :

Demonstrative Presentations

These are hands-on, showing how things work. Crafting a presentation design that's detailed and clear, helps people better understand what you're showing them. This is especially useful during a product demo or a new launch.

Decision-driven Presentations

Here, presentation design helps lay out choices for a clear decision. For example, using an organized slide layout can guide a team during strategic business meetings.

Emotive Presentations

Emotive talks stir feelings with stories that resonate. When you design your slides to make people feel something, it can be really strong. Like when a charity uses slides with touching stories to help people want to give money.

Every kind of presentation has its special role in making your message click. When you get what each type does best, you can pick the perfect one to connect with your crowd and get your point across. Remember, the way you lay out your slides counts too. Nail that, and you'll whip up a presentation that’s both engaging and memorable. Want to see all the different kinds of presentations ? Just hit the link.

12 Simple Steps for Designing an Effective Presentation

Creating an engaging and effective presentation is both an art and a science. It involves careful planning, thoughtful design, and strategic execution. You can split presentation design into steps. These steps help you from the start of your idea to when you finish your presentation. Whether you're crafting a PowerPoint presentation design for a business meeting or an educational seminar, following these steps can help you communicate your message with clarity and impact. Here's how you can design a presentation that captures attention and achieves your goals.

Establish Your Goal

Understand your audience, draft your content, choose a design template, refine your slide layouts, incorporate visuals and graphics, review and edit your slides, practice your delivery, gather feedback, make final adjustments, prepare for questions, set up ahead of time, presentation design vs. presentation templates: what are the differences.

Two things are synonymous with presentations: presentation design and presentation templates. They may seem the same, but they do different things to make a great presentation. Understanding how they're different helps you make a presentation that people will remember. We'll show you what sets them apart and why that's important for a great presentation. We'll explain how these small differences can make your presentation stand out or not.

Presentation Design

Presentation design is about making a set of slides that help tell your message. You pick colors, fonts, and pictures that look good and explain the speaker's words.

Presentation Templates

On the other hand, presentation templates are pre-designed frameworks for slides. They help make your slides look the same with consistent colors and layouts. They have spots where you can easily add your words, pictures, and charts. Templates are like a ready-made start for your presentation.

Note: Keep in mind that Deck Sherpa makes custom templates you can use again later.

Here are the key differences laid out:

Creation vs. Usage

• Presentation design is about creating a unique visual narrative for a specific message.
• People use presentation templates to apply a standardized design across different presentations.

Customization

• You can customize your presentation design according to your message and audience.
• You can't change presentation templates since they are pre-designed.

Time and Effort

• Designing an effective presentation from scratch requires more time and design skills.
• Using templates saves time and effort, as the basic design elements are already in place.

Originality

• Presentation design is original and can be as creative and unique as you want it to be.
• A lot of people use presentation templates to save time. While it helps, it's important to understand these pre-designed slides are not original.

Functionality

• A well-designed presentation considers the following - the flow of information, - the importance of visuals - the way slides transition
• Templates provide a basic setup, but they might not be optimal for the flow of information

In short, presentation design helps you make slides that tell a story your way. Presentation templates help you make consistent-looking slides fast. Below you’ll find some amazing tips that could be of tremendous help in your slide design.

10 Tips You Need to Know for Stunning Slide Design

Creating a great presentation is part art, part smart thinking. Think of each slide as a piece of your story's puzzle. You might want to teach, inspire, or persuade your audience. No matter what, how your slides look is crucial for success.

Here are 10 top tips to polish your presentation and make your slides pop. They'll help make sure your next pitch or talk is both eye-catching and memorable.

Embrace White Space

Use high-quality images, consistent theme, contrast for clarity, limit text quantity, readable fonts, use charts and graphs, use color wisely, animate with purpose, end with a strong close.

These tips can make your slides go from okay to amazing, helping people remember your message. Keeping the above points in mind, let’s learn what 2024’s presentation design trends look like.

Exciting Presentation Design Trends That You'll Need in 2024

Back in 2023, we shared a list of amazing trends in presentation design that we hoped you used as much as you could. As 2024 is getting closer, the way we make presentations is changing. It's mixing new technology with cool design ideas. Some exciting new trends are coming up, and we've listed them for you. Let's see how you can use these to make your presentations stand out.

Minimalist Presentation Design

It’s no secret that most people today prefer to follow the less-is-more philosophy. You'll see slides that are simple and not too busy, with lots of space. This helps keep the focus on the main point. It makes your stories come alive and keeps your audience hooked all the way through.

Immersive Storytelling

PowerPoint’s animations and transitions capabilities are set to become more advanced. They'll liven up stories, keeping the audience interested and involved in the presentation. You can make your PowerPoint presentations easier and way more interesting.

AI-Enhanced Presentations

We're leaning into Artificial Intelligence (AI) more than ever these days. This technology is set to give our presentations a personal touch like never before. Imagine getting smart design tips from AI or having your slides tweak themselves automatically after sensing the audience's reactions. You’ll be able to streamline your PowerPoint designs, making them not only easier to create but also more engaging and impactful.

Bold Typography

Big, bold fonts are the most popular way to catch your audience's attention and make your point. As a bonus, bold fonts also make your slides instantly readable and more effective.

Data Visualisation

People are going to use cool, interactive data visualisation in the form of infographics, tables, charts, etc. a lot more. They make hard information easy and clear to remember. This helps your audience understand and remember the important information.

Inclusive Presentation Design

Making slides easy for everyone to see and understand will be important. This means creating accessible presentations so all kinds of people can follow, no matter their abilities.

Using the newest trends to design presentations can make your slides way better. They'll look great, be clear, grab attention, and include everyone. A well-made presentation is awesome for connecting with your audience. Staying up-to-date with these new ideas can make your connection even stronger in 2024.

8 Important Presentation Rules To Know and Follow

When it comes to presentation design, various rules can guide you to create effective and engaging slides. Here are some key ones:

The 10/20/30 Rule

The 5/5/5 rule, the rule of thirds, the 6x6 rule, the contrast rule, the picture superiority effect, the font consistency rule, the 7x7 rule.

Each of these rules serves as a guideline to make your presentation design more effective. While it’s important to know these rules, remember that the best PPT layout design is one that effectively communicates your message and engages your audience.

Presentation Design Prices: Choosing What's Better For You

When you look at prices for presentation design, they're different all over the world. In India, the prices are usually between $100 and $500 for packages. It's cheaper because living in India costs less. This lets the agencies offer good work at lower prices. But for really tough projects, they might charge more.

But in Western countries like the USA or UK, the prices for presentation design packages are higher. They often start at $500 and can go up to a few thousand dollars for really detailed or special designs. That's because living and working there costs more. People who choose these agencies often pay extra for their special knowledge about local styles or new design ideas.

So, when picking an agency, it depends on how much money you want to spend and what you need. Indian agencies are good for great work at lower prices. Agencies from the USA or UK might have more knowledge about local styles or new design methods. It's all about what you value more: saving money, local know-how, or a mix of both. That's why we've made a list of the best presentation design agencies from around the world for you to see.

The Most-Acclaimed Presentation Design Agencies Across the World

Lately, the presentation design industry has been booming and getting more creative. Using high-quality images and strong communication is crucial in the corporate and educational world. That's why more people are looking for expert help with their presentations. Today presentation design agencies create presentations from scratch, enhance corporate pitches, and even transform educational materials, turning simple slides into powerful narratives. We understand how necessary awesome presentations are, so we've gathered a list of top-notch presentation design agencies from everywhere. Each brings something unique to the table with their skills, covering all types of presentation needs. Let’s take a look at these standout presentation design experts.

Deck Sherpa

Deck Sherpa creates custom slides that fit right in with what your business wants to say. They're all about making presentations that not only look good but also get your message across clearly, whatever your business needs.

SlideGenius

SlideGenius is a presentation design agency based in the United States. Their goal is to inspire audience action through engaging, meaningful, and memorable presentations.

Buffalo 7 in the UK turns plain slides into something exciting. They're good at turning your ideas into nice-looking presentations that tell a story.

BrightCarbon

BrightCarbon works on both slide design and instructional design for eLearning content and training. They focus on using visual aids and animations to simplify complex topics, making them engaging for the audience.

Stinson Design

Stinson Design specializes in custom, professional presentations for all industries, focusing on effective storytelling and visuals. They focus on effective communication using storytelling and visual techniques.

24Slides offers quick presentation design services from custom templates to slide redesigns. Their focus is on providing accessible, high-quality designs to a diverse range of clients.

Is Your Presentation Design Holding You Back?

As we said before, making a great presentation is a mix of art and science. Deck Sherpa is excellent at turning your ideas into beautiful slides, making us the top choice for presentation design. We're in India and work with all kinds of companies, here and across the globe. Our team knows how to make presentations that different audiences will like and engage with.

Why pick Deck Sherpa? We know every presentation is special. Our designers and storytellers work with you to make sure your presentation is not only seen, but also felt and remembered. It could be for business, a big idea, or a class. We focus on the small things, are creative, and keep up with new styles to make sure your presentation is right.

Plus, our rates are reasonable and you get awesome designs without spending a lot. In short, we're great for anyone who wants to impress their audience without breaking the bank.

If you want to make your next presentation better, come to Deck Sherpa. We'll be your team to make presentations that catch people's eyes and stick in their minds. Check out our website to see our work and find out more. You can call, email, or message us to get started. Please find the details below.

Call: 1800 121 5955 (India) Email: [email protected] WhatsApp Contact Form

How Can I be a Good Presentation Designer?

What are the 3 rules of presentation design, related posts, designing a helpful pharmaceutical ppt: tips and best practices, understanding the magic of typography in presentation design, google slides vs. powerpoint: which is better for presentation design.

A Beginner’s Guide To Presentation Design [+15 Stunning Templates]

Table of Contents

• What Is Presentation Design? 

What Is the Significance of Presentation Design?

Understanding various forms of presentations.

• 10 Tips to Create a Compelling Presentation Design 

5 Inspirational Presentation Design Trends

• 15 Best Presentation Design Templates to Consider 
• Key Takeaways 
• Conclusion 

Once you’ve mapped out your presentation, it’s time to tackle the intimidating task of creating a visually stunning presentation design . Creating an excellent presentation design becomes simpler by learning and adhering to fundamental presentation design standards. Here is a presentation design guide to creating an engaging and well-designed presentation,  regardless of the kind of project you are putting together. 

What Is Presentation Design?

Presentation design focuses on the visual facet of your presentation to captivate your audience. An outstanding presentation design may significantly impact your target audience, whether it is investors, employees, collaborators, or potential customers. The design must ideally complement the material of your presentation to help get your views across and convince your audience.

Creating a presentation for the first time to present in a professional setting or to a large audience might feel challenging. This guide to presentation design will walk you through the elements required for building a visually appealing presentation. 

A presentation is much more than just a layout of slides with text and graphics on them. You need to make sure it’s visually appealing too. It is mainly because visuals are much more engaging than written words in your presentation slides. Presentation design is crucial because it allows you to combine your ideas, narrative, graphics, facts, and statistics into one cohesive tale that drives your audience to the decision you desire.

A robust presentation design may unlock doors you never imagined could be opened. An effective design is much simpler to understand and earns a lot of credibility for your brand. You can communicate your message effectively, encourage your audience to take subsequent actions, and get them to engage with what you’re saying with excellent presentation design.

You have the potential to communicate your point of view, create a brand identity, and get your audience to see and hear you loud and clear when you build a presentation with impeccable design. The material of your presentation is crucial to your project’s success, but a poor design may divert the listener’s attention (and not for a good reason). Don’t let a lousy presentation design force you to lose out on a huge business opportunity.

Creating a winning presentation design involves combining design components to produce slides that will neither bore nor exhaust your audience. Instead, it will engage and inspire them effectively. So, instead of creating a lousy presentation using shoddy designs, it is significant to master the fundamentals of creating the best presentation design.

Presentations may be used for several purposes and can come in different forms. A quarterly sales presentation with your team will not be the same as a presentation focused on employee training. 

In the first scenario, you’ll strive to advance your team to achieve targeted sales growth. In the second, you’ll focus on imparting essential knowledge and skills to your employees. Looking at some of the most prevalent presentation types can give you a better idea about presentation design and when to begin constructing your own.

1. Investor pitch presentation

Using facts to convince rather than enlighten is the primary goal of this presentation style, as indicated by the name. If you’re a startup or a small firm looking for investment, you’ll need to use this form of presentation to your advantage. An investor pitch presentation will be required when you’re explaining your company’s user acquisition growth rate to prospective investors. Such presentations are created using the classic pitch deck concept to make the perfect, thoroughly professional pitch.

2. Educational presentations

Educational presentations are sometimes misunderstood as informative presentations since they are designed to teach viewers new skills and educate them on a new subject. You may need to produce a presentation for a school for various reasons, such as presenting an idea or providing an academic report.

Academic and corporate training programs often employ this presentation format. A video tutorial with comments and suitable themes may be added to the slides to improve them. Educators are always looking for new and unique methods to provide engaging and enthralling presentations for their students. Using an educational presentation template may guarantee that your presentation is visually appealing as well as easily comprehensible.

3. Webinar presentations

Webinar presentations are the newest craze, and they’re a win-win for presenters and the audience alike. A webinar refers to an online presentation, but unlike a video posted elsewhere, the webinar takes place in real-time and with the active participation of the audience. There are several themes and settings for which webinar presentations might be utilized. 

Short surveys, quizzes, and Q&A sessions let participants feel more involved in the webinar. Most commonly, a webinar is meant to disseminate information, but it may also act as a marketing tool, a source of leads, or a way to generate new sales and sign-ups.

4. Report presentations

A report presentation is intended to offer the necessary information to those engaged in a process or project. Report presentations are critical in ensuring these stakeholders that the procedures that must be followed for the project’s completion are effectively planned and executed. Sample reports are also accessible to these stakeholders. 

A report presentation may take numerous forms, such as a business report or an infographic. Reports on sales and marketing performance, website statistics, income, or any other data that your team or supervisors wish to know about can be presented during the report presentation.

5. Sales presentations

Sales presentations are often the initial phase in the sales cycle, and are, therefore,  critical. A sales presentation, often known as a sales pitch deck, is a form of presentation you would need to provide a prospective customer or client with when pitching a product or service.

Not every sales presentation is designed to close a deal right away. The goal might be to pique the curiosity of the people concerned. Sales presentations often include your company’s unique selling proposition (USP), product price points, and testimonials. Your sales presentation must be engaging and successful in influencing potential customers, using a well-thought-out approach.

6. Inspirational presentations

An inspiring presentation is a standard tool used by managers, team leaders, motivational speakers, and business owners to stimulate and encourage their audience. Inspirational presentations are essential to influencing others and achieving your individual and business goals. 

To get a desirable result from this kind of presentation, elicit an emotional response from the audience and motivate them to act. Using a presentation template that has been professionally developed provides you with an advantage over others. 

7. Keynote presentations

Keynote presentations are given in front of a larger audience. A good example can be those shown at TED Talks and other conferences. While the presenter gives the entire speech, there are advantages to using slides, such as keeping an audience engaged and on track.

10 Tips to Create a Compelling Presentation Design

If your presentation is lousy, you might come across as unprepared, uninterested, and lacking any credibility. A well-designed presentation makes you appear reliable and competent. Here are some fantastic points to help you develop the best presentation design.

1. Outline your content and fine-tune the message

It’s crucial to prepare your content and fine-tune your main message before you begin developing your presentation. Try to figure out what your target audience wants to know, what they may already know, and what will keep them engaged. Then, when you create your presentation’s content, keep those things in mind and furnish designs accordingly. It is vital to remember the key takeaway of each deck you create.

Too much information shown on a single slide is difficult for most viewers to comprehend. Make sure you don’t overwhelm your viewers; each presentation slide should include no more than one key point. Make your information as brief as possible, yet make it detailed enough and valuable.

2. Use more visuals and less text in your decks

Your audience recalls information considerably better when images complement it because they can better understand visual features than simple text. Presenters that employ images instead of words get more favorable feedback from their audience than those who rely only on text.

Using visual examples in slide decks increases audience engagement, encourages more questions, and registers your message in the minds of your audience. Remove any unnecessary text from your slides and replace it with visuals that will engage your audience.

You may use various methods for adding images, but the most common is using your data’s visual representation. It’s important to note that adding visuals does not mean sprinkling fancy images and symbols across your slides. Relevant images and iconography are a must.

3. Limit the use of fonts and colors

It is vital to pay attention to color schemes and other design components, such as fonts, to ensure your presentation succeeds. Although it may be thrilling to employ as many fonts and colors as possible, the best presentation design practices imply that you should only use two or three colors overall. Also, make sure the content in your slides is of a different font than the headers.

When it comes to color schemes, certain combinations work better than others. When choosing colors, keep in mind that they should not detract from the message you want to convey. Add an accent color to one or two of your primary hues for a cohesive look. It’s critical that the colors you choose complement one another and communicate your purpose effectively. Headers should be in one typeface, while body content should be in another. Add a third font for the accents, if you’d like. 

4. Create a visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is an important consideration when including text in a presentation. Visual hierarchy is one of the most significant but underappreciated presentation design principles. Color, size, contrast, alignment, and other aspects of your slide’s elements should all depend on their value.

When creating a visual hierarchy, you must clearly understand the story and its structure. Your audience’s attention should be drawn to the most critical components first, then to the second-most essential aspects, and so on. When creating your presentation, think about the story you want to tell and the visual hierarchy you need to support it. If you do this, the essential ideas you wish to convey will not be lost on your audience. 

5. Incorporate powerful visuals

It is important to use visual aids to make a compelling presentation: think images, icons, graphics, films, graphs, and charts. You should also ensure your slides’ aesthetics accurately portray the text they contain. Alternatively, if you don’t have words on the slide, make sure the visuals mirror the words you’re saying in your speech.

Visual aids should enhance your presentation. In addition, you’ll want to ensure that your slide has some form of visual representation so that you’re not just dumping a bunch of text onto a slide.

6. Avoid using bullet points

These days, any excellent presentation design instruction would encourage you to avoid bullet points as much as possible. They’re dull and old-fashioned, and there are more effective methods to display your material. 

A slide consisting of icons, images, and infographics is more exciting and conversational than one written in list form. Using bullet points for each slide’s primary theme is a standard PowerPoint design recommendation that you should refrain from while designing your presentation.  

7. In group presentations, segregate slides by theme

While making a group presentation, finding an appropriate balance of who should be demonstrating which presentation segment is often challenging. Arranging a group presentation by topic is the most natural technique to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak, without the presentation becoming incoherent. Your group presentation should be divided into sections based on the subject.

Prepare your presentation ahead of time so that everyone understands when it’s their turn to talk. It’s up to each person in the group to pick one thing to talk about when they give this presentation to investors or potential customers. For instance, the business model slide may be addressed by one person, while another can discuss the marketing approach.

8. Maintain consistency

Consistency is essential when you work on the design of your presentation. Your presentation is still one presentation, no matter how many slides it has. Design elements, color schemes, and similar illustrations can all be used to achieve design consistency.

Although some of the slides in your presentation may appear to be styled differently than the others, the overall presentation must be held together by a single color scheme. To ensure that your viewers don’t lose track of what you’re saying, make sure each of your slides is visually connected.

9. Emphasize important points

It is pertinent to use shapes, colorful fonts, and figures pointing to your material. They help emphasize vital information to make it stand out. This not only keeps the reader’s attention on the page but also makes your design more streamlined. Emphasizing the point you’re trying to put across with visual elements makes it easier for your audience to grasp what you’re saying.

10. Integrate data visualization

Consider utilizing a chart or data visualization to drive your argument home, especially if you have vital figures or trends you want your audience to remember. This might be a bar graph or a pie chart that displays various data points, a percentage indication, or an essential value pictogram. 

Confident public speaking mixed with good visuals may greatly influence your audience, inspiring them to take action. The use of design features makes it simpler for your audience to grasp and recall both complex and fundamental data and statistics, and the presentation becomes much more enjoyable too. 

Even though trends come and go, effective presentation design paired with some inspiration to get you started will always be in style. Think about what’s current in the world of graphic design before you create a staggering presentation deck for a creative proposal or a business report. To help you better, we’ve come up with a list of the most popular presentation design concepts. 

1. Dark backdrops with neon colors

While white backgrounds have long dominated web design, the advent of “dark mode” is gradually altering that. Designers may use dark mode to play with contrast and make creative things stand out.

This is a great way to get your audience’s attention and keep them interested in what you have to say. The key is to pick one or two bright colors and utilize them as highlights against a dark backdrop, rather than using an abundance of them.                                                                                            

2. Monochromatic color schemes

In recent years, color schemes originating from one base hue, such as monochromatic color schemes, have been given a subdued pastel makeover. The usage of monochromatic color schemes in presentation design is always seen as clean and professional. It’s ideal for pitch decks and presentations since monochrome is generally utilized to assist people in concentrating on the text and message, rather than the colors inside a design.

3. Easy-to-understand data analysis

The fundamentals of data visualization should be restored. In other words, even the most complicated measurements may be made easy to grasp via effective design. Designers, marketers, and presenters are generating snackable stats in the same way infographics have found a place on visual-first social networks.

Create a dynamic proposal or presentation with the help of an infographic template that is easy to use. You can create distinctive slides with animations and transitions to explain your point more effectively. With the help of templates, you can convert your data into bar graphs, bar charts, and bubbles that represent your idea simply, guaranteeing that every data point is simple to comprehend.

4. Straightforward minimalism

Minimalism is a design trend that will probably never go out of style. It has always been a show-stopper. Each slide should offer just enough information to let the reader comprehend what’s going on. You should use a color palette that isn’t distracting. Your simple presentation will enthrall your audience if you boldly highlight your most significant points and use trendy fonts.

5. Geometric structures

There’s a good reason why designers are so fond of geometric patterns, 3D objects, and asymmetrical layouts. They’re basic yet stunning, making them perfect for times you want to make a lasting impression with the information you’re sharing. 

More cutting-edge components, such as 3D shapes and floating objects, are used in presentation graphics these days. Go for a presentation template that contains editable slides that enable you to easily add your visuals and material to brighten your presentation. 

15 Best Presentation Design Templates to Consider

In the case of presentation designs, you should never sacrifice quality. Ideally, you should have a design that improves your brand’s image, amplifies your message, and enables you to deliver various content forms efficiently. 

The problem is, it’s pretty challenging to locate premade themes and templates of this merit. We’ve made it easy for you by putting together a list of the best 15 presentation design templates out there. These presentation design suggestions are a great place to start.  

1. Business plan presentation template

This is a crucial business presentation template with a significant emphasis on visualizations and graphics. To create a business strategy, you need this presentation template. It consists of several crucial elements, such as a mind map, infographics, and bar graphics. Replace the placeholder text with your own to complete the presentation.

2. Pitch deck template

Startups seeking financing require a clean and eye-catching pitch deck design to impress investors. You may use it to present significant aspects and achievements of your company to investors. You can include slides for mockups, testimonials, business data like statistics, and case studies.

The pitch deck presentation template is excellent for your next client pitch, as it allows you to pick from a range of different startup tales to showcase the most crucial features of your firm.

3. Brand guidelines presentation template

Creating a bespoke presentation talking about the company dos and don’ts may be a terrific approach to discuss your brand rules with your team and stakeholders. You can easily show off your brand’s typeface and color schemes using this presentation template.

4. Marketing plan presentation template

Marketing is a vast concept, and the slides included in this design stock set reflect that broadness. A well-executed marketing strategy is essential to the success of any team. A marketing plan presentation template should ideally include slides for charts, timelines, and competition research. You can create executive summaries or mission statements with the below-mentioned presentation’s elegant and minimalistic slides.

5. Keynote presentation template

This keynote template has a lovely color scheme that is equal parts captivating and professional. You can employ a keynote presentation template if you’re going to be a keynote speaker at an upcoming event and want to ensure that your design stands out.

In addition to several slides, the template comes with various predefined color schemes. This template is perfect for any business presentation requiring a well-designed layout.

6. Training manual presentation template

A training manual presentation template may be used to convey new hire training to your workforce. It is essential for the design to be as clean and straightforward as possible.

These training material decks created with a predesigned template make it easy for new employees to learn the ins and outs of their jobs. 

7. Case study presentation template

A case study is an excellent way to illustrate a point in your presentation. The best way to attract new consumers using a case study presentation is to show them how your existing customers are using your product or service. Make sure to highlight how your product solved their pain points.

8. Interactive brief presentation template

It’s common to provide a creative brief when working with a contractor, freelancer, or designer to ensure everyone involved understands what the final product should look like.

An interactive presentation template like a creative brief is a terrific concept for absorbing and memorizing that information.

9. Workforce handbook presentation template

When hiring a new employee, your company needs to create an employee handbook to ensure they know the company’s objective and general working norms. You may connect this presentation to your intranet or website, or just distribute the digital version through a password-protected or private link.

10. Ignite presentation template

Using this template as a starting point for an Ignite presentation would be ideal. An Ignite presentation is a five-minute presentation consisting of 20 slides, compelling the speaker to speak fast and concisely. As a result, an Ignite presentation template prevents you from using too much text on any slide. 

11. Informative presentation template

The need to create an educational presentation may arise due to several reasons, such as onboarding new hires, explaining a concept to students, and more. An informative presentation template is a suitable solution in all cases.

Regardless of who they are meant for, presentations are the optimal format for sharing information with any audience. Create an educational presentation that you can embed in a blog post or publish on several platforms online. Make presentations to provide knowledge at conferences and other meetings.

12. SWOT analysis presentation template

A strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis is a valuable tool for gauging where your business stands, and how your strategic planning measures are paying off. This presentation template is an excellent tool for SWOT analysis or refining your marketing strategy.

It comes in several formats; circular design and hexagonal shapes being two of them. You may modify the colors as desired.

13. Competitor analysis presentation template

Knowing your competition and what they offer is essential for a successful business. Competitor analysis means researching your competitors’ key strengths and weaknesses, which can, eventually, help you define your goals and USPs more clearly. 

There are built-in interactive elements in this competitor analysis presentation template, which can help hook your audience. 

14. Bold presentation template

Ideal for non-corporate sales presentations, a bold and daring presentation template includes slides with a vibrant, attention-grabbing theme that is neither overbearing nor distracting. The color combination is striking without being oppressive.

15. Company overview template

Creative presentation templates are all the rage today. Using a lot of negative space will allow your audience to take a breath and direct their attention to the most crucial parts of your presentation. It is suitable for corporate presentations, since it doesn’t stick out more than is necessary.

Key Takeaways

• Audiences tend to forget a large percentage of what was addressed before the presentation is through. This is why it is important to create a presentation design that is memorable.
• A presentation is much more than just a layout of slides with text and graphics on them. You need to make sure it’s visually appealing too. 
• Use a wide range of best presentation design tools, components, and styles until you discover the one that resonates with your target audience. 
• Consider the most recent trends and best practices, and dedicate time to thoroughly crafting every presentation.
• Fine-tuning your message, avoiding the use of bullet points, incorporating visual hierarchy, and incorporating data visualization are a few design tips to create a winning presentation. 

Both your presentation style and design are crucial. You can deliver more dynamic, memorable presentations by creating visually pleasing decks. It’s advisable to create a resourceful presentation design if you want to elevate your personal as well as professional credibility.

Take cues from some popular presentation templates, and enhance one little aspect at a time. Now is the time to practice everything you’ve learned in this presentation design guide. As with any other visual communication, creating the best presentation design requires time, effort, and patience. Never be afraid to try something new; you’ll quickly see the benefits a strong presentation can have on your project.

A presentation design puts ideas, tales, words, and pictures into a series of slides that convey a narrative and engage your audience.

A presentation design template is used to achieve a uniform look for your slides. Templates are pre-made presentations into which you may insert your data.

People remember images and words better than just words. The design of your slides should be simple and consistent. This way, your audience will focus on the most important points.

Use high-quality images to back your message, but don’t use too many special effects. Make sure you don’t read from your slides.

A well-presented, memorable introduction and conclusion are two essential parts of a presentation. Don’t forget them when you write your outline.

Presentation design is essential, because it helps you weave your ideas, narrative, images, facts, and statistics into a unified story that leads your audience to the choice you want them to make.

Latest Blogs

In this blog, explore the golden rules of using AI marketing tools so you can leverage the benefits to their maximum potential.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to avoid the pitfalls of SEO over-optimization while enhancing your site’s performance.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what AMP is, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it affects SEO.

Get your hands on the latest news!

Similar posts.

7 mins read

15 Best Firms Offering Design Services in India

5 mins read

All You Need to Know About Data-Driven Design

6 mins read

Decoding Design Communities and Their Advantages

Like what you're reading?

Presentation design guide: tips, examples, and templates

Get your team on prezi – watch this on demand video.

Anete Ezera January 09, 2023

Presentation design defines how your content will be received and remembered. It’s responsible for that crucial first impression and sets the tone for your presentation before you’ve even introduced the topic. It’s also what holds your presentation together and guides the viewer through it. That’s why visually appealing, easily understandable, and memorable presentation design is what you should be striving for. But how can you create a visually striking presentation without an eye for design? Creating a visually appealing presentation can be challenging without prior knowledge of design or helpful tools. 

With this presentation design guide accompanied by Prezi presentation examples and templates, you’ll have no problem creating stunning and impactful presentations that will wow your audience.

In this guide, we’ll start by looking at the basics of presentation design. We’ll provide a simple guide on creating a presentation from scratch, as well as offer helpful tips for different presentation types. In addition, you’ll discover how to organize information into a logical order and present it in a way that resonates with listeners. Finally, we’ll share tips and tricks to create an eye-catching presentation, and showcase some great presentation examples and templates you can get inspired by!

With our comprehensive introduction to designing presentations, you will be able to develop an engaging and professional presentation that gets results!

What is presentation design?

Presentation design encompasses a variety of elements that make up the overall feel and look of the presentation. It’s a combination of certain elements, like text, font, color, background, imagery, and animations. 

Presentation design focuses on finding ways to make the presentation more visually appealing and easy to process, as it is often an important tool for communicating a message. It involves using design principles like color, hierarchy, white space, contrast, and visual flow to create an effective communication piece.

Creating an effective presentation design is important for delivering your message efficiently and leaving a memorable impact on your audience. Most of all, you want your presentation design to support your topic and make it easier to understand and digest. A great presentation design guides the viewer through your presentation and highlights the most essential aspects of it. 

If you’re interested in learning more about presentation design and its best practices , watch the following video and get practical insights on designing your next presentation:

Types of presentations

When creating a presentation design, you have to keep in mind several types of presentations that shape the initial design you want to have. Depending on the type of presentation you have, you’ll want to match it with a fitting presentation design.

1. Informative

An informative presentation provides the audience with facts and data in order to educate them on a certain subject matter. This could be done through visual aids such as graphs, diagrams, and charts. In an informative presentation, you want to highlight data visualizations and make them more engaging with interactive features or animations. On Prezi Design, you can create different engaging data visualizations from line charts to interactive maps to showcase your data.

2. Instructive

Instructive presentations teach the audience something new. Whether it’s about science, business strategies, or culture, this type of presentation is meant to help people gain knowledge and understand a topic better. 

With a focus on transmitting knowledge, your presentation design should incorporate a variety of visuals and easy-to-understand data visualizations. Most people are visual learners, so you’ll benefit from swapping text-based slides for more visually rich content.

3. Motivational

Motivational presentations try to inspire the audience by giving examples of successful projects, stories, or experiences. This type of presentation is often used in marketing or promotional events because it seeks to get the audience inspired and engaged with a product or service. That’s why the presentation design needs to capture and hold the attention of your audience using a variety of animations and visuals. Go beyond plain images – include videos for a more immersive experience.

4. Persuasive

Persuasive presentations are designed to sway an audience with arguments that lead to an actionable decision (i.e., buy the product). Audiences learn facts and figures relevant to the point being made and explore possible solutions based on evidence provided during the speech or presentation.

In a persuasive presentation design, you need to capture your audience’s attention right away with compelling statistics wrapped up in interactive and engaging data visualizations. Also, the design needs to look and feel dynamic with smooth transitions and fitting visuals, like images, stickers, and GIFs.

How to design a presentation

When you first open a blank presentation page, you might need some inspiration to start creating your design. For this reason, we created a simple guide that’ll help you make your own presentation from scratch without headaches.

1. Opt for a motion-based presentation

You can make an outstanding presentation using Prezi Present, a software program that lets you create interactive presentations that capture your viewer’s attention. Prezi’s zooming feature allows you to add movement to your presentation and create smooth transitions. Prezi’s non-linear format allows you to jump between topics instead of flipping through slides, so your presentation feels more like a conversation than a speech. A motion-based presentation will elevate your content and ideas, and make it a much more engaging viewing experience for your audience.

Watch this video to learn how to make a Prezi presentation:

2. Create a structure & start writing content

Confidence is key in presenting. You can feel more confident going into your presentation if you structure your thoughts and plan what you will say. To do that, first, choose the purpose of your presentation before you structure it. There are four main types of presentations: informative, instructive, motivational, and persuasive. Think about the end goal of your presentation – what do you want your audience to do when you finish your presentation – and structure it accordingly.

Next, start writing the content of your presentation (script). We recommend using a storytelling framework, which will enable you to present a conflict and show what could be possible. In addition to creating compelling narratives for persuasive presentations, this framework is also effective for other types of presentations.

Tip: Keep your audience in mind. If you’re presenting a data-driven report to someone new to the field or from a different department, don’t use a lot of technical jargon if you don’t know their knowledge base and/or point of view.

3. Research & analyze 

Knowing your topic inside and out will make you feel more confident going into your presentation. That’s why it’s important to take the time to understand your topic fully. In return, you’ll be able to answer questions on the fly and get yourself back on track even if you forget what you were going to say when presenting. In case you have extra time at the end of your presentation, you can also provide more information for your audience and really showcase your expertise. For comprehensive research, turn to the internet, and library, and reach out to experts if possible.

4. Get to design

Keeping your audience engaged and interested in your topic depends on the design of your presentation.

Now that you’ve done your research and have a proper presentation structure in place, it’s time to visualize it.

4.1. Presentation design layout

What you want to do is use your presentation structure as a presentation design layout. Apply the structure to how you want to tell your story, and think about how each point will lead to the next one. Now you can either choose to use one of Prezi’s pre-designed templates that resemble your presentation structure the most or start to add topics on your canvas as you go. 

Tip: When adding content, visualize the relation between topics by using visual hierarchy – hide smaller topics within larger themes or use the zooming feature to zoom in and out of supplementary topics or details that connect to the larger story you’re telling.

4.2. Color scheme

Now it’s time to choose your color scheme to give a certain look and feel to your presentation. Make sure to use contrasting colors to clearly separate text from the background, and use a maximum of 2 to 3 dominating colors to avoid an overwhelming design.

4.2. Content (visuals + text)

Add content that you want to highlight in your presentation. Select from a wide range of images, stickers, GIFs, videos, data visualizations, and more from the content library, or upload your own. To provide more context, add short-format text, like bullet points or headlines that spotlight the major themes, topics, and ideas in your presentation. 

Also, here you’ll want to have a final decision on your font choice. Select a font that’s easy to read and goes well with your brand and topic.

Tip: Be careful not to turn your presentation into a script. Only display text that holds significant value – expand on the ideas when presenting. 

4.3. Transitions

Last but not least, bring your presentation design to life by adding smooth, attractive, and engaging transitions that take the viewer from one topic to another without disrupting the narrative. 

On Prezi, you can choose from a range of transitions that take you into the story world and provide an immersive presentation experience for your audience. 

For more practical tips read our article on how to make a presentation . 

Presentation design tips

When it comes to presentations, design is key. A well-designed presentation can communicate your ideas clearly and engage your audience, while a poorly designed one can do the opposite.

To ensure your presentation is designed for success, note the following presentation design tips that’ll help you design better presentations that wow your audience.

1. Keep it simple

Too many elements on a slide can be overwhelming and distract from your message. While you want your content to be visually compelling, don’t let the design of the presentation get in the way of communicating your ideas. Design elements need to elevate your message instead of overshadowing it. 

2. Use contrasting text colors

Draw attention to important points with contrasted text colors. Instead of using bold or italics, use a contrasting color in your chosen palette to emphasize the text.

3. Be clear and concise. 

Avoid writing long paragraphs that are difficult to read. Limit paragraphs and sections of text for optimum readability.

4. Make sure your slide deck is visually appealing

Use high-quality images and graphics, and limit the use of text to only the most important information. For engaging and diverse visuals, go to Prezi’s content library and discover a wide range of stock images, GIFs, stickers, and more.

5. Pay attention to detail

Small details like font choice and alignments can make a big difference in how professional and polished your presentation looks. Make sure to pay attention to image and text size, image alignment with text, font choice, background color, and more details that create the overall look of your presentation.

6. Use templates sparingly

While templates can be helpful in creating a consistent look for your slides, overusing them can make your presentation look generic and boring. Use them for inspiration but don’t be afraid to mix things up with some custom designs as well. 

7. Design for clarity

Create a presentation layout that is easy to use and navigate, with clear labels and instructions. This is important for ensuring people can find the information they need quickly and easily if you end up sharing your presentation with others.

8. Opt for a conversational presentation design

Conversational presenting allows you to adjust your presentation on the fly to make it more relevant and engaging. Create a map-like arrangement that’ll encourage you to move through your presentation at your own pace. With a map-like design, each presentation will be customized to match different audiences’ needs. This can be helpful for people who have different levels of expertise or knowledge about the subject matter.

9. Be consistent 

Design consistency holds your presentation together and makes it easy to read and navigate. Create consistency by repeating colors, fonts, and design elements that clearly distinguish your presentation from others.

10. Have context in mind

A great presentation design is always dependent on the context. Your audience and objective influence everything from color scheme to fonts and use of imagery. Make sure to always have your audience in mind when designing your presentations.

For more presentation tips, read the Q&A with presentation design experts and get valuable insights on visual storytelling.

Presentation templates

Creating a presentation from scratch isn’t easy. Sometimes, it’s better to start with a template and dedicate your time to the presentation’s content. To make your life easier, here are 10 useful and stunning presentation templates that score in design and engagement. If you want to start creating with any of the following templates, simply go to our Prezi presentation template gallery , select your template, and start creating! Also, you can get inspired by the top Prezi presentations , curated by our editors. There you can discover presentation examples for a wide range of topics, and get motivated to create your own. 

Business meeting presentation

The work desk presentation templates have a simple and clean design, perfectly made for a team or business meeting. With all the topics visible from start, everyone will be on the same page about what you’re going to cover in the presentation. If you want, you can add or remove topics as well as edit the visuals and color scheme to match your needs.

Small business presentation

This template is great for an introductory meeting or pitch, where you have to summarize what you or your business does in a few, highly engaging slides. The interactive layout allows you to choose what topic bubble you’re going to select next, so instead of a one-way interaction, you can have a conversation and ask your audience what exactly they’re interested in knowing about your company.

Mindfulness at work presentation

How can you capture employees’ attention to explain important company values or practices? This engaging presentation template will help you do just that. With a wide range of impactful visuals, this presentation design helps you communicate your ideas more effectively. 

Business review template

Make your next quarterly business review memorable with this vibrant business presentation template. With eye-capturing visuals and an engaging layout, you’ll communicate important stats and hold everyone’s attention until the end.

History timeline template

With black-and-white sketches of the Colosseum in the background, this timeline template makes history come alive. The displayed time periods provide an overview that’ll help your audience to grasp the bigger picture. After, you can go into detail about each time frame and event.

Storytelling presentation template

Share stories about your business that make a lasting impact with this stunning, customizable presentation template. To showcase each story, use the zooming feature and choose to tell your stories in whatever order you want.

Design concept exploration template

Not all meetings happen in person nowadays. To keep that face-to-face interaction even when presenting online, choose from a variety of Prezi Video templates or simply import your already-existing Prezi template into Prezi Video for remote meetings. This professional-looking Prezi Video template helps you set the tone for your meeting, making your designs stand out. 

Employee perks and benefits video template

You can use the employee benefits video template to pitch potential job candidates the perks of working in your company. The Prezi Video template allows you to keep a face-to-face connection with potential job candidates while interviewing them remotely.

Sales plan presentation template

Using a clear metaphor that everyone can relate to, this football-inspired sales plan presentation template communicates a sense of team unity and strategy. You can customize this Prezi business presentation template with your brand colors and content.

Flashcard template

How can you engage students in an online classroom? This and many other Prezi Video templates will help you create interactive and highly engaging lessons. Using the flashcard template, you can quiz your students, review vocabulary, and gamify learning.

Great presentation design examples

If you’re still looking for more inspiration, check out the following Prezi presentations made by our creative users.

Social media presentation

This presentation is a great example of visual storytelling. The use of visual hierarchy and spatial relationships creates a unique viewing experience and makes it easier to understand how one topic or point is related to another. Also, images provide an engaging and visually appealing experience.

Leadership books presentation

Do you want to share your learnings? This interactive presentation offers great insights in an entertaining and visually compelling way. Instead of compiling leadership books in a slide-based presentation, the creator has illustrated each book and added a zooming feature that allows you to peek inside of each book’s content.

Remote workforce presentation

This is a visually rich and engaging presentation example that offers an interactive experience for the viewer. A noteworthy aspect of this presentation design is its color consistency and matching visual elements.

A presentation about the teenage brain 

Another great presentation design example that stands out with an engaging viewing experience. The zooming feature allows the user to dive into each topic and choose what subject to view first. It’s a great example of an educational presentation that holds the students’ attention with impactful visuals and compelling transitions.

Remote work policy presentation

This presentation design stands out with its visually rich content. It depicts exactly what the presentation is about and uses the illustrated window frames in the background image as topic placements. This type of presentation design simplifies complex concepts and makes it easier for the viewer to understand and digest the information.

Everyone can create visually-appealing presentations with the right tools and knowledge. With the presentation design tips, templates, and examples, you’re equipped to make your next presentation a success. If you’re new to Prezi, we encourage you to discover everything it has to offer. With this presentation design guide and Prezi, we hope you’ll get inspired to create meaningful, engaging, and memorable content for your audience!  

Give your team the tools they need to engage

Like what you’re reading join the mailing list..

• Prezi for Teams
• Top Presentations

Presentation Design and the Art of Visual Storytelling

Discover a practical approach to designing results-oriented presentations and learn the importance of crafting a compelling narrative.

By Micah Bowers

Micah helps businesses craft meaningful engagement through branding, illustration, and design.

Presentations Must Tell a Story

We’ve all been there, dutifully enduring a dull presentation at work or an event. The slides are packed with text, and the presenter feels obligated to read every single word. There are enough charts, graphs, and equations to fill a trigonometry book, and each screen is awash in the brightest colors imaginable.

As the presentation drags on, the lists get longer. “We do this, this, this, this, this, and oh yeah, this!” Unfortunately, everyone in the audience just wants it to be over.

This is a major opportunity missed for a business, and we designers may be part of the problem. No, it’s not our fault if a presenter is unprepared or uninspiring, but if we approach our clients’ presentations as nothing more than fancy lists, we’ve failed.

See, presentations are stories , not lists, and stories have a structure. They build towards an impact moment and unleash a wave of momentum that changes people’s perceptions and preconceived notions. Good stories aren’t boring and neither are good presentations.

But before we go any further, it’s important to ask why presentations exist in the first place. What’s their purpose? Why are they useful?

Presentations exist to…

Presentations impart new and sometimes life-changing knowledge to an audience.

Most presentations provide a practical method for using the knowledge that is shared.

If executed correctly, presentations are able to captivate an audience’s imagination and lead them to consider the worth of what they’re learning.

Well-crafted presentations have the power to arouse feelings that can influence an audience’s behavior.

Presentations ready people to move, to act on their feelings and internal analysis.

Ultimately, presentations make an appeal to an audience’s logic, emotions, or both in an attempt to convince the audience to act on the opportunity shared by the presenter.

With this kind of power, designers can’t afford to view presentations as “just another deck.” We shouldn’t use the same formulaic templates or fail to educate our clients about the importance of high-quality image assets.

Instead, we need to see presentation design as an opportunity to craft a compelling narrative that earns big wins for our clients.

Need more convincing? Let’s take a quick look at how a few big brands merge storytelling with world-class presentation design.

Salesforce – Write the Narrative First

The overarching emphasis of any presentation is its narrative. Before any flashy visuals are added, the presentation designer works hand-in-hand with the client to establish the narrative and asks big questions like:

• Who are we presenting to?
• Why are we presenting to them?
• How do we want them to respond?

The marketing team at Salesforce, the world’s leading customer relationship management platform, answers these questions by first writing presentations as rough essays with a beginning, middle, and end. As the essay is fleshed out, themes emerge and section titles are added.

From here, the presentation is broken into slides that present the most impactful topics and information the audience needs to know. Only a few select words and phrases will make it onto the screen, but the essay draft will be rich with insights for the presenter to further refine and share in their oral narrative.

Writing the narrative first prevents the chaos of slide shuffling that occurs when a presentation’s stories aren’t clearly mapped out. With no clear narrative in place, slides don’t transition smoothly, and the presentation’s momentum dissipates.

Deloitte – Establish Credibility

Within the first few moments of meeting someone new, we quickly assess whether or not we feel they’re trustworthy.

Presenters are typically afforded an initial level of trust by virtue of being deemed capable of talking in front of a large group of people. But if that trust isn’t solidified within the first minute of a presentation, it can vanish in an instant.

Deloitte is a global financial consultant for 80 percent of all Fortune 500 companies. Naturally, they understand the need to quickly establish credibility. The slide used in the example above is number five in a thirty-slide deck. Right from the outset, Deloitte establishes their authority on the topic, in essence saying, “We’ve been at this awhile.”

Including a slide like this in a client’s deck can be a real confidence booster because it allows them to quickly secure expert status. Establishing credibility also helps an audience relax and engage with what they’re learning.

iControl – Define the Problem Visually

It’s not always possible to express a complex problem or solution with a single visual, but when it happens, it can be a powerful experience for an audience.

iControl is a Swedish startup that built an iPad app designed to replace paper and create better documentation at construction sites. They aren’t a big brand, but their investor pitch deck powerfully identifies a huge audience problem with a single slide—too much paper wasted, too many documents to track. An image like this so clearly identifies the problem that it simultaneously intensifies the need for a solution.

Defining the problem visually is an awesome strategy, but use it with care because an image that’s confusing or overly specific to an industry can leave audience members feeling like outsiders.

Arrange a Compelling Narrative

“Storytelling” is everywhere these days. Social media platforms have cleverly packaged the promise that our every post, image, and interaction is part of an ongoing story, but most of what we call “stories” are loosely related moments strung together by the happenstance of time and technology.

So what’s the distinction between narrative and story? How do they relate, and how do they differ? And most importantly, how do they tie into a compelling presentation?

A story is bound by time. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It details events and orders them in a way that creates meaning. In a presentation, stories speak to specific accomplishments and inspire action—“We did this, and it was amazing!”

A narrative is not bound by time. It relates separate moments and events to a central theme but doesn’t seek resolution. In a presentation, the narrative encompasses the past, present, and future—“Where we’ve come from. Where we are. Where we’re headed.”

How does this information impact the presentation designer? Here’s a simple and practical example.

You have a client who makes amazing paper clips that always bend back to their intended shape no matter how much they’re twisted. They ask you to design a presentation that highlights the paper clips and their company vision to “forever change the world of office products.” How do you begin?

Start with the Narrative

The narrative is the overarching emphasis of a presentation.

In this example, you would shape the presentation around your client’s company vision of forever changing the world of office products.

Advance the Narrative with Stories

Use succinct stories that highlight challenges, improvements, big wins, and daily life.

Perhaps the paper clip company’s research and development team faced several setbacks before a eureka moment made mass production cheaper than traditional paper clips.

Use stories like this as brush strokes on a canvas, each one contributing towards a more complete picture of the narrative.

Support Stories with Visuals

This is where the simple, yet stunning slides you design come into play.

In this case, you could show a simple graph that compares the production cost of traditional paper clips to your client’s innovative paper clips. And, to make sure you’re reinforcing the narrative, you could add a short title to the slide: “Game. Changed.”

Conflict Is the Engine of Memorable Presentations

In his bestselling book Story , Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee writes, “Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.” This advice is extremely valuable for the presentation designer.

An overly optimistic presentation packed with positive information simply crashes over an audience and sweeps away their enthusiasm. Each rosy insight is less impactful than the one prior. Before long, all the audience hears is, “Good, better, best. We’re just like all the rest.”

An effective presentation designer looks for ways to create internal conflict within an audience. This means they feel the weightiness of a problem and actively hope for the relief of a solution. The yin and yang of problem and solution is the presentation designer’s true north, the guiding principle of every piece of information included in a deck.

One tried and true way to ensure a healthy positive/negative balance, without overly dramatizing a presentation is withholding information.

For instance, in our example of the paperclip company, this could mean devoting an extra slide or two to the research and development process. These slides would hint at the soon-to-be-revealed production costs and build anticipation without providing actual numbers.

Then, when the cost comparison chart is finally shared, the audience is genuinely eager for the information it holds, and the payoff is far more rewarding and memorable.

Unlock the Power of Clear, Consistent, and Compelling Content

Content doesn’t exist apart from the narrative; it enhances it. Once the narrative is in tip-top shape, it’s time to make the content shine, but before we dive into slide design, let’s take a quick detour.

Imagine we’re reviewing an investor pitch deck and we take an elevator into the sky to observe the presentation from an aerial view. From this lofty position, the deck’s content should have a cohesive appearance that ties in with the brand, organization, or topic being presented.

If you’ve ever been hired to work on a company’s pitch deck design , you understand how challenging this can be.

Many times, clients already have some sort of skeleton deck in place before they hire a presentation designer. Sometimes, these decks are packed with a dizzying assortment of charts, graphs, fonts, and colors. Here, you have two unique responsibilities.

First, you must help your client understand how the disunity of their content detracts from the narrative. Then, you must provide a way forward and present them with a practical vision for remaking things in a cohesive style.

Be warned that you may have to sell this idea, especially if your client thinks that their visual content is presentation ready and only in need of some “design magic” to make it look good.

If this happens, remember to be gracious, and acknowledge the role that their expertise played in generating such valuable information. Then, bring the conversation back to results. “This is a compelling topic. I want your audience to be in awe as you present, but for that to happen, I need to recreate the visuals.”

This is a tough chore, but as designers, we’re hired to improve the way our clients communicate—not fill their heads with false affirmations of poor content.

Essential Slide Design Principles

Slide design is an important part of presentation design, and effective slides are rooted in visual simplicity. But the strange thing about simplicity is that it stems from a thorough grasp of complexity. If we know something well, we can explain it to someone who does not in just a few words or images.

In this section, we’ll look at hierarchy, typography, image selection, and color schemes, but know that these design elements are rooted in a proper understanding of a presentation’s narrative and content. If we start the design process with slides, we seriously risk equipping our clients with presentations that are unfocused and unimpactful.

Create Emphasis with Slide Hierarchy

Design hierarchy relates to the placement of visual elements in a way that creates emphasis. For the presentation designer, this means asking, “What two or three things do I want the audience to see on this slide?

Do’s and Don’ts

• Do create visual contrast through scale, color, and alignment.
• Don’t try to visually highlight more than three ideas per slide.

Whenever a really important idea comes up, be brave and only use a few words in bold type to communicate it. This kind of simplicity signals to an audience that it’s time to intensify their focus and really listen to what the presenter has to say.

Overcome Ambiguity with Thoughtful Typography

Most presentations are built on words, so it’s important to know which words to include and how to style them. This starts by choosing the right font, then knowing how big to make the words and where to include them.

• Do ask if your client has any designated fonts listed in their brand style guide.
• Don’t use more than two fonts in your presentation, and avoid text blocks and lengthy paragraphs like the plague.

Try not to use anything smaller in size than a 36 point font. Some designers believe it’s ok to use sizes as small as 24 point, but this often leads to packing slides with more text. Remember, slides are a speaking prompt, not promotional literature.

Communicate Authority Through Graphic Simplicity

Every chart, graph, icon, illustration, or photograph used in a presentation should be easy to see and understand. Images that are difficult to interpret or poor in quality can erode the trust of an audience.

• Do look for ways to use symbols, icons, or illustrations as they have a way of communicating ideas more quickly than photography.
• Don’t use more than one photograph per slide, and don’t use stock photography that conflicts with your client’s brand (e.g., too funny, serious, or ethereal).

During the consultation phase of a presentation design project, ask your potential client to see existing charts or graphs they’re hoping to include. If anything is confusing, pixelated, or inconsistent, tell them you’ll need to remake their graphics. Be prepared to show high-quality examples from well-known companies to sell your point.

Add Energy and Meaning with Bold Color Schemes

Color plays an important role in nearly every design discipline, and presentation design is no different. The colors used for a presentation affect the tone of the topic being shared and influence the mood of the audience.

• Do keep color schemes simple. Two or three colors should make up the majority of slides.
• Don’t use complementary colors for text and background (e.g., blue background with orange text). This has a way of making words vibrate with nauseating intensity.

Identify a few high-contrast accent colors to make strategic cameos for added impact.

The Mission of Every Presentation Designer

It can’t be overstated; presentations are huge opportunities for designers to positively impact their clients’ businesses. Innovation and advancements in culture and technology are occurring so rapidly that it’s become absolutely vital to be able to tell a good story. No one has time for poorly communicated ideas.

Here’s the simple truth: A bad presentation designer dresses up junk content with no thought for narrative and dumps a pile of slides into their client’s lap. Maybe the presentation looks pretty, but it doesn’t inspire, doesn’t activate, and certainly doesn’t sell.

To be effective, results-driven presentation designers means that we must empower our clients with an efficient tool. We carefully consider each slide, word, and visual for maximum impact, and we remember that presentations are intended for a human audience. Whether it’s a room of investors or a conference hall packed with consumers, it’s our job to provide our clients with opportunities to change minds and win business.

Understanding the basics

What is presentation design.

Presentation designers craft an array of ideas, stories, words, and images into a set of slides that are arranged to tell a story and persuade an audience.

Why is storytelling so important?

Where numbers, lists, and facts merely inform, storytelling has the power to make an audience care about and act on information that is being presented.

What are the basic elements of a slide?

The basic elements of a slide are its dimensions, text, images, layout, and color.

• SlideDesign
• VisualStorytelling
• PresentationDesign

Micah Bowers

Vancouver, WA, United States

Member since January 3, 2016

About the author

World-class articles, delivered weekly.

By entering your email, you are agreeing to our privacy policy .

Toptal Designers

• Adobe Creative Suite Experts
• Agile Designers
• AI Designers
• Art Direction Experts
• Augmented Reality Designers
• Axure Experts
• Brand Designers
• Creative Directors
• Dashboard Designers
• Digital Product Designers
• E-commerce Website Designers
• Full-Stack Designers
• Information Architecture Experts
• Interactive Designers
• Mobile App Designers
• Mockup Designers
• Presentation Designers
• Prototype Designers
• SaaS Designers
• Sketch Experts
• Squarespace Designers
• User Flow Designers
• User Research Designers
• Virtual Reality Designers
• Visual Designers
• Wireframing Experts
• View More Freelance Designers

Join the Toptal ® community.

Why is it Important to Design your Presentation?

Introduction

Components of a well-designed presentation, importance of design to your presentation, get to know alltime design, how can alltime design help you.

A well-designed presentation can help you connect with your audience, engage them and achieve all your desired results. Professionals create presentations to share information or message to their target audience - potential customers, investors, colleagues, partners, co-workers, and other stakeholders.

Presentations are mostly demonstrations, lectures, sales-pitch, or speeches that are presented to inform, persuade, inspire, motivate, present a new product or idea, or share a recent report or achievements with an audience.

Design in presentation is what increases your chances of conveying your message or information to your audience in the best possible way. Creating and adding visually appealing designs to your presentations grabs your audience's attention and help you engage them from the beginning of the presentation to the end. A recent report by Zoho discovered that

Presentations with visual aids are 43% more persuasive than those without visuals.

Adding stunning and eye-catching designs to a presentation does not only appeal to audiences, Interestingly 91% of presenters also claim they feel more confident presenting well-designed slides to their audience.

A presentation unlike other forms of business communication is serious business, it can make or mar your business's success and if you don't prepare for it properly, you could lose out on so much - this is where designs come in. Designs make up for all your shortcomings, wherever you fall short in your textual content, your design draws readers’ attention and evokes their interest all through the presentations.

In this guide, we’ll discuss all the reasons you should always include visually appealing designs in your presentations and the components of a well-designed presentation

Image: Canva

A poorly-designed presentation can make you lose your customers, investors, and prospects when you fail to convey the message and convince them to buy in. Aside from that, a bad presentation also gives off the wrong impression of incompetence, unreliable and unprofessional. A well-design presentation on the other hand makes you look professional, credible, and prepared.

If you are struggling to get your presentation design right, here are some of the most important components of a well-designed presentation:

Use more visuals and lesser texts

The general rule to creating eye-catching and stunning presentation designs is to limit the text and use more high-quality and related visuals to gain your audience's attention and create long-lasting impressions on them. Humans are visual beings, we interact and understand content much better when they are paired with strong, high-quality images.

If you are looking to connect with your audience, consider reducing your text and adding more visuals to your presentations. For example, if you have some complex information or concept, you can visualize them in an infographic to improve readability and audience engagement.

Summarize your points efficiently

As emphasized earlier, your presentation should not have too many texts, as this can easily overwhelm and affect your target audience's interest in your presentations. How then can you achieve this? Learn to summarize long texts into short and clear words that your audience can easily understand.

With the average human attention span of 8.25 seconds, the majority of the presentation audience gets bored when they have to read the wordy presentations. David Paradi in his survey discovered three things that annoy audiences during presentations:

Share one key point per presentation

You must understand the best way to engage your audience and try not to overwhelm them with information overload. Presentations are information intensive, considering this nature, there's a high possibility that you are going to be sharing so much information with your audience during the presentation. The best way to keep them engaged and get them to remember if not all, the major points is to keep the salient points per slide. Share a key point per presentation to make more impact on your audience.

Implement visual hierarchy in your presentations

Visual hierarchy is one of the most important visual design elements. It guides how every visual element - colors, fonts, shapes, lines, and textures, in your presentation design is arranged and organized. The visual Hierarchy rule is that the most important elements should be placed in higher spaces in the presentations with bigger texts to capture the audience's attention followed by the second and least important elements in that order. To create a well-designed presentation that captivates your audience, be sure to arrange the information in order of their importance with more emphasis on important ones.

Ensure consistency across your slides

Consistency is the bane of every business's success. It determines how your audience perceives you as a professional and credible brand. Similarly in your presentation design, you have to ensure that all your message and information as well as your visual designs are consistent across your slides. Inconsistencies in your presentation affect your audience's engagement with your design. You must ensure that the colors, fonts, and messages are consistent and follow the same narrative from the first slide to the last slide.

Add a compelling call-to-action

A call-to-action is a written directive given to prompt your audience to take an action at the end of your presentation. After making a powerful and informative that has gotten you a resounding ovation from your audience, it's not enough to end it there without giving them something to remember you by or guiding them on the next thing to do with the information. Instead, add a short, compelling call to action like “Contact us,” “Connect with us on social media,” “Sign up for our webinar or seminar,” Request a demo,” or “Buy Now” to encourage them to perform your desired tasks.

Design in presentations is a key element of presentations that can help you enhance the quality of your narrative, improve the easy understanding of the message, information, or ideas shared, and ultimately increase audience engagement with your presentations. The use of eye-catching visuals increases your chances of achieving your goals much faster.

They help your audience process and comprehend your information much faster

According to a study, the Presentation audience only retains 10-20% of the information presented in written words, while the information presented visually was processed and retained 65% more than texts. This is a clear indication that humans generally interact better with visual content than with texts, a lot of audiences during presentations claim that having more texts in a presentation reduces their attention span and makes them lose interest in the entire presentation. Imagine presenting to people for over 4-5 hours without any visual designs, images, or videos to lighten up their mood, it would feel more like torture to them. To help your audience understand and relate better to the information you share, add visually appealing designs in the presentation.

Designs stick to your audience's memory much longer than text

According to the popular saying that “Pictures speak louder than words”, this is the exact situation of using eye-catching designs in your presentations. Being visual beings, your audience is most likely going to interact and remember the information visualized in infographics and other graphical elements, pictures, or videos much better than the text. It's common knowledge that people might find it hard to remember everything you say but the images, videos, and designs that they see that really strike them will stay with them much longer.

Designs increase audience engagement

As emphasized in the earliest section, adding a beautiful design that your audience can relate to can increase customer engagement and reaction to your presentation. When you explain complex concepts with attractive, high-quality designs, your audience will understand it better and can effectively interact with your presentation. Visualize complex data in infographics and use graphical elements or characters sparingly across your presentation to generate the right reaction from them.

Design works on human emotion

If you are looking to evoke your audience's emotion and help them connect with the information or message you are passing to them. For example, if you are making a presentation for fundraising, including compelling visuals in such a presentation can evoke the right emotion in your audience and get them to take your desired action.

Presentation design showcases your expertise

Adding designs to your presentations showcases your expertise and competence in your field. The quality of designs in your presentation can help your audience perceive you as a professional and credible brand that they can trust and be associated with. A design that follows an organized narrative will also help you present your thoughts in a simple and engaging manner.

Designs help you grab your audience's attention

As visual beings, adding visually appealing designs can help you attract your audience's attention and help your audience navigate through the content and even gain their attention to every slide.

Design in your presentations is an important element that can help you create a long-lasting impression on your customers, convey information, or explain hard-to-explain concepts and increase your audience engagement.

Alltime design is one of the leading creative design service providers well known for its excellent service delivery and proficient graphic designers.

With a robust and intuitive platform, Alltime design enables you to access incredibly fast and professionally vetted creative designs to empower your marketing efforts.

We offer a wide range of creative services to clients such as booklets, brochures, presentation designs, product packaging designs, books and journals, flyers design, branding, web design, infographics, product marketing designs, custom illustrations, apps, and website UI designs, presentation designs, motion graphics, and animation, and front-end development.

Our team of professional and dedicated designers has a deep understanding of brand and marketing design solutions that will help our clients promote their products or services on social media and other digital media platforms.

Alltime design is one of the leading creative design service providers well known for its excellent service delivery and proficient graphic designers. By using our service, you can be assured of the following benefits;

We provide full-service graphics design service

One of our biggest strengths at Alltime design is our team of professional, well-experienced, and vetted graphics designers that are readily available to work on your design projects. We give you access to our super intuitive platform to help you track and work on your design projects as well as speed up your creative process in one centralized platform.

Access to dedicated support and super fast turnaround time

Every subscriber has access to dedicated support from the Alltime Designs team, however, depending on your payment plan, you can get access to more support and a super fast project turnaround period - 2 days for standard subscribers and same-day turnaround for premium subscribers.

You get one flat rate (No Suprise fees)

With Alltime designs, there are no surprise fees or contracts. You get to pay one flat rate and get unlimited designs.

You are assured latest creative designs

Our designers have access to and use the latest tools and technologies that help create digital marketing designs effortlessly. Our designers have the right design skills to work with these tools and deliver outstanding marketing designs.

Unlimited project requests & revisions.

Alltime design offers you unlimited graphic design requests and revisions, regardless of your plan to fuel your creative terrain. You are allowed to request corrections for all your designs for as much as you want until you are satisfied with the work.

Ownership of your files.

You get complete ownership of the design source files for all your designs

Ready to create more designs for lesser costs? ‍

Presentation Layout Design: More Important Than You May Think

When you think of a presentation, what comes to mind? It’s probably either 1) the burden of creating a deck from scratch, 2) the content you’ll include, or 3) your fear of public speaking. While all three are valid concerns, presentation layout design is important to consider, too. Presentation layout is oftentimes overlooked, but it’s an important element of the presentation design process.

In this blog we’re talking about all things presentation layout; what it is, why it’s important, and quick tips to nail your layout design. 

What does presentation layout mean?

Your presentation layout is essentially the anatomy of your presentation, and the format of each slide within the deck. It’s the way you’re structuring your story for your audience. Presentation layout emcompasses everything from image size and text placement, to chart selection and the order of slides. 

When you don’t know where to take your presentation, templates are a great starting point to help with layouts. That said, you don’t have to let the templates limit your creativity. There are many different ways to customize each layout beyond the default settings. You can simply use them as a jumping off point to help organize your thoughts and create beautiful slides. 

Why is presentation layout important?

We’ve talked about visual storytelling and it’s importance time and time again. Visual storytelling is the narrative told through the use of visual assets such as images, illustrations, graphics or charts, and video. Visual storytelling helps paint a better picture of your story, and really drive your point home. It’s important to your story because it’s how your audience will receive your content, and it affects how they will retain the information. 

Presentation layout is the backbone of visual storytelling in your deck. 

The majority of us are visual learners, so having information presented in a way that makes sense by way of infographics, charts, or images is significantly easier to comprehend than a cluttered block of text. It’s simple, really. If your layout is jumbled and messy, it’s going to be a lot harder to digest on the receiving end. Likewise, if you stick to clean, professional presentation layouts your audience will have an easier time following along.

It’s important to note that a bad layout can also result in a Frankendeck (and nobody has time for that), so nailing your presentation layout is critical to the overall success of your deck.

Layout tips

These simple tips can help you improve your presentation layout with little-to-no extra work. 

Think outside the box

With Beautiful.ai’s inspiration gallery, the design informs the idea which helps you craft your story in a more thoughtful way. Our Smart Slides have guardrails to help prevent non-designers from making a mess of their slides. While those limitations might push some people outside of their comfort zone, we put those restrictions in place for a reason. It encourages more avid designers to be more creative and think outside the box. Our inspiration gallery might help users think of a certain chart or infographic in a new way, and as a result that might help them structure their story in a way that flows better for their audience. Try something new and see where it takes you!

Toggle between different formats

Our Smart Slide templates aren’t one-size-fits-all, and there are actually many different variations for each template. Fidgeting with the menus in our slides is low stakes because you can easily change anything back with the click of a button if you don’t like it. If you want to get creative, toggling between different formats is a good place to experiment without having to re-do any of your work. You can quickly try out a few variations to see what you like, and what fits your content best.

By selecting the “layout” dropdown, or clicking the tool wheel, you can unlock things like:

• Different bar styles, chart or graph layouts
• Labeling options (i.e. icons, fonts, numbers, percentages, etc.)
• A fit or fill option for your image ratio
• The ability to change the layout, or style, altogether
• And much more!

Less is more

While playing around with different layouts can be fun, and unlock your creativity, it comes with responsibility. It’s important to remember that less is more in the world of presentations, and things can get messy fast. When you’re laying out your presentation, lean into clean, modern design to keep things digestible, visually appealing and professional.

If you have an inevitably text-heavy slide, break it up by following with an image or infographic afterwards. Part of nailing your presentation layout includes knowing which slides to use, and when to use them. Does it have to be two bulleted slides, or can you say the same thing in one slide with an image and text, or with a simple chart? Do you have to use two chart slides back-to-back, or can you mix it up? These are all things to consider in the presentation layout. keyw

Jordan Turner

Jordan is a Bay Area writer, social media manager, and content strategist.

Recommended Articles

5 tools to help you build the perfect slide, 6 effective presentation techniques inspired by marie kondo, how-to: using our photo grid template beyond photos, theming best practices: introducing theme background images.

• Presentation

Exploring benefits of giving a presentation

• May 30, 2022

In the fast-paced business world, making a lasting impression is often the key to success. Whether you pitch a new product, share quarterly results, or seek investment, how you present your information can make all the difference. This is where the art of Presentation design services comes into play, offering numerous advantages that can propel your business forward.

When you are giving a presentation, it’s important to make sure that your audience is engaged and getting the most out of what could be an informative session. There are many advantages to having well-designed presentations; this blog post will discuss some of them! Keep reading if interested or check back soon when we publish new content every day so that way know all there is about designing effective slideshows too!

Table of Contents

What is a presentation design?

The art and science of crafting visual and textual elements for clear communication lies at the heart of presentation design. It involves preparing engaging and impactful presentations using various multimedia features, such as text, images, charts, graphs, animations, and videos, to convey a story or present data compellingly and understandably.

In essence, presentation design is about transforming complex or abstract concepts into an easily digestible and memorable format for your audience. It goes beyond just the slides in a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation; it encompasses the entire visual and narrative experience accompanying your message.

Impact of presentation design

1-the human brain is wired to process visuals more quickly than text.

Visuals are a great way to keep your audience engaged and remember what you’re saying. In addition, visuals can help ensure that people stay tuned in because they will likely find themselves more interested than bored with the presentation if it contains some exciting graphics or photos!

2-Well-designed presentations help you stand out from the competition

You can make a huge impact on your business by taking the time to design professional presentations. Your audience will appreciate your effort, and that could win over new clients for sure!

3-They make your ideas easier to understand and remember

Your audience won’t remember your ideas if you don’t make them easy to understand. Use clear language and include visuals, because this will help people really get what it is that you’re trying to say!

4-Good design makes your content more persuasive

Graphic design is an essential element of any successful campaign. Whether you are trying to convince your audience of something, or simply want them to understand what it takes for one thing in particular designed visuals can be very persuasive and help illustrate points more effectively than text alone would do so!

5-People are more likely to take action if your presentation is well-designed

Clearly presenting your offer in a way that is easy to understand will help ensure the audience takes action on it, such as signing up for your product or service.

What are the advantages of presentation?

Clarity and Understanding

Presentations distill complex information into digestible chunks. With the right visuals and structure, you can ensure that your audience grasps your message clearly and quickly.

A well-designed presentation captures and maintains your audience’s attention. Visuals, animations, and interactive elements create a dynamic experience that engages people.

Professionalism

A professionally designed presentation reflects the professionalism of your brand. It shows that you’ve put thought and effort into your message, instilling confidence in your audience.

Memorability

Human brains are wired to remember stories and visuals better than raw data. Effective presentation design leverages this by weaving a compelling narrative and using memorable visuals.

An essential means of influence, presentations have the power to persuade. Employ storytelling methods, visual statistics, and powerful language to win over your audience.

Efficient Communication

Well-structured and designed presentations streamline communication within organizations. They help teams and stakeholders better grasp ideas, strategies, and goals.

Better Decision-Making

When everyone in a meeting or discussion understands the content and context, decision-making becomes more informed and efficient. Effective presentations reduce the need for lengthy explanations.

Competitive Edge

In a competitive business environment, a well-designed presentation can set you apart. It demonstrates a commitment to innovation and quality.

Increased Revenue

Ultimately, effective presentation design can lead to increased revenue. Whether you’re securing investments, closing deals, or attracting new clients, persuasive presentations can be catalysts for business growth.

Why is presentation design important?

Effective presentations facilitate better communication within your organization. Team members can quickly grasp ideas, strategies, and goals, leading to better collaboration.

Sales pitches, marketing campaigns, and product launches all benefit from compelling presentations. They help you stand out in a crowded marketplace and persuade potential customers. Moreover, when everyone in a meeting or boardroom understands the data and the stakes, decision-making becomes more efficient. You can save time and resources by avoiding lengthy explanations.

Standing out in a crowded industry requires a polished presentation. It showcases your dedication to excellence and cutting-edge thinking, opening up new possibilities. Ultimately, effective presentation design can lead to increased revenue. Whether you’re securing investors, closing deals, or attracting new clients, a persuasive presentation can catalyze growth.

Advantages of Using PowerPoint and Google Slides for Your Presentations

1-PowerPoint and Google Slides are both very user-friendly programs that are easy to learn

When you’re looking for a presentation program that’s easy to use but still has all the features needed, PowerPoint and Keynote are two great options. However, there is a difference between them which could be important depending on your needs as an individual or business owner!

2-They allow you to create beautiful, professional presentations with little effort

You can use images, videos, and other multimedia content in Google Slides. It has a variety of templates to help get you started with your presentation or collaboration project! If it’s more complex than just writing out notes on paper – like if there are animations and transitions involved- then we recommend PowerPoint because its interface allows for easier navigation between different parts while keeping everything together at once.”

3-You can easily share your presentations with others online

Here is a world where you need to be online at any time you need a way to show your slides online in your meetings. So, it’s one of the best options that you have. You can view presentations on any device, including smartphones and tablets, or otherwise You can present your slides offline if you need to.

4-They both have a variety of templates and themes to choose from

PowerPoint offers a number of options that make customizing presentations to your brand or style effortless. You can add videos, photos, and other multimedia elements for an even more engaging experience!

5-Google Slides is a great option if you need to collaborate on your presentation with others

As we mentioned before, sharing your presentation with others is one of the best features that it may have, you can easily share your presentation with others and work on it together in real-time.

it’s not just about sharing online you may need to share them online when you can’t connect to the internet. Google Slides is also a great option if you need to give your presentation offline.

6-They both offer built-in slide transitions and animations for a more polished look

The ability to create interactive, digital versions of your presentations is an excellent way for you and others in attendance at the same event or meeting. You’ll also want these files saved as PDFs because that allows users on different devices access through their computers’ web browsers–no need to uselessly carry around a USB keychain just so everyone has a peek ahead!

The advantages of presentation design are evident in every aspect of business, from internal communications to client-facing interactions. You can enhance these three aspects by harnessing the power of quality design. Enhanced communication yields amplified sales and marketing and a unique position in your industry. Ultimately, the impact on your bottom line is undeniable: The potential for lasting success and increased revenue is heightened when adopting innovative technologies. Embracing presentation design’s artistry is crucial to unlocking your business’s maximum potential.

What is the value of presentation design?

An excellent presentation design can serve as that visual index card for all the information you are trying to deliver; consider the power of the visual. Visuals are processed quickly. Did you know your brain can see visuals lasting just 13 milliseconds?

Is presentation design a skill?

Knowing how to design effective and visually stunning presentations is valuable for designers and everyone in the modern workplace.

• Graphic Design , UI-UX

How to Become a Motion Graphic Designer?

A Brief Overview of Lean UX

UX Strategy and Its Components

you'r more than welcome

7 days a week, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM

contact info

[email protected] +971581974748

• LB07129, Jebel Ali Freezone, Dubai, UAE

Got a Project?

We’re a team of creatives who are excited about unique ideas and help companies to create amazing identity by offering wide range of digital services

© 2021 All rights reserved.

Be the first one who knows about updates!

enter your email address 📩

Welcome to the club 🎉.

From now on, Temis will inform you of its most valuable content and offers. You can also subscribe to this list at the moment. We will also protect your privacy

• Presentation Science

The Importance of Presentation Design

• By: Caitlin McGuire

We have all seen presentations that are just to cluttered and overwhelming visually. Whether they are jam packed with words on a slide or filled with terrible word art that looks confused and outdated busy slides can easily distract from the overall presentation.

That is why a good presentation design is a vital tool for every great presenter. In fact, according to one study only 10-20% of information was retained over time when represented through written word, but that number increases to 65% when the information was presented visually.

The data is there, great presentation designs are vital to a great presenter, but if you are not convinced take a look at some other reasons a great presentation design is important.

Visuals stick in long term memory. When information is paired with a visual it is much more likely to stick with a person for the long term. That visual becomes an information index card which the brain can reference later on to recall the information. A great presentation design can serve as that visual index card for all the information you are trying to deliver, don’t underestimate the power of the visual.

Visuals are processed quicker. Did you know your brain can see visuals that last for just 13 milliseconds? That is an insanely short period of time, yet your mind can still retain that visual. Along with this incredibly short amount of time needed to retain an image, 90% of information transmitted to your brain is visual. The reality is you are hardwired to see information much more than you are to hear it. As a presenter that means you have the unique ability to deliver information quickly using compelling imagery that cannot be achieved with the written or spoken word.

Visuals evoke emotion. A compelling visual is a powerful tool when it comes to evoking emotion. That is why whenever you see someone fundraising for an organization they are usually standing next to a compelling image that pulls on your heart strings. The visuals in your presentation have the power to evoke emotion and as a presenter you must leverage your design to help take your audience on an emotional journey.

Visuals engage the audience If all the above data is not enough there is one last reason presentation design is important and that is that, visuals engage the audience. The reality is we live in a digital and visual age. With the uptick in smartphone purchase and usage our minds are constantly taking in visual stimulation. Whether that is good or bad does not matter what matters is that your audience is used to taking in visual information. Why then would we choose to rely solely on our speaking skills and poor design concepts to communicate our message. As a presenter you must play in to the strength of a visual generation and leverage your design to engage your audience.

Presentation design is a vital part of every presentation; however, it is often overlooked and under resourced. Don’t make the mistake of settling for a boring template. Instead leverage your design and create a standout presentation that will bring your audience back time and time again.

Want help with your next presentation design? Check us out at ethos3.com/presentation-design .

Caitlin McGuire

Join our newsletter today.

© 2006-2024 Ethos3 – An Award Winning Presentation Design and Training Company ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Diversity and Inclusion

Improve your practice.

Enhance your soft skills with a range of award-winning courses.

How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples

August 3, 2018 - Dom Barnard

For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about a  great deal of nerves . However, if you take some time to understand how effective presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll appear much more confident and relaxed.

Here is our complete guide for structuring your presentation, with examples at the end of the article to demonstrate these points.

Why is structuring a presentation so important?

If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you’ll have left feeling either inspired or informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure presentations – they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.

Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured information  40% more accurately  than unstructured information.

In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.

What will affect your presentation structure?

Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:

• Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations
• How  knowledgeable the audience  already is on the given subject
• How much interaction you want from the audience
• Any time constraints there are for your talk
• What setting you are in
• Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance

Before choosing the presentation’s structure answer these questions first:

• What is your presentation’s aim?
• Who are the audience?
• What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?

When reading the points below, think critically about what things may cause your presentation structure to be slightly different. You can add in certain elements and add more focus to certain moments if that works better for your speech.

What is the typical presentation structure?

This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid structure you can add your content to.

1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself

Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you’re credible.

Read our tips on  How to Start a Presentation Effectively

2. Introduction

In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst gaining the audience’s interest and confidence. It’s sometimes helpful to think of your introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:

• Introduce your general topic
• Explain your topic area
• State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
• State your presentation’s purpose – this is the basis of your presentation so ensure that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, “I will argue that…” or maybe you will “compare”, “analyse”, “evaluate”, “describe” etc.
• Provide a statement of what you’re hoping the outcome of the presentation will be, for example, “I’m hoping this will be provide you with…”
• Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation

In this section also explain:

• The length of the talk.
• Signal whether you want audience interaction – some presenters prefer the audience to ask questions throughout whereas others allocate a specific section for this.
• If it applies, inform the audience whether to take notes or whether you will be providing handouts.

The way you structure your introduction can depend on the amount of time you have been given to present: a  sales pitch  may consist of a quick presentation so you may begin with your conclusion and then provide the evidence. Conversely, a speaker presenting their idea for change in the world would be better suited to start with the evidence and then conclude what this means for the audience.

Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and connect with them.

3. The main body of your talk

The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction. Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time – it’s important for everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.

• Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
• Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
• Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you’re moving onto the next point.
• Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.

When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself “What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?” refining your answers this way will help you produce clear messages.

4. Conclusion

In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a shame as it’s the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a specific goal – that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers, lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points, or to motivate them towards a shared goal.

Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications. This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.

Follow these steps:

• Signal that it’s nearly the end of your presentation, for example, “As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…”
• Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation – “In this speech I wanted to compare…”
• Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions
• Indicate what is next/a call to action/a thought-provoking takeaway
• Move on to the last section

5. Thank the audience and invite questions

Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to  ask any questions  they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the structure of your presentation.

Many presenters prefer to make the Q&A session the key part of their talk and try to speed through the main body of the presentation. This is totally fine, but it is still best to focus on delivering some sort of initial presentation to set the tone and topics for discussion in the Q&A.

Other common presentation structures

The above was a description of a basic presentation, here are some more specific presentation layouts:

Demonstration

Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique in his presentations.

• Explain why the product is valuable.
• Describe why the product is necessary.
• Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
• Demonstrate the product  to support what you’ve been saying.
• Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.

Problem-solution

This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.

• Briefly frame the issue.
• Go into the issue in detail showing why it ‘s such a problem. Use logos and pathos for this – the logical and emotional appeals.
• Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
• Call to action – something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and pertinent to the solution.

Storytelling

As well as incorporating  stories in your presentation , you can organise your whole presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use – a popular choice is the monomyth – the hero’s journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.

Storytelling for Business Success  webinar , where well-know storyteller Javier Bernad shares strategies for crafting compelling narratives.

Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.

• Great storytelling: Examples from Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma

Remaining method

The remaining method structure is good for situations where you’re presenting your perspective on a controversial topic which has split people’s opinions.

• Go into the issue in detail showing why it’s such a problem – use logos and pathos.
• Rebut your opponents’ solutions  – explain why their solutions could be useful because the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you’re trustworthy, and then explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
• After you’ve presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with the audience believing that you’re fair and trustworthy.

Transitions

When delivering presentations it’s important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience can understand how everything links together and why it’s all relevant. This can be done  using speech transitions  which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.

Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence – there are many different forms, here are some examples:

Moving from the introduction to the first point

Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:

• Now that you’re aware of the overview, let’s begin with…
• First, let’s begin with…
• I will first cover…
• My first point covers…
• To get started, let’s look at…

Shifting between similar points

Move from one point to a similar one:

• In the same way…
• Likewise…
• Equally…
• This is similar to…
• Similarly…

Internal summaries

Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must inform the audience:

• What part of the presentation you covered – “In the first part of this speech we’ve covered…”
• What the key points were – “Precisely how…”
• How this links in with the overall presentation – “So that’s the context…”
• What you’re moving on to – “Now I’d like to move on to the second part of presentation which looks at…”

Physical movement

You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point. The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their interest.

A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:

• Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.
• For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
• You discuss your second point from the centre again.
• You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
• The conclusion occurs in the centre.

Key slides for your presentation

Slides are a useful tool for most presentations: they can greatly assist in the delivery of your message and help the audience follow along with what you are saying. Key slides include:

• An intro slide outlining your ideas
• A  summary slide  with core points to remember
• High quality image slides to supplement what you are saying

There are some presenters who choose not to use slides at all, though this is more of a rarity. Slides can be a powerful tool if used properly, but the problem is that many fail to do just that. Here are some golden rules to follow when using slides in a presentation:

• Don’t over fill them  – your slides are there to assist your speech, rather than be the focal point. They should have as little information as possible, to avoid distracting people from your talk.
• A picture says a thousand words  – instead of filling a slide with text, instead, focus on one or two images or diagrams to help support and explain the point you are discussing at that time.
• Make them readable  – depending on the size of your audience, some may not be able to see small text or images, so make everything large enough to fill the space.
• Don’t rush through slides  – give the audience enough time to digest each slide.

Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and author, suggests that slideshows should follow a  10-20-30 rule :

• There should be a maximum of 10 slides – people rarely remember more than one concept afterwards so there’s no point overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
• The presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes as this will leave time for questions and discussion.
• The font size should be a minimum of 30pt because the audience reads faster than you talk so less information on the slides means that there is less chance of the audience being distracted.

Here are some additional resources for slide design:

• 7 design tips for effective, beautiful PowerPoint presentations
• 11 design tips for beautiful presentations
• 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea

Group Presentations

Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but usually require more rehearsal and practices.  Clean transitioning between speakers  is very important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:

• Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: “So that was a brief introduction on what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody”
• Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss: “Now Elnaz will talk about the prevalence of health anxiety.”
• Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their name: “Elnaz”.
• The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: “Thank you Joe.”

From this example you can see how the different sections of the presentations link which makes it easier for the audience to follow and remain engaged.

Example of great presentation structure and delivery

Having examples of great presentations will help inspire your own structures, here are a few such examples, each unique and inspiring in their own way.

How Google Works – by Eric Schmidt

This presentation by ex-Google CEO  Eric Schmidt  demonstrates some of the most important lessons he and his team have learnt with regards to working with some of the most talented individuals they hired. The simplistic yet cohesive style of all of the slides is something to be appreciated. They are relatively straightforward, yet add power and clarity to the narrative of the presentation.

Start with why – by Simon Sinek

Since being released in 2009, this presentation has been viewed almost four million times all around the world. The message itself is very powerful, however, it’s not an idea that hasn’t been heard before. What makes this presentation so powerful is the simple message he is getting across, and the straightforward and understandable manner in which he delivers it. Also note that he doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard where he creates a simple diagram of his opinion.

The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout – by Rick Rigsby

Here’s an example of a presentation given by a relatively unknown individual looking to inspire the next generation of graduates. Rick’s presentation is unique in many ways compared to the two above. Notably, he uses no visual prompts and includes a great deal of humour.

However, what is similar is the structure he uses. He first introduces his message that the wisest man he knew was a third-grade dropout. He then proceeds to deliver his main body of argument, and in the end, concludes with his message. This powerful speech keeps the viewer engaged throughout, through a mixture of heart-warming sentiment, powerful life advice and engaging humour.

As you can see from the examples above, and as it has been expressed throughout, a great presentation structure means analysing the core message of your presentation. Decide on a key message you want to impart the audience with, and then craft an engaging way of delivering it.

By preparing a solid structure, and  practising your talk  beforehand, you can walk into the presentation with confidence and deliver a meaningful message to an interested audience.

It’s important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.

Research suggests that the audience remember the first and last things you say so your introduction and conclusion are vital for reinforcing your points. Essentially, ensure you spend the time structuring your presentation and addressing all of the sections.

01329 836 390

[email protected]

Why Presentation Design is Important

Presentations will always be an important part of business. Whether it’s in person, via a video call, or even sent as an email attachment. You may be presenting an idea, tendering or sharing information, it’s crucial that your presentations are on brand and well-designed.

Here’s why:

Demonstrates expertise.

You know what you’re talking about and you want to make it obvious to your audience, just how much expertise you have in your market. A considered, well-designed presentation will help make you look the part. An easy-to follow narrative will assist you present your thoughts in a simple and calm manner.

Makes you memorable

A well-designed presentation will stand out over a series of basic PowerPoint slides. It will create an impression and portray you well in all aspects of your business. Everyone wants to be remembered – for the right reasons at least.

Process information

You want to be able to deliver your message quickly and as clearly as possible. A well-designed presentation will take large paragraphs of text and break it up into bite sized chunks with imagery, icons or infographics to support. It will enable you to talk openly about your presentation, while not reading directly from the screen. It will also allow your audience to skim read and take in as much of the key information as possible in an attractive way.

Create a strong brand presence

Anything you create, whether it be for internal or external use, will reflect on your company and brand. A consistent and strong brand will ensure confidence, professionalism and trustworthiness.

Shows enthusiasm

A well-designed presentation will demonstrate that you care about the message you are trying to convey. It will show your passion for the topic. Much like the phrase ‘dressing for success’ your presentations should also look the part and will make you feel more confident when delivering.

A helpful aid

Whether you love it or hate it, presentations can often be nerve-racking. Having a well-designed presentation will provide prompts to encourage you to deliver a clear and powerful performance yourself.

Grab attention

Whether it’s a PowerPoint , Prezi or Canva (to name a few) presentation, the use of transitions and animations can allow you to navigate your audience through your document, drawing attention to key information or slides.

A presentation should not only sound great, but also look the part. If you can ‘talk the talk’, your presentations (as well as everything else) should follow suit to reinforce your company and brand as a strong and reliable business and deliver and elevate your message to the best it can be.

At Glow we assist many of our clients design powerful and impactful presentations. We’re here to ensure they stand out from the rest and would love to help you too .

Latest blogs

How to pick the right images for your brand personality

How to create your social media strategy

The value of a brand strategy

Creating an effective presentation is an essential skill in both professional and educational settings. Whether you're presenting in a corporate meeting, a conference, or a classroom, a well-crafted presentation can significantly influence your audience's perception and understanding of your message. In this guide, we will explore what makes a good presentation and provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a compelling PowerPoint presentation.

Importance of a Good Presentation

A good presentation is more than just a set of slides; it’s a combination of clear messaging, engaging visuals, and confident delivery. The ability to communicate your ideas effectively can lead to better engagement, understanding, and retention of information among your audience. This is crucial in any scenario where you need to inform, persuade, or inspire others.

In this guide, we will cover:

Key Elements of a Good Presentation

• Step-by-Step Instructions on Creating a PowerPoint Presentation

Tips for Enhancing Your Presentation Skills

1. Clear Objective

Before you start creating your presentation, define the objective. What do you want your audience to take away? Your objective will guide the content and structure of your presentation, ensuring that all elements align with your primary message.

2. Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is crucial. Consider their knowledge level, interests, and what they expect to gain from your presentation. This will help you tailor your content and delivery to meet their needs and keep them engaged.

3. Structured Content

A well-structured presentation has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Start with an introduction that outlines the main points, follow with detailed content, and conclude with a summary and call to action.

4. Engaging Visuals

Visual aids like images, charts, and graphs can make complex information more understandable and keep your audience’s attention. However, avoid cluttering your slides with too much text or overly complicated graphics.

5. Practice and Delivery

Even the best slides won’t save a presentation if the delivery is poor. Practice your presentation multiple times to become familiar with the content and flow. Focus on speaking clearly, making eye contact, and using body language to emphasize key points.

How to Make a PowerPoint 101

Creating a PowerPoint presentation involves several steps, from planning your content to designing your slides. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

Step 1: Plan Your Content

Define your objective.

Start by clearly defining the goal of your presentation. Ask yourself:

• What is the main message I want to convey?
• What should my audience learn or do after my presentation?

Outline Your Presentation

Create an outline to organize your thoughts and structure your presentation logically. A typical outline includes:

• Introduction: Brief overview of the topic and main points.
• Body: Detailed information, divided into sections.
• Conclusion: Summary of key points and a call to action.

Step 2: Create Your Slides

Open powerpoint.

Launch Microsoft PowerPoint and open a new blank presentation.

Choose a Template

PowerPoint offers a variety of templates that can give your presentation a professional look. Choose one that complements your topic and audience.

Add Title Slide

Your title slide should include:

• The title of your presentation.
• Your name and/or the name of your organization.
• The date of the presentation.

Add Content Slides

For each section of your outline, create a new slide. Here are some tips for designing content slides:

• Keep it Simple: Use bullet points to highlight key information. Avoid long paragraphs.
• Visuals: Incorporate images, charts, and graphs to illustrate your points.
• Consistency: Use the same font and color scheme throughout your presentation to maintain a cohesive look.

Step 3: Design Tips for Effective Slides

Use high-quality images.

Ensure that any images you use are high-resolution and relevant to your content. Avoid using generic stock photos that don’t add value to your presentation.

Each slide should convey one main idea. Use short phrases and bullet points rather than long sentences. This makes it easier for your audience to follow along.

Choose Readable Fonts

Select fonts that are easy to read. Sans-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica are typically best for presentations. Ensure text size is large enough to be read from the back of the room.

Use Contrasting Colors

Make sure there is enough contrast between your text and background colors. This improves readability and ensures your content stands out.

Step 4: Practice Your Presentation

Rehearse multiple times.

Practice delivering your presentation several times. This helps you become more familiar with the content and flow, reducing the likelihood of mistakes.

Time Your Presentation

Ensure your presentation fits within the allotted time. Practice speaking at a steady pace and avoid rushing through your slides.

Get Feedback

If possible, practice in front of a colleague or friend and ask for feedback. This can help you identify any areas that need improvement.

1. Engage Your Audience

Start with a question or an interesting fact to grab your audience’s attention. Encourage participation by asking questions throughout your presentation.

2. Use Stories and Examples

People remember stories better than facts. Use relevant anecdotes and examples to illustrate your points and make your presentation more memorable.

3. Maintain Eye Contact

Eye contact helps to build a connection with your audience and keep them engaged. Make sure to look at different parts of the room rather than focusing on your slides or notes.

4. Manage Nervousness

It’s normal to feel nervous before a presentation. Take deep breaths, practice relaxation techniques, and focus on your message rather than your anxiety.

5. Use Body Language

Your body language can reinforce your message. Use hand gestures to emphasize points, move around the stage to maintain energy, and ensure your posture is confident.

Also Read : Snagit vs. Camtasia

Creating a good presentation involves careful planning, designing engaging slides, and delivering your message confidently. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can develop a PowerPoint presentation that effectively communicates your ideas and keeps your audience engaged. Remember, practice is key to becoming a skilled presenter. The more you present, the more comfortable and proficient you will become.

1. How long should a good presentation be?

The length of a good presentation depends on the context and audience. Generally, aim for 15-20 minutes to maintain attention, followed by a Q&A session. For longer presentations, incorporate breaks and interactive elements to keep the audience engaged.

2. How many slides should I include in my presentation?

A common guideline is one slide per minute of your presentation. However, the number of slides should reflect the complexity and depth of your content. Focus on quality over quantity.

3. What is the best font size for PowerPoint slides?

For readability, use a minimum font size of 24 points for body text and 36-44 points for headings. Adjust based on the size of the room and audience.

4. How can I make my presentation more interactive?

Incorporate audience polls, Q&A sessions, and interactive elements like quizzes or live demonstrations. Encourage audience participation through questions and discussions.

5. What should I do if I forget a part of my presentation?

If you forget a part of your presentation, take a moment to compose yourself. Use your notes or slides to jog your memory, and if needed, acknowledge the lapse with humor and move on. Staying calm and composed is key.

6. How can I reduce anxiety before presenting?

Prepare thoroughly and practice multiple times. Use deep breathing exercises, positive visualization, and relaxation techniques before your presentation. Focusing on your message and audience rather than your nerves can also help.

7. Can I use animations and transitions in my slides?

Animations and transitions can enhance your presentation when used sparingly. Avoid overuse, as too many effects can be distracting. Use them to highlight key points or smooth transitions between sections.

8. How do I handle technical difficulties during a presentation?

Have a backup plan, such as printed handouts or a copy of your presentation on a USB drive. Stay calm and address the issue as best as you can. If the problem persists, be prepared to continue your presentation without visual aids.

9. What are some common mistakes to avoid in presentations?

Common mistakes include overcrowding slides with text, reading directly from slides, lack of preparation, and ignoring the audience. Focus on clear, concise content, practice your delivery, and engage with your audience.

10. How do I end a presentation effectively?

End your presentation with a strong conclusion that summarizes your main points and provides a clear call to action. Thank your audience for their attention and invite questions or discussions to close the session.

Get Doodle Maker For Just a One-Time Payment

Get a FREE QUOTE

Latest blogs, what makes a good presentation how to make a powerpoint 101, snagit vs. camtasia: which screen capture tool is right for you, 6 best screen capture and recording software in 2024, ultimate guide to creating engaging training videos for business success in 2024, how to take a screenshot on mac : the complete guide for 2024, youtube thumbnail sizes and best practices for 2024.

“What we love most about animation is, it’s a team sport, and everything we do is about pure imagination.”

• Onsite training

3,000,000+ delegates

15,000+ clients

1,000+ locations

• KnowledgePass
• Log a ticket

01344203999 Available 24/7

The Importance of Presentation Skills: That You Must Know About

Uncover The Importance of Presentation Skills in this comprehensive blog. Begin with a brief introduction to the art of effective presentations and its wide-reaching significance. Delve into the vital role of presentation skills in both your personal and professional life, understanding how they can shape your success.

Exclusive 40% OFF

Training Outcomes Within Your Budget!

We ensure quality, budget-alignment, and timely delivery by our expert instructors.

Share this Resource

• Effective Communication Skills
• Presenting with Impact Training
• Interpersonal Skills Training Course
• Effective Presentation Skills & Techniques
• Public Speaking Course

Table of Contents  

1) A brief introduction to Presentation Skills 

2) Importance of Presentation Skills in personal life 

3) Importance of Presentation Skills in professional life 

4) Tips to improve your Presentation Skills 

5) Conclusion 

A brief introduction to Presentation Skills  

Presentation skills can be defined as the ability to deliver information confidently and persuasively to engage and influence the audience. Be it in personal or professional settings; mastering Presentation Skills empowers individuals to convey their ideas with clarity, build confidence, and leave a lasting impression. From public speaking to business pitches, honing these skills can lead to greater success in diverse spheres of life.  You can also refer to various presentation skills interview questions and answer to build you confidence! This blog will also look into the advantages and disadvantages of presentations .It is therefore important to understand the elements of presentations .

Importance of Presentation Skills in personal life  

Effective Presentation skills are not limited to professional settings alone; they play a significant role in personal life as well. Let us now dive deeper into the Importance of Presentation Skills in one’s personal life:    

Expressing ideas clearly   

In day-to-day conversations with family, friends, or acquaintances, having good Presentation skills enables you to articulate your thoughts and ideas clearly. Whether you're discussing plans for the weekend or sharing your opinions on a particular topic, being an effective communicator encourages better understanding and engagement. 

Enhancing social confidence  

Many individuals struggle with social anxiety or nervousness in social gatherings. Mastering Presentation skills helps boost self-confidence, making it easier to navigate social situations with ease. The ability to present yourself confidently and engage others in conversation enhances your social life and opens doors to new relationships. 

Creating memories on special occasions  

There are moments in life that call for public speaking, such as proposing a toast at a wedding, delivering a speech at a family gathering, or giving a Presentation during special events. Having polished Presentation skills enables you to leave a positive and lasting impression on the audience, making these occasions even more memorable. 

Handling challenging conversations  

Life often presents challenging situations that require delicate communication, such as expressing condolences or resolving conflicts. Strong Presentation skills help you convey your feelings and thoughts sensitively, encouraging effective and empathetic communication during difficult times. 

Building stronger relationships  

Being a skilled presenter means being a good listener as well. Active listening is a fundamental aspect of effective Presentations, and when applied in personal relationships, it strengthens bonds and builds trust. Empathising with others and showing genuine interest in their stories and opinions enhances the quality of your relationships. 

Advocating for personal goals  

Whether you're pursuing personal projects or seeking support for a cause you're passionate about, the ability to present your ideas persuasively helps garner support and enthusiasm from others. This can be beneficial in achieving personal goals and making a positive impact on your community. 

Inspiring and motivating others  

In one’s personal life, Presentation skills are not just about delivering formal speeches; they also involve inspiring and motivating others through your actions and words. Whether you're sharing your experiences, mentoring someone, or encouraging loved ones during tough times, your Presentation skills can be a source of inspiration for others. 

Exuding leadership traits  

Effective Presentation skills go hand in hand with leadership qualities. Being able to communicate clearly and influence others' perspectives positions you as a leader within your family, social circles, or community. Leadership in personal life involves guiding and supporting others towards positive outcomes. 

Unlock your full potential as a presenter with our Presentation Skills Training Course. Join now!  

Importance of Presentation Skills in professional life  

Effective Presentation skills are a vital asset for career growth and success in professional life. Let us now explore the importance of Presentation skills for students and workers:  

Impressing employers and clients  

During job interviews or business meetings, a well-delivered Presentation showcases your knowledge, confidence, and ability to communicate ideas effectively. It impresses employers, clients, and potential investors, leaving a positive and memorable impression that can tilt the scales in your favour. 

Advancing in your career  

In the corporate world, promotions and career advancements often involve presenting your achievements, ideas, and future plans to decision-makers. Strong Presentation skills demonstrate your leadership potential and readiness for higher responsibilities, opening doors to new opportunities. 

Effective team collaboration  

As a professional, you often need to present projects, strategies, or updates to your team or colleagues. A compelling Presentation facilitates better understanding and association among team members, leading to more productive and successful projects. 

Persuasive selling techniques  

For sales and marketing professionals, Presentation skills are instrumental in persuading potential customers to choose your products or services. An engaging sales pitch can sway buying decisions, leading to increased revenue and business growth. 

Creating impactful proposals  

In the corporate world, proposals are crucial for securing new partnerships or business deals. A well-structured and compelling Presentation can make your proposal stand out and increase the chances of successful negotiations. 

Gaining and retaining clients  

Whether you are a freelancer, consultant, or business owner, Presentation skills play a key role in winning and retaining clients. A captivating Presentation not only convinces clients of your capabilities but also builds trust and promotes long-term relationships. 

Enhancing public speaking engagements  

Professional life often involves speaking at conferences, seminars, or industry events. Being a confident and engaging speaker allows you to deliver your message effectively, position yourself as an expert, and expand your professional network. 

Influencing stakeholders and decision-makers  

As you climb the corporate ladder, you may find yourself presenting to senior management or board members. Effective Presentations are essential for gaining support for your ideas, projects, or initiatives from key stakeholders. 

Handling meetings and discussions  

In meetings, being able to present your thoughts clearly and concisely contributes to productive discussions and efficient decision-making. It ensures that your ideas are understood and considered by colleagues and superiors. 

Professional development  

Investing time in honing Presentation skills is a form of professional development. As you become a more effective presenter, you become a more valuable asset to your organisation and industry. 

Building a personal brand  

A strong personal brand is vital for professional success. Impressive Presentations contribute to building a positive reputation and positioning yourself as a thought leader or industry expert. 

Career transitions and interviews  

When seeking new opportunities or transitioning to a different industry, Presentation Skills are essential for communicating your transferable skills and showcasing your adaptability to potential employers. 

Take your Presentations to the next level with our Effective Presentation Skills & Techniques Course. Sign up today!  

Tips to improve your Presentation Skills  

Now that you know about the importance of presentation skills in personal and professional life, we will now provide you with tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills .

1) Know your audience: Understand the demographics and interests of your audience to tailor your Presentation accordingly. 

2) Practice regularly: Rehearse your speech multiple times to refine content and delivery. 

3) Seek feedback: Gather feedback from peers or mentors to identify areas for improvement. 

4) Manage nervousness: Use relaxation techniques to overcome nervousness before presenting. 

5) Engage with eye contact: Maintain eye contact with the audience to establish a connection. 

6) Use clear visuals: Utilise impactful visuals to complement your spoken words. 

7) Emphasise key points: Highlight important information to enhance audience retention. 

8) Employ body language: Use confident and purposeful gestures to convey your message. 

9) Handle Q&A confidently: Prepare for potential questions and answer them with clarity. 

10) Add personal stories: Include relevant anecdotes to make your Presentation more relatable.   

All in all, Presentation skills are a valuable asset, impacting both personal and professional realms of life. By mastering these skills, you can become a more effective communicator, a confident professional, and a persuasive influencer. Continuous improvement and adaptation to technological advancements will ensure you stay ahead in this competitive world. 

Want to master the art of impactful Presentations? Explore our Presentation Skills Courses and elevate your communication prowess!  

Frequently Asked Questions

Upcoming business skills resources batches & dates.

Fri 7th Jun 2024

Fri 5th Jul 2024

Fri 2nd Aug 2024

Fri 6th Sep 2024

Fri 4th Oct 2024

Fri 1st Nov 2024

Fri 6th Dec 2024

Get A Quote

WHO WILL BE FUNDING THE COURSE?

My employer

By submitting your details you agree to be contacted in order to respond to your enquiry

• Business Analysis
• Lean Six Sigma Certification

Share this course

Our biggest spring sale.

We cannot process your enquiry without contacting you, please tick to confirm your consent to us for contacting you about your enquiry.

By submitting your details you agree to be contacted in order to respond to your enquiry.

We may not have the course you’re looking for. If you enquire or give us a call on 01344203999 and speak to our training experts, we may still be able to help with your training requirements.

Or select from our popular topics

• ITIL® Certification
• Scrum Certification
• Change Management Certification
• Business Analysis Courses
• Microsoft Azure Certification
• Microsoft Excel Courses
• Microsoft Project
• Explore more courses

Press esc to close

Fill out your  contact details  below and our training experts will be in touch.

Fill out your   contact details   below

Thank you for your enquiry!

One of our training experts will be in touch shortly to go over your training requirements.

Back to Course Information

Fill out your contact details below so we can get in touch with you regarding your training requirements.

* WHO WILL BE FUNDING THE COURSE?

Preferred Contact Method

No preference

Back to course information

Fill out your  training details  below

Fill out your training details below so we have a better idea of what your training requirements are.

HOW MANY DELEGATES NEED TRAINING?

HOW DO YOU WANT THE COURSE DELIVERED?

Online Instructor-led

Online Self-paced

WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THIS COURSE?

Next 2 - 4 months

WHAT IS YOUR REASON FOR ENQUIRING?

Looking for some information

Looking for a discount

I want to book but have questions

One of our training experts will be in touch shortly to go overy your training requirements.

Your privacy & cookies!

Like many websites we use cookies. We care about your data and experience, so to give you the best possible experience using our site, we store a very limited amount of your data. Continuing to use this site or clicking “Accept & close” means that you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more about our privacy policy and cookie policy cookie policy .

We use cookies that are essential for our site to work. Please visit our cookie policy for more information. To accept all cookies click 'Accept & close'.

• Pitch Decks & Investor Materials
• B2B Graphic Design
• Startup Consulting
• Trainings & Workshops
• Case studies
• Downloadable resources

Why does your team need training in presentation design from a specialist

• Presentation design /
• Public speaking /
• Visual communication

We all have suffered death from PowerPoint at least once in our lives. It could have happened in an academic environment, but if it occurs in a business one, it can hurt the brand's image and the presenter's expertise.

In the modern business landscape, effective communication is paramount. Whether pitching ideas to investors, delivering updates to stakeholders, or captivating potential clients, the ability to convey information clearly and compellingly can make all the difference. 

Yet, businesses overlook one crucial aspect of communication: presentation design . In an era where visuals reign supreme and attention spans wane, mastering the art of presentation design is no longer optional— it's essential .

Even if not all the presentations are high stakes, all of them lead to the productivity and revenue of the company. From the monthly planning, and reporting, to HR trainings, general meetings, and client meetings, presentations are essential pieces of the system. 

Why are presentation design skills for your team important?

Communicate ideas effectively.

Presentation skills and good designs help us communicate ideas clearly and persuasively to colleagues and clients. With proper training from a specialist, employees can learn how to structure the presentations logically, select the most appropriate visuals, and use storytelling techniques to engage their audience.

A structured presentation with flow and comprehensive visuals will clarify complex information, and data and can persuade your audience to take action. 

Increase productivity

If you have an internal design team, it may become difficult for them to prepare all the presentations your teams might need, and it can also distract them from their main goals. 

Most of the time, your employees are doing their presentations themselves, wasting the time of doing their actual job by trying to create good presentations. 

Training in presentation design will help your team to spend less time dealing with design tools and formatting issues. The training can include learning a workflow to reduce the workload and create presentations quicker, shortcuts, and learning to create templates. You can reduce the time they spend from 4-6 hours to 2-3 hours per presentation. 

Having more of your employees with at least basic presentation skills (depending on what you want for them) can increase their productivity and the business's overall productivity.

Enforce brand consistency

Through brand-aligned presentations, you reinforce the company's image and values, as all the presentations your company does are a brand touchpoint. This helps with the brand’s internal culture, new employees get accustomed to the brand from internal presentations and can represent it better in external situations. 

A specialist can help ensure that all presentations align with your company's brand identity and messaging. They can provide guidance on design elements such as color schemes, fonts, and imagery to create cohesive and professional-looking presentations.

Evokes professionalism and credibility

Well-designed presentations reflect positively on our team and organization. Training in presentation design can help them create visually appealing slides that convey professionalism and credibility, enhancing the business's reputation in meetings, conferences, and other settings. It demonstrates that employees are putting time and effort into preparing the presentation and that they care about the audience. 

Improves employee retention and confidence

Employees expect their organization to invest in their professional development, if their needs are not being met, you can lose them in no time. Training in presentation skills can boost their confidence and will be more likely to engage with stakeholders proactively. They'll be eager to share their ideas and insights, leading to increased collaboration and productivity across teams.

In essence, presentation design training equips employees with the skills and confidence they need to create compelling presentations efficiently and effectively. By enhancing communication, saving time, and fostering a culture of collaboration and improvement, it ultimately contributes to increased productivity and success within the organization.

At Visual Hackers, we offer our training and workshop services in multiple areas: storytelling for presentations, effective presentation skills, visual design principles, effective business presentation, and working with presentation masters and templates. 

Find out more on our Trainings & Workshops Page 

We can discuss your needs and create a tailored training session for your team. 

Top articles

• Infographics
• Personal branding
• Pitch deck design
• PowerPoint tutorial
• Presentation design
• Public speaking

Sign up for our monthly newsletter

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Are looking for custom service?

• Presentation Design
• Report Design
• Brochure Design
• Infographic Design
• Illustration Design
• Package Design
• Exhibition Design
• Print Design
• Logo Design
• Video Animation
• Motion Graphics

Presentation ideas

The Importance of Consistency in Presentation Design

Emily Bryce

6 February 2023

Presentation design plays a crucial role in effectively communicating a message to an audience. Whether you are presenting in a business meeting, delivering a keynote speech, or creating a marketing presentation, the design of your presentation can make or break your message. One of the key aspects of a successful presentation design is consistency. Consistency in presentation design helps to create a cohesive and professional image, reinforcing your message and improving its overall impact.

Consistency in presentation design can be achieved in several ways, including through the use of color schemes, typography, imagery, and layout. Let’s explore each of these elements in more detail.

Color Schemes:

Consistent use of colors throughout your presentation helps to create a visual hierarchy, drawing attention to important points and creating a sense of unity. It’s important to choose a color scheme that aligns with your brand identity and message. Once you have chosen your color scheme, make sure to use it consistently throughout your presentation, from your slides to your charts, graphs, and images.

Typography:

Consistent typography is essential for creating a cohesive and professional-looking presentation. Choose two or three fonts that complement each other, and use them consistently throughout your slides. This includes headings, subheadings, body text, and captions. Avoid using too many different fonts, as it can be distracting and can make your presentation look unprofessional.

Using images in your presentation can be a powerful way to convey your message and make it more memorable. When choosing images, make sure they are high quality and relate to your topic. Consistency in the style of your images, such as color or tone, can help to create a cohesive look and feel.

Consistency in the layout of your presentation is also important. Use the same layout throughout your slides to create a sense of structure and continuity. This includes the placement of text, images, and charts. Avoid using too many different layouts, as it can be confusing for your audience.

So why is consistency in presentation design so important? Here are a few reasons:

1. increases professionalism:.

Consistency in presentation design helps to create a professional-looking presentation. It shows that you have put thought and effort into your presentation and that you take your message seriously.

2. Improves Clarity:

A consistent design helps to make your message clear and easy to understand. It allows your audience to focus on the content of your presentation rather than being distracted by inconsistent or confusing design elements.

3. Builds Trust:

Consistency in presentation design builds trust with your audience. It shows that you are organized and detail-oriented, and that you have a clear and consistent message.

4. Enhances Memorability:

Consistent design helps to make your presentation more memorable. It allows your audience to remember your message and key points more easily, making your presentation more effective.

In conclusion, consistency in presentation design is crucial for creating a professional-looking, clear, and memorable presentation. By using a consistent color scheme, typography, imagery, and layout, you can create a cohesive and effective presentation that resonates with your audience. So next time you create a presentation, remember the importance of consistency in design and its impact on the success of your message.

Stay Updated

Join our exclusive subscribers list to receive the latest design trends, industry updates and digital world insights in your inbox.

You can read our privacy policy here .

Related Posts

5 Creative Presentation Ideas to Wow Your Audience

The Benefits of Working with a Professional Presentation Designer

The Role of Timing in Your Presentation

How to Create an Effective Investor Pitch Deck

My Presentation Designer is a brand of Out of Box Ltd. which is a registered company in England and Wales under company no.  06937876  and VAT ID  GB381889149 .

Copyright © 2015-2023 • My Presentation Designer • All rights reserved.

• Leading in the Post-COVID World
• Leadership Development
• Top C-Suite Interviews
• Women in Leadership
• Career and Learning
• Corporate Governance
• Culture & Lifestyle
• Legal Services
• Future Series
• Accelerator Series
• Emerging Ideas
• Design Thinking
• Business Model
• Latest News
• Digital Transformation
• Artificial Intelligence
• Blockchain & Crypto
• Big Data & Analytics
• Computer & Software
• Internet of Things
• Business Mobility & E-Commerce
• Industry 4.0 & Manufacturing
• Product and Service Reviews
• Home Improvement
• Strategic Spotlight
• People Management
• Remote Work
• Organisational Change
• Crisis Management
• Global Business
• Luxury Strategy
• Personal Finance
• Social Media
• Business Process
• Transportation & Business Fleet
• Succession Planning
• Climate Change & Green Business
• Social Impact
• Health & Wellness
• Top Executive Education with Best ROI
• Interviews with Directors and Faculties
• Executive Education Calendar
• Programme Highlights
• Success Stories
• Industry Insights
• Programme Directory
• Executive Education Q&As
• The Hamilton Mann Conversation: Digital For Good
• Fernanda Arreola – Inclusive Innovation: Rendering Change Accessible
• Simon L. Dolan – A Future Shaper
• Hervé LEGENVRE – EIPM Research on Technology and Collaboration
• Mapping the Future of Business with Jacques Bughin
• Adrian Furnham – On Your Head
• Kamil Mizgier On Navigating Risk Frontiers
• Delivering Innovation – Accenture Research
• The Better Boards Podcast Series
• Best Partners for Business Growth
• David De Cremer on Management
• Success through the Lorange Network
• A Special Report on AI and Humans by AiTH, NUS Business School
• Surdak on Technology
• Female Leadership In Our Time
• Europe’s recovery is possible. This is how…
• Editors’ Pick
• Business Events Calendar
• Events Partnership
• Travel & Leisure
• Our Mission
• Top Executive Education
• Advertising
• Guidelines for Authors
• Past Covers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions

Why Presentation Design Is Important for Business Reports

An efficient business report is critical for the success of any project. Professionals understand that poor presentation designs can easily undermine all the work that goes into creating rare business reports. A business presentation is a purpose-led summation of important information about your company’s practices, plans, products, or practices. The presentation can be intended for external or internal audiences. 

Whatever business presentation you are working on, design is critical. Evidence shows that compelling business presentations are crucial for effectively communicating ideas, persuading others, and introducing new products and offerings to the market. As such, designing your business presentation is an essential skill to master. Here is what you need to know about how to make report presentation. 

Why Is Business Presentation Design Important?

It is important to reiterate that business presentations are more than just stacks of slides containing texts and images. An excellent presentation captures the audience’s attention and keeps them interested in the vocal core message. Remember, audiences are likelier to remember your presentation if your slides contain colorful and creative visuals. 

A good presentation design allows you to develop your visuals, ideas, narrative, statistics, and data into coherent and appealing slides. It will enable you to tell a compelling story, leading your audiences to the correct conclusions. If you need help, engage a reliable PowerPoint presentations service .

Also, creating presentations with suitable designs allows you to share your viewpoint successfully. You grow your business by getting target audiences to see and follow your vision. 

While presentation designs are crucial, most presenters don’t know how to achieve good results with their decks. In addition, many audiences dread sitting through presentations because of the length and visually exhausting slideshows. So, while the content of your slides is essential, how you design the presentation decks is even more critical. To make your slides more engaging and visually appealing, consider using a presentation maker that offers a variety of design options and templates to elevate your presentations.

Design Tips for Effective Business Reports

An effective business report is essential for the success of any project. After working hard and getting incredible achievements, you must present your results coherently and consistently. If you want your work to get the appreciation it deserves, ensure your report presentation is flawless. Remember, showing data and valuable ideas is not enough to guarantee an excellent presentation. Here are a few tips to help you get going when designing your slides.

Use Visuals for a Balanced and Engaging Presentation 

Evidence shows that human beings better understand information when it is presented through visuals instead of written text. Since most reports are text-heavy, designing their presentation slides should focus on getting opportunities to transform their text into visuals. If possible, strive for a 50-50 balance between text and images. 

In other words, the more you use visual presentations like charts, diagrams, infographics, and photographs, the quality of your slide decks will improve. But remember, functionality is the most crucial consideration. As such, visuals should enhance your deck’s appeal and comprehensibility. So, select visuals that will help audiences understand your message better. 

Remember, your data visuals do not have to be fancy to be effective. For example, use bar graphs, line charts, and pie charts to help your slides stand out. These detailed visuals in your report presentation design reduce the risk of confusing your readers. 

Use Bold Colors to Make Important Information Stand Out 

Color is one of the most important elements of presentation design. Experts know how to use color to control the areas of their slides that attract the audience’s attention. In other words, your color theme can help with navigation, guiding the audience to what matters during the presentation. 

Bold color features draw your audience’s focus to essential facts and statistics. The point is that color can be used as a design feature, helping the presenter to highlight crucial data points. However, you must be cautious and stick to the theme selected for the entire deck.

Your business report presentation ppt will appear more aesthetically appealing if you use colors in headers and footers as background. You can also use color to draw attention to specific information in the report. All you need to do is enter some text in a box with a colored background. 

Use Your Company Brand to Reinforce Presence

In business presentations, the presence of your company brand says a lot about what you offer and your ideals. Use your brand to tell the audience your core values before presenting the core message of your report. Then, when you use your company’s brand elements, your deck will have consistent and clear messaging. 

Use Whitespace Effectively 

The space around the content of your ppt report in every slide you create can play an essential role in enhancing the design of your presentation. Of course, the space does not have to be blank. You can use any color, texture, or pattern to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the document. Remember, the right amount of whitespace in a presentation deck helps the design to feel balanced. On the other hand, slides without the right amount of white space can seem unfinished and cramped. 

Create an Appropriate Background 

A strong slide background is one of the essential elements of a great presentation design. However, the background you choose can improve attention or distract from the primary information. So, choose your background carefully, ensuring the audience can focus on what matters.

Your background can comprise a color, a picture, or specific patterns. To start with, consider what you want to achieve with the deck and choose a suitable theme for your slides. For instance, choose a solid and less distracting color background if your presentation uses several pictures and visuals. Choosing the right background adds character to your deck. 

As you write presentation report, remember that consistency is vital. Choose the right fonts and colors, and stay within the same theme for the entire deck. Ensure that each slide in your presentation goes together with the others and talks about the same topic. You can also improve the appeal of your design by breaking different sections of your report using section header slides.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Lucky By Design 5 Clever Attitudes to Tilt Odds in Your Favour

How to Put Curiosity to Work in Your Organisation

How Sound Design Shapes Product Quality Perception

Smells Like Patchouli!

Web Design for Business: Tips for Promoting Your Brand Online 

Charisma and brand relevance: How to achieve a strong corporate identity

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Free Online Event for Digital Publishing and News Media Professionals!

Ai & big data expo north america, responsible business europe 2024 (london, june 11-12), international hrd summit 2024, curious2024 – future insight™ conference, global ev & mobility technology forum, 2024 world battery & energy storage industry expo (wbe), reuters events: sustainable transport 2024 (3-4 september, amsterdam), leading people and teams, online mba – stephen m. ross school of business, meet our mba alumni – university of bath, v-entrepreneurs talk 2024: the ritchie story, 2024 learning impact conference, meet us in london – university of st.gallen (hsg), mba experience event – ghent campus – vlerick business school, hr day 2024 – vlerick business school, featured articles.

Unlocking the Power of AI Leadership: A Dialogue with Professor David De Cremer

How Top-Performing Firms Needed to Reorganise Seven Times for Digital

How AI Liberates the Transition to a Skill-Based Organisation

Leading the Gen AI Revolution: Building Workers’ Trust to Reinvent Work in Europe

Aligning Organisational Ecosystems to be Fit for Purpose

Generative AI Update for 2024

Longevity for Sustainability: Adding Value That Lasts

Magnetic Loyalty: Crafting Effective Loyalty Programmes that Attract and Retain Customers

A New Business Leadership Paradigm to Understand Signals and Timing: When to ENTER a Business and When to EXIT

Future series.

Struggling to Implement AI in Your Business? Read this  

Augmented Intelligence: How AI Will Enhance, Rather than Replace, Human Expertise 

What Does EVhype Teach Us, and How Can We Consider the Lessons in AI’s Development?

Embracing AI: The Next Frontier in Elderly Housing

The Dawn of the Value Economy Era 

Platform Thinking: What Established Firms Can Learn From Big Tech and Digital Start-Ups

Part B: Designing Organisational Ecosystems and Overcoming Barriers to Implementation

Strategic Excellence: Steps to Maximise ROI in GEN AI Implementations

Strategy & management.

Towards the Building of Organisational Resilience: Uncovering the Key Features

How to Navigate the Complexities of the EU Supply Chain Law

Do I Need a Head of AI? 

How To Build a Strong Brand Identity for Your SaaS MVP

Bluemina: A Leading Force in Citizenship and Residency Solutions Launching a Virtual Office for Clients Anytime Anywhere!

Upcoming events, privacy overview.

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• AI Essentials for Business
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

What Is Design Thinking & Why Is It Important?

• 18 Jan 2022

In an age when innovation is key to business success and growth, you’ve likely come across the term “design thinking.” Perhaps you’ve heard it mentioned by a senior leader as something that needs to be utilized more, or maybe you’ve seen it on a prospective employee's resume.

While design thinking is an ideology based on designers’ workflows for mapping out stages of design, its purpose is to provide all professionals with a standardized innovation process to develop creative solutions to problems—design-related or not.

Why is design thinking needed? Innovation is defined as a product, process, service, or business model featuring two critical characteristics: novel and useful. Yet, there’s no use in creating something new and novel if people won’t use it. Design thinking offers innovation the upgrade it needs to inspire meaningful and impactful solutions.

But what is design thinking, and how does it benefit working professionals?

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design . While it can be traced back centuries—and perhaps even longer—it gained traction in the modern business world after Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about it in the Harvard Business Review .

Design thinking is different from other innovation and ideation processes in that it’s solution-based and user-centric rather than problem-based. This means it focuses on the solution to a problem instead of the problem itself.

For example, if a team is struggling with transitioning to remote work, the design thinking methodology encourages them to consider how to increase employee engagement rather than focus on the problem (decreasing productivity).

The essence of design thinking is human-centric and user-specific. It’s about the person behind the problem and solution, and requires asking questions such as “Who will be using this product?” and “How will this solution impact the user?”

The first, and arguably most important, step of design thinking is building empathy with users. By understanding the person affected by a problem, you can find a more impactful solution. On top of empathy, design thinking is centered on observing product interaction, drawing conclusions based on research, and ensuring the user remains the focus of the final implementation.

The Four Phases of Innovation

So, what does design thinking entail? There are many models of design thinking that range from three to seven steps.

In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase innovation framework. The phases venture from concrete to abstract thinking and back again as the process loops, reverses, and repeats. This is an important balance because abstract thinking increases the likelihood that an idea will be novel. It’s essential, however, to anchor abstract ideas in concrete thinking to ensure the solution is valid and useful.

Here are the four phases for effective innovation and, by extension, design thinking.

The first phase is about narrowing down the focus of the design thinking process. It involves identifying the problem statement to come up with the best outcome. This is done through observation and taking the time to determine the problem and the roadblocks that prevented a solution in the past.

Various tools and frameworks are available—and often needed—to make concrete observations about users and facts gathered through research. Regardless of which tools are implemented, the key is to observe without assumptions or biased expectations.

Once findings from your observations are collected, the next step is to shape insights by framing those observations. This is where you can venture into the abstract by reframing the problem in the form of a statement or question.

Once the problem statement or question has been solidified—not finalized—the next step is ideation. You can use a tool such as systematic inventive thinking (SIT) in this stage, which is useful for creating an innovative process that can be replicated in the future.

The goal is to ultimately overcome cognitive fixedness and devise new and innovative ideas that solve the problems you identified. Continue to actively avoid assumptions and keep the user at the forefront of your mind during ideation sessions.

The third phase involves developing concepts by critiquing a range of possible solutions. This includes multiple rounds of prototyping, testing, and experimenting to answer critical questions about a concept’s viability.

Remember: This step isn’t about perfection, but rather, experimenting with different ideas and seeing which parts work and which don’t.

4. Implement

The fourth and final phase, implementation, is when the entire process comes together. As an extension of the develop phase, implementation starts with testing, reflecting on results, reiterating, and testing again. This may require going back to a prior phase to iterate and refine until you find a successful solution. Such an approach is recommended because design thinking is often a nonlinear, iterative process.

In this phase, don’t forget to share results with stakeholders and reflect on the innovation management strategies implemented during the design thinking process. Learning from experience is an innovation process and design thinking project all its own.

Check out the video about the design thinking process below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

Why Design Thinking Skills Matter

The main value of design thinking is that it offers a defined process for innovation. While trial and error is a good way to test and experiment what works and what doesn’t, it’s often time-consuming, expensive, and ultimately ineffective. On the other hand, following the concrete steps of design thinking is an efficient way to develop new, innovative solutions.

On top of a clear, defined process that enables strategic innovation, design thinking can have immensely positive outcomes for your career—in terms of both advancement and salary.

As of December 2021, the most common occupations requiring design thinking skills were:

• Marketing managers
• Industrial engineers
• Graphic designers
• Software developers
• General and operations managers
• Management analysts
• Personal service managers
• Architectural and engineering managers
• Computer and information systems managers

In addition, jobs that require design thinking statistically have higher salaries. Take a marketing manager position, for example. The median annual salary is $107,900. Marketing manager job postings that require design thinking skills, however, have a median annual salary of $133,900—a 24 percent increase.

Overall, businesses are looking for talent with design thinking skills. As of November 2021, there were 29,648 job postings in the United States advertising design thinking as a necessary skill—a 153 percent increase from November 2020, and a 637 percent increase from November 2017.

As businesses continue to recognize the need for design thinking and innovation, they’ll likely create more demand for employees with those skills.

Learning Design Thinking

Design thinking is an extension of innovation that allows you to design solutions for end users with a single problem statement in mind. It not only imparts valuable skills but can help advance your career.

It’s also a collaborative endeavor that can only be mastered through practice with peers. As Datar says in the introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation : “Just as with learning how to swim, the best way to practice is to jump in and try.”

If you want to learn design thinking, take an active role in your education. Start polls, problem-solving exercises, and debates with peers to get a taste of the process. It’s also important to seek out diverse viewpoints to prepare yourself for the business world.

In addition, if you’re considering adding design thinking to your skill set, think about your goals and why you want to learn about it. What else might you need to be successful?

You might consider developing your communication, innovation, leadership, research, and management skills, as those are often listed alongside design thinking in job postings and professional profiles.

You may also notice skills like agile methodology, user experience, and prototyping in job postings, along with non-design skills, such as product management, strategic planning, and new product development.

Is Design Thinking Right for You?

There are many ways to approach problem-solving and innovation. Design thinking is just one of them. While it’s beneficial to learn how others have approached problems and evaluate if you have the same tools at your disposal, it can be more important to chart your own course to deliver what users and customers truly need.

You can also pursue an online course or workshop that dives deeper into design thinking methodology. This can be a practical path if you want to improve your design thinking skills or require a more collaborative environment.

Are you ready to develop your design thinking skills? Explore our online course Design Thinking and Innovation to discover how to leverage fundamental design thinking principles and innovative problem-solving tools to address business challenges.

About the Author