Design is one of those unnecessarily mysterious fields that people either don’t pay attention to or otherwise automatically assume they’ll never be capable of achieving any kind of competence in. It’s true that exceptional design requires artistic gifting coupled with a high level of technical skill. But that’s not an excuse to put those bare white, poorly formatted slides up on the screen.
In the absence of true artistic inventiveness, great visual execution is still possible. We live in an age of utter accessibility: design blogs — even presentation design blogs, pop culture trends, classic art, and a constant barrage of visual communications in the form of advertisements, digital content and print materials are all around us. The only excuse for not developing some sensibility regarding design aesthetics is living in a cave or just having a closed mind. If the former is your situation, we respect your lifestyle choices; if the latter is true, well, we hope you change.
It’s called copy-catting, and it’s not a bad thing. Every creative person in the history of the world has been influenced by the creative individuals who lived before them. Iconoclasts produce reactionary work that is often a rebuke of the establishment, and progressivists tend to channel modern iterations of classic or foundational standards. The approaches have this in common: they exist and are defined by that which already existed. So for even the stodgiest, least “creative”, most business-y among you, it’s time to understand that “not having an artistic bone in your body” is not an acceptable excuse for completely ignoring the statistical significance of quality visual aesthetics in your presentations. It’s proven to matter. Let’s pay attention to this!
With artistic ability taken care of, we’re left with technical ability. What programs make great design possible? How do you learn to use them?
There are two categories of programs to consider.
The first category is purely presentation-oriented design-ware. They all do more or less the same thing (the primary differences are driven by compatibility and interface):
1. PowerPoint
2. Keynote
3. Google Slides
4. SlideRocket
The second category is professional layout software. Adobe Creative Suite is the leader, to such an extent that even we can’t think of who exactly their competitor is. We assume they compete primarily with people not caring about design. Anyway, Creative Suite offers the designer a significant amount of control and some really powerful design tools, but the basic tenet that applies to the presentation design applications applies here: at the end of the day, when we design presentations, we’re talking about creating backgrounds, shapes, text, and media (like images, video, and audio). Making a square is technical ability; determining transparency/opacity, location and size, and color is artistic ability (or mimicry).
To make the square, one need only toy around with their software of choice (maybe watch a few how-to videos or find an expert to reach out to) and learn how to do that. The same goes for text layout, managing layers, etc. We overstate the significance of knowing how to do these things. The real power is in knowing what shapes to make, where to put them, where to put the text, what fonts to choose, etc. To develop this power, you just need to be wired that way OR pick 3-5 sources of inspiration and allow your aesthetic sensibilities to be influenced by what they do. It’s really that easy.
Do this and — we’re serious here — you’ll be a design master. It’s really not that hard!
Question: What myths about who can and cannot create artistic masterpieces have you been believing?
