The Easiest and Most Effective Presentation Design Tip

To design presentation slides that your audience will love, aim to create slides that look more like great works of art, and less like traditional PowerPoint templates. Creating slides that are similar to great works of art is easier than it sounds.

For starters, don’t create slides with a header and bullet points, and instead present only one idea per slide, use minimal text, and utilize images on your slides to add depth of meaning to your message. 

For example, don’t create slides like this:

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Instead, create slides this:

presentation design examples.001

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If you follow those basic guidelines, your slides will already be more sophisticated than the average presentation slide. However, you can elevate the design of your slides even more by utilizing a guideline that renowned artists and great thinkers established centuries ago: the Rule of Thirds.

Even if you use the Rule of Thirds like a pro, your slides might still never hang in a famous museum or gallery, and that’s not the goal of your presentation anyways. However by utilizing the Rule of Thirds, your presentation will be more compelling, and make a greater impact on your audience. The Rule of Thirds will help you captivate your audience, and your audience will enjoy viewing your slides, just like they would enjoying strolling through a gallery or museum. And here’s the most beautiful thing about the Rule of Thirds: it is as easy to use as it is effective for improving your slide design.

rule of thirds example

What Is The Rule Of Thirds?

The Rule of Third is a guideline for composing images, visuals, or in this case, presentation slides. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject.

When designing slides, use the Rule of Thirds to determine the best placement for images or graphical elements. For example, the slide below features an image of a man’s face. The size of this photo can be adjusted, and the image can also be cropped; thus the image can be placed on this slide in a variety of different ways. The Ethos3 presentation designers selected the layout you see below to take advantage of The Rule of Thirds. As you can see below, the man’s eyes land on the top horizontal line, which is a pleasing placement.

rule of thirds white space

The two slides below show how you can use the Rule of Thirds to determine the best placement for smaller design elements. By placing the apple and coffee cup outside the two vertical lines, you avoid placing the object in the center of the slide, which is a design no-no, and instead you find the optimal placement for the object.rule of thirds

rule of thirds

Here is one final example of a slide designed using the Rule of Thirds:

rule of thirds

As you can see in the slide above, the cat’s eyes fall on the top horizontal line, and the cat’s body is at the intersection of the lower horizontal line and the left vertical line.

Conclusion

The human eye prefers to move around an image, starting by focusing on one focal point, then moving to subordinate points within the frame. When you center the most important elements of an image on your slide, you create a slide that is not pleasing to view because the eye is not encouraged to move around the slide. By placing the focal point off-center, you create a tension on the slide that encourages movement of the eye, thereby drawing viewers into your slide in an engaging fashion. The Rule of Thirds is simple to use and highly-effective. So take a note from the greatest painters and artists, use the Rule of Thirds to enhance your presentation design.

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