Presentation Design Tips For Busy Business Professionals

Presentation Design Tips For Busy Business Professionals

If you’re a busy business professional with an upcoming presentation, you might be tempted to use a presentation template to guide your presentation design. While some presentation templates might be sufficient for your presentation, most templates will never be ideal and they can typically take just as much time to customize as it would take to build a creative presentation from scratch.

Break free of the template mold and design your own presentations to reflect your personal style and objectives. You will be much more pleased with the results and the audience will likely be more impressed with the presentation experience you deliver. 

Use these tips to guide your presentation design

1. Know Your Audience

Before you even start creating your content or preparing to design your slides, you should learn as much as you can about the audience that will be present for your presentation. When you understand your audience you can more effectively craft content that will resonate with the individuals who will be listening to you speak, and you can also select a presentation design style that will align with the design preferences of the attendees.

presentation design professionals

If you don’t know much about your audience you can learn more by contacting the individual who invited you to speak and requesting audience demographics. The coordinator might even provide a list of names and email addresses for the attendees if you ask. Gather as much insight as you can from your contact and then use that information as a launching pad for your own online research. For example, if you have names of individuals who will be in the room, you can take a look at their social media profiles to learn more about their backgrounds, interests, and careers. Once you have compiled some data about the audience, consider how you can craft your presentation specifically for the attendees.

For example, if the audience will be comprised of mostly millennials, you should cater to the passions and preferences of that young demographic. To learn about presenting to millennials, review these articles:

How To Deliver A Presentation Millennials Will Love

How HR Can Use Presentations To Connect With Millennials

Presenting in a Millennial World

Whether you are presenting to an audience of millennials, baby boomers, or a mix of many different types of people, you need to create a deck that will be the best fit for the people in the room.

Trust me: every audience is different, and wants to experience different types of presentations. Don’t create a presentation as if you were only presenting to your peers; create a presentation that will deliver results by customizing your slides for the audience that will be giving you their attention on your big day.

2. Outline Your Content

Once you know to whom you will be speaking, you can start to develop and refine your content for your slides. Don’t skip this step and start developing your slide style before you craft your content because the tone of your content will impact the style of your slides.

For example, if your content is going to be fun and motivational, you should design slides that reflect that mood. However if you are using your content to represent a brand of luxury or an exclusive experience, your slide style will need to match that objective.

As you’re outlining your slide content there are a few basic rules to keep in mind.

1. Outline your content with a defined structure in mind. According to research, structured presentations are 40% easier to retain than freeform presentations.

Don’t simply populate your content outline with points as they pop into your head. Get all of your idea down on paper first, then insert points into your outline according to the specific structure you have selected. As you add points to your outline, ensure that each point directly relates to the main objective of your presentation. 

Consider building your presentation structure by answering the questions: 1) What? 2) So what? 3) Now what? 

write presentation content

If you’re giving a sales presentation, you can use The Five Stages of a Sales Presentation for the structure. Whatever structure you choose, make sure to answer WIIFM for the audience throughout your presentation, and end with a strong, clear call-to-action

2. As you’re outlining your content, be sure to  put only one idea on each slide, and try to limit the text on each slide to 140-characters.

It is important to present only one idea per slide, and use minimal text because you do not want to overload your audience with too much information at one time. Remember your slides are only meant to enhance what you’re saying to your audience; they are not meant to be a complete script of everything you will say.

Asking your audience to read a lot of text while also following along with what you’re saying is the fast track to burning out your audience. If you burn out your audience their eyes will glaze over and they will start to tune you out simply because they cannot take in any more information.

To learn more about cognitive load theory, read these articles:

Minimize The Extraneous Load of Your Presentations

Too Much Information Can Ruin Your Presentation

Cognitive Load Theory and Presentations [Podcast]

The Simple Trick to Avoid Overwhelming Your Audience

3. Avoid bullet points. Since you will be presenting only one idea per slide, there should be no reason to use bullet points, however bullet points have a tendency to make an appearance in presentations so it is worth mentioning that bullet points are a big no-no for presentations. Here’s why:

Why Bullet Points Kill Presentations

4. Remember to build in some interactive moments or breaks to help you keep the attendees’ attention. To learn about creating interactive moments in your presentations, check out these tips:

Why Public Speakers Should Create Interactive Presentations

Your Presentation Needs Twitterable Moments. Here’s Why.

3. Define Your style

Now that you have outlined your content, you can start to define a style for your presentation design. To get started, collect a few design assets that inspire you and also fit within the design preferences of the audience.

For example, if you are inspired by photographs that relate to your presentation message, let the style of the photographs dictate the other design elements you will incorporate. However if you need to stay within a brand style guide that includes a brand-specific typeface or color scheme, let those requirements determine the design style you select.

However you get started, you will eventually need to answer these questions:

1. What is the color scheme for the presentation? 

Design Presentations with Consistent Color Schemes

Color Theory Basics for Presentation Design

2. Will you use illustrations or photography or both?

Here is a presentation that was designed using photography.

Here is a presentation that was designed using illustrations.

Here is a presentation that was designed using both illustrations and photography.

3. What style of photography or illustrations will you use? 

Gorgeous (And Free) Stock Photos For Your Presentations

Free Stock Photos To Beautify Your Professional Presentations

Stock Photography Advice For Presenters And Marketers

4. What fonts will you use? Limit your fonts to no more than three per presentation.

How To Choose Fonts For Presentation Design 

5. What style of icons will you use? 

Where To Find Free Icons For Your Presentation Designs

Presentation Design 101: Iconography

Once you have selected all of your preferred design elements, create a mood board to use as a reference as you’re creating your slides.

At Ethos3, when we are determining the best style for our clients’ presentations, we provide three different mood boards that showcase the elements mentioned above. The client then selects their favorite mood board, and we use their chosen mood board to guide the design of their presentation. The three mood boards shown below were used to determine the best style for this presentation

presentation design tip presentation design tips professional presentation design tip

4. Create Slides

With your content outlined and your mood board created, you are now ready to open your presentation software to start creating your slides. 

As you’re designing your slides there are a few basic rules to keep in mind.

1. Follow the Rule of Thirds as much as possible.

The Easiest and Most Effective Presentation Design Tip

Slide Design 101: The Rule of Thirds

2. Use white space strategically. 

5 Reasons to Utilize White Space when Designing Presentations [Podcast]

3. Use big font sizes to make your text easy to read.

Design 101: Using Large Type in Presentations

Here are some additional resources to help you create stunning slides.

No Excuse For Poor Presentation Design: 19 Simple Tips

The Science of Memorable Data Visualizations

3 Beginner-Friendly Data Visualization Tricks

5. Solicit Feedback

Once you have the first draft of your slides designed, solicit feedback from contacts who are similar to the people who will be in the audience. Ask for candid, constructive feedback and be open to any and all suggestions.

To help guide the feedback process, ask specific questions such as:

1. How does this presentation make you feel? Inspired? Curious? Confused? Sad? Bored? What specific elements contribute to that emotional response?

2. What do you think about when you view the photos or illustrations? Do they remind you of anything? Do they make you feel a certain way?

3. What is the main point of the presentation? Does it motivate you to do anything in particular? If so, what does it motivate you to do?

4. How do you feel about the color scheme and font choices? Do the colors put you in a specific mood? Is the font easy to read?

After collecting feedback, revise your slides accordingly. 

Conclusion

Whether you want to believe it or not, you will be judged on the design of your presentation – not just the message of your presentation. Take the time to design slides that will reflect your commitment to the presentation as well as demonstrate your refined approach to everything you do professionally. And if you get stuck along the way, we are here to help you. Feel free to contact us if you want to learn more about our presentation design services or presentation training. Whether you tackle the presentation design on your own, or solicit our help, I hope your slides help you achieve all of your goals and more.

Why You Need To Hire A Professional Presentation Designer

Why You Should Schedule Presentation Training For Your Team


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