Many of us make presentations on daily basis. However, only few presentations stand out from the crowd with appealing design and content. In addition to creating complicated design for own purposes, people also sell templates for PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides. If you are struggling with presentation design of your document, then here are the tips to improve the appeal.
Good Looking Design Matters
No matter which software you are using, it is a fact that everyone likes good-looking design and documents. While you are focusing on the content, it is also equally important to consider the design aspects. However, it takes time and strong passion to create a document with attractive design. If you wonder, there are companies charge hundreds of dollars for single slide in a PowerPoint presentation. Though you have strong content and use complicated tools for designing your documents, it is essential to apply the basic things uniformly.
Tips to Improve Presentation Design
In this article, we primarily focus on PowerPoint and Keynote presentation. You can apply these principles on any graphical design template and document.
1. Fonts
Choosing the correct font is the first thing, you should consider when making and sharing your presentation. Font type, size and weight can make big difference to your documents. Below is an example slide from Marriott using different font families in an attractive manner.
However, fonts like Apple Chancellery is not available in Windows operating system. Therefore, make sure to embed the fonts in your document when using custom fonts. This will help to keep the design and appeal uniform across platforms. Since this will increase the size of your presentation, you may also choose to use the standard fonts to keep things simple. In addition, check the font size in presenter mode, many fonts will look different in normal and presenter view.
2. Colors
Some readers may have sight problem and cannot read the content with inappropriate colors. In addition, background and font colors will affect the visibility of the reader. Make sure to use one of the web safe colors so that the presentation will be cool to the eyes.
You can create layers to adjust the opacity of the slides. It is very useful when you have light picture in the background. For example, below slide contains text boxes on a bright image.
You can add a simple text box and fill it with transparent dark color. This will look like below and make the text clearly visible for the readers.
3. Choosing Proper Theme
It is not an easy task to choose proper font and color manually for each slide. The best option is to choose the theme with predefined set of fonts and colors. In Microsoft PowerPoint, you can choose the theme and adjust the font/color variations of your presentation under “Design” tab. In addition, the latest version also offer “Design Ideas” to automatically suggest ideas for each slide. You can simply click on the idea you like to apply the design.
Apple’s Keynote also offers large number of theme templates. You can either choose a theme when creating your presentation or change theme anytime from “Document” panel.
3. Icons
PowerPoint and Keynote offer different ways to insert pictures on the slides. With the latest Office 365 version, you can also insert stock images, shapes and clip arts. However, customizable icons are what you need on the presentation compared to these stuffs. You can create or buy scalable vector icons and use then on your presentation.
You can replace lengthy content with icons to retain the reader’s attention.
4. Direction
Below slide is a good example of using directions. As you can see, all images are vertically aligned to get user’s attention.
For example, you can show five mobile screenshots to explain the functions of an app. That will easily reach out your audience instead of explaining with lot of text content. Below are some of the directions and you can choose a style that fits for your need in vertical, horizontal or in any pattern.
5. Animation
You might have seen the power of animations in most of the corporate keynote presentations. Making animations in presentation is a time consuming task. However, it can be useful to convey messages powerfully and in a visually appealing manner. It is also a good idea to embed a video in your presentation if needed. Below is an example of a fully animated presentation.
Final Words
The above tips are basic but powerful in making attractive design. You can use these to make reusable templates and save lot of your effort. As mentioned, you can also sell your presentation templates on marketplaces to earn money.
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