Five Tips for Using Professional Powerpoint Design to Create a Polished, Effective Presentation
You already know that using PowerPoint is the best way to make your seminar, workshop, lecture, or business presentation stand out, but it’s likely you don’t know everything. Here are a tips about professional powerpoint design that will help your create a polished and effective presentation.
Content is Key
Sure you can fill your PowerPoint presentation with striking images and graphs that grab your audience’s attention, but great images only illustrate a point, they don’t make it. In order for your PowerPoint presentation to be useful, you need to fill it with great content.
In addition to making sure that you have compiled enough, high quality content to get through your presentation, you need to make sure that everything, including the font, layout, color choice, and images support the content. This can be time consuming, but the polished final result makes the effort worthwhile.
Commit Yourself to Consistency
One of the biggest mistakes that individuals who are new to professional PowerPoint design make is inconstancy. They might have a great presentation lined up, but they slide in low quality images or images that they like even though they don’t quite match the content. Not only will inconsistency cause your audience to lose interest in your presentation, but they’ll start to question your professionalism.
Having two or three people watch your presentation beforehand is the best way to identify inconsistencies.
Don’t Be Afraid of Text
When most people think of professional PowerPoint design, they only consider using images to illustrate a point. The truth is that it’s very easy to use text effectively. Inserting text slides into your PowerPoint presentation helps drive home important points. It can also extend the length of your presentation. Text slides are a great choice when you can’t find images that are relevant to your content.
Have a Great Cover Slide
When using professional PowerPoint design, don’t underestimate the importance of your cover slide. It’s the first impression your audience has of your presentation, and in some cases, of you. It needs to be good. Something that has been effectively used by many presenters is heavy reliance on their color scheme. They simply make a plain or lightly patterned tile and add a little text, generally their name of the title of the presentation. It’s simple, striking, looks professional, and announces the start of the presentation. When it comes to the cover slide, most marketing experts urge presenters to keep things as simple as possible.
Don’t be Afraid to be Bold
When it comes to using professional PowerPoint design, you need to be bold. General rules include;
- The smallest text font you use should be 16 point
- Images should be clear and bright and to the point
- Points should be accurately illustrated
A good rule of thumb is to try to design your PowerPoint presentation to mirror a billboard sign. The image should be eye-catching and quick to process.