Tap Into the Vision of a Presentation Designer
What separates an adequate PowerPoint presentation from one that’s truly memorable? A presentation designer with the vision, knowledge, and skill to translate the facts and statistics you want to communicate into graphic images that reinforce your message.
If you’re like most businesspeople, you’ve worked with PowerPoint on your own, experimenting with different fonts and colors and layouts. A professional presentation designer won’t mind if you have. In fact, he or she will probably think that’s good, because the better you understand the process of creating a presentation, the more you’ll appreciate the work of a presentation designer with the expertise to elevate your graphics and customize your visuals.
And speaking of visuals… Allow us to present a graphic representation of what we mean:
These are samples from a presentation we created for The Discovery Museums in Acton, Massachusetts. The presenter’s goal was to connect with donors and benefactors to raise funds for a museum expansion. Capturing their attention was a vital first step toward persuading them to act.
The museum had a good story to tell. It lent itself to visual representations of progress to the present day and projections for the future. Just the sort of thing an adequate presentation would express with line graphs and bar graphs.
Now, we like line graphs and bar graphs as much as the next person. They’re a fundamental and highly effective way to demonstrate a comparison; that’s why they’re used so frequently. But we were well aware that this audience sits through chart-and-graph PowerPoint presentations on a regular basis. Simply putting together another red-blue-green graph wasn’t going to cut it here.
What helped the presenter send a clear message that would stand out from all other presentations—one the audience would remember? Original infographics that captured the spirit of the organization, clearly expressed the themes of the presentation, and made the audience take notice. Attendees left the presentation with a vivid mental picture of what the museum is, what it represents for the community, and why the fundraising campaign deserved their attention.
That “takeaway” is the difference between an adequate PowerPoint presentation and a truly memorable one created by a professional presentation designer. It is why pros rarely mind if their clients experiment with PowerPoint on their own. Once you’ve tried to do things yourself you’ll see the difference that working with a professional visual designer can make.
A client’s message and intention always come first. Without them, there wouldn’t be a presentation.
Visual images are a close second. They reach an audience on a more subliminal level. If words make the audience think, visuals make them feel and react. They’re what make an audience smile or feel pride, express an emotion or respond to a call to action. They’re what make a presentation memorable. The more original the visuals, the more memorable the presentation will be.
