For those of you (like me) who are not designers or naturally gifted in graphic design, this post is for you. We are always being judged by the visual appearance of our presentations, so I think that it is worth improving our capabilities in slide design. I have gathered ten tips that are easy to implement. A link to the article can be found here, which includes a lot of useful illustrations to help get these points across.
#1 Avoid built-in themes
Custom built slides make for a more powerful statement. Templates should only be used for last minute presentations.
#2 Use quality photos
A good photo is one of the easiest ways to make your presentation look better. However, no photo is better than a bad photo. Photos should be unique, attractive, and cliché-free. Where to get free photos? Try Stock XCHING or Flickr. On Flickr, search for “creative commons licensed content,” as those photos are free and usually only require attribution.
#3 Solid colors rock
Yes, it is possible to create an impactful slide with plain design and solid colors. Choose wisely though—too bright or colorful can be bothersome to the eyes. Remember your color wheel from elementary school and use contrast when picking your secondary color.
#4 Select fonts prudently
Make sure you understand the message you want to communicate before selecting a font. The classic, old-style serif fonts are formal while sans-serif are more modern.
Note: People often think the classics are too boring. They are wrong. These are safe choices.
#5 Make your slides readable
Do not use that amazing photograph as a background if you cannot make your font readable over it. You can get around this by using a simple color bar (example below).
#6 Simpler is better
The main content comes from you when presenting, so the slides need to serve as a simplified visual aid. Think of your slides as an outline for your presentation. Additionally, simple slides prevent you from reading them.
#7 Go easy on the bullets
Keep them few in number and simple. Also, they do not need to be self-explanatory because that is what you are there for!
#8 Create clear focal points
Tip #8 may be harder to implement for those with limited design abilities (like me), but the idea is to know where and how to direct your audience’s attention You can do this with color, fonts, text size, and photographs. Without clear focal points, you risk losing your audience.
#9 Design a captivating slide cover
This slide sets the tone for your presentation, so do not ignore it even though it may only be seen for a few seconds. Leaving it up during your introductions helps start the presentation on a positive note and introduces your visual theme.
#10 Add some humor
Your goal is not necessarily to hear laughter. Consider inserting a simple comic or picture that will make your audience smile, as this will help ease any tension in the room. Remember, do not try too hard.
I know that we have some really good slide designers in the program because I have seen some beautiful slides. Anyone have other graphic design tips that the average PowerPoint user can start implementing?
I think the points above are really helpful, especially for technical people (like myself) who sometimes struggle with slidecraft. For presentations that do require technical data, either charts or graphs from excel, here are a few helpful tips that I use:
1. When copy and pasting from excel into power point and you want the data to be non-editable, select the data from excel and paste as a ‘device independent bitmap’ file. The picture quality will be clearer than if you copy and paste the content as a standard image.
2. If you would like to edit the data inside of powerpoint to promote discussion about the data during a meeting, copy and paste as an excel file into powerpoint. So that data can be quickly manipulated during a meeting, try to make sure that you know where the source data is located in the file. Alternatively, it may make more sense to have the excel file running as a separate application so that you can move quickly from powerpoint to excel during the meeting.
Betsy
Great information! I, too, am graphically challenged and need all the help I can get when it comes to slidecraft. As my career progresses, I hope to have greater need for Powerpoint, but at this time I am mostly using it for Goizueta work. For now, all I can strive for is to keep my slides clean, simple and professional and strive to ensure my delivery is what is most impactful.