10 techniques for creating beautiful business presentations from 2017
Did you meet terrible PowerPoint presentations with multi-colored slides and tasteless pictures? Then you should definitely read this article!
IMPORTANT : here I am writing only about business presentations for reading - not for public speaking. This is important to understand, as the techniques are different in these two formats. Under the format of “business presentations for reading” I mean documents such as commercial offers, sponsorship packages, investment presentations of projects, product presentations, which in most cases are sent exclusively by e-mail.
In this article I will talk about the most common mistakes in design and share my 10 tricks to create truly cool presentations. Almost all the examples that I give below are excerpts from real-life cases that we have implemented.
It is important to note here that 10 receptions are relevant for 2017 (and the coming months of 2018).
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Let's start with the most important thing when creating a presentation:
I want to disappoint you, but there are no design templates in PowerPoint. Often, these templates are no longer in vogue and will immediately be perceived by your audience as “low-quality goods”.
I offer 2 solutions:
1. Do not use templates at all. Combine your slides with a single color scheme and make the format and layout of the headers the same on all slides except the first and last.
2. Create your own templates if you plan to use and edit this presentation in the future. To do this, we need to go to the View tab -> Sample Slides. This is a secret room, about which not everyone knows, as practice shows.
In this section, we can create your own template!
Usually I delete all standard template slides in the left tab and create my own from scratch. All you need here is to add fillers and decorate them.
Next, exit this mode (there is a red cross in the upper right) and try to apply the template slides - Right Mouse button -> slide layouts.
Now you have your own template.
Please do not use more than 5 different colors when creating your presentation. Moreover, use only 3 basic colors, since the other 2 are usually shades of primary colors.
How to choose a color palette.
So let's look at a few examples. Maybe I can give you ideas:
Gray background, blue main text and dark gray accent.
White background, black text, blue accent. 3 Colors. Alternating with a dark background and white text.
Dark background, white text, light green accent. It also uses shades of light green and alternates a dark and light background.
If you still could not decide on the color palette or you do not have the brand book of the company / project, then I suggest you the following resource color.adobe.com
Here you can choose a color palette based on the image, as well as in the “Explore” tab (View) see the decisions of other users and even find out the number of views and likes.
Unfortunately, I still often meet slides that use volumetric low-quality icons. Now it is an outdated topic and looks very ugly. And some do not use icons at all, which is also bad, because visualization is important in the presentation, and not just a solid text.
The purpose of the icons : to replace extra text and speed up the memorability and digestibility of information.
My advice to you : when creating a presentation, use the icons from this resource - flaticon.com
Icons from flaticon will make your presentation more modern and concise.
There is a section " Packs ", where you can find icons of a single style on a specific theme from a single designer. I advise you to select icons in a comprehensive manner so that everyone is in the same style.
Subconsciously, we feel every detail in the presentation down to the line thickness of the icons, and if this thickness is different between the icons, then the presentation immediately ceases to harmonize, and subconsciously we no longer perceive it as a quality one.
Also, when working with icons, I want to note such a tendency in people as “blindness syndrome” . This is when the presentation is all done in large sizes - “so that everyone can see. If you make everything huge, it will significantly reduce the quality of your presentations, and in fact icons look good only for small sizes.
Let's look at an example:
When creating a presentation, observe the frame from the edges of the slide. And in a fashion now large frames.
Important: the distance from the borders to the content of the slide should be the same on all sides.
Example:
What can happen? It may happen that the content you planned to place does not fit on one slide, and that’s good! No need to try to squeeze everything on one page. It is better to divide into two slides with one heading.
One slide - one message.
Why do everything big? The slide needs air.
If you are not an avid designer and do not experiment with fonts, then I advise you not to use serif fonts.
I offer you the following list of fonts:
System fonts:
Arial
Arial narrow
Arial Black (headers only)
Calibri
Third-party fonts:
Bebas (headers only)
Raleway
Roboto
Helvetica
Circe
Open sans
Gotham pro
How to combine fonts when creating a presentation?
If you have never touched upon the theme of a combination of fonts, then I advise you to use only one group of fonts and only change its type when creating a presentation. For example, make the title Arial Black, and for plain text Arial, or another variant of third-party fonts - the title Raleway Bold, and the main text Raleway Regular.
If you still decide to experiment , you can try the following combinations:
Bebas Bold - heading
Raleway Regular - Plain Text
For the rest of the combinations, I prefer to choose one font and change only its type. It is more correct.
And here are a couple of links that I personally use to download fonts:
⁃ Google Fonts
⁃ Font Squirrel
This is generally a sore subject. Especially here in Russia. If someone read Artemy Lebedev's book “Kovodstvo” , then there he clearly notes how, in connection with the fall of the design culture after the collapse of the USSR, our population simultaneously distorted the taste for high-quality design.
Perhaps you are reading now and never appreciate the work that I celebrate here. And this is not because you are a bad person, but because our environment did not allow you to develop a good designer taste.
I can only advise what has worked perfectly in our studio for several years and is valued internationally.
Now we delve a little into the design.
You may notice that when drawing a shape in PowerPoint, it can turn out to be blue and with a blue outline.
Important: immediately remove these contours. They only emphasize that you are not in trend and did not want to bathe with the presentation design.
This begs the question: are the contours now out of fashion?
The answer is no, they simply mutated into large frames.
Here are the outlines that can still be used:
And the rest - yes, the contours went out of fashion like once white wigs.
Shadows, of course, are not out of fashion, in contrast to the contours. But they turned into something exclusive and expensive. Like a Patek Philippe watch. You either buy the original or a Chinese fake and everyone understands that this is a Chinese fake.
The moral of this story is: if you know how to create trend shadows - great! If not, please cancel them everywhere in the " Format " tab.
In PowerPoint, shadows are installed as standard (especially in earlier versions). And I can tell you for sure that such shadows need to be removed immediately from the template.
Let's look at examples:
Bad shadows from PowerPoint
Good shadow from dribbble
Nice shadow from powerpoint
I even attach settings to you if you still want to use shadows. But use this power wisely and do not impose such a shadow on all the figures in a row so that they do not fill the entire background.
Here, in fact, the rules overlap, but I noticed that for some, when it comes to tables and diagrams, they seem to forget everything: about the rule of colors, contours, shadows, frames, and the like.
However, I have already described all the errors to you. It remains only not to make them.
Let's consider in practice:
Here is the smoker's table:
But a healthy person:
What is the difference? One is heavy and bulky, the other is clean and concise.
Note:
If presentations were created in Paint, then the slides would look much more creative. I say this to the fact that we ourselves often drive ourselves into the PowerPoint template framework, although you can also create unique works of art there.
Consider the examples of slides created in PowerPoint:
I wish you to create only high-quality presentations for your projects!
Read the following article, “Tips for improving conversions from your business presentations.”
IMPORTANT : here I am writing only about business presentations for reading - not for public speaking. This is important to understand, as the techniques are different in these two formats. Under the format of “business presentations for reading” I mean documents such as commercial offers, sponsorship packages, investment presentations of projects, product presentations, which in most cases are sent exclusively by e-mail.
In this article I will talk about the most common mistakes in design and share my 10 tricks to create truly cool presentations. Almost all the examples that I give below are excerpts from real-life cases that we have implemented.
It is important to note here that 10 receptions are relevant for 2017 (and the coming months of 2018).
')
Let's start with the most important thing when creating a presentation:
1 Do not use PowerPoint templates in your presentation.
I want to disappoint you, but there are no design templates in PowerPoint. Often, these templates are no longer in vogue and will immediately be perceived by your audience as “low-quality goods”.
I offer 2 solutions:
1. Do not use templates at all. Combine your slides with a single color scheme and make the format and layout of the headers the same on all slides except the first and last.
2. Create your own templates if you plan to use and edit this presentation in the future. To do this, we need to go to the View tab -> Sample Slides. This is a secret room, about which not everyone knows, as practice shows.
In this section, we can create your own template!
Usually I delete all standard template slides in the left tab and create my own from scratch. All you need here is to add fillers and decorate them.
Next, exit this mode (there is a red cross in the upper right) and try to apply the template slides - Right Mouse button -> slide layouts.
Now you have your own template.
2 Use 3-5 basic colors when creating presentations.
Please do not use more than 5 different colors when creating your presentation. Moreover, use only 3 basic colors, since the other 2 are usually shades of primary colors.
How to choose a color palette.
- One of the three shades should be highlighted for the background. Decide immediately - it will be a presentation with a light or dark background. If you are an advanced designer, you can try alternating, but in this article I miss these experiments.
- Next, select the color for the text. It should be as contrast as possible to the background color. Ideal and often found option: the background is white - the text is black. But this option is inferior in terms of creativity.
So let's look at a few examples. Maybe I can give you ideas:
Gray background, blue main text and dark gray accent.
White background, black text, blue accent. 3 Colors. Alternating with a dark background and white text.
Dark background, white text, light green accent. It also uses shades of light green and alternates a dark and light background.
If you still could not decide on the color palette or you do not have the brand book of the company / project, then I suggest you the following resource color.adobe.com
Here you can choose a color palette based on the image, as well as in the “Explore” tab (View) see the decisions of other users and even find out the number of views and likes.
3 Refuse 3D icons from search engines - refer to linear and flat icons.
Unfortunately, I still often meet slides that use volumetric low-quality icons. Now it is an outdated topic and looks very ugly. And some do not use icons at all, which is also bad, because visualization is important in the presentation, and not just a solid text.
The purpose of the icons : to replace extra text and speed up the memorability and digestibility of information.
My advice to you : when creating a presentation, use the icons from this resource - flaticon.com
Icons from flaticon will make your presentation more modern and concise.
There is a section " Packs ", where you can find icons of a single style on a specific theme from a single designer. I advise you to select icons in a comprehensive manner so that everyone is in the same style.
Subconsciously, we feel every detail in the presentation down to the line thickness of the icons, and if this thickness is different between the icons, then the presentation immediately ceases to harmonize, and subconsciously we no longer perceive it as a quality one.
Also, when working with icons, I want to note such a tendency in people as “blindness syndrome” . This is when the presentation is all done in large sizes - “so that everyone can see. If you make everything huge, it will significantly reduce the quality of your presentations, and in fact icons look good only for small sizes.
Let's look at an example:
4 Each slide is a picture, and it needs a frame. Or not needed?
When creating a presentation, observe the frame from the edges of the slide. And in a fashion now large frames.
Important: the distance from the borders to the content of the slide should be the same on all sides.
Example:
What can happen? It may happen that the content you planned to place does not fit on one slide, and that’s good! No need to try to squeeze everything on one page. It is better to divide into two slides with one heading.
One slide - one message.
Why do everything big? The slide needs air.
5 Give up bad habits. Tie with serif fonts
If you are not an avid designer and do not experiment with fonts, then I advise you not to use serif fonts.
I offer you the following list of fonts:
System fonts:
Arial
Arial narrow
Arial Black (headers only)
Calibri
Third-party fonts:
Bebas (headers only)
Raleway
Roboto
Helvetica
Circe
Open sans
Gotham pro
How to combine fonts when creating a presentation?
If you have never touched upon the theme of a combination of fonts, then I advise you to use only one group of fonts and only change its type when creating a presentation. For example, make the title Arial Black, and for plain text Arial, or another variant of third-party fonts - the title Raleway Bold, and the main text Raleway Regular.
If you still decide to experiment , you can try the following combinations:
Bebas Bold - heading
Raleway Regular - Plain Text
For the rest of the combinations, I prefer to choose one font and change only its type. It is more correct.
And here are a couple of links that I personally use to download fonts:
⁃ Google Fonts
⁃ Font Squirrel
6 When creating a presentation, use only high-quality images.
This is generally a sore subject. Especially here in Russia. If someone read Artemy Lebedev's book “Kovodstvo” , then there he clearly notes how, in connection with the fall of the design culture after the collapse of the USSR, our population simultaneously distorted the taste for high-quality design.
Perhaps you are reading now and never appreciate the work that I celebrate here. And this is not because you are a bad person, but because our environment did not allow you to develop a good designer taste.
I can only advise what has worked perfectly in our studio for several years and is valued internationally.
- Do not use images from search engines as background images if it is not necessary.
- Download images only from specialized sites where photographers publish their work.
- As a background, use high-resolution images - for me it is at least 1000 pixels in height and width
- Do not use stock images with stretched smiles of people and a white background. It looks unnatural.
- You can use the following resources as sources: flickr , unsplash , everypixel
7 Do not use contours. Either thick or nothing
Now we delve a little into the design.
You may notice that when drawing a shape in PowerPoint, it can turn out to be blue and with a blue outline.
Important: immediately remove these contours. They only emphasize that you are not in trend and did not want to bathe with the presentation design.
This begs the question: are the contours now out of fashion?
The answer is no, they simply mutated into large frames.
Here are the outlines that can still be used:
And the rest - yes, the contours went out of fashion like once white wigs.
8 Do not use shadows. Either big and blurry, or none
Shadows, of course, are not out of fashion, in contrast to the contours. But they turned into something exclusive and expensive. Like a Patek Philippe watch. You either buy the original or a Chinese fake and everyone understands that this is a Chinese fake.
The moral of this story is: if you know how to create trend shadows - great! If not, please cancel them everywhere in the " Format " tab.
In PowerPoint, shadows are installed as standard (especially in earlier versions). And I can tell you for sure that such shadows need to be removed immediately from the template.
Let's look at examples:
Bad shadows from PowerPoint
Good shadow from dribbble
Nice shadow from powerpoint
I even attach settings to you if you still want to use shadows. But use this power wisely and do not impose such a shadow on all the figures in a row so that they do not fill the entire background.
9 How to make tables and charts beautiful? Remove all unnecessary
Here, in fact, the rules overlap, but I noticed that for some, when it comes to tables and diagrams, they seem to forget everything: about the rule of colors, contours, shadows, frames, and the like.
However, I have already described all the errors to you. It remains only not to make them.
Let's consider in practice:
Here is the smoker's table:
But a healthy person:
What is the difference? One is heavy and bulky, the other is clean and concise.
Note:
- There is free space between the border of the cell and the content.
- Of course there are no contours
- No extra shadows
- Some fields are not painted at all.
10 Slide is your canvas. Be creative. Imagine having a brush in your hand.
If presentations were created in Paint, then the slides would look much more creative. I say this to the fact that we ourselves often drive ourselves into the PowerPoint template framework, although you can also create unique works of art there.
Consider the examples of slides created in PowerPoint:
I wish you to create only high-quality presentations for your projects!
Read the following article, “Tips for improving conversions from your business presentations.”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/342778/
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