Presentation design is basically the simultaneous use of text optimization, font selection, color and background selection, icons and shapes selection. To have a great presentation, each of these mentioned factors should be carefully considered. Presentation design determines how your content is perceived and remembered, and is responsible for creating a first impression and setting the tone of your presentation. Also, proper design will ensure that your presentation is well organized and guides the audience effectively. Therefore, attractive, understandable and memorable visual design is what you should look for.
But how do you create an impressive visual presentation without a design perspective? Keep in mind that creating an impressive visual presentation without prior knowledge of design or tools can be challenging. Most people have had the experience of attending a boring presentation; The slides are full of text and the presenter has to read every word; It’s really sleepy! In such cases, there are many charts and graphs, and every page is filled with the brightest possible colors. These issues will tire the eyes and tire the audience.
Therefore, according to the topics mentioned, presentation design refers to the process of creating slides that convey the message or information in the simplest possible way. Presentation design is essentially a multidisciplinary activity that includes graphic design, user experience, psychology and communication skills; Therefore, to make a great presentation, all factors must be considered. To make a great presentation; According to the requests of their clients, presentation designers use different software such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, and even Prezi to create visual and attractive slides and support the speaker’s message in the simplest possible way.
Introduction to Presentation Design in PowerPoint
As mentioned, various items are involved in the design of the presentation, which should be given special attention for the design. Therefore, a presentation designer using different knowledge will try to design your sometimes complex content in the best possible way to convey concepts with an attractive appearance to the audience.
Keep in mind that different data in a table can mislead people, while if this is drawn professionally in a statistical chart, it will easily help you to display the numbers and discuss the comparison. to be easily seen by the audience.
It should be noted that the design of the presentation plays an important role in your relationship with the audience of the presentation, because with a basic presentation, the first positive impression is made on the audience and it helps to maintain the overall tone of the message during the presentation. That being said, a proper and purposeful design, rather than just displaying raw content, presents it in an organized and attractive way that will help your audience understand the information well and connect with you. This design model not only strengthens the message but also keeps the audience’s attention and smoothes the communication path.
In addition, presentation design conveys the message non-verbally by using visual tools such as colors, fonts, icons, and charts. These visual elements can affect the emotions of the audience and facilitate understanding. As a result, a successful presentation design helps improve communication and conveys the message to the audience in an understandable, attractive and lasting way.
Principles of Good PowerPoint Presentation Design
Paying attention to the principles of presentation and learning about them will help presentation designers to prepare the most difficult concepts for presentation in the simplest possible way. The principles of presentation play a key role in conveying concepts and points, and by following them, you will significantly help to create effective communication with your audience. Among the things that play an essential role in presentation design, we can mention the use of the right font and color, the simplicity and structure of the content, the use of images and graphic symbols in the right places, and the use of the right layers during the presentation.
In this regard, you can refer to the article “How to make a PPT look professional” to learn these principles.
The Role of Storytelling in PowerPoint Presentation Design
In this section, it should be said first that Storytelling and Narrative, which are sometimes known in the same concept, have a fundamental difference. Narrative is not bound by time, while Storytelling is related to time and basically has a beginning, middle and end. Both of them play an essential role in conveying concepts and messages to the audience, and the attention and proper use of these two techniques will help you to create a positive impact on your audience.Storytelling means using story structures to better communicate with the audience of the presentation. This technique helps the audience to establish a visual and mental connection with the designed content and understand it better, instead of receiving raw and long and sometimes complicated content. In Storytelling, basic elements such as questions, solutions, and real examples are used to create the flow of a story so that people can understand the real examples and better relate to the presentation.
A simple example of Storytelling can be seen in statistical charts, if a certain period of time has certain numbers, those numbers can be displayed in the chart separately for each month and with the correct animation of the beginning, evolution and end process. It displayed the time period with figures.
Narrative refers to the overall structure and flow of the narrative in the presentation. The structure of the presentation usually starts with an introduction and a basic question so that the audience is involved in the why of the presentation. Narrative specifies the order of content arrangement and content entry, and content prioritization is determined in this technique. A Narrative will help the presentation designer create a clear path for the audience in the presentation and make each part of the presentation relate to the next part. This not only helps in better understanding but also makes it easier to keep the audience focused.
PowerPoint Tools and Features for Effective Design
PowerPoint software helps presentation designers by providing various tools to convey the concepts of the presentation in the best possible way. These tools are usually created in the insert tab so that your texts and content can be designed with an attractive appearance through shapes, smart art and charts.
Of course, each of these tools has many specific settings and only with a lot of user experience you will be able to use all these settings. But simple use of this tool will help you create a more attractive presentation. In the following, we will mention some of these tools:
- Slide Master: According to the author of this article, one of the most important parts of PowerPoint is Slide Master. In Slide Master, you will be able to make general settings that apply to all slides; This tip will help you save a lot of time. Some of the features provided in Slide Master include font alignment, creating and editing layers, applying general color settings.
- Shape: The ability to use shapes created by default in PowerPoint will help you to have comprehensive access to all types of shapes. Even if you don’t find the shape you want, you can use the tools in Shape to draw the shape you want. Usually, the shape tool is used to create important points or draw a model.
- Charts and Smart Art: Using charts and graphs is the most attractive part of PowerPoint tools. Using SmartArt will help you to design your raw text using PowerPoint’s default designs and take it out of simplicity. Also, it is possible to create shadows and coloring in Smart Art settings. On the other hand, the presence of charts will help you to design and prepare all kinds of statistical charts with the most detailed settings in PowerPoint.
In addition to the insert tab, the animation and transition tab will also help you make your presentation more attractive. In the animation tab, you will be able to animate the content inside the slides in three styles. Also, from the transition tab, you can adjust how to move between slides to preset effects.
Common Mistakes in Presentation Design
There are various problems in PowerPoint design that knowing them will help you design an ideal presentation.
- Inserting too much information: One of the most common pitfalls is filling slides with too much data. This issue causes people to lose concentration and further aggravates fatigue and sleepiness in them. Replacing long texts with key points, as well as using important data in the form of images or charts, plays an important role in conveying concepts.
- Low contrast: using color palettes in a color spectrum in elements and background can reduce the readable appearance of slides. Low contrast makes content difficult to see and can cause confusion for people. You should constantly ensure that content and key components are displayed in a recognizable color. Therefore, the use of color palettes that are different from the background is one of the important points.
- Inconsistency of elements: not using a basic structure for fonts, colors, layers and elements used in the design will cause confusion of people’s concentration. For example, using different fonts and colors for the main slide titles will cause your audience to lose focus. It is best to use consistent styles on all slides to create a cohesive and professional presentation. In this regard, it is important to use the correct layers during the presentation.
- Ignoring the empty space: using all the space of the slides in order to maximize the use of the empty space will cause your audience to get confused in the bombardment of information and on the other hand, their eyes will also be irritated, which will reduce the transfer of concepts. . It should be noted that the empty space of the slides will help the audience to be more comfortable in analyzing the slides. Smart use of white space can focus people’s attention on key components.
- Overuse of animations and transitions: Complicated animations and transitions may look attractive, but overusing them can distract your audience and reduce the overall impact of your presentation content. It is necessary to use them only in the slides where the animations help to improve the understanding of the content.
The Future of PowerPoint Presentation Design
The future of PowerPoint presentation design can be influenced by new technologies and emerging trends, considering the significant progress we have made in this regard in the last one or two years, it seems that in the future, the use of these tools will be of significant help in the preparation of presentation design. In the rest of the article, let us introduce these trends and explain the effects of these technologies in presentation design.
Artificial intelligence and automation tools
Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a significant role in presentation design today. AI capabilities can automatically schedule slides, suggest styles and colors. Sometimes these tools provide the possibility of arranging your content in a personalized way by providing various formats. These tools help to reduce design time and help people without much design expertise to create professional and attractive presentations.
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)
With the developments in the field of augmented reality and virtual reality, today’s presentations are moving towards becoming interactive and have provided a new style of presentation. These advancements allow speakers to present their content in the form of virtual experiences that audiences can intelligently interact with in 3D. This approach can advance the learning experience and communication in educational and business situations.
Combining videos and interactive content
Smart video content has become an essential component in presentation design. The ability to integrate short videos, animations and interactive content in slides can improve the audience’s visual and audio experience and convey the message in a more engaging way.
Web-based platforms and collaboration
Web-based platforms such as Google Slides and Canva with simultaneous collaboration capabilities have become one of the important patterns in presentation design. These platforms enable group collaboration without the need for physical proximity, allowing groups to work on the same presentation at the same time.
conclusion
In this article, we talked about what PowerPoint Presentation Design is and pointed out that PowerPoint presentation design plays a big role in improving and conveying the speaker’s message to the audience, and in this regard, we introduced some important parameters that play an essential role in designing and conveying concepts. explanations were provided and we said that a presentation designer must master various knowledge to design a presentation. We also mentioned the tools created in PowerPoint to improve the design and tried to avoid using them by pointing out some common mistakes in presentation design. In the end, we mentioned the latest tools and technologies that can help design the presentation.
