There is no doubt that a slide presentation is a key element of every modern public speech. No matter, if it’s a presentation of a product or some kind of an academic talk, every purpose may be screened on slides. Although, it’s important to realize that not every slide presentation is supposed to enhance your position in eyes of your audience. You may also agree that a bad presentation poisons the whole performance of a speaker.
How can it happen? And why people forget that 65% of communication is nonverbal? Sometimes, or unfortunately, very often a person that is going to have a speech neglects the significance of slides behind their back, paying mostly 100% of attention to a text of their speech itself, making it too long (as the result boring) and even distant from the visual presentation. At the same time, the whole performance looks untidy and bad-planned. It also influences listeners wrong. Instead of winning their attention it makes them annoyed (sleepy?) or just lefts indifferent.
That’s an absolute collapse in a case when it comes to a meeting with your potential investors − a time of doing your best, but in the period of only 20-30 minutes. That’s the usual space of time speakers are granted to represent their projects. Only a stunning slide presentation can be taken into a consideration of professionals that may see countless numbers of different startup presentations weekly. And your task is to make a pitch deck that won’t be forgotten in some minutes.
So, as you see, there are so many situations when a good presentation is of high standing for your success. And today some tips about creating an awesome slide presentation will be shared. Hopefully, you will find them useful and even find out something new.
1. Target Yourself
First of all, to give a good kick-start to your future slide presentation, you need to answer only three questions by yourself:
What do you want people to do after your presentation?
What is a chief conclusion of your presentation?
How your presentation (in what a way) influences the audience in reaching a decision?
That may help you greatly in understanding the whole structure of your presentation. Keep it clearly bounded with the text of your speech.
And remember, your task is to help your audience to make the right decision (the one the is favourable for you;) For this, don’t forget to make your slide presentation informative and motivating enough not becoming boring.
You also need to follow the well-known structure: introduction, key part (problem → its solving) and conclusion.
2. Keep It Tidy And Simple
In general, let your slide presentation supplement your speech with visual content (images, schemes, tables, diagrams etc), making it accomplished. For this, avoid wordy slides, freaky fonts, and colors, pictures of low quality and inappropriate animation effects. Get assured, that your speech and your slides don’t disturb each other.
Also, don’t load your audience with tonnes of information. Add only such kind of content, that, firstly, is essential to be remembered and, secondly, makes your performance attractive and memorable.
3. Color
Color is the first thing people pay attention to. It gives a tone to your slide presentation literally and creates the right (the bad) atmosphere.
So, this should be the very first thing you should think about before you start working on your presentation. As a solution, on the site Color Lovers, you can choose a color palette to your taste. There are ready samples of colors tinges that fit each other well.
It’s also said that blue is the most popular background color for presentation slides. Studies have shown that blue has the power to slow our breathing and pulse rates. You can choose a dark blue background with light text for conservative corporate presentations. A lighter blue is considered to create more relaxed atmosphere (for example, when you explain some tasks to your co-workers or even divide work between them).
As for green color, it’s said to be a good stimulator of interaction. If you want to generate discussion, use green.
At the same time when white seems to be a little bit boring, nothing is so strong and definite as black. Black will always match all your business purposes elegantly.
In addition, red is the color you should be very careful about. Also, better avoid yellow, as it can create feelings of frustration and anger
But it’s only a tiny drop of facts about colors and their influence.
4. Font
Use a consistent font size, colour, and header title style. Very often in different presentations, 90 pt in size is used for the main part of a text. But a greater preference is also given to a size of 150 pt to 300 pt for headings.
Don’t doubt to use such a big font size. Creating a presentation, better think about whether people can read it at the very back of the hall in which you will perform.
Right here you will find 10 popular fonts you should absolutely avoid for your slide presentations.
5. Reiteration
People love reiterations. The best storytellers always build their speech on the repeating of the brightest moments, creating a sense of familiarity with the audience. Slides in the presentation are no the exception. Steve Jobs often used this method. Before moving on to the next product, he repeated the same information he had just spoken about for 30 seconds. This is a very simple way to make any audience remember the main idea.
6. Highlight The Main Information
7. Simple Transitions (Animation)
8. Time
No more than one slide every 2 minutes.
9. Use Video
According to the tendency, 43% of people want to see more video content.
10. Template
It’s very necessary to admit that all slides of a presentation should be tied up with one visual theme. As you see, a slide presentation is not a rainbow. Pay attention to a style.
From the first day of announcement, PowerPoint templates have come a long way. Now the belief about a modern solid presentation, especially a business-related one, are far from school PowerPoint knowledge. It means that a number of standard slides doesn’t guarantee you high achievements. Particularly, when you need a powerful pitch deck. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to make a lasting impression using a temple everyone has seen dozens of time. But there is the best way to make your slide presentation unique mostly effortless.
