5 PowerPoint Graphic Design Tips
Simple Time Saving Tips to Build Beautiful Slides
Whether presentations are a regular or occasional part of your job, they may be one of the most impactful things you do. Presentations leave your audience with a lasting impression and are a chance to show off your professionalism and expertise.
But between getting your content together to making it look good, the hours needed to prepare for a stellar presentation add up quickly. For most people, it takes days to develop a presentation that lasts an hour.
This article covers five PowerPoint graphic design tips that will not only improve the look and feel of your presentation, but will save you time as well. In fact, these tips are about doing less (rather than more) as you design your slides.
Presentation Design Tip #1: Finish writing your content before creating visuals when designing your PowerPoint presentation.
Your message, not your visuals, should always be the primary focus of your presentation. Visuals play a supporting role. Think of your content as your plot and your visuals as the scenery. If you’ve ever spent hours making endless tweaks to the design and text on you slides, it’s often a result of focusing too much on your design and less on your content. Establish your content as a solid foundation followed by visuals and not only will you save tons of time fussing over your slides, but your message will come across clearly.
Your message, not your visuals, should always be the primary focus of your presentation. Visuals play a supporting role. Think of your content as your plot and your visuals as the scenery. If you’ve ever spent hours making endless tweaks to the design and text on you slides, it’s often a result of focusing too much on your design and less on your content. Establish your content as a solid foundation followed by visuals and not only will you save tons of time fussing over your slides, but your message will come across clearly.
Your message, not your visuals, should always be the primary focus of your presentation. Visuals play a supporting role. Think of your content as your plot and your visuals as the scenery. If you’ve ever spent hours making endless tweaks to the design and text on you slides, it’s often a result of focusing too much on your design and less on your content. Establish your content as a solid foundation followed by visuals and not only will you save tons of time fussing over your slides, but your message will come across clearly.
How to Implement Tip #1: Before you add a single graphic design element to your slide (like fonts, colors or images) create slides with text or data only. Fine-tune the presentation working with just your copy and add the design elements afterward.
Presentation Design Tip #2: Each slide should have just ONE main idea.
Each slide in your deck should house one main idea, not take your viewers on the entire journey.
Especially for live presentations, a slide should appear more like a billboard than a page out of a book. Nancy Duarte, an expert on presentations appropriately calls this the “glance test.” Slides should serve as a quick reference to reinforce the message. Viewers can’t read through a block of text and listen to a presenter at the same time.
How to Implement Tip #2: Read over your slides. Can a viewer make sense of what is on the slide within a few seconds? If it feels like each slide is telling a story, rather than providing just one piece of the story, split those slide into multiple slides.
Presentation Design Tip #3: For a modern, minimal PowerPoint presentation design, keep your slides uncluttered.
A minimal amount of content on each slide will give your presentation a modern, professional aesthetic and is a technique used by many luxury brands. If left to sort through a crowded slide, your audience will become tired and inattentive. Empty space (also known as negative space or white space) on your slides is powerful, as it directs your viewer’s eye to the important item(s) on the slide.
How to Implement Tip #3: Review all text and design elements on your slides. Is each one necessary to communicate your message? Consider items like your logo which is often included on every slide, but not always necessary. If you’ve included the date and page number on each slide, do they serve a purpose? Remove anything that isn’t helpful in communicating your message.
Presentation Design Tip #4: The best animations for PowerPoint slides are simple.
If adding animations to your presentation has you feeling overwhelmed, no need to worry! While PowerPoint offers dozens of animations, they can be overwhelming to set up. They can also be distracting to your audience and take away from a sleek design.
How to Implement Tip #4: If you are short on time, you may decide to focus on a beautiful deck design and omit animations altogether.
Or you can play with minimal animations and slide transitions that compliment your content and design. Some of the best choices for animating objects in PowerPoint include:
Appear
Fade
Float
An alternative to animating objects on slides is utilizing PowerPoint’s slide transition option across your entire deck. are three options that provide a smooth transition between slides. Three options that provide a smooth transition between slides are.
Fade
Push
Reveal
Presentation Design Tip #5: When it comes to graphic design in PowerPoint, use variety to hold your audience’s attention.
There are many forms of visual communication with the most common listed below.
Photos
Infographics
Diagrams
Charts
Icons
Illustrations
If you love one of the above, you may be tempted to put them on all of your slides. But variety in your visuals keeps viewers interested and wanting more. Your audience may love photos, but they’ll lose interest if there’s one on every slide.
How to Implement Tip #5: To keep your presentation feeling fresh, flip through your deck. Do the images feel repetitive? If they do, swap a photo for an illustration or vice versa. If you don’t have enough images to incorporate into your presentation, you can use text as a design element (such as an oversized headline or quote) to add interest to your slides.
Whether you have days or weeks to prepare, implementing the simple tips above will set you up to design great looking presentations!
