Unlocking the Keys to Consistency
It is undeniable that valuable content is essential for an effective presentation. However, even the most compelling content can be overlooked if not presented with high-quality slides. It is essential to give a consistent look to your presentation in terms of fonts, colors, themes, and branding. Giving a consistent look to your presentation will keep your audience attached to your branding and this helps to recognize your brand and the service offerings effectively.
Consistency in Slide Deck – 12 Expert Tips
- Elevate the visual impact of your presentation by employing a monochromatic color scheme, which lends a polished and cohesive feel
- Save outlining for when it’s absolutely necessary, and rely on other formatting options to streamline your content
- Harness the power of alignment to ensure your message comes across loud and clear
- Straight lines convey a sense of structure and order, lending a professional touch to your presentation
- Use data storytelling to make complex concepts more digestible and engaging for your audience
- When presenting charts or tables, provide clear titles and unit measurement for easy comprehension
- Master the art of slide navigation to seamlessly guide your viewers through your presentation
- Your presentation’s title should effectively communicate your main message, capturing your audience’s attention from the outset.
- Develop a single presentation design that can be presented
- Harness the potential of negative space to maintain a uniform appearance in your presentation
- Strategize the aesthetics of your slides with consideration to their intended purpose
- Employ expert add-ins for efficient and seamless uniformity in design.
For every presentation that is put together, a consistency review should be conducted. Assembling slides from existing presentations and adding new layouts generated at the last-minute give life to some of the ineffective presentations. Hence, you start tasks like aligning titles from slide to slide, positioning the logo in the bottom right, making sure it is the same size and the same position in every slide along the presentation deck, etc.
These tasks can cost you a lot of time, and it gets even worse when you are running short of time. You do not have to be a gifted designer to create professional-looking slides. Having these 12 techniques in mind can help in creating a presentation that looks consistent and is effective. Through this article, you will learn a methodology that will allow you to stop imagining slides and start solving them in order to make a presentation that looks consistent.
1. Outlines – Less is More
Giving a Consistent Look To Your Presentation – Data Visualization Charts
An outline is a line or set of lines enclosing or indicating the shape of an object in a sketch or diagram. You can apply outlines to many objects in PowerPoint: shapes, text boxes, or text
E.g. If we have four objects, identified by the sub-headings, and detailed with the boxes beneath. If lines are removed, the slide is lighter and presents fewer objects to focus on. Therefore, it is not only perceived as lighter, but it is also more correct.
Design principle – Less is More: If the design in a slide does not work, the best solution is never to add elements on the slide but remove them or leverage white spaces.
A well-designed PowerPoint template can elevate the impact of a presentation by providing a consistent and professional look throughout. With the right presentation ppt, one can effectively convey complex information in an engaging manner. When creating a PowerPoint template for IT presentation it is essential to choose a template that is professional, modern, and relevant to the topic being presented. Content and designs should be balanced to make PPT that looks consistent.
A PowerPoint example offers inspiration and ideas for creating an effective presentation. With the use of a PowerPoint presentation template, one can easily create a cohesive and professional looking presentation. The design in power point should not overshadow the content of the presentation. Incorporating a slide show feature allows for a seamless transition between slides, keeping the audience focused and engaged throughout the presentation.
2. Align the content structure
Alignments are a powerful way to correlate objects. If you see two or more objects aligned, your brain will perceive them as correlated in meaning. If objects not aligned, will look odd and give the impression that details may not be accurate enough. Adjusting alignments is a recurring task during the process of creating a presentation – align every object in every slide.
PowerPoint has the option of Quick Access Toolbar. This allows having the frequently accessing functions shown together, at the ease of a click. Keeping the alignment and distribution function in the Quick Access Toolbar saves the time of searching and using them all through the presentation slides.
3. Highlight a group of objects using straight lines
Do you ever need to highlight a group of objects on your slide, like the one given below?
Stop using odd forms to highlight the group of objects on the slide, and prefer straight forms as shown below.
We tend to spot differences at a quick glance. Therefore, on the slide, you need to keep everything in order, preferring straight forms to curved forms to highlight the group of objects.
PPT slides or PowerPoint presentation slides offers animations and transition features to add life to static contents in slides. One should use animation at an optimum level while designing a PowerPoint slide.
4. Color-coding in charts
Let us suppose, you want to show that the introduction of innovations would compensate revenues for the decrease of core products in the long term.
Now you have innovations visually correlated against the core products, just by using consistent colors. We can extend the color-coding technique to the title as well.
By coloring the innovations and their effect in green, you are linking them to the chart and enhancing the relationships between the different objects. This will guide the eyes of your audience through a straightforward path to the core message.
5. Monochromatic color combination
Usage of the same font, placing the logo in the bottom right corner, and usage of consistent color palette helps to make a presentation look consistent for a professional look and feel. Colors, when randomly combined, do not guarantee a consistent result. It is recommended to work with a palette of 5 colors in total (the given one plus another four).
Adobe color is free and available online. Using Adobe color, you can find out the monochromatic color combination of 5 colors. For e.g. Let us say the main color used in the PowerPoint is green. You can input the RGB for this green color in the Adobe color. The other colors get automatically calculated as part of a color combination. You could also find other powerful color combinations. The most elegant color combination that would help you make the safest choice: monochromatic.
Adobe Color calculated a monochromatic combination of the main color, Green, and give the other 4 colors that perfectly work combined with it. You have darker alternatives of the same green to use as backgrounds and you have lighter alternatives to use as foregrounds. Using these 5 colors in the color palette would help to add a professional look and feel for the presentation slides.
6. Chart title and unit of measure
Using the word ‘revenue’ in the title means, it speaks about money. More attention would be given to the relationship between the bars (bigger, smaller, increasing, decreasing). It would be equally important to provide the unit of measure to help the audience clearly understand the numerical value and significance. You can add a small label appropriately, with the right level of contrast to indicate the unit of measure. It does not have to stand out compared to the other content.
7. Slide navigators
Giving a Consistent Look To Your Presentation – Slide Navigators
Self-standing presentations often come as long reports made by multiple sections. The reports usually have a table of contents and then they take you section by section, in order. To support the readers, and effective best practice is the slide navigator. It guides the reader through your presentation to go with the flow.
Slide navigator for slides: This helps to move from one section to another, to know whether to go forward or backward in the flow, to have quick access for the right information.
8. The core message – PowerPoint Slide Titles
It would be impactful to use the title to immediately communicate the core message and, eventually, if you find it useful, use the subtitle for the rest. Use action titles to convey the key message of your slide. Action titles are critical to creating slides that sell. One way to check if your PowerPoint slides have effective action titles is to stack your slide titles and see if they make a story. Make sure that all your titles are aligned the same way slide-to-slide. Maintaining a consistent font size can also help keep your PowerPoint presentation polished.
9. Presentation handouts
PowerPoint has the option to print the presentation in handout mode. This helps to keep the slide nice and clean. You can write all the related information into the notes. If you can print them, this means you can also print the presentation as a pdf. You can also convert your PowerPoint presentation into a handout report and send it via email. Presentation handouts allow providing detailed information than you would put on a slide. They give your audience the key messages as a takeaway from your presentation, to review later. It reminds them of your presentation meeting. Pay attention to the quality and design of your presentation handouts. In short, think of your handout as another key design element of your presentation.
10. White space management
White spaces are a powerful tool because they create contrast with the content and give breath to it. This is true also in text paragraphs. White space includes any empty space on your slides, i.e., above, below, around, and in between elements. These spaces can be split into two groups: active and passive.
Passive white space includes margins or the spaces in between lines of text. It occurs naturally and helps to prevent information overload. Active white space occurs intentionally and is used as a design element to create distinction and hierarchy between elements, drawing attention to what is important. Finally, to leverage the white spaces, do not be afraid of them, for they are great allies. If you respect them, they will enhance your content and improve your design.
11. Design for end-user utility
Let us take an example. You have a presentation full of charts and tables. You utilized the principle of data storytelling and made use of colors to create contrasts. Each color signifies a differentiating aspect that guides the audience to the core message easily. Here the colors play a key role in identifying and differentiating among various aspects represented through the charts and tables.
Let us consider a scenario, wherein you printed the entire presentation and gave them as handouts to the audience. Suppose by mistake you printed them in black & white means, the entire idea would lead to confusion. Because the differentiating color aspect is missing in the printed handouts. You should consider every constraint about the way the presentation would be delivered to your audience before you design.
PPT slide backgrounds provide a visual backdrop for the content being presented. Backgrounds for PowerPoint slides can be utilized to add an aesthetic appeal to the presentation. Presenter need to chose PPT topics of audience interest, ensure to keep the PPT format and design as professional. For aligning the design format, one can make use of best PowerPoint template with consistent design layouts. Presentation slides template with pre-defined layouts ensure to create future presentations with consistent layouts.
12. Professional Add-ins
A recurring task performed manually could lead the designer to make a mistake, as human error. PowerPoint provides the option to create a customize ribbon on functions, a type of PowerPoint Add-in that helps to improve speed and accuracy during the presentation creation.
Think-Cell PowerPoint Add-in: Enables you to quickly create powerful charts directly in PowerPoint, improving speed and accuracy covering wide aspects of chart creation.
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Investing in Presentation Slide Design
If you have an important presentation meeting, instead of working on PPT slide design or PowerPoint slide design by yourself, you can outsource this tedious PowerPoint design task to a design agency. Design agency work on improving the PPT design with suitable design elements delivering quality slides. They improve on each aspect of the PPT presentation slide design including suitable animations and transitions as per need. PowerPoint presentation slides design not only improves the visual appeal but also make the slide deck easy to navigate and quick to follow.
Utilizing PowerPoint samples for presentations can offer inspiration and guidance in building a compelling and well-structured presentation. Additionally, studying a PowerPoint example presentation can provide insight into effective use of design elements, such as graphics and animations, to enhance the overall message. Choosing the right theme for a PowerPoint presentation is crucial in engaging and captivating the audience.
A well-designed theme for PPT presentation can effectively convey the message and leave a lasting impression on the audience. A well-designed template PowerPoint presentation can enhance the overall look and feel of the presentation, making it visually appealing and engaging for the audience.
Conclusion
It takes time and practice to master these techniques. Start implementing those that already fix your mistakes, as those will have an immediate impact on your working process, giving the maximum benefit in the shortest amount of time.
Our team of creative designers delivers consistent and professional-looking presentation decks. Reach us to serve you better in your presentation design assignments.
Link: https://visualsculptors.com/contact-us
FAQs
- What is the secret of a good presentation?
The secret to a good presentation is to engage your audience. This means making eye contact, using body language, and speaking clearly and confidently. It also means knowing your audience and tailoring your message to their interests and needs. Finally, it means using visuals and other aids to help illustrate your points and keep your audience engaged.
2. What are 7 elements of powerful presentation?
The 7 elements of a powerful presentation are: clear and concise message, engaging opening, strong visuals, effective storytelling, audience interaction, confident delivery, and memorable closing. By incorporating these elements, you can create a presentation that is both impactful and memorable.
3. What are the 5 keys of presentation?
The 5 key elements of a great presentation are: clear and concise messaging, engaging visuals, a strong opening, a clear structure, and audience interaction. By focusing on these elements, you can create a presentation that is both informative and engaging for your audience.
4. What is 555 presentation rule?
The 555 rule is a presentation technique that involves breaking your presentation into three parts: 5 slides for the introduction, 5 slides for the main content, and 5 slides for the conclusion. This helps keep your presentation concise and focused, while still delivering all the necessary information.
5. What is 777 PPT rule?
When creating a PowerPoint presentation, it’s important to keep in mind the Rule of 7 (or 777). This rule suggests that each slide should have no more than 7 lines of text, with each line containing no more than 7 words. Additionally, it’s recommended to limit your presentation to 7 slides if it’s a 20-minute talk. Remember, your slides should support your presentation, not be the main focus. Avoid reading directly from your slides, as this can disengage your audience.
