Create Awesome Presentations: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide for Non-Designers

Everyone can master the art of modern presentation design. You do not need to study tons of professional literature or attend expensive courses to do this. It is enough to memorize the basic rules and stock up on successful presentation examples.

Of course, you won't become a professional designer just because of this. But you can easily create stylish pictures and presentations.

Mastering the Art of Beautiful Presentations

Breaking Free: Crafting Unique Presentations Beyond Templates

They are soulless and dull, and everyone is already wildly bored. It's better to create something of your own. Moreover, it is no longer necessary to have design skills for this. There are a large number of programs and services that will do all the work for you.

Good color combination

One of the most common mistakes made by people unfamiliar with modern web design trends is selecting an extremely unsuccessful combination of colors: brown, dark blue, burgundy, and mustard. If you use these colors with each other and even with a unsuccessfully chosen font, it seems that the image came to us from a dull time. Currently, such colors are not used in web design. More precisely, they are used, but in combination with other, more pleasant and "pure" shades (the so-called flat colors).

No more than five colors in the entire presentation

Do not turn your presentation into a rainbow, even if your report is devoted to a children's topic. A large number of colors prevents reading and perception of the meaning of the slides. It is best to use no more than 2–3 colors on one slide, taking into account the main background color.

Observe the contrast between the text and the background

It's simple here: if the background is dark, use a light font. If light, then dark. The text should be clearly readable on your slide; otherwise, your audience will be uncomfortable, and instead of listening to you, they will spend their attention trying to make out what you have written there.

Give up shadows, gradients, and other old-fashioned effects

Try to keep up with the times and design your slides so that they are not perceived as relics of the past. After all, the level of audience confidence in you as a specialist will depend on how well you design your presentation. A good specialist is always developing and following new trends. A bad one does not want to perceive anything new and believes that it has already fully taken place. Do you agree? Then strive for minimalism.

Give up low-quality stock images

Low-quality stock images will spoil the impression of your presentation, even if smart thoughts are written on the slides. Please don't use them. It's better to spend more time, but find images that will be pleasant to look at.

Use modern fonts

Calibri, Comic Sans, and Times New Roman—you can use these fonts, but we would not recommend them to you because they are quite boring and do not produce the desired effect on the audience. It is better to make a choice in favor of more modern fonts. For example, Helvetica, Open Sans, or Roboto. These fonts are quite simple, but they are suitable for almost any project.

The font must be readable

When choosing a font, be sure to pay attention to how well it reads. Unusual ornate serif fonts look interesting, but sometimes they are so difficult to read that it is better to abandon them altogether.

Use no more than 3 fonts per slide

There should be no more than three fonts in the entire presentation: the font of the title, the font of the main text, and the font for the insets (if necessary). If you use more fonts, your slide will look sloppy and not serious.

Follow the basic layout rules in your presentation

Do not align the text with the width. Because of this, large gaps form between words, the text becomes untidy, and reading it causes difficulties.

Do not make the lines too broad, because it will be difficult for users to keep their attention on them. The ideal line width is about 70–100 characters.

Make a normal line spacing: not too big, but not too small either. Make the intervals between paragraphs slightly larger than the intervals between lines.

Use different formatting to facilitate the perception of information: bulleted and numbered lists, bold, etc.

Make sure that your text is large enough

The text on the slide should not be too large or too small. Try to find a middle ground. And if you show your presentation offline, make sure that the text is visible even to those who are sitting in the very last rows.

Text and pictures should be aligned

The neater your presentation looks, the more trust users have in you as a good specialist.

There shouldn't be a lot of text on the slide

Some speakers try to fit almost all of their speech into the presentation, and instead of speaking for themselves and improvising, they read the text on the slides to the participants. The audience doesn't like it; it starts to get bored and loses its emotional connection with the speaker. To prevent this from happening, add a minimum of text to your slide, and remember: the purpose of your slides is not to help the speaker remember the text but to strengthen the emotions of what you say to the audience.

Dedicate a separate slide to each item

If your presentation has bulleted or numbered lists, it is better to break them into separate slides. This way, the information will be better absorbed because each item will be supported by a relevant image and a different story.

By following these straightforward pieces of advice, you'll be equipped to create a stellar presentation. If you think that it is better to delegate this activity, post a Task on Insolvo, and our Freelancers will make a good presentation for you.