25 Tips for an Appealing Presentation Design – Part 2

Let us show you how to best choose colors for your presentation layouts and introduce you to some of the best known design rules for appealing slide designs.

1. Find matching colors.

Learn how to combine different colors in your presentation so they harmonize well together. You can find Internet sites to help you decide on color schemes. Complementary shades have many hues to choose from. Find such tools to help you generate color plates and saturation, brightness, contrast and more and experiment how different colors would look on your slides.

2. Create a color palette.

Before designing your presentation, define a range of background and accent colors that you can use throughout your slides. Set yourself a limit of 3-5 colors to ensure that you don’t overload the slides with too many different shades. You can find help online for harmonizing colors and for content matching color constellations.

3. Add accents – with accent colors.

There is always a risk that your design won’t say much or add value to your presentation.  For example, when you limit yourself to conservative ideas and neutrality in the presentation design. Using only a few of your brand colors found on your website or in your logo can quickly lead to a bland and boring presentation. To avoid this, apply colors accents. Whether red, yellow, neon green – even the slightest hint of these colors can highlight important points and breathe life into an otherwise dry design style.

4. Apply the rule of thirds.

If you want to capture the attention of your audience, apply the rule of thirds to your slides. This photo composition rule takes 1/3 of the picture, showing the subject you want your audience to focus on. The remaining 2/3 form a kind of frame. The secret to this trick is that the bulk of the slide is kept simple, letting your subject stay in the spotlight.

 5. Use the Lessig Method.

The American law professor Lawrence Lessig developed a method for liquid presenting that affects the design of templates. The principle is simple: Create four different slides with only one relevant point, allowing. You to talk about each slide for 15 seconds. This is far more effective than creating 1 sheet with 4 points, and talking   about that for 60 seconds. The result is simply-designed and effective individual films.

6. Apply the Takahashi method.

The Masayoshi Takahashi method is very similar to the Lessig method. Create your slides with a white background and one word in bold black font. Pick out the most important word of your content – a radical cut will guarantee simplicity in your presentation.

7. A look at the Kawasaki method.

Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule states that you present 10 slides in 20 minutes with a minimum size font of 30pt. To accomplish this, prepare your slides so that they can be digested by the audience in just one minute. Adjust your design so that there is enough space for the larger font size.

8. Takeaway from the Godin method.

Entrepreneur Seth Godin’s presentation style puts a strong focus on the use of images. What a speaker says should never be repeated on the templates. Your key message should not be found on the presentation, but should be supported by photos and graphics.

9. Think big.

Presentations are usually projected with beamers or displayed on large screens. Accordingly, the size of your visual presentation should be a factor in making your presentation. Think about enlarging fonts and make sure your images are in high resolution. Be careful that the quality of pictures won’t be degraded when you move from your small laptop to a large presentation screen.

In the last part of this series we will talk about various options of visualization such as icons and charts. Read Part 3.