Presentation Design Tips
At some point in our careers, we all need to create and deliver a presentation, whether for management, internal training, or a conference. In fact, presentation skills are often critical for career success, but developing such skills requires continuous work. Following are some tips to get you on the right path.
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From Dull to Dynamic
Most Commercial Card professionals are not graphic designers. Consequently, our presentations might resemble textbooks, even if this style is the least appealing to us as attendees. Within our slides, we might replace paragraphs with lists of bullet points, but this gets stale. Maybe we throw in some clip art for fun, but we need to ask ourselves if it really supports our message.
Per Michael Campbell, Radiate Presentation Design, “Slides should support your ideas with highlights only—simple and big. You need to display enough information for your audience to understand your key messages. Anything beyond the highlights should either go in your notes or in a handout.”
Pitfalls to Avoid
Excessive text, including complete sentences that match your planned verbal delivery
Small font/hard to read information
Complex charts and graphs that the audience cannot easily digest
Clip art or images that might be cute, but serve little purpose (and they might be a copyright violation)
Lack of meaningful images
Disjointed mix of fonts, images, colors
Misspelled words and incorrect punctuation
What type of slides turn you off as an attendee? Do not fall into the same traps when you are a presenter. What are some memorable presentations that you have seen? Sometimes small changes can make a big difference.
Be the director of your presentations and cut the clutter.
““Your slides should be a billboard not a document!””