PowerPoint presentation design is inescapable for most people in any organization. Whether you have to create an internal presentation for senior management or share information with potential customers and shareholders, your PowerPoint presentation design has to be crisp, attractive, engaging, and effective. However, there are a few things that you need to look out for beforehand and correct so that your presentation doesn’t suffer.
What should you look out for?
The script is all over the place
When it comes to giving a formal speech, you need to have a script ready. You can’t go ad-libbing as you would do with an informal speech. Similarly, if you have to make a presentation, which is usually formal in nature and matter, you require to have a script ready. Now, while it’s easy to fill in a lot of information in the said presentation, there’s a good chance that a lot of details are unnecessary. Or you might even forget important ones. Therefore, it’s crucial to build a good script and incorporate it into your presentation design. By doing so, you ensure the proper delivery of the presentation to your audience.
You read verbatim from the presentation
This is a big no. Even though you’ve prepared a script, it doesn’t mean that you only use that to deliver your presentation. There may be parts where you can ad-lib but still get your point across. Keep in mind that your audience has to understand what you are selling before they actually buy it, whether it’s a product or a service. Being completely robotic in your delivery is not going to get you anywhere. If you find that this is a regular occurrence when making presentations, you definitely help with your presentation design.
There’s an information overload on each slide
When it comes to creating PowerPoint presentation design, there’s typically a lot of information to share. Whether it’s background information, the organization’s brand identity, and products and services. However, it’s unnecessary to cram every slide with lots of text, imagery or other design elements. Another common mistake is creating a presentation design that looks like it belongs on a bestseller list. Your audience won’t even bother looking at the presentation if it’s completely text-heavy. Therefore, keep to your script and only share relevant and functional information on each slide.
The whole presentation is dull and incohesive
When you’re passionate about the topic at hand, getting lost in details is a sure thing. Not to mention that there’s also a tendency to mention every little piece of information. However, it’s not advisable to go down this path. What you must actually concentrate on is making your presentation design exciting. This is crucial in ensuring that your audience doesn’t get bored. Let’s face it, most presentations ARE boring to sit through. We’ve all been there. Not only is it because there’s a lot of information but also because the presentation is uninspiring and unclear. In such cases, simple language works best for explaining complex information and data points. Use the different design elements and colors available within PowerPoint itself to do so. PowerPoint also has built-in templates that you can use or simply create a customized one that will help you finish the job more efficiently.
The presentation templates used are uninspired
It’s essential to understand that a dull PowerPoint presentation is definitely going to have disastrous results. There’s a tendency to use PowerPoint’s generic templates, especially in cases where there’s a deadline to be met. While this is alright to do sometimes, by and large, it’s lazy work and isn’t going to benefit anyone in the long term. However, PowerPoint does allow you to create and customize templates as per your own vision and as per brand guidelines. In this way, you can project your PowerPoint presentation, and also grab your audience’s attention, the right way.
The information doesn’t flow with ease
PowerPoint presentation design is useless without a proper flow of information from slide to slide. Introduce the organization and mention a bit of background, talk about problems that occur, and offer up solutions, along with illustrations of where these solutions have worked. Include information about new strategies that industry experts have used which have yielded positive results (if there is information available on these) and finally, conclude your presentation.
Too many transitions
Transitions are a great way to help information flow from slide to slide with ease. Unfortunately, these are often overused, causing the information to rapidly roll, tumble and eventually fade out of the audience’s minds. It’s annoying and completely unprofessional. Limit your use of the transition elements and keep your presentation crisp, concise, easy to understand, and deliver your message effectively.
Facing these issues with your presentation design?
Are you burdened by any of these problems with your presentation design? Do you need help creating fantastic presentation designs that will wow your audience and be effective?
Look no further. At Deck Sherpa, an award-winning presentation design agency, our team has the experience and the drive to create multiple, awesome PowerPoint presentations that will grab your audience’s attention, keep them engaged and provide you with the best end results as desired. Have a look at our website to understand what we do. You can then call us on 18001215955 or drop us an email at [email protected] for a consultation and quote.