Four Simple Suggestions to Sharpen Your Slide Decks

Your Slide Decks Can Be Improved in Four Different Ways

For any type of presentation, slide decks are a powerful way to backup it from team meetings and sales pitches to conference keynotes and workshops. There have been presentations conducted and received poor response from the target audience and the main reason for it is the mediocre design of the deck slides. However, most people who are presenting an event are not graphic designers. For your information slide decks can be really irritating to build, and if the slide decks are eye-catching then they help in communicating to your audience that wants to hear.

And while you cannot be an expert in graphic designing overnight, there are some easy tactics that can make your terrible-looking deck slides into decent ones. Even though decent ones won’t get you showered with praise, but it also won’t leave a bad taste in someone’s mind about your graphic design skills and will allow them to concentrate on what you actually have to say.

Plotting Your Way to Success

While we all have varying creative ideas, it is not recommended enough to outline your deck before you begin on the building of slides. In this way you will be focused and will let you organize the narrative of your presentation’s story. Many graphic design experts refer the “everything and the kitchen sink” version of the outline. It is typically two-three times longer than the average allotted time for presentation. If you follow this step, it will help you in fine tuning for the specific audience and ensure your message will stand out.

Fonts and Font Sizes Must be in a Readable Level

When it comes to making presentations at a conference or a launch event, make use fonts that are highly legible. It is not, your whole presentation can be boring and frustrated for the audience as they cannot able read any of your slides. If you do some web browsing, you can get plenty of free fonts other than the usual Times New Roman, Calibri and Arial. Font size can be an issue for events where there are two sixteen-foot high screens. For legibility, even in the back of the room, experts recommend speakers to not use fonts that are lower than 36pt. Depending on the font, 48-60pt font can be your smallest range. You need to keep in mind that not all of your audience will have perfect vision, so you need to make some necessary adjustments. You can send the fonts you have chosen to the event organizer along with your slide decks if you are using any non-standard ones.

Forget the Bullet Points

It is common for any presentation to include bullet points to showcase what you have really in your mind. If you find yourself spending any time explaining points, it is definitely the time to break them up. But when comes to conferences or product launch events, audiences will first read slides before they listen to speakers. Typically bullet points leave the deck slides heavily copied and their speakers get no attention. At least for however long it takes for someone to read the slide. If those bullet points need their own slides before you begin practicing your talk, it is a great way of reviewing your outline.

Kill “About Me” and Promotional Slides

A good moderator or emcee will introduce you based upon the profile you submitted with some other details of social media monitoring. They will tell your audience why you are qualified to be speaking on this particular subject. If you are presenting before a small audience or clients, who may not know you, keep it short and sweet, and if everyone knows you, no need to include it. If you impress the audience with your presentation, they will start hunting you down. And hopefully, they can do this simply because you have added that information to your slides. Also, a thank-you ending slide with your contact details is always considered as a nice gesture.

For a business conference or a product/service launch event, excellent presentations accompanied with deck slides are considered as an art form in their own right. The above mentioned suggestions will help you build good slides for your presentation.