Hey guys, Payman again and this is the last part of the 3-part series on how to create
compelling presentations.
The first part, what I talked about was what you need to do before you create your story
and building your audience.
And in part 2, we talked about color schemes and how to establish your theme.
And in this part, last but not least, we’re going to bring all the design elements together,
so it’s actually going to get a little bit more fun in this episode.
So, let’s break it down.
Number 1 we’re talking about the composition and layout.
So, generally speaking, in composition and layout you know, one of the advantages of me running
a presentation tool at Visme is I get to see a lot of slides created by various different
types of people and one of the biggest mistakes that I see has to do with the composition,
it has to do with the way people put the sizing and spacing between the objects and so in
the example behind me, the photos, there’s a gap between the padding and also the content
is actually overflowing the photo itself.
Taking that same exact content and building it into a nicer slide, what’s happened here
is there’s an actual border that has been built.
So there has no bleed between the slide.
The images are going into each corner on the top, bottom and the right and also on the left
side, the title the header is defined, it’s larger and there’s a smaller text underneath
of it serving as the body text itself.
So it’s a little more organized and cleaner.
Now, let’s go through a couple more examples.
Same thing with this slide, what we have is, poor contrast between the header and the background
and additionally, we have the content underneath of it where it’s hard to understand,
hard to visualize the statements.
So again, this is a slide. You’re supposed to allow people to easily and quickly grab
and understand the information as presented to them.
Now the same exact content has been built out in this slide.
So, the header is defined, it’s larger and also again, the last lesson talking about
the different types of color schemes and in this case, the monochrome colors, the colors
are adhering to each other and you have just kind of a nicer, cleaner set up and also using
the visual cues, you have a better understanding of the audience, goals and the medium.
So, a couple more things.
Less is more.
We’ve talked about this a lot.
A lot of times in design, you want to have a clean, aesthetic design.
And by doing that, what you want to do is to avoid the complexity.
So in this case, the content, the “Keep color simple” text has been made a lot more
complicated.
There is the introduction of many colors, there’s the background color behind it and so it’s
just not a cleaner set up.
And look at this one, same exact text but with minimal style.
It’s a lot cleaner and crisper. In fact, all this is, is a background, a solid background
and text in front of it.
But yet, it is a lot cleaner and crisper than the example here.
Now, let’s talk about images.
That is one of the most common issues that I see is that people just start placing images
over their slides.
There’s really no focal point.
So in this example, there are 3 separate images and they’re just kind of flowing over each
other.
You don’t know which one you’re supposed to look at and I don’t understand what is
being perceived here.
What you could do instead is to use just one image.
So using one image per slide is a pretty easy-to-follow tip.
If you have high-quality images, you establish a focal point and you have the content
to a side.
Now, what if you do want to use multiple images?
If you want to do that, in that case, build the pattern.
So, the large image on the left and using the similar pattern, in this case, 2 different
images to the right and they’re basically flowing and they have the same aesthetic design.
And let’s talk about the font.
So you know, is it making it easier for the user?
That’s the question you want to ask.
Whenever you create content and slides, you have to ask yourself:By implementing this
style is it making it easier
for the user to understand and read that information?
So 2 examples here.
This one is using a couple different fonts styles and formatting and the one on the right
is a little bit easy to understand.
It’s actually a cleaner set up.
Also, talking about bullet points.
I see a lot of slides where people just copy and paste their bullet points from their actual
storyboard.
So, in part one, I talked about creating an outline. Users pretty much go ahead and just
copy and paste part of their outline into the slides.
Instead of creating bullet points, try to take each of those bullets because each of
them is actually a key message and implement them into separate slides.
You know, that allows you to talk more and also engage with your audience more versus
them having to force themselves to actually read the text that is on the slide.
They’re really are supposed to be visual cues.
Now, number 3 is design elements.
When it comes to design elements, beautifying your content, again, there should be a purpose
with the text.
So Times New Roman is the text on the left, it’s a default text very commonly used,
and the one on the right is a San Serif.
It’s a little bit of a cleaner setup.
So you can actually follow that through.
There’s a purpose to it.
So beautify, make the content a little bit more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read.
Contrast – I’ve talked about this a lot in the last few episodes.
So when it comes to the contrast, you know, you want to appreciate it, you want to respect
it and to actually implement it.
So, that example here and the same one right here.
So you have a lighter text over a darker background.
And that allows you to easily read that text.
Now, visual cues as far as using icons is a big tip.
You want to use visual cues as much as you can.
However, there should be a certain type of organization to it.
So you know this is pretty cool stuff, we got some nice icons here.
Well, what’s the problem?
They’re in different formats and different styles.
So you got to decide, do I want to go with the solids, do I want to go with the outlines
and make sure that you follow that through each of the slides.
So in this case, let’s say if I have to go with the wine glass at the bottom or maybe
it’s a champagne glass or martini glass and going to the next slide, that outline
is being reflected through them.
So, use a similar type of icons throughout the set, stick to the same style.
Now, let’s talk about using graphs and charts
to visualize data.
A lot of times in presentations, you have data that you need to present.
And often what people do is they create these tables.
So, with tables, it’s a great way to present information but it is often hard to understand.
3-second test: What year had the highest for those with a Bachelor's degree?
Can you tell me in 3 seconds?
Probably not.
Let’s do the same thing, same test again.
What year had the highest number of people with a Bachelor's degree?
The highest percentage of the Bachelor's degree.
So if you look over here at 2016, the percentage is approximately 59%, more than the year 2006.
So that was taking data from a table format and putting it into a more visual format.
Now, another example: Sometimes you want to represent figures, okay?
So autism is a big issue in terms of the ratio. Comparing boys to girls, it’s about 4 to 1.
So you have to kind of read the sentence here or you could actually visualize that into
an easier-to-understand format.
So, simple and effective data visualizations really allow you to present information more
easily.
So the same exact information. The ratio is 4 to 1, comparing the number of boys with girls.
So very quickly you can actually absorb that information.
Now, I can’t emphasize enough about using
high-quality photos.
So these days,
there’s should be very little excuse in terms of the type of photos that you use.
If you look on the left, that is a low-quality photo.
So someone probably took that photo and basically stretched it out.
And then on the right side, we have this other photo that is very crisp and aesthetically pleasing.
So these days, photos are very inexpensive.
They are inexpensive, there are tons of royalty-free photos, a lot of free resources that you
can tap into and that allows you to create better presentations.
Now, let’s talk about consistency.
That’s a big element that you want to follow through in your presentation.
So look at the slide here: What we have is the slide deck and there’s a problem with it.
It’s not cohesive, and there is a sense of inconsistency, too many fonts,
too many colors, a number of bullet points and none of the slides really follow the same aesthetic style.
However, this one is more cohesive, it’s actually a very popular slide deck on SlideShare
and if you look at it, there’s a certain style and color scheme that follows through
all the slides.
That’s what you want to shoot for.
So finally, let’s bring it all together.
This slide behind me, I’m going to show you a few slides that are going to be consistent,
and we'll do it together.
Now, this slide, I referred to it in a couple of the last episodes,
and it kind of follows a similar scheme where I’m going to build this out into a few additional slides
So this is your cover and there’s a certain font and it’s a monochromatic feel, we’re
not using too many colors and let’s go through the next one.
So we’re going to actually take the same flow of the color, a similar color scheme
follows through every slide and the next one.
So in this case, what we’re doing is using consistency in the fonts and also using visuals
to do that.
And also if you look at it, the same background is following through.
And that angle that you see, that’s actually being consistent.
So that’s the opposite angle and a couple slides before, we used that and here we’re following that
through here as well.
Now, additionally here what we’re doing is we’re creating a focal point.
So following the similar slides through, the focal point is the map and the information
about the places that I’ve visited.
So that allows you to have a consistent feel.
So if you go through these slides going back, you get to see that there’s
a certain type of cohesiveness, consistency through the fonts, the styles and that gives
you the look that you’re looking for.
So, there you have it.
This was a 3-part series.
I hope that you've benefited from it in terms of how to create compelling presentations.
I’m going to be talking about some new stuff, especially infographics coming up in the near future
and I hope you put this to good use.
Thank you very much.