If you've made it here,
you've probably seen...
The horror.
Overcrowded slides,
presenters that bore you to death,
thousands of business presentation templates that all look the same.
Death by PowerPoint is very much real.
In this video we're gonna look into some
high quality presentation templates.
Dig into the slide creation process
and learn how to follow a storytelling structure
that keeps the attention of your audience
Death by PowerPoint is not only caused
by ugly slides,
and we'll get into those in a minute,
but by a dull presentation story.
That's why we're gonna talk about structure first
ensuring your audience doesn't fall asleep.
Templates like these are handy
to help your slides follow a concise story arc.
Often if not all the time,
a presentation is much like telling a story,
and there's a lot that presenters
can learn from storytellers.
A good story is usually divided into three acts,
and so is an excellent presentation.
In the first act we establish the status quo
and the story itself.
The second act
begins with the first plot point,
an event that completely changes everything.
The final and third act,
starts with the second plot point,
that narrows the outcomes of the story
and pushes the characters to a resolution.
You recognize this arc in pretty much every novel,
every story
and especially Hollywood movies,
and it can most certainly be applied to presentations.
Let's look at the presentation Airbnb used
to pitch their business back in 2009.
Notice how the first section establishes the problem
and the opportunity; the status quo.
The problem and its value proposition
are the plot point that breaks the state of affairs,
and each upcoming slide builds up on that story.
when selling a product,
and even when pitching a company
I like to think of the pricing side as the second plot point.
The presentation story builds up to a climax,
and then this is the moment
that brings the story to a culmination.
Try to arrange the story you want
to tell in a way that's exciting to the audience.
Use the introduction to set the story;
the intro is the place to add
a slide about the status quo
and the challenges your company and your project faced or faces.
Use the middle section to build upon the story.
Don't be afraid of mentioning challenges
and setbacks that you had to overcome,
and reinforce the point that you
or the team you represent
were the right people
to master those difficulties.
Finally use the last section to draw conclusions
and talk about the next steps.
Remember most presentations are stories.
For more details on the storytelling behind the presentation,
take a look at the article we've posted below.
Now let's talk about design.
Most people think of death by PowerPoint
after looking at terrible slide designs...
and they're right,
PowerPoint has given us
some very regrettable presentations.
An excellent presentation story,
blended with slides that draw attention
is the killer combination to deliver a memorable pitch.
If you found this video after
downloading a Slidebean template,
rest assured that the slides will look great.
We built Slidebean to take these principles into account
and to ensure slides look good every single time.
If you're editing your presentation on a different platform,
here are a few of the principles we use
to design our templates.
Number one:
Choose one,
just one idea per slide and stick to it.
If you feel the urge to elaborate on a second idea,
move it to another slide.
30 simple slides are much better
than 10 overcrowded.
An overcrowded slide is also a slippery slope
that leads to cognitive overload.
Just avoid it at any cost.
keep the main content of your presentation
to three or four primary colors.
So use the darkest and the lightest color
for the background and the text
and the other two colors for the highlights.
If you're working on a company presentation
you can of course base these colors out of your logo.
The days of searching for Google images
and coming up with boring, catastrophic, terrible
and copyrighted protected stock photos are over.
Plenty of services like Unsplash
and Startup Stock Photos
offer truly gorgeous stock photos,
free to use and free to download.
Like Unsplash you can look into The Noun Project
which is a gallery of millions of icons
that you can download in any color in any size
Non Project does cost 10 dollars a month
but unlimited use is included for free on Slidebean.
Not all information should be granted the same level
of significance in your slide.
So use focal points to establish visual hierarchy.
If something ends up being too small,
it probably shouldn't be in the slide at all.
Big fonts work great for presentation
and also forces you to keep the amount of text
to low levels.
Treat your text like an image it can make a difference.
Sites like Medium are beautifully designed sites
where the only element is type.
our first tip is to understand the
difference between San Serif and Serif fonts
Serif fonts are often used in formal documents
while sans-serif fonts are associated with more casual
more informal presentations.
You can actually try combining the two on headings
and body elements.
As a rule of thumb,
stay away from cursive or other heavily stylized type.
Now I've added a bunch of links to some fantastic articles
that go into much more detail
about the points we've reviewed today.
We'll be publishing more in-depth videos
about these specific points,
so make sure to Subscribe to our Channel
to stay up to date.
What would you like us to cover in the future?
Let us know in the comments!
Break a leg on your next presentation!