The goal of any presentation should be to convey the message as clearly and concisely as possible in order to increase understanding, interest, and action on the part of the audience.

There are many do’s and don’ts when it comes to designing presentations:

Dos

Include visuals

Presentations are a big part of our work. They communicate ideas, make a point, and persuade others.

A presentation should include visuals to ensure that the audience understands the message being conveyed. 100% of people think that a slide should include visuals and this is backed by research as well.

Visuals help us understand information better than words alone. They also give us a break from reading text on the slides which can be tiring for some people.

Include high-quality stock images

Including stock images in presentations can be a great way to make them more engaging, but it can also be a costly endeavor.

If you’re looking for free stock photos, you can use Unsplash and Pexels. These sites have a large library of high-quality images that can be used in presentations.

Use large fonts

Large fonts should be used in presentations to make the content easier to read, especially for those people sitting in the back of a room.

No matter what your opinion is on this subject, large fonts are generally better than small ones. From an eye-sight perspective, they allow us to see more words at once and make it easier to read them. From a design perspective, they give projects a clean and elegant look. All these reasons make it worth investing in larger fonts.

Create consistent slides

The design of the presentation slides should be consistent. This means that the slides should have the same color scheme, font size, and font type. This will help with branding and make it easier for your audience to follow along.

Create a visual hierarchy of text

We can use size, font, color, and weight to create a visual hierarchy for text. The most important text is usually bolded, larger, and in a different color than the secondary information.

Hierarchy can be created by defining different fonts and sizes of text. The most important information should be in a bigger font with more contrast or different colors to stand out from the text around it.

Use Dark Backgrounds

Dark background in PowerPoint design is one of the latest trends in presentation design. It has been used for a long time by designers and artists to create an atmosphere that is intended to be more serious or somber.

Dark backgrounds have a number of benefits for presenters. One of the most important reasons is that they reduce blue light exposure, which preserves battery life.

Use Audio or Video

Audio and video are the most engaging ways to present your ideas. It is important that you never show a long clip because people can get bored very easily.

Embed Fonts

Embedding your font files in your PowerPoint presentation will guarantee that the fonts will not change when presenters move from one computer to another.

To embed a font in your PowerPoint presentation, you can go to the “File” tab and then select “Options.” From there, you can click on the “Save” tab and then select the “Embed fonts in the file check box”.

Don’ts

Do not fill up space

Empty spaces are a part of any presentation. They give the presenter space to move around and make their point. However, there is a big difference between using empty spaces as a tool to enhance your presentation and filling them up with unnecessary elements.

The best way to use empty spaces in presentations is to use them sparingly and strategically. Do not fill up empty spaces with unnecessary elements that do not serve any purpose other than filling up space.

Don’t overdo transitions and animations

Animation is a powerful tool for engaging an audience. But it should not be used just to make something more interesting. It should be used to highlight important points or to explain complex concepts.

It is important to know when and how to use animations in presentations because they can easily distract the audience if not used correctly. Transitions are also a powerful tool for engaging an audience but they can easily become distracting if overused.

Colors

Color is a powerful tool for designers. It can be used to create moods, highlight important points, and make the design more visually appealing. However, there are some things that designers should avoid when using colors in their designs.

• Don’t use too many colors
• Don’t use a color that is not appropriate for the brand’s identity
• Don’t use too many shades of one color
• Don’t use bright colors for text on a dark background
• Don’t use the same color for all elements of the design

Don’t use fancy fonts

The font you choose for your presentation design is an important decision. It can make or break the look and feel of your presentation.

Arial is usually better, a popular choice of font is Gill Sans.

Premade templates

There are many reasons why you might want to use a premade template. For example, you might need to create a presentation within a short time frame and don’t have the time or resources to create something from scratch. Another reason might be that you are not very creative and need some guidance in terms of what content should go into your presentation.

However, if you do use a premade template, ensure that there is consistency and that it looks professional. You should not make the mistake of using different templates for different slides in your presentation.

Conclusion

We hope that this article has provided you with a more in-depth understanding of the dos and don’ts of presentation design. Remember, the key to a good presentation is to use design elements that communicate your message clearly and effectively.

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The post Dos and Don’ts of Presentation Design appeared first on Tricky Enough.

The most popular tools for modern business presentations are Prezi and PowerPoint. A dozen similar programs exist, but the majority of companies prefer the above two.

These programs come with a big set of similarities and differences. How can you tell which one is the best for your purposes?

In this article, we’ll give you a short comparison between Prezi and PowerPoint to make your struggle easier.

Remember, even an ideal presentation can be ruined by the wrong choice of tools.

What is Prezi?

What is Prezi anyway? It’s a rather young (compared to PowerPoint) piece of software, which takes an innovative approach to presentation making.

Instead of using slides, which everyone is used to, Prezi created a large canvas filled with points, each of which can be zoomed in on. The Prezi platform supports text, images, and videos.

For presentation makers, who haven’t had experience with Prezi, the platform offers a formidable choice of templates. Even though they aren’t highly customizable, they are suitable for a wide variety of purposes.

Prezi has a drag-and-drop interface, which isn’t as easy to work with as PowerPoint but could be preferable as soon as you get used to the idea. It is the king of diagrams, graphs, and other visual ways to present information.

Prezi allows storing presentations on the cloud so different users can access the presentation simultaneously for editing or for watching.

One of the highly-valued features offered by Prezi is analytics. The platform offers real-time analysis of the presentation that helps presenters understand which points were appreciated by the audience and which need improvement.

What is PowerPoint?

Not too many people in the world have ever heard of PowerPoint. Next year, the program is celebrating its 30th birthday. More than 500 million people use it worldwide. PowerPoint is a market leader in the presentation industry. Its popularity is often attributed to its ease of use.

Schoolchildren use it to make presentations in classrooms. Meanwhile, executives without any coding experience can take advantage of PowerPoint to create a good presentation.

PowerPoint has had sufficient time to deal with all its bugs and come up with numerous useful features. It uses a slide-by-slide presentation approach, allowing the user to go back and forth between pieces of information during the presentation.

The program has many different PowerPoint business templates, which can be customized. It comes with excellent support from the developers (Microsoft) and numerous communities.

If you have a question about PowerPoint, just Google it. There is a 99% chance that the answer has been discussed online several times before you graduated from high school.

Let’s go further to compare and contrast the two popular presentation-making tools.

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 1. Platforms To be Used On

These days, mobility is king. If your presentation can’t be accessed on a mobile gadget, you can send it to the trash can. Sounds too harsh? It’s true. More than half of the world’s population is using mobile gadgets. How likely is your audience to be among it?

PowerPoint comes with iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone apps. However, Prezi currently offers only iPhone and Android app options.

This may not be a deciding factor for some businesses. However, it’s nice to know that apps are available for the majority of platforms.

2. To Pay or Not to Pay

For the majority of business owners, pricing matters. In fact, more often than not, price becomes the deciding factor.

Both tools are similarly priced. However, for PowerPoint, you’ll pay about $2 more per month. Meanwhile, PowerPoint doesn’t have a free trial available. So you can’t test it before making the final choice.

Free Prezi software is good enough to get an idea about its suitability to the needs of your company.

3. Business Suitability

When it comes to making business presentations, size matters. If you are a small or medium-sized business, both PowerPoint and Prezi can work fine. However, if you are an enterprise, you should stick with the good old PowerPoint.

According to presentation designers at PresentationGeeks, the majority of enterprise owners choose PowerPoint for their business presentation purposes. The reason is the set of proper tools needed for sizeable presentations.

4. How Easy Is It?

Another thing to consider when choosing between the two tools is the learning curve. Microsoft PowerPoint is much easier to use than Prezi. Of course, you still have to spend some time learning how to wield different features with PowerPoint.

However, with Prezi, learning is bound to take longer. Unless you have experience with Prezi, you need to allow some time to get the hang of it.

5. Innovation vs. Reliability

While PowerPoint has been on the market for decades, Prezi is the “new kid on the block”. It takes a different approach to presentation making, giving presenters an opportunity to add more visuals to the process.

In a world where visuals are gaining popularity faster than light, such an approach could be highly valuable. The eye can process an image in just 13 milliseconds, which is much faster than it processes text.

However, the good old PowerPoint is suitable for more purposes than Prezi. When it comes to business presentations, visual innovations offered by Prezi aren’t always acceptable.

Prezi Advantages

Here is a list of Prezi advantages you should consider:

• The Zoom function offers a new way to present your information. The presentation looks like a big canvas packed with info. When you want to focus on the topic, you zoom in on it.
• It comes with a free web-based version so you don’t need to download any software to your computer.
• You can insert images at any angle (unlike horizontal and vertical image insertion in PowerPoint.
• Media insertion is simplified.
• It’s easy to embed Prezi presentations in blogs and websites.
• It’s easy to go back and forth between the slides. You don’t need to search for the right slide if you have to go back to certain information.

PowerPoint Advantages

PowerPoint has some interesting advantages over Prezi:

• Unlike Prezi, PowerPoint is easy to use. Many people have already used PowerPoint in school or college.
• You can change premade layouts without too much effort.
• PowerPoint offers high-quality slide transition effects.
• You can print the presentation out.
• You can insert hyperlinks.
• The clarity of slides is often preferred over the overwhelming number of images and dizzying zooming of Prezi.
• Since the software has been around for many years, all the features are tweaked to excellence.

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Which One Should You Choose?

Marvel or DC? Coffee or tea? Gandalf or Dumbledore? Prezi or PowerPoint? When it comes to business presentations, the choice may be hard to make.

If you want to impress your audience with visuals, Prezi is the right way to go. However, you have to be ready for the lack of important features and a bit of unprofessional appearance. Prezi can be an excellent choice for e-business presentations. Using it is a great way to show your strive for innovations and new angles.

If you want to experience, reliability, and power, PowerPoint is the answer. Business owners have been using it for decades.

The post Understanding Prezi vs PowerPoint – What’s The Best For Your Business Presentation appeared first on Tricky Enough.

If yes, then you have dropped to the right place.

PowerPoint has long been around as one of the best and most used presentation applications. PowerPoint is widely used in offices, schools, communities, and even at home as the primary slideshow maker; be it business plans, financial reports, or subject-matter presentations, PTA meetings, vacation plans, brainstorming sessions, and everything else in between.

However, while PowerPoint is user-friendly and offers plenty of features for beginner and expert users alike, many still find it hard to create good presentations. Many simply don’t have the skills or experience, and some just don’t have the time.

This is why many turn to the free PowerPoint templates to help make their lives easier when it comes to creating awesome slideshows that will grab the attention of the audience and keep them glued to the last slide.

Use PowerPoint Templates to Create Amazing SlideShows

PowerPoint templates have helped many people create stunning presentations that help give them, even more, confidence to be on the podium or talk to a huge crowd. There are many resources that offer slideshow templates, but many of them require a fee or subscription, while some have limited options for customization.

Free PowerPoint Templates, or just FPPT.com, is a leading resource of free, premium-quality templates. The portal has been around very long, accumulating an ever-growing collection of over 10,000 templates, themes, and backgrounds for commercial, educational, and personal use.

With free presentation templates from FPPT.com, creating awesome slideshows from templates is easy, especially if you exercise proper planning and organization, with a dash of creativity to customize your template and make it truly yours.

Easily Find the Perfect Template that You Need

FPPT has a diverse and ever-growing collection of templates, themes, and backgrounds specially designed for PowerPoint. It regularly updates its collection with new templates that match the updates done on PowerPoint as well, so you can take advantage of the application’s latest features. So, whatever topic or purpose you have in mind for your presentation, you can be sure to find a template that is perfect for you.

The portal provides an easy way for you to locate your ideal template, whatever topic, purpose, audience, theme, or design you are looking for. In the homepage, you can search for your desired template according to categories, tags, backgrounds, and themes. There are also suggested and latest templates that you can preview right away, as the site provides a reliable review of the templates it features on a regular basis.

The Categories are diverse, showcasing how templates can be used for different yet specific purposes. Categories include Abstract, Business, Holidays, Business, Finance, Medicine, Lifestyle, Health, Industrial, Education, Technology, and so much more.

You can also go ahead and type your presentation topic or theme on the search bar. With FPPT’s over 70,000, you can expect a couple or more results to be generated, so you can choose the best template for your needs.

Download Free PowerPoint Templates

There are dozens of online resources for PowerPoint templates, yet FPPT is one of the top few that offers premium-quality templates for free. This means you don’t have to sign up or subscribe to anything. You also don’t have to pay for any template and yet get access to complete presentation packages that are professionally designed with slide layouts, graphics, and slide objects to use for your own slideshows.

For example, you can choose any Category of the template, and from here, you will see one or more results. You can preview the templates by clicking on them one by one, and upon choosing the template that you like, you can just easily download it.

A great thing about FPPT templates is that you don’t have to download another file or software to use and customize the templates. After downloading the PPSX file of the template, you can then just modify it right through PowerPoint, using its many formatting and design features.

Customize the Templates to Suit Your Needs and Preferences

Any template you choose can be easily customized so it fits your desired theme. This is especially important if you are creating a presentation for your company or organization, where brand strategy is important. You can also choose templates from FPPT according to your desired color scheme.

Most of the slideshow templates from FPPT come in a package containing numerous slides, with distinct design and layout specific to a theme. To customize them, you can make use of PowerPoint’s design and formatting options. You can format the background and change it with images, patterns, gradients, or solid colors of your choice. You can also modify certain components of the slides, such as the text, graphs, charts, diagrams, and images. Furthermore, you can add your own layouts or rearrange the slides to display your content smoothly and more effectively.

With these free FPPT templates for PowerPoint, you can also utilize PowerPoint Online and OneDrive to work remotely from your office, which is ideal if you’re traveling or on the go. This also allows you to closely monitor your presentation’s progress as you work on a project with a team. The templates are also fully compatible with major versions of Microsoft PowerPoint, OpenOffice or you can also import the templates as Google Slides themes into Google Slides.

You can go ahead and try out FPPT templates yourself. Download one from the thousands of templates available for free download so you can get started on creating your own amazing PowerPoint template.

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