This article was contributed by SketchBubble-Co-Founder Ashish Arora. Before we begin, let’s answer this question: What was the best presentation you have ever attended? And what was so special about it that you still remember it? It would probably be a presentation with good quality content, excellent delivery, and mind-blowing slides that efficiently communicate the idea. Hence, you’ve remembered it for a long time. Thus, an effective presentation combines text, elements, pictures, animations, and videos. Its purpose is much more than to inform people; it aims to interact, reflect, and educate the audience. Be it a school presentation or a pitch meeting, here are ten ideas that will spark your creativity and inspire you to create stunning presentations! You must go beyond text and images to make your presentation stand out. Start by using different shapes, and add pictures to them. You can enhance your slides by grouping shapes together and creating a bold presentation. Make sure to select the shapes that go well with your theme and your content. If you are running short of time, you can use pre-designed shapes and graphics. What excites you more- information in elongated texts or informative videos? Of course, the latter. Adding videos to your presentation can instantly capture your audience’s attention and keep them hooked on your slides. You can use videos to demonstrate your product or service, footage of your industry, client testimonials, or even a message from the founding team. Everybody uses basic texts with defined fonts for headings, subheadings, and paragraphs. It makes presentations seem boring. Start by layering text if you wish to stand out and make your slides impressive. You can choose two different fonts that pair well and align them. This allows you to fit more information in limited space, craft an outstanding slide, and create an intriguing visual effect. You can also layer texts with fonts of different colors, sizes, and textures. Presentations are all about interaction and engagement. As soon as your audience begins to feel a part of the show, they automatically start paying more attention to you. You can add interactive elements such as questions, polls, quizzes, rhetoric, and more to your slides. For instance, if your presentation is about Marketing, you can reach your audience with funny customer stories, the craziest marketing techniques, or conduct polls on marketing strategies. If you feel that a particular topic might be too complex to explain, try using mind maps. Break down the idea into parts, create a central theme, and explain each point step-by-step. It will help the audience understand your content easily. Backgrounds are the most important part of your presentation. Imagine sitting through a presentation with a dark background, camouflaging the text and stealing the essence from its images. This is probably one’s worst nightmare! Start fidgeting with photo backdrops to ensure that your slides have the perfect backgrounds. You can choose free stock images, add text, and make them look more personalized and unique. Another captivating background that works well with almost all presentations is gradient. You can create them on PowerPoint or use a free gradient image from the internet. You must include color themes in your presentations. Be it a spectrum hue, neutral shades, or monochromatic layers, every color helps communicate messages much better. Colors also create greater visual interest and add more depth to your presentation. They instantly lift spirits and create more enthusiasm in your audience. Using a theme helps you establish consistency in your presentations. It reflects a sense of style and focus and allows the audience to stay connected to the subject. For instance, if your presentation is about Fashion, you can go all quirky with the theme. However, if it is about a graver subject, you can use a minimal theme with sophisticated and elegant fonts and plenty of empty spaces. Illustrations are an amazing way to make your presentations more fun and interactive. They reflect a sense of personalization and make the slides more dynamic. You can add expert-designed illustrations and make your PowerPoint slides versatile. For instance, if your presentation is about History, you can add illustrations of people from historical periods, making your presentation outstanding! Numbers might sound boring, but they are the game-changers in every deal when used with stunning visuals. Use diagrams such as bar graphs, pie charts, matrix tables, Venn diagrams, etc., to display numbers. Add bold text with bright colors to make your information stand out. Conclusion Presentations are opportunities in disguise – be it for acquiring new clients, raising a round of investment, or even scoring a good grade in school assignments. We hope that these creative ideas will inspire you to craft the most powerful presentations and help you grab the opportunities in front of you! About the author Ashish Arora is Co-Founder of SketchBubble.com, a leading provider of result-driven, professionally built PowerPoint templates. Travelling the world to gather new creative ideas, he has been working in the digital marketing space since 2007 and has a passion for designing presentations. You can also find him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
