Jan 7, 2022 4 min read Evergreen

Designing Effective Presentations that Stand Out

Over the past 15-years, I have created thousands of presentations. I've learned what works and what doesn't. I have put together a collection of guidelines, tips, and resources that have helped me become a better presenter and storyteller.

People love to hate slide "decks". Can you blame them? There are plenty of lousy presentations with bad clip art, poor font choices, too much text, and distracting animation. It doesn't have to be this way.

Presentation Design Building Blocks

A good presentation starts by following three simple rules: the cardinal rule, the 10-minute rule, and the rule of three.

The Cardinal Rule

The most important rule to follow is that content is king. Spend most of your time building great content. Edward R. Tufte, the data visualization pioneer, once said, "design cannot rescue failed content."

The 10-Minute Rule

In his New York Times bestselling book Brain Rules, author Dr. John Medina states, "audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion".

The Rule of Three

Your audience can recall information better when you present your content in groups of three. On The Team W's behavioral science blog, psychologist Susan Weinschenk notes that "researchers working in the field of decision-making tell us that people can't effectively choose between more than 3 to 4 items at a time."

Design Process and Structure

I have found that the following design process works best for me through lots of trial and error.

Understand Your Audience

Your objective is to maximize the value for your audience. Try to understand your audience member's perspectives and personalities.

From the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Communication, "Audience analysis involves identifying the audience and adapting a speech to their interests, level of understanding, attitudes, and beliefs. Taking an audience-centered approach is important because a speaker's effectiveness will be improved if the presentation is created and delivered in an appropriate manner."

Slide 10 in the embedded presentation has an audience analysis checklist to use if you are stuck.

Build a Narrative

Visualize what you want to say and write it down. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Define your structure.

Communications expert Nancy Duarte states, "The most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved. That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently — to move from what is to what could be. And by following Aristotle's three-part story structure (beginning, middle, end), they create a message that's easy to digest, remember, and retell."

Storyboarding

Spend a large portion of time sketching out your slide designs on paper first. I use a notebook dedicated to presentation storyboarding. By spending more time at this step in the process, you save a significant amount of time when you start creating your slides.

Explore the best way to communicate your message on each slide, and pay attention to the flow from one slide to the next.

Slide Design Fundamentals

Using Color

Do not use more than 2-3 colors
Use different shades of the same color
Eyes prefer black or dark grey text on white or off-white backgrounds
Avoid high contrast backgrounds and images
Remember the cardinal rule; the content should shine, not the colors
I like to pick one primary color, one accent color, and a grey

Choosing Fonts

Best summed up in Butterick's Practical Typography,

Typography matters because it helps conserve the most valuable resource you have as a writer—reader attention... good typography can help your reader devote less attention to the mechanics of reading and more attention to your message. Conversely, bad typography can distract your reader and undermine your message.

Font pairings should complement each other. I would recommend pairing a sans serif and a serif for paragraphs of text.

This site uses Merriweather Sans (sans serif) and Merriweather (serif). When in doubt, stay within the same typeface family and use different weights and styles within the same family.

Slide Flow

How you structure your slides is important
The flow of your slide tells your audience's eyes where to go and focus
Generally, you want your flow to be left to right or up to down
Steer clear of flashy shapes and convoluted diagrams
Make sure you draw attention to the most important content
Learn how to use whitespace properly

Using Data Visualizations

Please keep it simple!
Learn the basics (fonts, colors, design, chart type selection, depth of analysis)
Ask yourself, do I have the correct data?
Remember garbage in equals garbage out when choosing the right data
Horizontal bar charts are often the best choice; pie charts not so much
Let the data speak for itself, don't mess around with the axis

Images & Icons