Presentation Faux Pas: Designing professional presentations

In the professional world, presentation is extremely important in making a good impression, especially the presentation of your presentations. Here are some tips for designing elegant, professional presentations. Follow the five tips below and see if you don’t start getting comments about your awesome presentation design skills.

#1 This workflow is nearly identical to that of countless presentation designers and the result is a typical presentation slide that I’ve seen countless times throughout college and my career.Here’s a design secret, this slide sucks; as do many of the default themes you’ll find in Powerpoint.

#2 Use Quality Photography. Photography is one of the single best ways to make your presentation look awesome. Remember that no photo is better than a bad photo.The image in the slide below is unique, attractive, and void of cliches. Finding Free Photos. Where are these amazing photos you say?

#3 Solid Colors are better than you think! You don’t always need a fancy photo or crazy custom background to make a presentation look professional. Using a strong palette of solid colors can make for an awesome presentation. If you need help building color palettes, check out the free tools below. Kuler is the quintessential online color tool. Choose from thousands of awesome pre-built color schemes or generate your own with advanced but user-friendly tools. Use Piknik! This makes it perfect for hovers and borders in web design but it can also be great for finding an accent color for typography or other elements in a presentation.

#4 Typography Speaks Volumes. Non-designers frequently stress out about finding the proper typeface for a presentation, and for good reason. The right font can me make or break your presentation. Old style serif fonts tend to fee formal and professional while sans-serif fonts feel modern and clean. The biggest mistake that people make with fonts in presentations is assuming that the first three font styles listed above are boring. If you’re not a professional designer, remember that the first three styles above aren’t boring, they’re safe. Never be afraid of standard-looking fonts.

#5 Watch Your Readability: The solution however is quite simple: use tip #3 (solid colors rock). By creating a simple color bar behind the text we increase the readability by leaps and bounds and still maintain a stylish looking slide.

Please visit this original blog at: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1A2DZE/designshack.co.uk/articles/graphics/10-tips-for-designing-presentations-that-dont-suck-pt-1.

What else can you do to improve the design of your presentations?

Written By: Karly Poole