6 Tips to Boost Your Presentation Design
- February 15, 2022
- Vlad Muslakov
Creating a harmonious presentation design could be a challenge if you are not a designer, but do not worry! In this article, we will describe our favorite points that we always keep in mind when creating Pitch Decks or any kind of presentation. Just follow the steps below which will help you much improve your presentation slides.
1. Keep your slides clean and readable
This is a common mistake and probably the hardest thing you need to overcome in your presentation design. Filling out most of the space in your slides hardly increases the readability and viewer experience.
Don't fill out all the space with content
Trying to put all information in one slide sometimes might be a bad idea if you have much to tell. So do not be afraid to break your information into several slides.
Always try to write your message as clear as possible
Give your elements more space
Tidy up the spaces between all the elements on the slide will much increase the readability. Also, do not let your content get too close to the edges of the slide. We recommend using at least 60pt between your content and the slide edges (top-bottom-left-right). Use guidelines to set up the content area.
Use the bold thickness to make an accent
You can see in the example above how the texts are merges with each other. To avoid it just use bold thickness in the important paragraph on your slide.
For example:
Title or Subtitle - Bold & Semibold
Body text - Light or Normal
2. Typography
Guess your impression when you are trying to read the presentation with unreadable texts? The typography is the core of your presentation design. Wrongly selected fonts or parameters might seriously affect the readability and spoil the impression of your viewer. But don’t worry! Just follow the steps below to avoid basic mistakes in typography design.
Use less fonts
Want to use more than 2 different fonts in your presentation? Definitely a bad idea. Using one font family is the best scenario.
Love Serif & Handwritten fonts?
Be careful. These kinds of fonts can decrease the readability of your presentation. We do not recommend using such fonts in Pitch Deck or any business kind of presentation.
However, if you still want to use such fonts keep in mind one simple tip:
Use serif fonts only in titles. For primary text use sans fonts.
Font size
Using a different font size for any paragraph or title is not a cool idea. Determine your text styles at once and reuse them in the whole presentation.
We do not recommend using a font size less than 20pt because it is hard to read in any case whether it is a web presentation or especially an offline speech.
For example:
Large title - 80pt
Small title - 60pt
Subtitle - 42pt
Body text - 28pt
Caption - 22pt
-
Line height
Less fonts, sans fonts, font size... Is it done? Nope! Pay attention to the line height of your paragraphs. Too tight can seriously affect the readability.
There is no universal line-height for all fonts because every font looks different with the same line-height parameter. But at least 1.5 times the font size for your paragraphs.
For example:
If your paragraphs use 26pt font size then your line height should be at least 39pt.
26x1.5=39
Contrast
Are you sure that your background does not blend with your texts? Be sure to make your message the most visible part of your slide using the right color combination.
Black and White the best contrast couple. But if you want to use something more colorful, check your colors using this handsome Color Contrast checker from Colorable
Colors are the main part in contrast but additionally, you can increase it through font weight. Keep in mind that thin font weight can decrease the contrast and accordingly readability.
3. Assets
Images, illustrations, icons can incredibly complete your message and bring a good impression of your presentation. On the other hand, low-quality assets might completely spoil it. Here is a couple of tips on how to avoid it.
Use only high-resolution images and illustrations
Use vector or PNG icons with transparent background
4. Avoid shadows
In most cases, shadows will reduce the quality of your presentation design. So If you are not a professional designer try to avoid any shadows on any elements in your presentation especially text. Simple but very helpful tip.
5. Align elements сorrectly
Arranging the elements on the slide by eye? Not anymore! Always keep the elements on the slide aligned with each other.
Rulers and alignment functions will help you
6. Use presentation templates
Templates can save you much time and effort instead of trying to create your own slide deck from scratch but do not use outdated templates such as PowerPoint propose to use. They are definitely bad.
Where to find good-looking templates?
We can help you with it! We've created a huge slides templates pack with more than 400 unique and professionally designed templates.
- Good decision
Quick recap
We've tried to explain the main tips for our opinion which describes a professional presentation design. Hope they were useful to you. Just try to implement all things described above and you will see how your presentation becomes a lot better.
- Do not overload your slides. Give them more white space
- Use less fonts in your presentation
- Choose harmonious colors and keep important information in contrast
- Use only high-quality assets
- Avoid shadows
- Align all elements on the slide using rulers
- Use only professional presentation templates
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