Designing and delivering good presentations isn’t easy and relies on several key principles including great content and slick visuals. A good presentation will flow effortlessly and the coordination between the presenter and slide transitions is essential. After all it is often easy to spot someone delivering someone else’s slides.

In this article we will share some of the basic principles required to create a good presentation. These are based on experience and the great resources available on the web.

Avoid Using Too Much Text

Presentation slides are designed to act as a prompt and often very little time is spent on any one slide. Moving between slides quickly makes it difficult for the audience to read large chunks of text. Here you should try to highlight the key points you are trying to make and in turn make your audience think.

Make it Easy to Read

Try to use clean and simply type faces. Fancy fonts are often difficult to read and can leave members of the audience feeling frustrated. You should also give some consideration to colour as some will contrast and add to the confusion. Finally, think about the size of the fonts you are using. Will members of the audience at the back of the room be able to read your slides? This is particularly important in conference locations.

Personality

This often gets overlooked but is also the most important. In truth much of the information given in presentations could easily be found by each and every member of the audience. What brings a presentation to life is the personality of the presenter. Adding in personal touches to your slides often goes down well and then you will need to add your own views or bit of insight.

Images Work

Pictures can be used to sum up a point very quickly and prove extremely powerful. The internet is full of weird and wonderful pictures and can be used to great effect in just about any presentation. The important point here is to ensure that they relate to the point you are trying to make. Try to avoid using an image for the sake of using an image and try to keep the style consistent. Flickr for example is a great resource for this.

These are just some of the basics you will need to consider but ultimately much of the success of a presentation comes down to the presenter themselves. There are many great presenters out there who in fact make poor use of slides. Despite this they are able to wow crowds with their knowledge and charisma. Perfecting this is much more difficult but there are resources out there to help with this.

When designing your presentation remember to keep your audience in mind at all times. This will help to keep it focussed and identify what you want to achieve with your presentation. This might be teaching them about a specific area of your sector and making a point about something topical. Making your audience think and interacting with them usually leads to a successful presentation. Most of all have fun with it.

Susan Hornby – Brand design expert that delivers a growing number of presentations

Susan Hornby – http://www.studionorth.co.uk Brand design expert that delivers a growing number of presentations

Author Bio: Susan Hornby – Brand design expert that delivers a growing number of presentations

Category: Business
Keywords: brand design, branding, brand identity