We live in amazing times. The world is changing rapidly, and by 2020 the digital universe will grow tenfold. There will be even more varied content, and it will become increasingly difficult for our overloaded brain to perceive it.

To cope with such an influx of information, you need to learn how to structure and present it correctly.

How to create an effective presentation and what mistakes to avoid in the process?

Rule 1: Engage with Content

At one of the lectures I was asked: “Alexander, how do you see a successful presentation?”. I thought for a long time and looked for arguments, because success in this matter consists of many factors.

First of all, interesting, structured and well-presented content.

Such that during the presentation the listener looks at the phone for only one purpose - to take pictures of the slides, and not to check the Facebook feed.

So that his eyes sparkle and the desire to create appears.

But how do you know if the audience is ready, if they are interested, and how involved they are?

First you need to come to terms with an important fact: people don’t go to think and stress. And most likely, they don't care about your presentation. However, how you present and what they see can change their mind.

Dave Paradis, a presentation expert, conducted research on his website.

He asked people: what don't they like about presentations? Based on thousands of people's responses, he created two important notes for any speaker.

Rule 2. Don't read text from slides

69% of respondents answered that they cannot stand it when the speaker repeats the text placed on the slides of his presentation. You must explain the information on each slide in your own words. Otherwise, you risk that your audience will simply fall asleep.

Rule 3. Don't be "small" :)

48% of people cannot tolerate The font in the presentation is too small. You can come up with brilliant copy for every slide, but all your creativity will go down the drain if the copy is unreadable.

Rule 4: Make jokes and be sincere

Will Stefan at TED-x knows how to laugh at himself even during important presentations.

Look. Draw a conclusion. Smile. The audience will appreciate your ease of communication and simplicity of speech.

Rule 5: Use the right fonts

In 2012, The New York Times conducted an experiment called “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?”

Participants had to read an excerpt from a book and answer “yes” or “no” to several questions.

The purpose of the experiment: to determine whether the font affects the reader’s trust in the text.

Forty thousand people participated and were shown the same paragraph in different fonts: Comic Sans, Computer Modern, Georgia, Trebuchet, Baskerville, Helvetica.

The result is this: the text written in Comic Sans and Helvetica fonts did not inspire confidence among readers, but the Baskerville font, on the contrary, received agreement and approval. According to psychologists, this is due to its formal appearance.

Rule 6: Visualize

We all perceive information differently. You tell the person: make a beautiful presentation. You draw a concrete example in your head.

And you don’t even realize that in his thoughts a beautiful presentation looks completely different.

Therefore, it is better to show five pictures than to explain everything in words once.

Before your speech, you need to choose clear illustrations of your key message. It doesn't matter what you sell - lunch boxes, your consultations or life insurance.

Show your audience five pictures

You

Your product

Benefits of your product

Happy customers

Metrics of your success

Rule 7. Simplify

Most people think that making a presentation on a white background is boring and unprofessional. They are convinced that if they change the color, “magic” will happen and the client will immediately accept the order. But this is a misconception.

We try to “embellish” the slide with a large number of objects, although we can explain its essence in one word or picture.

Your goal is not to reach Rembrandt's level of skill. An overly detailed and elaborate drawing will only distract the audience from the idea you intend to convey. (Dan Roem, author of Visual Thinking)

Using illustrations and a minimum of text, we help convey our thoughts to listeners and capture their attention.

Less doesn't mean more boring. The design of the one dollar bill is over 150 years old, and it only gets better every year.

It is constantly visually changed, leaving only the most important things on the bill. Today the banknote is beautiful in its simplicity.

Rule 8. Rehearse your speech

If you don't have time to prepare a presentation, why should the client take the time to prepare it? How will you enter the hall? What do you say first? Your laptop will have ten percent charge, and where do you expect to find an outlet? Will you rehearse several scenarios and your speech?

The answer to all questions is the same: you need to prepare for important meetings and presentations. It’s not enough to create a presentation with cool content and pictures, you need to be able to present it. When speaking, you should be understood, heard and accepted.

Creation effective presentation— it’s not just about adding cool content and pictures to the slides, it’s about the ability to present them. At the speech you should be understood, heard and accepted.)

Imagine: a person comes into the hall and starts rushing around - first the 1st slide, then the 7th, then back to the 3rd. Worries, worries, forgets. Will you understand anything? Don't think.

People are very sensitive to other people. When you are not ready, when you are not sure, it can be seen from a distance. Therefore, my advice is: rehearse your presentation in front of a mirror at least three times.

Greeted by the cover

Imagine you came to a meeting and amazed everyone great presentation, you added as a friend on Facebook the person you were “selling” to, and you have a flower or a skull on your avatar.

First of all, it's weird. Secondly, in two weeks, when you write to a person in instant messenger, he will not remember your face.

Open messenger. If you see letters on your avatar or a person whose back is turned to you, will you remember the face of the interlocutor without his name?

Presentations are transformative. This doesn't necessarily mean they're changing audiences. This can also happen, but that’s not what I’m talking about now. Presentations transform you and your own ideas. It's not about them helping you become rich and famous. It's about becoming different the best people. You will become more knowledgeable, more understanding, more sincere and more passionate. ( Alexey Kapterev, presentation expert)

No matter how great your PowerPoint presentation is, if you have a low-resolution picture on your avatar, people will forget about the presentation.

Remember that your Facebook profile sells while you sleep. People come to it, read, and look for something interesting. The visual design of your page is very important.

Can I ask you to do one thing? Upload your avatar to Facebook on a white background and make a cover with your photo and short description, What do you do.

Over time, you will understand that you are “meet by the cover” and will get a concrete result from communication.

Presentation by mail: 5 life hacks

A presentation in front of an audience is significantly different from one you need to send by mail.

What I advise you to pay attention to before sending a presentation to a client:

The title slide always sells. Your first picture should be provocative and unusual. Looking at her, a person should want to know more.

To learn any skill, you need to copy and repeat. When children grow up, they repeat what their parents do: hold a fork, duplicate words and actions.

How to do good presentation? You need to copy and repeat. Repeat not presentations, but elements. Styles, not images. Fonts, not text.

What elements are best to use in presentations? How the best presentations inspire me Lately? I tell you in my article.

1. Minimalism and flat design

I like to draw an analogy between design and spices.

Spices can either add incredible flavor to a dish or ruin it. After all, if you over-salt a dish, it will be impossible to eat.

I see a simplification in both dinner preparation and presentations. For example, I was recently in a new fish restaurant, and they practically abandoned most of the spices - they only used salt, pepper and olive oil.

It's the same with presentations. Now the trend is minimalism - the removal of all elements of shadow, reflection, 3D shapes, and so on. Everything is clean, understandable, but no less beautiful.

2. Vector images

Vector graphics are becoming very popular in video, infographics and presentation design. The vectors are editable and you can change the color to suit your needs.

This feature became possible after PowerPoint 2016 began rendering SVG format on slides.

Different angles and perspectives: more and more often we see non-standard photographs. They are used to surprise the audience and show everything from an interesting angle.

3. Animation is back

PowerPoint 2016 has a completely new transition type, Morph, which will help you create smooth animations, transitions, and moving objects on your presentation slides.

Morph transition can be applied to slides to create the illusion of moving text, shapes, drawings - this will produce an incredible wow effect.

4. Data visualization and more icons

Instead of just writing a number on a slide, people try to show it. There are many data visualization tools available.

For quantitative data it is better to use graphs, tables, pie charts. And also thermometers, speedometers, dials, gauges, donuts and much more.

5. Just doesn't mean cheap.

“The simpler, the better,” these guys thought and made a presentation in the form of simple illustrations, which are to some extent similar to comics, that is, they contain little text and many pictures. Everything we love.

The best presentations that inspire

1. An excellent example of using imagery in visualization

Glasses - technical knowledge, tie - business competence, creativity - palette. The presentation “How Google Works” is at the top of my list of inspiration.

The presentation itself is interesting from the point of view of describing employees new era, their values ​​and motives.

After watching the presentation, I immediately wanted to work at Google.

Useful: If you don't know how to make a sketch presentation in video format, mysimplehow is the resource for you.

You simply write text (in English), and the program automatically reads and visualizes your slides.

2. A short excursion into the election race

An excellent and relevant presentation on the US elections, which shows the difficult path of the two candidates.

What I like here:

Large and contrasting font, well-chosen images.

Color division into two camps for better visual perception: red background for Trump, blue background for Clinton. Easy to read and understand.

Useful: How to make a font with this effect? Hint: Bebas font.

We write one phrase different colors. A little magic and no fraud.

3. This presentation is about the pitch (sales presentation)

You will understand how people perceive your product and why it is important to focus on your audience.

Now there is a certain trend for B&W photography in presentations. It looks quite stylish aerobatics Photos from the same series are considered. See how this is done in the presentation below (starting on slide 23).

Healthy: A great resource for photos from the past New Old Stock.

When the question arises, how to age a picture or make it black and white, I have the answer: “Format” tab - “Color” - “Saturation 0”.

Whoosh! And already VERY OLD.

4. This presentation has mixed reviews due to the abundance of colors on different slides, but I like how they come together

Very nice tones and soft color.

This presentation is about time management, priorities and why you shouldn't check your email every 5 minutes.

A great example of the “1 slide – 1 idea” rule.

How do you find colors that will go together?

Healthy: This is one of the resources where you can choose colors for your presentation - colorhunt. It is very similar to Instagram, only for choosing a color palette.

5. More than 3 million people watched this presentation.

Its creator, Seth Godin, is a famous speaker, entrepreneur, and marketer. Here he talks about typical mistakes on slides, shows what to do and what not to do in presentations.

According to Seth, it gives a basic understanding of what a good presentation should look like, and why details and large amounts of text should be left in documents and not on slides.

I love the combination of colors and the use of different colored solids in the photographs.

How to make such a plate in your presentation?

Useful: Let's take a photograph.

Place a rectangle on top of the image.

By right-clicking on the rectangle, in the “Shape Format” section (right) select the desired color.

And let's make the image transparent. Ready.

And finally

Your presentation is the face of your company, what your client and your audience primarily communicate with. And it’s up to you how it looks. The same presentation in its form can evoke completely different emotions.

This is your costume in which you appear in front of people. Now absolutely everyone with the help modern technologies, resources and practice can make a good presentation, I assure you.

Think about it: if you don't pay attention to your presentation, why should the client waste time on it?

Alexey Obzhorin

Explores communication in all its manifestations - foreign languages, psychology of communication, public speaking and visualization - and willingly shares her discoveries with others. Uses a scientific approach to everyday things and believes that being a scientist is interesting.

A lot has been said and written about how to make a presentation. Despite this, today students and high school students grab their heads when given the task of preparing a presentation for their project. And then - teachers and teachers, looking through dozens of template slides and reading microscopic text written in red letters on a bright green background. What to do?

Just look at the world's best examples. To do this, let's go to Slideshare.net - a site with a 70 million monthly audience dedicated exclusively to presentations - and select best works for all time and in all categories. These are not only presentations that were viewed by 100 thousand to 3.5 million people, but also those that are most often shared, liked, and downloaded by users. Let's try to find what unites them in terms of design, content and in general.

Design

1. Photographs are used much more often than diagrams, diagrams and other graphic elements. Moreover, the pictures do not directly depict what is said in the text, but develop the symbolic meaning of the words (freedom - a bird, a novelty - a light bulb, and so on). A large number of photographs are emotional faces.

2. The palette of the 15 most popular presentations in the world is dominated by warm shades (yellow, red, orange, brown) on a white or light gray slide background. It is noteworthy that the color and emotionality of the content coincide. For example, light web colors in a calm presentation about Google and emotional red shades in “What the hell is social media?!”

3. Use one or two fonts and a consistent text size throughout the presentation (larger for headings, smaller for body text). There is a clear trend towards sans-serif fonts (13 out of 15 presentations use sans-serif fonts).

2. Ambiguous, intriguing headlines that create the effect of mystery (“Mobile phones have eaten the world”, “...secret empire”, “No one really knows that...”, “How to find the meaning of life...”). 8 of the 15 best presentations in the world have a question in the title: “How does it work?”, “What would you do?”, “What is needed?” and so on.

3. Information is broken down into parts. For this purpose, numbered lists are actively used, as well as the “one slide - one thought” rule. Another one found interesting feature: In nine presentations, the authors divide sentences into phrases, simulating pauses in a live conversation. The viewer has time to think about the line while the next slide switches.

General Features

1. Capture attention at the beginning of the presentation. The technique is surprisingly repeated in all 15 presentations: the first 3–10 slides identify the problem and prove its scale and significance. “Every second, 350 presentations are made in the world... and 99% of them are bad”; “Who works with social networks correctly? Dell, Starbacks... and you?”; “Did you know that..?”; “Why do we need to know what strategy is?” After this, the author offers a solution, says: “I know how to solve this problem. Here are 10 tips that will help...”

2. Simplicity in everything - fonts, pictures, words used, language and so on. The most complex ideas are presented as simply as possible, broken down into clear, unambiguous theses, and the authors avoid using terminology.

3. The concept or unifying idea is in all the best presentations in the world. And this is the most important thing. The concept is the feature that is interesting to the viewer. A simple sincere conversation or a pathetic emotional speech, sarcastic frankness or a friendly explanation of the smallest details. The concept can be seen in the way information is presented, speech and visual support. Creates an image that makes this particular presentation stand out from thousands of others.

The found criteria are a guideline. The main thing in any presentation, as in any other speech, is confident knowledge of what he is talking about.

You've probably seen exciting ones that you simply can't tear yourself away from. However, most conferences are rarely that interesting. Presenters typically use fairly boring preset PowerPoint themes in their presentations, with a lot of text and monotonous images.

If you also often speak in front of people and want to stand out from the crowd, but do not have enough skills to create your own presentation design, this article will be very useful to you. It contains 27 unique templates PowerPoint presentations, which can be downloaded completely free of charge.

They are easy to edit and adapt to your content. Most sets include font, graphs, tables, icons and maps. You can choose exactly what you need and save valuable time.

1. Christmas Theme Template

This template is made in a Christmas style: with images of wreaths and a predominance of red shades. 22 slide designs available.

2. Balthasar

Green theme for speeches related to finance and other professional topics. Available in 25 different slide designs for 16:9 screens.

3. Gold Keynote

The combination of gold, gray and white on a black and brown background is perfect for any professional presentation.

4.Business

There are two variants of this template available: light and dark. It uses 6 colors and 50 slides for each color. You can easily choose the perfect design.

5. Golden Template

Featuring eye-catching gold tones, this template is ideal for a business-themed presentation. You can choose a suitable design for yourself with a predominance of gold, white or gray.

6.Resume

Great template for an eye-catching presentation personal brand. There are two themes available: dark and light. This design strikes a perfect balance between text and images.

7. Macmorris

This template combines dynamics, geometry and gradients. Looks stylish and suits any theme.

8. 3 Gorgeous Powerpoint/Keynote Templates

Three universal templates for Powerpoint and Keynote 09 for every taste.

9. Business by Graphic Panda

If you need a presentation with tables, graphs, maps, layouts and infographics, then this template is perfect for you.

10. Titania

Made in light colors with bright elements, the presentation contains 25 slides for 16:9 screens.

11. Introduction to Dribbble

A collection of bright and memorable templates for any theme. You can easily find a design that suits you.

12.Warwick

Looking for a serious and professional template? Made in blue-green shades, it is suitable for a presentation on a business or education topic.

13. Social Media

Modern and unusual template. Perfect for SEO, analytics or SMM topics.

14. Katharine

In this template, images and large photographs tell a story. Among the 17 slides, there is not a single one with two or three columns of text. Images for 16:9 screens take center stage here.

15. Vicentio

Featuring a two-tone gradient effect, this template is ideal for legal and legal topics. For screens with 16:9 extension.

16.Nowco

Memorable, professional and modern theme, which will be appreciated by an audience that does not like excesses.

17. Nathaniel

All 25 slides in this template feature a unique design with thin lines, a sans-serif font, and an emphasis on one color. Ideal for 4:3 screens.

18.Miranda

This template puts you in a sentimental mood and is perfect for presenting photos. Designed for 4:3 screens, the set includes 25 different slides.

19. Viola

The template is designed in a minimalist style with a focus on one color and will look best on 16:9 screens. It consists of 25 slides. It's elegant and professional theme which will become great addition to your collection.

20.Lady Mortimer

This trendy template comes in vibrant colors and will help you stand out at any conference.

21. Perdita

This set features 25 slides for 16:9 screens in vibrant orange. If it doesn't suit you, you can choose red, blue or green.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but PowerPoint doesn't come with design templates. Often these templates are no longer in fashion and will immediately be perceived by your audience as a “low-quality product.”

I offer 2 solutions:

1. Don't use templates at all. Unify your slides with a single color scheme and make the format and position of headings the same on all slides except the first and last.

2.Create your own templates if you plan to use and edit this presentation in the future. To do this, we need to go to the View tab -> Slide Master. This is a secret room that not everyone knows about, as practice shows :)

In this section we can create our own template!

I usually delete all the standard template slides in the left tab and create my own from scratch. All you need here is to add fillers and decorate them.

You now have your own template. Bonus: As a reward for reading this section, I want to give you my secret weapon for creating presentations - a free template of 800 animated slides with infographics, icons and maps, which really helps you get creative. Believe me, it's worth it :) (on our page you can subscribe and get 800 coveted templates)

2 Use 3-5 basic colors when creating presentations.

Please do not use more than 5 different colors when creating your presentation. Moreover, use only 3 base colors, since the other 2 are usually shades of the primary colors. How to choose a color palette.

⁃ One of the three shades must be selected for the background. Decide right away - this will be a presentation with a light or dark background. If you're an advanced designer, you can try alternating, but I'm skipping those experiments in this article.

⁃ Next, choose a color for the text. It should be as contrasting as possible with the background color. The ideal and frequently encountered option: white background - black text. But this option is inferior in terms of creativity :) So let's look at a few examples. Maybe I can give you some ideas:Gray background, light blue body text and dark gray accent. White background, black text, blue accent. 3 Colors. Alternates with a dark background and white text. Dark background, white text, light green accent. Shades of light green are also used here and dark and light backgrounds alternate.

If you still couldn’t decide on a color palette or you don’t have a company/project brand book, then I suggest you the following resource color.adobe.com

Here you can select a color palette based on the image, and also in the “Explore” tab see the solutions of other users and even find out the number of views and likes :)

3 Give up 3D icons from search engines - turn to linear and flat icons.

Unfortunately, I still often see slides that use large, low-quality icons. Now this is an outdated topic and looks very ugly. And some don’t use icons at all, which is also bad, because visualization is important in a presentation, and not just solid text. Purpose of icons: replace unnecessary text and speed up the memorability and digestibility of information. My advice to you: when creating a presentation, use icons from this resource - flaticon.com

Icons from flaticon will make your presentation more modern and concise.

There is a section " Packs", where you can find icons of a single style on a specific topic from one designer. I advise you to comprehensively select icons in this way so that they are all in the same style.

Subconsciously, we feel every detail in the presentation, right down to the line thickness of the icons, and if this thickness is different between icons, then the presentation immediately ceases to be in harmony, and subconsciously we no longer perceive it as high-quality.

Also, when working with icons, I would like to note this tendency among people: "blindness syndrome". This is when everything in a presentation is made large in size - “so that everyone can see.” If you make everything huge, it will significantly reduce the quality of your presentations, but icons only look good at small sizes. Let's look at an example:

4 Every slide is a picture and it needs a frame. Or is it not needed?

When creating a presentation, keep the frame from the edges of the slide. Moreover, large frames are in fashion now. Important: The distance from the borders to the content of the slide should be the same on all sides. Example:
What can happen? It may turn out that the content you planned to post will not fit on one slide, and that’s good! Don't try to cram everything on one page. It's better to divide it into two slides with one title.

One slide - one message.

Why make everything big - the slide needs air.

5 Give up bad habits. Stick with serif fonts.

Unless you are an avid designer and experiment with fonts, I advise against using serif fonts.

I offer you the following list of fonts: System fonts:

Arial Black (headers only)

Calibri Third party fonts:

Bebas (headers only)

Gotham Pro How to combine fonts when creating a presentation?

If you have never touched on the topic of combining fonts before, then I advise you to use only one group of fonts when creating a presentation and change only its type. For example, make the heading Arial Black, and for regular text Arial, or another option from third-party fonts - the heading Raleway Bold, and the main text Raleway Regular.

If you still decide experiment, then you can try the following combinations:

Bebas Bold - header

Raleway Regular - regular text

To other combinations, I prefer to choose one font and change only its type. This is more correct.

Here's a couple links which I personally use to download fonts:

6 When creating a presentation, use only high-quality images.

This is generally a sore subject. Especially here in Russia. If anyone has read Artemy Lebedev’s book “Kovodstvo”, then he clearly notes how, due to the decline of design culture after the collapse of the USSR, our population’s taste for quality design was simultaneously distorted. Perhaps you are reading now and will never appreciate the works that I celebrate here. And this is not because you are a bad person, but because our environment did not allow you to develop good design taste.

I can only give advice something that has worked great in our studio for several years and is valued internationally (tested on all continents of planet Earth):

⁃ Do not use images from search engines as background images unless necessary

⁃ Download images only from specialized sites where photographers publish their work

⁃ Use high resolution images as background - for me this is at least 1000 pixels in height and width

⁃ Don't use stock images with people's forced smiles and white backgrounds. It looks unnatural.

⁃ You can use the following resources as sources: flickr, unsplash, everypixel

7 Don't use outlines. Either thick or nothing.

Now let's go a little deeper into the design.

You may notice that when you draw a shape in PowerPoint, it may appear blue with a light blue outline. Important: remove these outlines immediately. They will only emphasize that you are not in the trend and did not want to worry about the design of the presentation.

This begs the question: are contours out of style altogether now?

Answer: no, they just mutated into large frames :). Here are some contours that can still be used now:

As for the rest - yes, contours have gone out of fashion like white wigs once did.

8 Don't use shadows. Either big and blurry, or none at all.

Shadows, of course, have not gone out of fashion, unlike contours. But they have turned into something exclusive and expensive. Like a Patek Philippe watch. You either buy an original or a Chinese fake and everyone understands that it is a Chinese fake.

The moral of the story is: if you can create trendy shadows, great! If not, please cancel them everywhere in the "tab" Format".

PowerPoint comes with shadows installed as standard (especially in earlier versions). And I can tell you for sure that such shadows need to be removed immediately from the template. Let's look at examples: Bad shadows from PowerPoint

Nice shadow from Dribbble
Nice shadow from PowerPoint I'm even attaching the settings for you., if you still want to use shadows. But use this power wisely ☝ and do not put such a shadow on all the figures in a row so that they do not fill the entire background.

9 How to make tables and charts beautiful? Remove everything unnecessary.

Here the rules actually overlap, but I noticed that for some, when it comes to tables and diagrams, they seem to forget everything: the rules of colors, contours, shadows, frames, and the like.

However, I have already described all the errors to you. The only thing left to do is not to do them. :) Let's look at it in practice:

Here is the smoker's table:

What is the difference? One is heavy and bulky, the other is clean and concise. Note:

⁃ There is free space between the cell border and the content.

⁃ Of course there are no contours

⁃ No extra shadows

⁃ Some fields are not filled in at all

10 The slide is your canvas. Be creative. Imagine that you have a brush in your hand.

If presentations were created in Paint, the slides would look much more creative. I say this because we often drive ourselves into the template framework of PowerPoint, although we can also create unique works of art there. Let's look at examples of slides created in PowerPoint:

I wish you to create only high-quality presentations for your projects!