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We have a few tips for you.


Bored audience

You are using too much text

Presentations often involve a lot of content. Your message might be extremely complex and in depth. However, this doesn’t mean you should write it all down on the slide. The audience doesn’t want to read, they want to be entertained. They want to hear what you have to say. So please so displaying slides with hundreds of words. It’s a sure fire way to annoy your audience, plus it encourages you to read the content which shows you have not prepared yourself enough to use cliff-notes.

Accoring to a recent survey, one of the top frustrations people have with presentations is that there’s ‘too much text,’ yet a lot of slide presentations we see still look like larger-than-life index cards.

Tell a story instead of regurgitating information

Reading notes from your slides is something to be careful of doing too much. The audience can do this themselves. Better yet, tell your audience a story. Take them on a journey with your content rather than reading your notes. Be passionate, engaging, and explain why you are here to help them and use personal experience to help resonnate with everyone.

Arial is not the only font

PowerPoint default fonts like Tahoma and Arial are like primary colors. We’ve been using these standard typefaces in our slides for years; they aren’t just familiar, they’re antiquated.

Spice up your slides by adding premium fonts to your palette. There are tons of websites you can visit to download custom fonts for free, like:

Use stock photos that don’t suck

We all recognise these images. We’ve seen them time and time again. They are cheesy, fake, and overly staged. Is this how you want people to think of your presentation. Didn’t think so! You need images that make us look like the savvy, cutting-edge businees people that you are.

Now, I know finding gorgeous images has never been easy. Subscription sites like ShutterStock and iStock don’t always agree with our budgets and reading the usage rights on free photos can be a headache. But, there are a few beautiful, high-quality photos websites out there worth visiting:

Bullet points trigger daydreaming

As soon as bullet points flash on the screen, the audience starts daydreaming or playing Angry Birds on their phone. We think bulleting our content will make it easier for people to absorb, when in reality, it makes it harder for them to stay awake. The solution to the ‘too much text’ problem isn’t condensing every paragraph into bullet points – it’s embracing visual elements.

Bullet points can be a great way to outline your presentation, but when actually presenting, make sure they’re gone from your deck. Remember, no one’s going to say, “I wish that presentation had more bullet points.”

Ditch the default template

No matter how good your presentation is, no matter how engaging you are at talking to the audience. If you decide to use a default PowerPoint template or Keynote template you need to stop. Put simply, they look terrible. There is so much potential to create amazing slides with these tools. The tools are so intuative and simple that web designers actually use them to show website animations these days.

We know that not everyone is a designer, but this is where Velvet Squid can help. We have a few guru presentation designers in our team and they are truly “slide ninjas”. Below

example slide presentation

It’s time to call in the experts

Why not contact us at Velvet Squid and we can convert an existing slide deck or help you with your next project. You will be amazed at the difference it can make.