Do I even need presentation slides?
Do you remember the last presentation you went to?
Did the presenter hit the mark, or were you left bored and uninspired?
The last memorable presentation I attended was by Sam Stubbs, the co-founder and Managing Director of Simplicity. He was presenting to a large audience on investing your money. Not the most exciting of topics for me, but I was engaged throughout!
Why?
Firstly, due to his excellent delivery, a speech that took the audience on a journey. Secondly, he utilised visual aids to reinforce and communicate his points.
What worked for me with the Simplicity slides were:
✅ They were simple
They stuck to their brand colours of orange, black and white delivering a cohesive and unified visual story.
✅ They reinforced the key points
Being a speech about financials, a graph was a great way to visually reinforce and communicate money trends over time.
✅ They added credibility and professionalism to the message
The clear and cohesive design of the presentation made me feel that it was well researched and credible. So important when asking people to trust you with their money!
Well-designed slides can be a powerful tool for enhancing the effectiveness of your presentation and improving audience engagement and understanding.
A good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of visuals. Well-designed presentation slides will:
1. Increase audience engagement
Visuals such as images, videos, and graphs add variety and interest that keeps your audience engaged.
2. Enhance audience understanding
Thoughtful visuals can help convey complex concepts and ideas more quickly and efficiently for your audience. For example, a graph or chart can help visualise data and make it easier for your audience to gain insights.
3. Reinforce key points
By incorporating visuals that highlight key points of your presentation, you can help reinforce these ideas and make them more memorable for your audience. Research has found that we retain 10% of what we hear from an oral presentation, 35% from a visual presentation, and 65% from a presentation that combines visual and oral.
4. Enhance a speaker’s credibility
Incredible slides aren’t going to redeem a poorly conceived speech. However, even if your speech is amazing, you could risk appearing unprofessional if you have cluttered, poorly designed slides that detract from your message. An audience will always appreciate high quality design that helps them understand. You’ll more likely be perceived as knowledgeable, competent and credible.
Do you have your speech sorted but need help with presentation design?
Your expertise and narrative can be brought to life through custom design and illustration. I’ll help make the design decisions that achieve the goals of your presentation.
