prezi tips Archives

Prezi Design Tips: How to Leverage Your Brand

Posted on December 4, 2014July 9, 2021 by Rick E

A company’s brand is an integral part of its identity. For this week’s Prezi feature, we discuss a few ways you can incorporate branding to make sure your presentations stand out from the competition.

Whether it’s a small business or a multinational corporation, branding is always a process that’s integral to any organization. That’s why it’s important to make sure your brand is in the presentations you deliver. No matter how well-designed, it’s not enough to use stock templates and illustrations. You need to present visuals that highlight your company’s story and experience. If you want to stand out from your competition, branding your presentation is a step you can’t afford to skip.

In Prezi, an easy way to start branding your presentation is by uploading your own custom logo. If you’re either a Pro, EDU Pro, Enjoy, or EDU Enjoy user, you can replace the Prezi logo that appears by default in the lower left corner.

Replace the logo with your company’s own logo by upgrading your Prezi plan.

All you have to do is head to the Theme Wizard by clicking on ‘Customize’ and choosing ‘Advanced’ from the right sidebar. From there, you’ll easily find the “Upload custom logo” feature. You can watch this video tutorial for a step-by-step review of the process.

Of course, uploading your logo is only the first step to fully branding your presentation. After all, the logo is only a single component of your company’s entire brand. You still need to make sure that the rest of your design remains consistent with your company’s core message and identity. To do that, you need to create a prezi that tells the complete story.

Here are some things you can keep in mind when building a presentation to leverage your brand:

Look to your logo to make font and color choices

The logo is your first source of inspiration when branding a presentation. (View Prezi)

One of the easiest ways to brand your presentation is by looking to your logo for some quick inspiration. It’s important to keep your integral design elements consistent with the visual representation of your brand. Head back to the Theme Wizard and customize your prezi by choosing colors and fonts that work well with your logo. Your choices doesn’t have to be directly similar. In fact, a bit of variety can add some interest to the look of your presentation. However, keep in mind that the fonts and colors you pick should still be compatible with the overall look of your logo.

Use images that fit your brand’s personality

The visuals that enhance your design should be consistent with your brand’s personality. (View Prezi)

You should also make sure that the images in your presentation are a perfect representation of your brand’s personality. You can check this resource to uncover more details about this. Once you have everything figured out, sit down for a quick brainstorming session. List down the words that come to mind when you think of the qualities that make your brand unique. You can then use your list to come up with keywords that will facilitate your search for the perfect pictures and illustrations.

Think of a visual metaphor that describes what you do

Keep your brand story engaging by finding the perfect visual metaphor. (View Prezi)

You can also turn your story into a visual metaphor that will give the audience more insight about what you do. Designer Meghan Hendricks created a presentation to illustrate how an architecture firm made use of Prezi to pitch to a big client. In order to tell a story that corresponds to their brand, she used a blueprint as the design’s central metaphor. For your own presentation, think of an object or symbol that perfectly describes the service or product you’re offering. If you want to make sure that your presentation is as unique as your brand, stay away from cliches by taking the time to brainstorm and hash out your ideas.

Presentations are the perfect opportunity to leverage your brand. Make sure your design remains consistent with your core message and identity by following these tips.

Featured Image: Featured Image: Death to the Stock Photo / Prezi logo via Wikimedia Commons

Collaboration in Prezi: Creating a Cohesive Vision

Posted on November 20, 2014July 9, 2021 by Rick E

Technology continues to make communication and collaboration much easier. Share your ideas and collaborate with everyone in your team with a step-by-step guide in this week’s Prezi Feature.

A presentation isn’t always a lone endeavor. Maybe you’re working with collaborators on a new project. Maybe you need to ask some people in your team to corroborate the facts and data you have. Whatever the reason, there will be occasions when your work requires close collaboration with others. If you want to make sure that the core message is properly represented through visuals and content, you’ll need to take into account everybody’s input.

Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. The process of collaboration can get a bit tedious, especially when you’re building a presentation deck together. There will be plenty of back and forths between different individuals. Dozens of emails sent. Different versions of the presentation file shared. There are so many steps to go through before everyone can agree on a final “look”. In between those steps, there are a lot of room for error as well. The process will be so much easier if you can all just sit and work together at one time. But what if there’s a conflict in schedules? Or what if your collaborators live across the country from you?

We often talk about how today’s technology has significantly increased our ability to communicate, specifically in the world of business. You can save a lot of time and effort if you know which tools to use. Speed up the process and see everyone’s input instantly using Prezi’s collaboration feature.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to keep everyone’s ideas clear and cohesive:

With Prezi’s collaboration feature, you can work with up to 10 different users. While editing your presentation, click on the Share button at the right side of the top menu.

Choosing ‘Share prezi’ will prompt a pop up where you can type down the email address of your collaborators. Prezi will send emails informing them that they can edit the presentation with you.

From there, it’s as easy as working on your prezi as you usually would. Except now you’re working together with several other people, making your own edits on specific parts of the presentation.

If you want to see which part of the prezi your collaborator is working on, click on their avatar and choose ‘Zoom to position’.

You can also invite other users to join by expanding the sidebar on the right. If you want to review your prezi once everyone is done making their contributions, just click on ‘Start presentation’.

You’ll be the presenter by default, but you can allow your collaborators to take the lead by clicking on their names and choosing ‘Hand over presentation’.

Collaboration is a crucial part of any project. When it comes to preparing presentations, the old saying “two heads are better than one” is often true. Allow others to share their ideas and contribute to create a strong and cohesive vision. Creating a presentation involves a lot of creativity and innovation. With Prezi’s collaboration feature, you can combine the best ideas into a single vision.

Featured Image: Death to the Stock Photo / Prezi logo via Wikimedia Commons

Prezi Tips: How to Create Your Own Designs in No Time

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Rick E

For this week’s Prezi feature, we’re going to help you work on a tight schedule. Presentations can take a lot of effort, but you can still come up with original designs by following these 3 time-saving Prezi tips.

Living in a fast-moving environment, we often have a long list of tasks to finish by the end of the day. Those that require more attention become a lot harder to accomplish. As much as you’d want to focus most of your time preparing for a big presentation, there are plenty of other things you have to do. Sometimes, it’s just not realistic to aim for a perfect prezi.

Sure, great presentation design will take a lot of effort. But if you know how to play your cards right, you can create an amazing prezi in no time at all. The first thing you have to do is to decide on a concept for your design. It may sound like additional effort, but you will be able to work much faster once you know which direction to take your prezi. With a concept planned, the only thing left to worry about is arranging all the pieces together. You can do that easily with these time-saving Prezi tips:

Tip #1: Recycle old content

You don’t always have to start from scratch. One of the easiest ways to save time is to recycle your old content and design elements. Prezi allows you to build a library of frames and other items that you might want to use in future presentations. You can easily reuse your favorite content from prezis you’ve made in the past by taking advantage of the My Content feature.

Save your content for future use by selecting it and clicking on ‘Favorite’. You can also right-click on the content you want to save and choose ‘Add to Favorites’.

To access the stuff you’ve saved, just click on ‘Insert’ from the top menu and select ‘My Content’. From there, you can drag your content from the right sidebar and drop it right onto your canvas.

Another thing you can do is use slides from an old PowerPoint presentation. Import your PowerPoint into Prezi through the Insert menu. Select ‘PowerPoint’ and choose the slide deck you want to use. Drag and drop the slides individually or hold shift and double click to insert several slides at a time. On your canvas, these slides will work as frames.

If you want to separate elements within a frame, just click the options button and select ‘Remove Frame’ from the transformation tool.

Tip #2: Make use of templates and layouts

Another way you can save time is by taking advantage of templates and pre-set layouts. Prezi has a huge selection of templates that’s constantly updated, so you always have new visuals to choose from. You can always change up the theme and customize as you’d like. Add your own background or choose a different color palette to make it completely your own.

If you’d rather work on your own design, use layouts to skip worrying about arranging your frames and content. From the top menu, click ‘Insert’ and select ‘Layouts’. From the sidebar, you can choose from different single and multi-frame layouts.

Tip#3: Enable keyboard shortcuts

You can skip a few steps by using keyboard shortcuts as you work on your prezi. Click on the cog wheel icon in the top menu and enable shortcuts from there.

Refer to this list for a full guide on different editing and presenting shortcuts. Here are just a few that you might find useful:

F – Draw frame, press again to change frame type (bracket, circle, rectangle or hidden)
L – Load a file on your canvas (image, pdf, video, swf)
S – Draw a shape, press again to change shape type (arrow, line, rectangle, circle, triangle)
P – Go to Path mode
1 – Zoom in
2 – Zoom out
CTRL + SHIFT + C – Opens the Prezi CSS editor
CTRL + SHIFT + D – Duplicates and flips your content, creating a mirrored version of your content (works for images and arrows but not text)
Esc (Escape key) – Finish current action or close open dialog
Space – Enters Present mode
Space then 0 – Enters Present Mode in fullscreen

Preparing for a presentation can really be stressful, but you can make it work if you take advantage of Prezi’s many helpful features. Come up with your own amazing designs in no time with these Prezi tips.

Featured Image: Death to the Stock Photo / Prezi logo via Wikimedia Commons

Extending the Metaphor: 3 Tips for Choosing Images in Prezi

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Rick E

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. For this week’s feature, extend your visual metaphor by carefully curating the images in your design. Take note of these 3 tips for choosing images in Prezi.

A lot has been written about the role of images in presentation design. Experts always reiterate that adding pictures to your presentations is one of the best ways to get your point across. Instead of filling the screen with a block of text, you can use a single image to highlight the idea you’re trying to convey.

Prezi is already a dynamic presentation tool, but you can still take your designs one step further by choosing the right images. Start by clicking “Insert” from the top menu and selecting “Image”. From there, you can decorate your prezi with pictures saved in your computer or easily search the web for something that perfectly represents your message.

Extend your prezi’s visual metaphor by choosing images that go beyond an aesthetic purpose. Here are 3 tips to make sure that the pictures you use contribute to advancing the story you want to tell:

Use several keywords to find the perfect image

It’s convenient to just choose the first image that pops up, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get the right one. Most of the time, the first thing you see is the first thing other people see as well. If you want to use images that are unique to your prezi, you will have to widen your search.

Find the perfect image by using several keywords as search terms. Broad and less specific keywords will get you images that aren’t too common or literal, but they might also yield results that are irrelevant to your theme. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, re-do your search with a different but related keyword. To make it easier, use a term that you commonly associate with the original keyword.

In this example, I tried to search for images around the word “freedom” but couldn’t find one that matched my theme. I searched again using the word “flying” and found an image that works better for the metaphor I’m going for.

Look for images that are simple but poignant

Obviously, the images in your prezi should leave an impact on your audience. Look for ones that depict a strong emotion. Audiences tend to connect with what they find relatable, so try to deviate from overly staged stock photos. If you’re a PRO user, you can extend your search to Flickr. Click on the down arrow beside the search button and adjust the options as you’d like. Just be sure to tick the box that filters out copyrighted materials.

While you’re aiming for drama, it doesn’t mean that you have to go with the most intricate image you find. When it comes to presentation design, simplicity can also be poignant. A picture that’s bold and streamlined is a lot easier on the eyes. Without too many details to distract the audience, it can also quickly attract attention.

Choose an image with plenty of white space. An image that doesn’t have a lot going on will draw focus on only a few elements, making your prezi look less cluttered. White space is particularly important to create balance, which you’ll need if you have plenty of other items in a single frame.

Give all pictures a consistent look with some editing

By using several different images, you might end up with visuals that look disjointed and incoherent. To make sure everything looks consistent, take the time to edit and enhance the look of your pictures. Select the image you want to edit and choose “Effects.”

From there, you’ll have access to a photo editor without having to leave Prezi. Make the necessary adjustments and apply the same (or similar looking) filters to achieve a more consistent look.

Your prezi is sure to stand out if you’re careful about the images you choose. It’s not enough that you decorate your presentation with visuals that are aesthetically pleasing. The images in your prezi should also serve a purpose. Extend your visual metaphor by carefully choosing images that are relevant to your core message.
Featured Image: Featured Image: Death to the Stock Photo / Prezi logo via Wikimedia Commons

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