slide design Archives

The Hows of Concise Presentations

Posted on May 8, 2019May 3, 2023 by Rick E

Technology gives easy access to information and a more convenient way of living.

These benefits, however, have disadvantages, including impatience, shorter attention spans.

As the average attention span gets shorter, you should capture and hold their focus. One way is to ensure that those blocks of text are condensed and concise.

Let’s look at the following principles according to the Writing Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Writing Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Make It Action-Packed

Make your PowerPoint slide design more engaging by transforming your sentences from having a passive voice to a more active voice. This minimizes the confusion and frustrations.

Trim the Fat

Delete unnecessary words. And start with phrases.

Instead of “we are able to” change it to “we can.” Remove length and keep its meaning.

Positivity Is Key

According to Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, another tip to make your language more precise is by changing a negative sentence into an affirmative one. Inserting positivity in your sentence makes it assertive and shows the speaker knows what they are talking about.

Quoting The Elements of Style, “…the reader is dissatisfied with being told what is not; he wishes to be told what is.”

Keep It Simple

Another way for people to keep their attention to what you’re saying and showing is by using simple vocabulary to convey your point.

The best practice is to make sure that you keep things as simple as possible for your target audience. Don’t confuse them. For example, you can substitute “use” for “utilize” or “help” for “facilitate.” Be direct and avoid fluff.

Be Clear

Avoid using vague ideas in your paragraphs. It’s better to go straight to the point since you’re trying to give your point before the audience’s attention wanders.

“Sugar is an important factor to consider when losing weight.”

“To lose weight, cut back on sugar.”

The first sentence meanders while the second one is compact and straight to the point.

Once you have your content pat down, you may now format your slides for a cleaner look.

Make Your Presentation the Best

You may even get in touch with businesses that build custom PowerPoint slides. At SlideGenius, we’ve been helping people create captivating presentations since 2012. We’ve helped our clients raise more than $500 million dollars over the years.

For thousands of clients, we have proven to be the masters of storytelling and vivid imagery. If you’re eager to make sure your PowerPoint presentation is the best, reach out to us and find out how we can help you make sure you are showing the world your value.

The 10 Most Important Slides in Every Presentation

Posted on May 9, 2018May 3, 2023 by Rick E

Pitch decks are important if you’re looking to introduce a new product or service to the Board or a group of potential investors. This should excite them about your idea and engage them in a conversation that, hopefully, leads to an investment or approval.

If you’re looking for investors, you could start by customizing a PowerPoint presentation that has all the necessary information that potential stockholders may ask from you.

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Elevator Pitch

This section should contain the main idea of your presentation. State the key takeaways that your audience can expect by the end of your pitch. If you can, try explaining it in one or two sentences.

Problem

Why do stockholders need to invest in the product or service that you’re pitching? Address the issues that customers face—tell a story and make it relatable. State why these need to be solved—consider this a prelude to the solution that you’re about to introduce.

Value Proposition

Identify your target market—demonstrate its size and if it’s niche, much better. State how you hope to position yourself within it and use the data to scope the problem you’ll be solving.

Product/Service

Introduce the product or service that should solve the issues you’ve suggested earlier. Go through its specifications and how it differs from what the competition offers. Here’s where you prove its uniqueness and value for necessity.

Business Model

Explain how the product or service will generate revenue. Clarify whether this is a premium or budgeted offering and how its pricing fits into the existing landscape.

Roadmap

If you already have early adopters of the product, then talk about that. Your investors will want to hear about their feedback and see tangible proof validating that your solutions work to solve the problems addressed earlier.

You can also talk about your milestones on this slide. State some goals that you have achieved so far and identify the next steps you plan on taking.

Marketing & Sales Strategy

Outline the marketing and sales plan. Identify key tactics to get the product to prospective customers.

Gaining customers can be difficult, especially if you’re an emerging company in an already-existing market. Because of this, it’s vital that you show that you have a solid grasp of how you’ll reach your target market and have a clear understanding of which sales channels you’ll be using.

People behind the Product

Introduce your team—everyone who had lent a hand in the research, development, and manufacturing process of the product you’re presenting. Talk about the management team’s experience and expertise as well.

Competition

Whether you’re operating in existing or niche markets, give potential investors a rundown of the qualities and other attributes that set you apart from the competition. Show them why they should pick you instead of the other players on the market.

Financials

Your audience needs to see sales and cash flow forecasts in your presentation.

When you show these to the panel, don’t overwhelm them by providing spreadsheets that are difficult to read. Instead, use graphs, diagrams, and charts that will show financial information vital to the discussion.

The goal of your presentation deck is to pique your investor’s interest. It has to provide the necessary information about your company, as well as the products and services you offer. You want them to ask for more details, which is why a solid custom deck is vital for your sales pitch.

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References:

Lavinsky, Dave. “Marketing Plan Template: Exactly What To Include.” Forbes. September 30, 2013. www.forbes.com/sites/davelavinsky/2013/09/30/marketing-plan-template-exactly-what-to-include/#4c9610a33503

Ashe-Edmunds, Sam. “How to Introduce Teammates During a Presentation.” azcentral. April 13, 2018. yourbusiness.azcentral.com/introduce-teammates-during-presentation-10553.html

James, Geoffrey. “How to Give a Flawless Elevator Pitch.” Inc. July 2, 2014. www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-give-a-flawless-elevator-pitch.html

Are Visuals in Business Presentations Actually Helpful?

Posted on May 2, 2018May 3, 2023 by Rick E

Visual aids upgrade your speech, as the combination of content and design add flare to your presentation. These make your pitch more understandable and allow your audience to follow the discussion with their eyes.

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Before making a customized PowerPoint presentation, your goals must be clear—you should be sure of the message you want to convey. When you have a plan, you’ll know what you have to work on to achieve your objectives.

So what exactly is so important about visual aids that it’s imperative that you prepare one for your business presentation?

It conveys the message loud and clear.

Visuals help you catch your audience’s attention and engage them throughout your presentation. With these, you can communicate complex ideas in an understandable way. Rather than “telling,” you’re “showing” the audience exactly what you want to say, allowing them to make connections on their own—given that the graphics you use are relevant to your discussion.

Approximately three-quarters of adults in America own a smartphone, making it one of the most quickly adopted consumer technologies to date. Apart from this, they spend almost five hours on their phones. Why is this number important?

As a presenter, you’d want to keep your audience’s eyes on you. So, to keep their attention off their phones, you have to make your visual aids appealing. Add graphics, images, and animations relevant to the topic at hand and you’re good to go.

It elicits emotions.

Images are highly subjective. That said, there are certain categories that are more likely to elicit strong emotional responses compared to others. Images can help establish a long-term connection with the hearts and minds of your audience.

Rather than using bullet points, images that resonate with the audience inspire them to act. Plus, this makes it easier for them to retain information for a longer period.

It saves processing time.

A picture paints a thousand words and it holds true to this day. Using visuals relevant to your presentation is less time-consuming compared to writing a few hundred words. Apart from that, you’d only need to make sure that what you say revolves around that.

In addition, because your audience’s brain works overtime to process all the information fed to them, visuals prove to be the most efficient way to make your discussion easier to understand.

Your visual aids shouldn’t distract your audience, but rather help them reach the core of your presentation. These can either make or break their first impression of what you are pitching and you as a presenter. Simplicity is key when it comes to customized PowerPoint presentations—the best way to keep your audience’s attention is by removing clutter.

Nothing else maximizes efficiency and effectiveness quite like professionally designed visual aids, but take note: you may have the best PowerPoint design, but its purpose is only to add interest and enhance the way you convey your message. You’re still the star of the show, which is why you still have to do well with your speech.

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References:

Miltner, Olivia. “You’re Not Addicted to Your Smartphone – You Just Really Like People.” OZY. April 1, 2018. www.ozy.com/acumen/youre-not-addicted-to-your-smartphone-you-just-really-like-people/85737

Tierney, Leah. “6 Types of Images That Elicit an Emotional Response.” Shutterstock. May 5, 2017. www.shutterstock.com/blog/6-types-of-images-that-elicit-an-emotional-response

“Using Visual Aids.” University of Pittsburgh. www.speaking.pitt.edu/student/public-speaking/visualaids.html

Key Lessons from Cliff Atkinson’s First Five Slides

Posted on June 5, 2017May 3, 2023 by Rick E

In 2005, presentation pitch deck consultant Cliff Atkinson published his bestselling book, Beyond Bullet Points, which revolutionized the way people used PowerPoint. Atkinson was one of the first presentation gurus to displace the bulleted list by introducing a more viable alternative. It’s a principle called “the first five slides.”

Atkinson claimed that a presenter only needs the first five slides of a pitch deck to hook the audience. But the real question is, “What exactly do these slides contain, and what effects do they have on potential clients?” Let’s find out.

A Story Only Slides Can Tell

The premise of Atkinson’s book is the ability of the first five slides of a deck to tell a good story. Stories are easily relatable, and they’re more effective in evoking emotions compared to plain facts. A good narrative can help you create an emotional bond that will get your audience to empathize with you and see things from your perspective.

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To lay out your deck in a narrative form, make sure that the order of your slides fall within a good story arc. You can do this by establishing the setting and the protagonist in the first two slides of your presentation. The setting should clearly define the business environment you find yourself in, and the protagonist, naturally, should point to your audience.

In the third slide, establish the imbalance that your protagonist encounters in the setting. What problem is your audience experiencing? What incident is weighing them down? You may outline an existing dilemma that your business aims to solve. Before you can present the solution, however, you need to establish a sense of balance in your fourth slide. What’s the ideal situation that your audience should aspire for? How good should the state of affairs be for them to achieve a sense of fulfillment?

Once you’ve successfully presented these four elements, it’s time for the most important part: the solution. The fifth and last slide should contain your proposal to the audience. What can you do to alleviate their discomfort? How can your business help in addressing their concerns?

Your business pitch should always focus on your audience. Customers are interested in what you can do for them, so bank on that.

The Supplemental Nature of Slides

A common misconception presenters have about PowerPoint is that it can replace their presence during a live pitch. However, because your deck’s main purpose is to serve as a visual aid, loading each slide with too much information can burn out your viewers. People aren’t wired to process information in bulk, so break things down into bite-sized pieces to help them remember your points better.

Divide your hook into five brief statements that focus on specific aspects of your pitch. Establish your credibility by forming a personal connection with your audience. Each slide should have one topic that you can expound on. In terms of design, place only keywords and powerful images related to your message, and leave the rest for your verbal explanation. After all, your audience went to hear your pitch, and not to see your deck.

The Ultimate Investment

Although the first five slides might be the most important in attracting your audience’s attention, they only serve as the first act of an elaborate performance, as your fifth slide acts as the end of your opening credits. The next step is to convince your listeners to invest in you.

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After drawing people in, give them a good reason to stay. Walk your audience through the succeeding chapters of your pitch. Refer to your earlier slides, particularly the existing conflict in which you have a unique solution to. This is your opportunity to present your products and services, your business strategy, and your current standing in the market. While emotional appeal works in hooking your listeners, giving actual facts and data will help strengthen your pitch.

The Power of Five Slides

Every good presentation has a clear structure with an effective hook, line, and sinker. Take inspiration from Cliff Atkinson’s best-selling book and drop the bullet points. Focus on your first five slides to draw in prospects.

Your pitch deck is a story waiting to be told. Make sure it’s worth every minute of your audience’s time. Keep in mind that your job doesn’t end in hooking your audience—it’s still a long stretch from there. Your first five slides are only the beginning of your winning pitch deck.

Death to Comic Sans: The Worst Font for PowerPoint

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Rick E

If you don’t know what Comic Sans is, maybe you’re too ashamed to admit you do. It continues to grace countless homemade greeting cards, signs, banners, and sometimes, even PowerPoint presentations.

Despite many alternatives, Comic Sans retains a degree of prevalence, banking on its perception as a warm and fun typeface.

This perception, along with its overuse by amateur designers, contributes to its reputation as the worst font choice in any designed output. Before we dive deeper, let’s take a short look at its history.

Humble Roots

We can thank former Microsoft Employee Vincent Connare for the existence of this typographic blight. He claims that Comic Sans wasn’t initially designed as a usable typeface for Microsoft Office, but just for use in an application featuring a virtual canine assistant, Microsoft Bob.

In his own words:

“Comic Sans was NOT designed as a typeface but as a solution to a problem with the often overlooked part of a computer program’s interface, the typeface used to communicate the message.

There was no intention to include the font in other applications other than those designed for children when I designed Comic Sans. The inspiration came at the shock of seeing Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way.”

To be fair, the British Dyslexia Association considers the font easier to read than other fonts. Its legibility makes it easier for viewers to distinguish different glyphs and characters from each other. In addition, its handwritten design and curvy features lend it an air of friendliness and accessibility.

So why do people, especially designers, hate it?

An Ignoble Font

It’s the abundant misuse in inappropriate situations that’s handed Comic Sans its legacy as the worst font of all time. The friendliness mentioned is unfortunately not suited for how it’s been used. You’ve probably seen this a dizzying amount of times in office pantry signs, self-published greeting cards, and even some unwitting business signages.

Most likely, an unaware presenter may have even used it in his slides. It’s easy to reason that its bad rep is solely due to this abuse. Experts would beg to differ, noting its inconsistent kerning (spacing between characters) which make Comic Sans technically “ugly.”

No matter what, it can’t shake its image as cheap and unprofessional, given its common use by untrained designers.

So When Should I Use Comic Sans?

Never.

Save yourself from embarrassment. The people over at Ban Comic Sans Manifesto, expanding on its misuse, put it so:

“Comic Sans as a voice conveys silliness, childish naivete, irreverence, and is far too casual for such a purpose. It is analogous to showing up for a black tie event in a clown costume.”

In other words, Comic Sans is only good for communicating one thing: that you’re not a professional. There’s also no longer any excuse for resorting to this silly font. Even if you’re going for a more fun or aloof feel font for PowerPoint, there are so many other alternatives.

If you’re presenting to a professional audience, you’re better off sticking to the classics like Arial, Century Gothic, or Helvetica. Some may argue that they’re equally overused, but at least their look is clear, classy, and timeless. Still insist on injecting some fun into your slides? Ban Comic Sans can give you other alternatives.

In Summary

Comic Sans is a font that stumbled into its role as designers’ public enemy number one. Its overexposure and misuse has made it a target of much derision. The fact is, there are so many other free choices that come built into Microsoft Office.

We have serious serifs like Times New Roman, Garamond and the like for long bodies of text. There are more commanding sans serifs such as Impact, and you can count on Arial when you need to grab attention. In a perfect world, everyone would know the proper font choice for every situation.

Not everyone can be a PowerPoint professional, but anyone can easily learn to follow the general rule: avoid Comic Sans.

References

“Ban Comic Sans Manifesto.” Ban Comic Sans. n.d.
Connare, Vincent. “Why Comic Sans?” Connare: Art, Design & Typography. n. d.
“Typefaces for Dyslexia.“ BDA Technology. March 20, 2011.
“What’s so Wrong with Comic Sans?” BBC News. October 20, 2010.

Featured Image: “Ban Comic Sans” by Emanuele on flickr.com

3 Tips for Choosing the Perfect Images for Your Slide Design

Posted on September 14, 2015April 27, 2020 by Rick E

A picture can tell a complete story without a single glyph of text. When making your slide design, push your deck to the next level with smart and appropriate use of stock photos. Use images for PowerPoint the right way to enhance your deck.

It might seem overwhelming at first to fit images into a visually appealing deck, but don’t worry. Nobody is expected to rely on pictures alone to get their message across. What we’ll be talking about is how to find the most suitable ones that best communicate your ideas to achieve your goals.

1. Search for the Good Ones

The first step is to find visually striking images, ones which are clearly for commercial use. Google is likely your first choice when looking for appropriate photos. More often than not, however, you’ll end up with common and visually unappealing results.

A good place to start when looking for images is Flickr, which has a practical search function. Flickr allows you to limit the results to ones you can edit or use for commercial purposes. One thing, though: make sure to give credit to the artists in your own work.

If you’re willing to pay a premium for amazing photos, use Shutterstock, or DepositPhotos for royalty-free images. This gives your PowerPoint an extra dose of uniqueness. With your search term, use specific keywords instead of broad ones. This will discount search results that are too common.

To circumvent problems with some monitors or projectors, avoid photos with intricate details and fine dots or lines.

2. Decide Which Images Fit

Design your slides in a way that best fits your brand. Your image choice is most effective when it conveys or complements your message without straying from your brand persona – all while still maintaining unity with each other.

Try to choose images with a color temperature or palette that fits your own company colors. They should also meld with your brand identity. For example, you don’t want to use images of young people on skateboards when you’re presenting about elderly care. Putting thought into your selection and layout saves you from presenting to a confused audience.

Your images should only be there to help your presentation. If they hinder, take them out for a simpler layout.

3. Edit Them to Your Needs

The supremacy of Adobe programs is undeniable, as evidenced by Photoshop being an industry standard in photo-manipulation and graphic design. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s only for experts in graphic design.

You can easily use Photoshop to crop your images to the proper size, or even change the brightness levels and color temperature. If you find striking images that have unnecessary elements or don’t have the right color, use Photoshop to correct and adjust them to your needs.

In Conclusion

The right choice of stock images can make your PowerPoint layout an aesthetic advantage. Getting the right ones with the proper copyright permissions will be your first priority. Ensure that you won’t be infringing on anyone’s rights for your own purposes.

Your next priority is making sure your choices are appropriate for your branding and your message individually, while ensuring that your branding and message complement each other. Every design decision should enhance your presentation, not distract from it.

If you must, use Photoshop to make edits such as cropping, brightening, or other forms of tweaking. Need more help with designing your slides? Our Presentation Experts are ready to take your call and provide a free quote!

References

“Apply the Color Balance Adjustment.” Photoshop Help. Accessed September 14, 2015.
“Images for PowerPoint: 5 Practical Tips to Improve Your Design.” SlideGenius, Inc. August 26, 2014. Accessed September 14, 2015.
“Levels Adjustment.” Photoshop Help. Accessed September 14, 2015.

4 Factors for Creating Info-Heavy PowerPoint Slide Designs

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Rick E

Making arguments without providing evidence to back up your stand is a bad move in presentations. It is useless, however, to bombard your slides with unnecessary information. Designing your deck haphazardly only muddles the information-sharing process and confuses your audience.

To improve your deck for your next pitch, here are four important things to keep in mind when creating info-heavy PowerPoint slide designs:

Accuracy

Facts, data, and other information presented in your slides should be correct, current, and relevant. When citing from the internet, make sure to properly fact-check and source your information. Avoid directly citing Wikipedia. Follow the citations if you want to refer to something you find interesting in wikis. Maintaining accuracy is important not only for the sake of your slides, but for your credibility as well.

You want to present data to inform and convince—not to misinform and deceive.

Clarity

It’s not enough to have accurate information. Your content should be displayed in a clear and organized manner that makes all the facts and numbers easier to understand. Cut down all the content to the bare minimum that you need to get your point across. Reducing them to the most pertinent and logical manner allows for easier transfer of information.

According to presentation trainer, Nancy Duarte, there are a number of ways to arrange your slides so they pass the glance test, or the audience’s first scan through your deck. Among these are keeping your layout simple, maximizing white space, using proper fonts, and emphasizing the important points structure your deck into something that’s easily digestible.

Meaningful

Correct and well-ordered figures aren’t enough. An important key is to inject some significance that relates to your audience. To best connect with your audience, it’s vital to do some advanced research and determine their interests, needs, and concerns. Knowing these will assist you in adjusting to optimize your presentation to their needs.

Presenting your slides as a story or in a narrative structure best engages your listeners. This is due to how we’ve come to recall memories and enjoy our entertainment: as a series of episodes with a chronological structure and thematic background.

Memorable

The best presentations are those that remain with the audience. Executing a memorable presentation requires getting on your listeners’ good will. It’s important to improve your credibility by looking enthusiastic, genuine, and creative.

Effectively communicating your own excitement regarding your topic also adds to your power to persuade. This assures your listeners that your topic is worth their time. Inserting a slice of yourself through a personal anecdote also increases your audience’s perception of you as a genuine person.

Lastly, a creative approach using a funny or poignant beginning and/or ending, or through a unique execution of your presentation, also makes your slides more memorable.

Conclusion

Being new at presenting or not having enough time is never an excuse to show up with lazily-made slides.

Always design your PowerPoint slides like a professional to get the best out of your message, and maximize the impact on your audience.

References

“3 Secrets to Make Numbers Interesting in Sales Presentations.” SlideGenius, Inc. May 13, 2015. Accessed August 20, 2015.
Duarte, Nancy. “Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test?” Harvard Business Review. October 22, 2012. Accessed August 20, 2015.
“Five Ways to Transform Your Overloaded Text Slides.” Think Outside The Slide. September 14, 2012. Accessed August 20, 2015.

Designing a ‘How It Works’ Slide That Works

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Rick E

Do you find it difficult to explain to someone how a product, service, or process works? If your business involves selling new products or you’re constantly introducing new service features, then you’ll need an easy way to explain things. This is where the “How It Works” slides come in.

Explaining how certain things work is one of the most common uses of presentation slides. Done right, a “how it works” PowerPoint can be effective for product demos, process flow illustrations, or pitching a business idea. To help you get started out, here are some ways you can make this type of slide work:

Lay it out

PowerPoint has several types of slide layouts. The default type comes with two boxes: The text box at the top, which is for the title of the slide, and the middle box, which is a multipurpose placeholder for text, graphics, or any content types.

For this purpose, however, you may choose the blank layout type and then simply insert the content that you need. Or better yet, as with the above slide, choose the Title Only template before putting all the other elements. To enhance the effect of your slide, feel free to choose from the Shapes and SmartArt Graphics.

Be consistent with colors

This one is pretty basic although there are still those who take it for granted. Buffer‘s Leonhard Widrich writes about how color schemes can affect our perception of a brand. The more recognizable colors have effectively been associated with specific brands, while those that were more difficult to point out didn’t have such a good color combination.

Similarly, presentation slides should have similar color schemes as they can affect the overall impact of your message.

Using varying combinations for different slides can confuse your audience. So for best results, make the color scheme of your How It Works slide consistent with the rest of your deck. This also applies to the slide itself. Looking at the above sample, you’ll notice that the color of the iVoteLIVE logo is consistent with that of the template. Apart from that, most of the imagery (i.e., photos and graphics) have similar shades of colors. This makes the slide pleasant to look at.

Take it easy with texts

This is another common concern and when it comes to How It Works slides, we can’t stress enough its importance. The purpose of slides is to describe visually something you can’t explain verbally. Why spend 15 minutes explaining a new feature, when a couple of images will take you just a few seconds, right?

If you’re going to include some texts, make sure not to mix up the fonts and font sizes just for the heck of it. Otherwise, your slide will appear visually confusing. Take a look at the sample again. While the format of the texts describing the consumers is different from the texts indicating the features (iVoteLive computer interface, Live Program Broadcasts), they still work because each group has specific purpose.

In short, they are not randomly mixed up.

The Takeaway: Engage with imagery

In general, images can make it easier for people to understand and remember ideas. So use relevant imagery instead of text in parts where you think a visual element would work better. When using images, though, be sure that they are of appropriate quality.

For scanned images, the ideal resolution is between 150 dpi (when precise color reproduction is not required) and 300 dpi (if you need higher quality images).

As much as possible, do not take images from the Internet as they usually of a very low quality and might pixelate when projected on a screen.

Reference

Widrich, Leonhard. “Why Is Facebook Blue? The Science of Colors in Marketing.” The Huffington Post. January 16, 2014. Accessed May 20, 2014.

How Much Should a Presentation Deck Cost?

Posted on August 16, 2013April 24, 2020 by Rick E

“How much does it cost to hire a graphic designer to create a PowerPoint presentation for me?”

This is a common question we often get right off the bat from potential clients looking for a PowerPoint specialist, but it’s not a simple question to answer. First, we need to know about your business needs, your resources, and your goals. Are you a small startup or a Fortune 500? Basically, it’s a very personalized process, and there’s no blanket answer for it.

It’s a lot like asking, “how much does it cost for you to make me a website?”

How much does a pitch deck cost? — Pitch Deck Designer Cost

There are a myriad of factors that go into the cost:

How big of a business are you?

How high-end do you want your website to be?

Do you already have a website to use as a foundation?

What kind of functionality do you want the website to have?

Just like web design, there are quite a few factors that we custom tailor to the needs of each client when landing on the price for their deck. That means what your presentation deck costs can be a little… or a lot.

The Low End Pitch Deck ($1,000 to $3,000)

Prices in this range fall into two categories, returning clients looking to improve a deck they’ve already had designed, and they’d like to perform relatively minor improvements to it. A complete overhaul of a presentation requires much more time and effort.

The other group that falls into this category are those looking for a new, custom-designed deck, but are only willing to pay the bare-bones price for it, which we highly discourage. Having a solid visual aid is the second most important part of a presentation. The first is showing up. You don’t want to skimp on your PowerPoint presentation, because that’s sure to leave a bad taste in the mouths of potential clients or investors.

Remember, a professional PowerPoint presentation is an investment. An investment that will surely produce an ROI and help impress and attract new clients, which is the opposite effect that a mediocre presentation will have. A bad impression is worse than no impression at all.

Mid-range Presentation Design ($3,000 to $10,000)

Most of our clients fall into this range. This involves either significantly revamping a previous presentation, or doing a new presentation involving a significant amount of animation and custom graphic design.

How much does a ppt deck cost? — Presentation Deck Cost

The wide amount of variation in this range depends largely on the quantity of slides in your deck and the amount of graphic design and animation needed on each slide. Again, costs here can be greatly leveraged depending on how much copywriting, design, and multimedia is being brought to the table by the client.

The Upper End Presentation Services ($10,000 to $50,000)

If you’re a young startup looking to breaking in to a competitive, high-end market and you don’t have much to show for yourself concerning branding or multimedia, we can do it all for you, but it will be a significant cost. Building a public, corporate identity through a presentation is a huge task, so it’s best to do it right the first time.

This range also includes multi-deck projects and large decks nearing the triple-digit slide count. Also in this range are the custom-designed slide libraries, which are essentially an interchangeable database of slides that can be catered to the individual needs of sales teams with in larger companies, while maintaining a consistent set of slides controlled by management.

We’ve found the most satisfied clients are the ones who view presentation and pitch deck design as an evolving, ongoing relationship. While a small startup may initially only have the resources for a fairly basic presentation, they are able to continue working with us, and improve the professionalism, appeal, and selling power of their presentation as their business expands, and they have more to invest in a presentation’s power to attract new clients.

This allows the client to not only spend just the resources they have available, they’re able to constantly pinpoint and customize exactly what they want out of a presentation, and consequently, as presentation designers, we’re able to figure out over time exactly what optimizes your business from a presentation point of view. We work best when our process and your business grow alongside one another.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Slide Design

Posted on July 30, 2013November 22, 2019 by Rick E

We here at SlideGenius have witnessed far too many glaring mistakes on homemade PowerPoint presentations that make us want to pull our hair out. Unfortunately, what seems like common sense to us concerning what and what not to do with slide design is often lost on amateur PowerPoint creators.

When giving a corporate presentation (or a presentation of any importance, for that matter), we highly recommend going to the pros and employing the expertise of a PowerPoint specialist, but when you decide to do it yourself, here are some Do’s and Don’ts to pay attention to on your slides.

LiveNation21 — In this slide designed by SlideGenius, the text is a compliment to the presenter. By phrasing the bullet points as questions, it keeps the emphasis on the speaker.

Text:

DO: Keep it simple and concise. Your audience should be listening, not reading.

DON’T: Avoid using your slides as your notes to read off of. Your slides are there for your audience, not you.

Color:

Poorly designed PowerPoint Slide — Choose your background and text color with extreme caution, because a mistake like this shows carelessness and a lack of attention to detail.

DO: Use color in the background of your slides to emphasize emotion. Be creative, but conservative. Check out our full post on color psychology for specifics.

DON’T: Be wary about making your background and text color too similar. There’s nothing more amateur than showing up with an illegible PowerPoint presentation.

Statistics:

DO: Simplify, break them up. Visually represent if possible. Avoid unless they’re a key part of your message.

DON’T: Tables, don’t use them to present information. Feather pillows are less conducive to sleep than a table full of figures to an audience.

Creativity:

DO: If you’ve had experience with graphic design, this can be utilized to make your presentation much more engaging. Presenting information in unique ways can keep your audience’s attention much more effectively.

Nonexistent guy shocked at PowerPoint animations — “Oh my God, how did they do those slide transitions? It’s terrifyingly wonderful and impressive!” -Said no one ever.

DON’T: You won’t impress anyone with your knowledge of how to make the words zoom across the page at the beginning of each slide. Don’t go overboard with animations, because they’re often more distracting than anything else.

While it’s fun to be creative and experiment with new design methods, it’s important to remember that a PowerPoint presentation is not a work of art, it’s a tool used to convey information. High-end designing is best left to the professionals.

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