Tips for an Aesthetically Pleasing PowerPoint

Whether you’re a student or a professional, we’ve all been at a point where we need to impress somebody with a visual presentation. Have you ever sat while watching someone else’s presentation, completely blown back by their aesthetic vision? Would you like to succeed in doing the same, leaving your colleagues or professors speechless? Well you’ve found the right blog, as somewhat of a PowerPoint connoisseur and a major design enthusiast, I will be taking you through some tools of the trade; making sure you understand fundamental choices to make when designing your next stunning PowerPoint presentation. Let’s begin off with my process for creating a presentation, and please keep in mind that some of these tips may vary based on your situation.

Once I’ve drafted out the information and general timeline of my presentation, I will begin my PowerPoint presentation. Unless you have a slide deck, always opt for a blank presentation. Empty presentations are a blank canvas for you to flex your artistic muscles and will allow you to follow your design sensibilities. Don’t worry if you do not feel confident in your creative eye. Hopefully by the time you read through this blog, you will feel confident enough to experiment and figure out what works for you in PowerPoint.

SLIDE MASTER IS YOUR FRIEND

Most people think that the visual capabilities in PowerPoint are very limiting, and do not provide many options. And while most people are right to some degree, PowerPoint still offers a multitude of tools which will allow you to take your presentations to the next level. One of the quintessential tools in PowerPoint that not enough people know about is the Slide Master view. In your view tab, click on Slide Master.

Once in the Slide Master view, you can begin designing the core theme of your presentation. The Slide Master view will allow you to create the backgrounds of your slides, the overall aesthetic direction of the presentation, and even create templates for specific slide types.

In the left panel of the Slide Master view gives you a view of all the slide templates you have now. You can click on each of these slides and create designs as to how you want to place your text and graphic elements on each slide. KEEP IN MIND the design elements in Slide Master will only serve as a background on your real PowerPoint slides.

For example, I gave this slide a dark background and added some blue rectangles as accents. Notice how I did not design the entire slide but just the background elements which will be present regardless of the text. 

PICKING A COLOUR SCHEME

When I am beginning in the Slide Master view, I always begin by establishing a colour scheme. If you have a colour scheme in mind which is related to your presentation subject you can use that. However, if you aren’t much of a colour savant, there are plenty of resources online to help you establish a colour scheme. My favourite is Adobe Colour which you can use to discover, create, or even extract colour schemes from pictures. Once you choose a colour scheme, take the ‘RGB’ values of every colour from Adobe Colour (there will be a dropdown menu saying “</> Color Modes & Codes” at the bottom of the colour theme page). On your Slide Master in PowerPoint go to the ‘Colors’ section.

Go down to the ‘customize colours’ option and plug in all your colours. With the right colour schemes, even the simplest of PowerPoints can looks sleek, clean, and professional.

FONTS, FONTS, FONTS!

I’m sure you have been informed at some point in your life not to use funky fonts on your PowerPoints as they are distracting and hard to read. While this is true, for the love of God, please do not use the boring, vanilla, pre-installed fonts on your PC. There are plenty of lovely, simple and clean fonts out there for FREE that will help give your presentation that extra layer of polish. I recommend Google Fonts, or Dafont as resources to acquire new fonts. Look for something clean and simple, similar to Arial or Calibri but not quite as generic. Some fonts I recommend: Roboto, Biryani, and Quicksand.

Right under the colour portion of Slide Master, you can find the fonts portion. When customizing your fonts selections, please avoid fonts that clash when choosing a header font and a body font. If you are struggling to find two harmonious fonts,  I recommend using the same font for both, making the header font bold. Once you make most of the changes needed in Slide Master you can close it and move onto the real meat of your presentation.

KEEP YOUR SLIDES SIMPLE

A beginner’s mistake, common in too many presentations, is a lack of visual clarity. When you keep your slides simple they become easier to digest. This allows the visual elements in your slide to really resonate with your audience.

In this slide I created for a friend’s presentation, the friend had originally crammed his entire ‘company overview’ all on one slide. Instead I created a simple title slide with few visual elements. Notice how I have placed the visual elements. There is contrast between the colours and the slide is not too crowded. I placed a simple title text, the company logo, and a simple lifestyle picture showcasing the brand.

USE VISUAL ENHANCERS

Visual enhancers help pieces of information on your slides stick out. Use shapes and icons to help emphasize specific parts of your presentation you want to stand out. But always remember the adage "less is more"; a cluttered slide is never your friend. 

In the slide above, I helped my friend summarize operational impacts of COVID-19 with strong visual aids. Icons can easily be acquired through resources like Flaticon and The Noun Project. The latest versions of PowerPoint also include icons preloaded into the software, to access these go to your Insert tab > Icons. The visual aids in the example are contrasted by intentional use of the colour scheme. Remember to incorporate your colours into your visual elements. 

Additionally, you can move away from using bullet points by organizing your information into shapes. In the example below you can see me breaking down Revenue Segments in 3 different rectangles, with a pie-chart breakdown right beside.

Try to play around with your uses of shapes to contrast, highlight, or emphasize information on your slides. Remember when keeping your slides simple, keep information on the PowerPoint to a minimum. Only highlight the most important information visually, and elaborate on the rest orally during your presentation. This will go a long way to make your presentations that much more professional.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Always reiterate what you want your audience to take away from the slide. Create a duplicate of the slide and then overlay a box with LARGE TEXT exclaiming ‘KEY TAKEAWAY’. These will flash up on screen and remind your listeners about what the importance of what they just heard was.

In this example I created a duplicated the Generating Revenues slide and added a somewhat transparent box on top with the KEY TAKEAWAY  text. Notice once again, how I’ve used the colour scheme intentionally to make visual elements of text work together harmoniously.

ONE LAST TIP

When finishing your PowerPoint, you will need to keep in mind that your viewers or the computer that you will be presenting on do not have the fonts you chose installed. Therefore, you must export your presentation as a PDF, so to keep it consistent and display your custom fonts. This will mean that you cannot use animations in your slides, but if you truly believe PowerPoint animations are appropriate, then even I can’t save you…

SO WHAT DID WE LEARN?

Although this was a quick overview on how I make my PowerPoints visually pleasing, I am sure you will feel confident enough to open up PowerPoint and begin playing around. You will be able to now use the Slide Master view to customize your PowerPoints with custom fonts and beautiful colour schemes. You should now have a better understanding on how to make clear slides which listeners can easily digest. Get on your computer right now, open up PowerPoint and begin playing about. You’ll be surprised with the designs you can come up with.