Stand Out from the Crowd with Great PowerPoint Presentation Design

Did you hear about the guy who substantially increased his dating prospects when he uploaded a personalized PowerPoint presentation to his Tinder profile? (No really, this did happen.) One woman was so impressed she tweeted screenshots of his profile and got more than 100K responses. Proving once again that great PowerPoint presentation design always helps you stand out from the crowd.

Here’s another example: In conjunction with the release of his first solo album in 14 years, David Byrne is touring a PowerPoint presentation called Reasons To Be Cheerful, stories of positive change from around the world. Throughout his career, Byrne’s always found ways to do things differently. This time round he’s using PowerPoint presentation design as his medium.

Examples abound of PowerPoint presentation design enabling people to not only achieve their goals, but to exceed them; to be not only creative, but oh-I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that cool.

At eSlide, we’ve always known that using professionally designed PowerPoint makes you cool and helps you stand out from the crowd. (Still, it’s nice to have what you know validated.) It’s why PowerPoint is all we do and have done for the last 16 years.

And it’s why we want to show you how to use PowerPoint presentation design to stand out from your crowd. Here are five things to think about from your experts at eSlide:

1. Keep the focus on you

One of the reasons that presentations are a great opportunity to shine is because you’ve got a captive audience. They’re yours for the hour or so, without competition or distraction.

Yet presenters often throw away their opportunity to impress by allowing their presentation to take over. When your PowerPoint presentation design is too busy, confusing or jarring, you risk losing your audience’s attention – sometimes out of boredom and sometimes out of frustration.

When this happens, your presentation is getting the focus that should be on you and your message.

But, when your design is well executed, you and your message stay front and center. So, bear this in mind and design your presentation so that the focus stays where it needs to be.

2. Be strategic with visuals

Maybe you’ve learned the too-much-text lesson and are now a devotee of visuals in your slide decks. For this, we congratulate you.

But, don’t assume that slapping any old visuals into your presentation will do.

Your visuals must work as hard as your text does to support your message and show your story. Each one should have a connection to the one before and after so that your story unfolds in a meaningful and logical way.

Also, connect your visuals from slide to slide with color and other style elements to give them a cohesive look.

3. Seeing is believing

For a presentation to be effective, it must be believable. Examples are a great way to make you and your message credible. And video is a great way to show examples. It’s also a great way to make your presentation stand out from the bullet-point crowd.

But be wary of video (or other multimedia components) that don’t feed into your unfolding story in a seamless way. Playing a video during a presentation can disrupt story flow if it isn’t carefully integrated into the design.

There are lots of effective ways to add video to your PowerPoint presentation design, and even tools to help you style your videos by adding effects like frames, tilts, shadows and reflections.

4. Got data? Style it out

Adding data can often feel like a burden when it comes to creating interesting PowerPoint presentation design. But there are ways to make data and statistics help you and your presentation stand out from the crowd.

By changing your data and statistics into fantastic charts and graphs you can make less-than-exciting information an appealing part of your unfolding presentation story.

Your charts and graphs need to make your data easy to understand at a glance. Too often charts and graphs try to do too much, once again drawing attention away from you and your key message.

But there are some easy techniques you can use to keep the focus where it needs to be, including paring down the design by removing or lightening elements like backgrounds, lines, borders or labels.

5. Templates aren’t always the enemy

PowerPoint templates often get a bad rap and it’s sometimes deserved. But it is possible to use them to create a stand-out presentation if you choose a theme that hasn’t been seen a lot by your specific audience.

Keep your brand in mind when choosing a template and look for one that compliments your company’s look and ethos.

Also, don’t assume that just because you’re using a template, you don’t have to follow the usual good design rules. Here’s a quick reminder of some of these: less is more, limit text, make room for white space, use compelling visuals. Here’s more on good design rules from one of our previous blogs.

Bonus Tip: Spotlight on Type B

Standing out from the crowd can be especially difficult for anyone who isn’t a Type A personality.

For these people, meetings – especially those that require a presentation – are a constant worry. Yet, giving a PowerPoint presentation is the prefect chance for you to put your ideas together in an effective way, practice what you want to say and present without having to enter into a conversation joust with your colleagues.

Your PowerPoint presentation design allows you to use your presentation to show off what you know and what you can do. But remember, your presentation design must be up to the task.

In the business world, there are too few opportunities to be unique, which is why you shouldn’t miss your chance when creating and delivering a presentation.

Maybe it’s time we change the way we think about the ubiquitous business tool that’s been around for almost 30 years. So, the next time you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation, think of it as your chance to rock out like David Byrne or win hearts and minds like that guy on Tinder.