The easiest exact procedure to follow to get your message through to your audience and have your brand stand out from the rest is to have amazing visual presentations.

Visual presentations will almost certainly lead to positive feedback and great responses from your audience. We’ve all been through one of those presentations that you wish would end already. So let’s learn how to avoid situations like that.

The purpose of a PowerPoint presentation is to, well, make your point powerfully. And how do you do that? By being visually compelling and, accordingly, making the viewing process enjoyable.

  • Why Are Visuals The Stepping Stone For An Impactful Presentation? 💁🏻‍♀️
  • So How Can You Make The Most Of Your Presentation? 🗒
  • Take Away 💁🏻‍♂️
  • Important disclosure: we're proud affiliates of some tools mentioned in this guide. If you click an affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (you pay nothing extra).

    Why Are Visuals The Stepping Stone For An Impactful Presentation? 💁🏻‍♀️

    Visuals Are Attention-Grabbers 👀

    Usually, your eyes go straight to visuals
    We all know the saying—Show, don't tell.

    It's a common mistake to include a lot of text in your presentation but rather include meaningful visuals (make sure the picture conditions are great to better the viewing experience) for a higher rate of participation in your presentation.

    Carefully selected imagery is the key to engaging with your public. Sometimes, it's significantly easier to explain complex concepts through a short video or an infographic.

    Overall, shorter presentation times can often lead to your audience understanding complex ideas, even if they have no prior background knowledge of the subject.

    The normal viewing times of videos or presentations of your audience are decreasing day by day, which is why the visual display of your presentation is so important to keep their attention.

    The pair of images that you choose to use isn't there to undermine your point. Their purpose is to make your audience attentive and to emphasize what you have to say.

    Images Are Action-Inspiring 🙌

    Using a visual display in your presentation will make your audience react. You can use them to raise awareness about a certain topic or to inspire your public to take a specific action.

    More often than not, messages delivered visually receive a more powerful reaction and a higher rate of participation from people.

    So How Can You Make The Most Of Your Presentation? 🗒

    Is All That Text Necessary? 🧐

    You can try to follow the 6 x 6 guidelines for one slide as a general rule. This means you should have a maximum of 6 key points, each with six words. This way, you can keep everything succinct, organized, and easy to understand.

    Even when you're preparing an audio-visual presentation (which can be a better choice for people with learning difficulties), your focus should still be to keep the text short and sweet on each of the individual images.

    Having no more than 140 characters on your slide will leave you with a lot of white space. This will make your presentation look more clean and organized. But also, it will help your audience focus on the key points you're trying to make.

    Make sure that your background color combinations emphasize the key points and don't take attention away from them.

    Use Straightforward And Precise Fonts 𝘼𝙖

    While you might be tempted to break the mold with your presentation, fonts are not the place to do this. Try to use standard sans serif fonts, like Open Sans, Tahoma, Verdana.

    These are easily recognizable and look good on the viewing window. Try not to use more than 2 or 3 different fonts in your presentation. The key to having an outstanding slide deck is organization and consistency.

    Using too many different elements will distract and confuse your audience.

    Any feedback activity from your audience will also result in this conclusion, and if your audience is confused, your rate of participation from the audience declines.

    Say No To Poor Quality Images 🙅🏽‍♂️

    Needless to say, high-quality images will make your presentation look professional. Try as much as possible to color-coordinate your visuals with the color scheme you’ve chosen for your slide deck.

    Their purpose is to enhance and underline, not to overwhelm the slide, so make sure the picture conditions in your presentation are top-notch! Using binary image classification might also be a good idea to simplify complex concepts.

    To avoid bad quality on your pair of images used in your presentation, make sure that your laptop display resolution agree with your presentation.

    Another thing you should keep in mind: not using too many individual images. Generally, it’s good to try and use a single picture—or 2, if they’re relevant. Your presentation isn’t a photo album.

    Use Contrast For Emphasis And Grabbing Attention 💁🏻‍♀️

    You can use contrast cleverly in your presentation. First of all, it can help your message "pop" with a high-level contrast between your background and your text.

    You can also add a bar of color behind your text—to make it more legible and bring it to the center of attention. Binary image classification is also a great way to emphasize the contrast between concepts.

    Contrast can also be used to highlight your key points. Choose a color from your palette to emphasize important text on your slide. Make sure that your key points are a few times larger than the supplementary information given.

    By making your key points a few times larger than supplementary info, you're creating contrast and thus pointing your viewers into the right direction of where to look, helping those with possible learning difficulties.

    Nevertheless, it will lose its power if you use this trick too often. So use it wisely. Using an arrow symbol during your presentation will also emphasize the important points.

    Limit Your Color Palette 👈🏽

    Yes, rainbows are really pretty, but not in your presentation. Be mindful of what colors you choose and if they come together harmoniously.

    There's no need to go overboard—you can grab attention without using complex textures or gradients. You can, for example, use a background of blocks to emphasize the message in front of it.

    Even though it's tempting to make an art-inspired presentation, keep this for a more fitting audience and not for business proposals.

    To choose the right colors for your presentation, you can use tools like Kuler or coolors.co. Using these can help you learn a bit about which colors go together and which ones don't.

    Additionally, suppose you want to do this right. In that case, you can even look at an analysis of color theory to see how your palette can influence your audience's emotions.

    Doing this avoids the risk of presenting a pair of images and evoking the wrong response from your audience.

    Data Visualization Is Your Salvation 📊

    Project management presentations or anything with a lot of numbers and data to present can be dreadful.

    Luckily, you can use a lot of elements to make your life easier in your individual images —charts, graphs, radials, binary image classification, and more.

    By doing this, you can simplify complex information or even a lot of information in a short period of time, even if the audience doesn't have prior background knowledge of the subject.

    Shorter presentation times often work better for explaining complex ideas. Additionally, you can always look online for some free timeline templates to showcase progress or presumptions, or learn how to make your own timelines in PowerPoint.

    The key is taking all the data and putting it into individual images that are easy to remember and understand.

    Skip The Bullet Points 📝

    Ideally, you should focus on a single idea for each slide. This means that instead of having five bullet points, you should have five slides focusing on each key point to do an in-depth analysis.

    This way, you can make sure that people remember what you say, and your audience will be able to draw comparisons between the five slides. Also, bullet points are kind of old, aren’t they?

    Surely, you can find more attractive ways to structure information within a slide. Try content boxes, bubbles, all sorts of frames—just don’t go overboard with your elements.

    Mind The Visual Hierarchy 🎨

    Even if you have no background knowledge in graphic design, you can still organize elements on your slide or picture, depending on their importance.

    The purpose of this procedure is to let your audience know where their eyes should go first on each picture, and then second, and so forth.

    You can do this by making use of size, the correct laptop display resolutions, white space between elements, or proximity between elements. Another smart thing to do is to use repetition to your advantage in your visual display.

    Having only one element in your viewing window will make it pop—so your audience will know that is the main point. When your audience is viewing your presentation, they shouldn't wonder where to look on your PowerPoint.

    Audio And Video Elements 🎙📹

    Choosing tasks using video and audio elements can help you explain complex concepts so much easier. An audio-visual presentation is also a great way to create interaction with your public.

    Using these gives you a break from talking and your audience a new point of focus. Embedding a video into a PowerPoint presentation is not hard if you decide to go this route.

    However, make sure not to pick a 10-minute video, but rather use shorter presentation times.

    You should use these items as a short, fresh breath of air—not let them have the presentation for you.

    Additionally, make sure this content is relevant not only to your content but also to the audience—or you will lose their attention, as this is a big feedback influence.

    What Do You Think About Interactivity? 👨🏾‍💻

    No matter how good your presentation is, there is always going to be a low-energy moment. A good way to recover from this is to directly interact with your audience and strive for a high rate of participation.

    For example, you can make them vote on subject comparisons, stand up for some reason, or conduct a short quiz.

    To make this more interesting, you can add links to your presentation—either between slides, on the middle image of the presentation, or elements.

    This way, when they choose and answer, something happens. Creating a unique slideshow can help you keep your audience attentive and create longer viewing times for your audience.

    Transitions And Animations

    Image Source: Animation Desk

    You either love transitions, or you hate them. There’s no in-between. The safest route is to go all static and grab attention through colors, textures, and so forth.

    This way, nobody gets distracted, and we all remember something at the end of your presentation.

    However, if you want some pizzaz on your slides, you can use animations and transitions to become memorable.

    However, keep them consistent and don’t get too excited. Not every element on your slide has to move. Use motion as an emphasis, not as a distraction.

    Have An Interesting Cover Style 😍

    The cover slide should be the one to grab your public’s attention and curiosity. It should say something about the subject but still be mysterious.

    You can think of it as a movie trailer—you give people a taste of what’s to come, but without spoiling the whole thing. These slides are your chance to be creative and inventive. You can’t afford to be boring on this one.

    Here, you should draw inspiration from an art-inspired presentation. However, as with any part of your art-inspired presentation — don’t go overboard.

    Using too many elements or too many colors can put your whole slide deck in a bad light.

    Reserve A Couple Of Slides At The End To Summarize Your Main Points

    By doing this, you emphasize them and make sure that they will be remembered.

    You don’t have to go through everything once more — just some keywords to jolt the memory of your public.

    However, be careful. If your presentation is already quite lengthy— you might want to skip this one or make it short. If your speech is too long, the only thing your public will want is to escape and go home as fast as possible.

    Accordingly, the attention span and the desired viewing times of the audience will be low.

    Take Away 💁🏻‍♂️

    It might sound easy, but building a visually compelling presentation is not that simple. There are a lot of factors and small details that can either make or break your whole work.

    For example—using colors, but too many of them, a pair of images, but making sure the picture conditions are great, using the right type of font, but at the wrong sizes, and so forth.

    However, if you check all the points made in the article—and maybe do a little research and analysis on your own, you’ll be just fine, and your feedback will surely be positive. Most rules are basic common sense for anyone who has seen a presentation before.

    The most important thing here is to feel comfortable with your presentation in a way that it seems as though you have background knowledge on the subject.

    If you’re happy about it—and passionate about the subject you’re talking about, then you can’t go wrong. Feelings are contagious, so your audience will sense your happiness.

    If you find yourself pressed for time or lacking the necessary expertise to create a visually stunning presentation, you can explore options such as SketchBubble to access professionally designed PowerPoint templates that you can download.