4 things that ruin your presentation

Lots of Small Text

🚫 “Small as possible and on 2 columns”

A presentation is a tool that helps navigate the attention of the audience and enhance the effect of the speech. The effectiveness of the tool depends on the purpose. Slides can contain a lot of text if we are going to send them to the audience to read. In that case, everyone can quietly and attentively read the slides whenever it is convenient.

In public speaking presentations, unnecessary text overloads a slide and creates extra stress for the viewers. It also distracts from the speaker's speech because it's hard to read and listen at the same time. So feel free to get rid of it, or split up large portions of text into different slides.

Tip 1: Separate paragraphs with a blank line

Tip 2: The headline must be clear

Ask yourself the question, "What is the main idea of this slide?" The answer is in the headline.

You don't need to entice a person to read the text. Clickbait headlines like "Just one product will help you lose 8 pounds in a week, and this product..." are unnecessary — your audience is already here and already listening to you.

Tip 3: Make a newspaper block layout

Divide the canvas of text into blocks, give them subheadings. This will make the text easier to read and navigate.

Expand choices for the audience: read the whole text on the slide, just the title, or the blocks of interest.

Tip 4: Use icons

They also will make it easier to see, and slides with them are easy to edit. And you can also use brand colors or one common background color.

Tip 5: Give information gradually

If a slide has a long list, its items can appear one after another. You don't need to be proficient in motion design to do this. You can create several slides that differ from each other by one element.

This way you will create a convenient scenario for the audience: the viewers' attention will be focused on the new element.

Typeface Overload

🚫 “Choose three or even four fonts”

Typography, font combinations, colors are the whole science. Understanding them on your own and finding the perfect match is difficult. If you are not sure about the design decision or effect you want to achieve with an unusual combination of elements on the slide - it's safer to stick to the minimalistic solutions.

One typeface per presentation. For accents, it's better to use font styles (bold, italic). If you want to take two or three typefaces, we advise you to focus on existing font pairs (there are a lot of them!).

Font pairing is visually matching fonts (usually two) that help structure the information on the slide and solve its task.

💡 To select cool font pair, see here: https://www.fontpair.co/all

💡 To find unique combinations of your own pairs, use this website: https://fontjoy.com/

It offers variations based on machine learning techniques and allows you to adjust the contrast of fonts using the slider at the top.

Color Overload

🚫 “Each slide with a new background. The brighter the better”

For one presentation it is better to take no more than 3-4 colors. It is important to make it visually easy and enjoyable for viewers to study the presentation. A unified style will help us a lot!

💡 Matching shades can be found on special resources:

https://mybrandnewlogo.com/ru/generator-cvetovoi-palitry – to select ready-made palettes.
https://coolors.co/ – palette generator with the possibility of creating your own.

Stock Images

🚫 “Add pictures just to be there, it doesn't matter what quality they are or how you scale them. The main thing is to occupy the space”

Pictures clearly demonstrate parts of a speech, create atmosphere and grab the audience's attention. We are used to them being mandatory in presentations. But this is actually not the case: choice of pictures should be deliberate! For example, stock photos with office staff are often used to fill space and illustrate the 'seriousness' of the company.

But they don't really do the job: such photos are unnatural, don't evoke sympathy, don't make you more serious in the eyes of your viewers and certainly don't show the real process. It's better to use one real photo than five stock photos.

Important principles when choosing pictures for your slides

1. If the picture is in poor quality —

think about whether it is so unique and necessary to use here and now! The audience won't lose anything by not seeing it. But a pixelated screen will definitely have a negative impact on the impression of the slide.

2. Only proportional scaling!

Unless the goal is to create a comical effect, horizontally or vertically stretching out the photo with your boss is unlikely to help your presentation! Your visual will lose in level.

Check out other helpful tips and materials on public speaking in our open Soft Skills database