Presentation and Design Principles and Techniques

Presentation Design and principles

Design starts right at the beginning it's about creating solutions that help or improve the lives and thoughts of people.  Good designs should be able to changes things.

To have a good design a few things are needed - Graphics should be free from errors and must be accurate, to acquire this Robin Williams provides suggestions from her publication The Non Designers which includes these few principles:

1. Signal to noise ration

2.  Picture superior effect

3. Empty space

4. The big four – contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity 

The key to a great design is using fewer elements and keeping SIMPLICITY in mind.   Stay away from branding your logo on everything and using it as a detail on every slide.

Tom Grimes agrees with the “less is more idea” to get the core point across without being overbearing and redundant you can use the I- 7-7 rule this incorporates the main idea on a slide using 7 text images /visuals. A good concept for minimal elaboration.

Always remember pictures and effects are statistically remembered better than words. With that being said, ask yourself if there any text slides that could be replaced with a photograph or image instead? I would suggest trying to do so going forward!

Now the where to? Where you may ask can you can professional photos, well for those not fortunate enough to have a photographer in your inner circle, the next best thing are websites that charge a nominal fee, or are free for usage. A few websites are www.everystockphoto.com , www.istockphoto.com , www.fotolia.com , www.dreamstime.com , www.japanesestreets.com and lastly if you do decide on using quotes please be sure they are short and simple.

Empty space is key, so be sure to leave a spot or two, this can capture elegance, clarity, high quality, sophistication, and importance of course. Zen highlights and captures the simple things in life.

The website PrensentationZen  brings out an interesting point from an articled posted May 8^th 2013 stating- there should be no excuse for boring an audience from a bad technical presentation. You may have read or recalled the story called ‘Death by a Salesman” this was a great story with an interesting ending, well again there is a similar idea called “death by-power point” by Prezi.  Just spare your audience and don’t do it. J

The pain and suffering of bad presentations must end, TODAY! I learned a thing or two did you? Well hopefully so. Everything should be balanced and used in accordance to your presentation, remember when in doubt take it OUT! Having a smooth power point slide in conjunction with your story will have a nice response from your audience. They will have takeaways from your speech and will have learned something. Just as Chris Dasiell mentioned in his article Kane Reaction found on cinescene.com he mentioned how the techniques, software and design are used to aid your narrative, to “show off or impress”. Keeping these tips and thoughts in mind will help you in creating the best presentation ever!