Presentations are stories, not lists, and stories have a structure. They build towards an impact moment and unleash a wave of momentum that changes people’s perceptions and preconceived notions. Good stories aren’t boring and neither are good presentations.

Presentations exist to…

• Inform. Presentations impart knowledge to an audience.
• Instruct. Provide a practical method for using the knowledge that is shared — sometimes this is “hire us, because we are the experts.”
• Entertain. Your presentation should be able to captivate an audience and lead them to consider the worth of what they’re learning.
• Inspire. Influence an audience’s behavior and help them realize their own aspirations.
• Activate. Helping people act on their feelings and internal analysis.
• Persuade. Ultimately, presentations make an appeal to an audience’s logic, emotions, or both in an attempt to convince the audience to act on the opportunity you are presenting.

Presentation design is an opportunity to craft a compelling narrative that earns big wins for our clients.
Slide design is an important part of presentation design, and effective slides are rooted in visual simplicity. Simplicity is best achieved by grasping the complex and being able to interrupt it in bite-size information that the audience can grasp quickly

My presentations are primarily built in PowerPoint and I’ve definitely grown as a presentation designer after spending the time to really learn all the capabilities that PowerPoint can do when it comes to building a deck.
Above, follow the link to see my favorite PowerPoint features in action. I made this short
deck just to show off PPT’s capabilities and convert coworkers to use it for their
presentations.
Below, I recorded a deck I built using some of these features. This is strictly just to see the flow of the deck and these amazing tools in action.

Once you have a proper understanding of a presentation’s narrative, you can then take the key design elements — hierarchy, typography, image selection, and color schemes — and build a focused and impactful presentation.