Ever sat through a PowerPoint presentation that's made you feel bored? We know the feeling. Learn how to make your PowerPoint presentation stand out from the crowd and engage your audience in every way.
Although design functionality is limited in the MS Office software you do have certain elements at your disposal. You can make your presentations look professional by focusing on the following elements:
A rookie mistake when creating a PowerPoint slide is selecting colours for backgrounds and text that don't have enough contrast. This is a sure-fire way to lose your message. Here are two colour rules to follow: a light background with dark text, or a dark background with light text.
Like all Microsoft programs, the default fonts in PowerPoint are Calibri and Cambria. Run from these and don't look back! No, but seriously, you can do better than that. We know that non-designers find choosing the right type of font frustrating - with good reason. You have to ensure the font conveys your message, is readable, and has a clean and professional look. Try to use your own brand's font or find good font pairings using Font Joy.
You can use one of the nine built-in slide layouts, or you can add a personal touch and create a custom one. The image gives you an idea of good and bad formats and how much of an impact they can have.
If your design skills aren't quite there yet, you might find that you could benefit from some Design training courses.
You can use both Photoshop and Illustrator to create your design, and then export it to PowerPoint. Embrace the power of Photoshop to create a design template. Then export it as a background image and embed it in a slide. You can also use the software to enhance images by brightening, recolouring, and cropping them.
Illustrator can also be used to create design templates. Use this software to create the main graphic elements and then export them into your PowerPoint slide to combine with editable elements. Illustrator can be used to create infographics and finesse tables.
Remember that you must only use text as a placeholder when creating your design templates in either Photoshop or Illustrator so that you are able to edit them in your presentation.
If you have no particular loyalty to PowerPoint and are open to trying something new - InDesign may be the software for you!
Not everybody knows that you can actually use InDesign as a tool to create slick and professional-looking presentations. A lot of the shortcuts that you'd use in PowerPoint also work in InDesign. Not only does InDesign offer the same features as MS Office software, but it also offers a more advanced range of typesetting options.
PowerPoint presentations can be up to a maximum of 96dpi whereas PDF Presentations can be up to 300dpi, making InDesign the best option for print.
One of the Pros of using InDesign is its seamless compatibility with other Adobe Creative Cloud programs such as Photoshop (which you can use to colour correct and cut out your images) and Illustrator (used for creating graphs and infographics).
Use our effective tips to make sure your PowerPoint presentations stand out and engage your audience, you don't have to be a professional designer to wow them. However, if you would like some hands-on, practical experience improving your Powerpoint presentations take a look at our PowerPoint Presentation Design course.

by Cristina Moraru | 27 Sep 23