Presentations are visual storytellers. Whether you have to pitch an idea, product, or service, a well-crafted presentation design is what you are going to need. With a presentation, you can break down your content into different segments for your benefit as well as for the benefit of your viewers. These presentations help you easily walk through complex concepts using the power of visuals.
However, coming up with presentation design ideas can be challenging if you’re unsure what things to look out for. In fact, statistics show that 67% of presenters state that, deck design is the biggest challenge they face when creating presentations. That’s why in this blog we’re going to visit Penji’s portfolio for some design inspiration. Using Penji’s presentation design ideas, we will draw on 6 lessons for best presentation design practices.
So let’s get to it!
Just like in any type of design, color is of paramount importance in presentation designs too. It’s not just about aesthetics; color profoundly influences how your message is perceived. The whole purpose of a presentation is for your message to be perceived correctly by the audience you’re targeting.
One of the most important things to consider about color in your presentation designs is the contrast between all the colors. Proper color contrast enhances readability, ensuring your content is easily understood.
Next comes the consistency in color throughout your presentation design. And that’s something you can ensure if your brand guideline has a color palette defined. It’s also important to note that consistency doesn’t necessarily mean you copy the same design with the same colors over and over again.
Take a look at the above presentation design idea by Penji. The colors used are vibrant yet professional. And you can also see throughout each slide that the presentation design doesn’t look monotonous. Each slide has variations in the way color has been utilized. The use of a mixture of gradients and solid colors makes for a good design.
This variation in color manipulation helps keep viewers alert while you’re presenting.
So if you’re looking into presentation design ideas, go for a good color scheme and use this example from Penji to differentiate the look on different slides.
One of the factors contributing to an effective presentation is the layout of each slide of your design. To understand this more, let’s talk about the layout schemes used in the above design by Penji.
As you can see different slides use different layouts making for a dynamic presentation design. Throughout the presentation, they have used all three alignments to present texts; left, right, and center. This technique helps keep the eye engaged.
You can also see that the presentation has thematic elements in it. They’ve dispersed those elements around in different placements on each of the slides. This kind of dispersal goes to show that the designers are serious about the presentation design.
These various layout techniques keep the presentation design from looking like a mediocre template. So the lesson here is to be creative about your layout in your presentation design ideas as much as possible while adhering to visual hierarchy principles.
This presentation design done by Penji focuses more on communicating a message via text. That’s why this is a perfect example to talk about how typography plays an important part in a presentation design.
The texts in this presentation design look dynamic for a few reasons.
So you see that they have done a lot to make the typography interesting in this presentation design. So the bottom line is to avoid repetitive styles in your texts because it will help the presentation look interesting.
This design by Penji displays one of the top uses of presentations and that is to communicate statistical data. And as you can see, the above presentation design has lots of diagrams and charts. The use of such graphical elements helps take a presentation from just plain text and boring to visually dynamic. Diagrams and charts help condense huge amounts of data into concise digestible portions of information.
You may think that diagrams and charts tend to make a presentation serious looking. But if you take a good look at the design by Penji featured above, they’ve made it look interesting by keeping the total aesthetic of the design quirky.
You can use pie charts, line charts, bar charts, organizational charts, Venn diagrams, flowcharts, and funnel charts creatively. But it all comes down to what type of industry you’re in and what kind of information you’re trying to communicate.
So if you need to incorporate diagrams and charts in your presentation design ideas then this design by Penji is a good inspiration.
We cannot stress how important images are for presentations. It takes a lot from the work of having to explain something. Images help viewers visualize what you’re talking about and save the guesswork. It precisely indicates what you’re talking about. It can even help save you from false advertising.
These images can be photography, graphic design elements, stock images, and illustrations. Regardless, make sure these images are of the highest quality and are relevant to the point you’re presenting. Otherwise, you’re just needlessly cluttering your presentation design.
The above design by Penji is a great example of including images in a presentation design. It seems to be a product design presentation and all images are appropriately shown to help viewers understand the scope of services being offered here.
On another note, a good graphic designer will know how to bring the best out of images. For example, you can see there are slides with a red overlay placed on some of the images. These help make a presentation design dynamic. Those sorts of graphic design techniques help images blend into the rest of the design and overall, it elevates the image to look more professional.
A presentation is a collection of graphic designs. Meaning, that a presentation doesn’t just have one graphic that is on display. It will have at least 4 -10 slides in it. This can be problematic because there’s the possibility of a few slides missing the mark when it comes to cohesiveness. You need to remember that your presentation is one unit and this cohesiveness in design helps hold the entire message.
A cohesive presentation shows that you’re professional and credible. It shows that you’re serious and you’ve taken the time to lay it all out in perfect unity. It will then not look generic and will be an excellent piece of marketing material.
Take a look at the presentation design above by Penji. The design is beautifully done while being impeccably cohesive. From the colors to the images to the illustrations and shapes everything looks like it’s done with a clear goal.
It helps pique the interest of viewers because they can psychologically sense the pattern at the back of their minds. This too helps keep viewers engaged.
So whichever presentation design ideas you’re considering for your use, make sure that each and every slide is cohesive in identity.
Whichever industry you’re in chances are that you’re going to need a presentation done at one time or the other. So we urge you to look at these presentation design ideas from Penji’s portfolio that we’ve presented along with the various lessons that they teach you. Following these lessons will ensure that your presentations don’t miss out on achieving the best possible results.
