It's impossible to make a great presentation in 2020 without new tools and modern design.
This is the second part of the article: "Evolution of Presentations", and it is about trends, new tools, tricks for working with design and content.
In the first part, we talked about presentation software that has influenced continuous changes and updates in presentations.
Let's take a closer look at the three pillars of a successful presentation:
Presentations for performance and presentations for sending via email are not the same.
It is common to think that you can prepare one standard presentation, which will be suitable for mailing and performing at once, but it's not true. There are few exceptions, but in general, there is no such thing as standard presentation. There are two types of them and the main difference is the amount of text on slides.
During the performance, presentation slides should complement the speaker. Moreover, if you have a lot of text, people will read it faster than you present, and will not pay attention to what you say.
Presentations for mailing should have enough text to be complete and understandable. After all, the speaker will not be around and he will not be able to explain unclear details.
Common presentation mistakes: put the whole text on the slides, which you are going to tell, or which has nothing to do with the speech.
Slides should complement, not overlap with the speaker's presentation. If the text on the slides goes off the topic, it should be cut. For instance, the speaker talks about Newton's laws of motion, and slides show his biography. Speaker didn't plan to talk about it during the presentation but put it there just in case.
Write shorter
There is a leading book for copywriters — "Пиши, Сокращай" (the book is in Russian only). Lessons from the book are also practical for presentations. Main advice — write short, simple, and understandable. Such phrases as "team of professionals", "experts in their field", "comprehensive innovative solutions for customers" are no longer in fashion.
Colors usage in presentations is surely not a trend itself. People used them for years. The main mistake is using colors that have no meaning, which happens regularly.
Use colors meaningfully!
If you are not a designer, use specific websites to choose colors. You can find a list of these websites in our article about resources for presentations.
Text in the presentation is one of the fundamental things. It goes without saying. You can make text engaging and readable simply by using a few techniques. The well-designed text keeps your presentation in trend and gives respect to the audience.
Use contrast fonts, adjust interline spacing, align the text to the left. In PowerPoint, alignment results in different spaces between words and this worsens the readability.
Read more about safe fonts and contrasts in our article.
In the examples below, we show how to work with typography.
The main trend is to use high-quality emotional images.
There are several resources (unsplash.com, pixabay.com) where you can find free high-quality pictures for your presentations.
You should avoid pictures of white men. They are like a virus that has spread all over the world and has flooded all the slides in all corners of the planet. They are unemotional and meaningless.
We all love to scroll through Facebook or Instagram, like funny gifs and videos with cats. Dynamic objects attract much more attention than static images. In presentations, it's better to choose a relevant video or GIF than just a picture. Gifs evoke emotions from the audience and make the performance more interesting. The main thing is not to overdo with gifs and consider the target audience.
Another thing. If gif repeats several times ( more than 3), it annoys and distracts the audience.
We have several projects with hand-drawn presentations and the results were amazing. The audience responds with excitement and curiosity. There is no need to be an artist or draw professionally. You can easily make silly figures and audience will like it. Such presentations can be even used for company presentations or important speeches in front of a big audience.
Of course, if you draw professionally, it will also look cool. The advantage of this approach is in creating necessary pictures from scratch without spending hours on finding the right one on the Internet.
Storytelling skills are the trend of the 21st century. You can include characters in your speeches and presentations. It is interesting to follow the characters, they excite, draw attention, help to remember new information.
Stories can be used as a way to entertain and explain serious business processes.
Read how to use stories in presentations in our article "Statistics vs stories".
Smooth neat animation is still in trend and remains one of the most spectacular visual solutions.
Animation helps to tell a story smoothly, control the audience, and surprise it.
You can find some examples of animated presentations made by Reprezent team below. Check out how animation helps you to achieve different goals.
As people are still getting used to 3D objects, you can surprise them during the presentation.
You can insert a model of your product into the presentation, rotate it at different angles using Morph, and dynamically show the characteristics. This creates an experience of personal product usage.
For more information on using the tool, see the "3D in PowerPoint" article.
3D usage example for product presentation
In 2020, designers will continue to create compositions with hiding images and text. Here is one of the examples of how this can be below.
This is a minimalistic, simplified illustration style. It is perfect for the transmission of concepts and ideas. It looks plain, classy, and discreet. It is one of the trends in graphic design in 2020.
In a presentation, linear elements can be part of a background, complex graphics, or diagrams. You can also create nice compositions mixing them with pictures.
Learn how to work with the Morph transition, explore the latest tools, optimize your presentation work, and you will have the coolest presentations in 2020.
Let us help you highlight your product to its best advantages.
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