materials needed for presentation

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by Tom Rielly • June 15, 2020

Keeping your presentation visuals minimalistic, simple, and clear is just one important step to remember when designing a hit presentation. Leaving nothing to chance, great presenters prove quite methodical as they prepare. Here’s a checklist for everything you need to keep in mind before your next presentation:

1. Choose the right software for your needs

The easiest way to select the right presentation software for you is to simply find the one that is native to your device. For example, if you have a Mac, use Apple Keynote, if you work on Windows, use PowerPoint. Google Slides is recommended if you’re working with someone, as it makes collaboration very easy. Another software option is Prezi: a specialty tool called Prezi that creates a presentation using motion, zoom, and panning across one giant visual space.

2. Organize your files

As you develop your script and visuals, you will need to start assembling all the assets for your slides. Create a unique folder on your computer to hold these items. Keep the folder organized by media type (presentation drafts, photos, videos, scripts) and back them up frequently to the Cloud or external disk. Label each file with a specific descriptive name, e.g. “Susan Johnson singing magpie 2020”, as opposed to “IMG_4043.jpg”, which can make it confusing to find your assets. The more organized you are up front, the easier preparing for your presentation will be.

3. Prepare your presentation materials

Make sure your presentation materials (script, graphics, actual slides) are saved in at least two safe spots (for example, your computer and an external USB drive) and are backed-up frequently. If you are using an online presentation software, such as Google Slides, be sure to also download a copy of your presentation in case the internet connection is unreliable. Having all the individual assets on hand in addition to your presentation slides can be helpful if you experience tech issues before presenting, or if you need to make any last minute changes. Make sure to label your final presentation with the title and your name so it’s easy to find.

4. Practice, practice, practice!

Remember, practice makes perfect. People often run out of time making their presentations and have no time to practice. Most TED speakers practice at least ten times. Neuroscientist Jill-Bolte Taylor gave one of the most successful Talks in TED history with nearly 27 million views. How did she do it? She practiced her Talk over 40 times! By rehearsing multiple times you will naturally memorize your Talk, which means you won’t need note cards when you give your final presentation.

5. Do a final test run

Before presenting, make sure the equipment you need is working properly. It’s generally good practice to rehearse standing on the exact stage with the exact lighting using the exact computer that you will be using in your final presentation.

Here’s a quick checklist of what to look for when testing your equipment:

• If you're not using your own computer, the one provided might be slower and have trouble playing media. If you have videos or other media, make sure they play correctly
• Test the projector to make sure it’s HD
• Make sure images are clear
• Test the sound of any clips you use, as this is what goes wrong most frequently
• If you’re using a mic, test the volume

Don’t let technical issues or other blunders overshadow your presentation. By following these guidelines, and with a little preparation, you can engineer out the problems BEFORE they happen.

Ready to learn more about how to make your presentation even better? Get TED Masterclass and develop your ideas into TED-style talks

© 2024 TED Conferences, LLC. All rights reserved. Please note that the TED Talks Usage policy does not apply to this content and is not subject to our creative commons license.

Presentation Checklist: Essential Items for a Presenter’s Laptop Bag

• Dedicated laptop power supply that stays in your bag. Leave the original computer manufacturer version at your desk. Every time I buy a new computer, I also buy an extra AC adapter, but you can find a number of universal power supplies at your local office or computer supply store.
• Presentation remote control; your own equipment which you have used before.  Find out how to choose a remote control .
• Extra AA and AAA batteries for remote, headphones, and other equipment, plus spare 9-volt batteries for the wireless microphones in a meeting room. Although these are often supplied by a hotel or A/V staff, when these go dead, it always seems to be in the middle of a presentation.
• Adapters and dongles: Display adapters and other dongles to ensure you can connect your laptop to the provided projection system. Mac users often need an expanded selection depending on the types of ports on their notebooks.
• Mouse and mouse pad.
• A three-prong extension cord or power strip.
• AV or gaffers tape to tape down cords; duct tape is too sticky and leaves lots of residue.
• Security cable for laptops: although these can be cut, they create a deterrent to a swift thief.
• Portable timer or clock or timer phone app with a readable display to monitor presentation time. I run the Minimalistic Countdown Timer on my iPad and iPhone. Check out CountdownKings   for download details.
• Rubber door stop for a wobbly or uneven projector.
• A backup copy of your presentation on an accessible cloud drive or USB flash drive to transfer it to another laptop if you have equipment failure.
• Hard copies of presentation slide show and presentation handout.
• Presentation notes.
• Playing music? Smartphone or laptop loaded with royalty-free music you can play during walk-ins and breaks in your program, plus your personal playlists of music, movies, and TV shows.  I typically play music directly from my laptop and then connect the sound system to my laptop.
• Notebook or Bluetooth speaker for video audio and music for smaller sessions.
• Cell phone, video camera, surge protectors, and chargers for all mobile devices; adapters and airline chargers for international travel. Bring a tripod with a phone or camera attachment if you want to shoot a video of your presentation.
• Noise-canceling headphones to help buffer noisy plane flights.
• A spare pair of earbuds.
• Copy of AV room setup.
• Copy of your presentation introduction printed in a large font on heavy cardstock.
• Monitor extension cables. Although this may not be needed by many presenters, a monitor extension cord is one of my essentials as I present directly from my laptop and often need to move it further away from the projector.
• Labels with my name and contact information on my laptop and all accessories.
• Cough drops or throat drops; avoid cherry flavored, which will give you an odd red mouth. I also travel with a small, portable throat spray such as Singer’s Saving Grace.
• Pepto-Bismol chewable tablets, Imodium AD, and other first-aid remedies to help you recover from a long flight or strange food.
• Eye mask for airplane naps. Also handy for ending unwanted conversations with annoying seatmates.
• Color copies of your passport and driver’s license. Also, upload to the cloud for easy reference.
• A collection of $5, $10, and $20 bills for tipping hotel setup staff, AV team, and other helpful personnel.
• Starbucks Coffee gift cards for handy thank yous.
• A copy of this checklist for easy reference and to add your own items.

Download your own presentation equipment checklist .

All this, and more, should fit neatly in your carry-on bag. Not only have these essentials saved me multiple times, but I have also rescued a number of my fellow presenters as well.

Were these PowerPoint tips helpful? Discover more PowerPoint techniques and shortcuts at  TheSoftwarePro.com/PowerPoint .

© Dawn Bjork, MCT, MOSM, CSP®, The Software Pro® Microsoft Certified Trainer, Productivity Speaker, Certified Speaking Professional

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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How to Prepare for a Presentation, with Examples

February 15, 2021 - Dom Barnard

This guide covers everything you need to know to prepare for your presentation. including what you need to think about beforehand, during and after the presentation.

1. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse (always aloud)

Once you have your presentation worked out, you will need to practice it, but even though you might think it’s the best way to have a flawless presentation, don’t memorise what you’re going to say.

That might sound like incredibly bad advice, but here’s why:

• If you memorise your speech, you’ll get stuck in thinking you can only deliver your ideas in that way, and that stifles your creativity, and the chance for new thoughts and ways to put things that come up as you speak.

Not only that, but every  audience is different . Sometimes they laugh out loud, sometimes they sit and smile, and you never know which type of audience you’ll have until you’re live.

Practice Presentation Skills

Improve your public speaking and presentation skills by practicing them in realistic environments, with automated feedback on performance. Learn More

If you’re going off a memorised presentation, it’s much more difficult to break away from that to go with the flow on the day, and respond naturally to your audience.

• If you forget your speech in the middle of it, you will be thrown, and you’ll have more chance of complete brain freeze, which really will knock your confidence.
• Memorising your presentation gives you a false sense of security, which could leave you high and dry if something goes wrong. If you’ve only got your memorised speech, for example, what will you do if your PowerPoint freezes or your props break, and you can’t do what you were going to do?

Rehearse in front of colleagues, friends, a mirror, in virtual reality – always aloud. Make sure you spend plenty of time practising your presentation, it will make you feel much more relaxed if you know your material.

Courses where you can rehearse with interactive exercises:

• Essential Public Speaking
• How to Present over Video

Video showing how you can prepare for your presentation using virtual reality.  Learn more about virtual reality training .

2. Memorise your opening line

Do, however, memorise your opening line. If you know how you’re going to begin, you’ll get a strong start and that will build your confidence.

Many speakers and stage actors find that the minute they’ve actually delivered their first line, the nerves are gone and they’re well into their stride.

3. Practise your speech from written notes

Writing your presentation out in your own handwriting will help you clarify your ideas and may well bring you new ones.

• How to Write a Speech to Engage your Audience

4. Practise presentation flow

As well as practising for the ideas and what you want to say, practise how you want your presentation to flow. Think of it almost as a symphony, with high points, slow movements and crescendos. If it’s important, think about how you want your audience to feel, what emotions you want them to have, and when.

5. The power of silence

Don’t be afraid to pause and use the power of silence. A good pause can have a huge emotional impact. It allows people to really absorb what you are saying and react, and it’s vital to pause if you’re using humour so that the next part of your presentation doesn’t get lost underneath people’s laughter.

For more on the ‘Power of the Pause’, watch this short from video Brian Tracy:  The Power of the Pause

• 10 Effective Ways to use Pauses in your Speech

6. Have a backup

There’s nothing worse than the projector dying or finding that your laptop won’t communicate with the projector for some reason. If you know you have a backup, even if it’s only a pre-prepared flip chart, you’ll feel better, and you’ll be more confident.

7. Arrive early

Following on from that, arrive at least half an hour early so you aren’t feeling rushed, and so you have time to check your equipment and get your notes laid out ready to go. That gives you time to breathe and relax before you go on, knowing everything is as set as it can be.

8. Use physical props for a demo

Use physical props, if possible, for a demo. This can make you stand out and be more memorable among all the other speakers who only use PowerPoint, and it can add greatly to the impact of your presentation.

Video showing an example of using physical props during a live demo.

9. Structure your presentation

First, find out how much time you have to present, is it 10 minutes, 15, an hour? Prepare enough material for this time and have a couple of extra slides as backup – we tend to speak much quicker when nervous so you might find you finish your presentation too early. At some large conference events, timings may change on the day, be aware of this have a shorter version of your presentation in mind (i.e. know which slides to skip over).

• How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples
• Examples of Corporate Presentation Structures

10. Prepare for questions

Have a few backup slides for questions you think will arise from your presentation. It is sometime a tactic to explain a section briefly in your speech, so that you get a question about it afterwards. If you don’t understand the question, ask for it to be rephrased.

If there are no questions, it is not an indication how good or bad your presentation was. You many have explain your material extremely well, or simply that people are tired at the end of the day and want to go home.

• Guide for Handling Questions after a Presentation

11. Prepare for where you are presenting

If you can, go to the room you are speaking in before the actual event. It gives you an idea of furniture layout, podium height, location, room size, audience size and lighting. You can then visualise the room while practising and avoid the shock of suddenly being faced with a huge room when you expected a tiny one.

Ask the organiser if you need any particular props, for example a table to help with your live demo.

Additional planning to think about before your presentation:

1. Purpose  – what outcome are we trying to achieve? How can results be measured? What will success look like?

2. Topic  – Novelty? Complexity? Technical?

3. People  – Who should attend? What do they already know? How are they going to help?

4. Timing  – When will it happen and how long will the presentation take?

5. Location  – Where will the presentation be held? Do you have access to the correct facilities for the presentation?

6. Papers  – Who is keeping minutes? Do you need to send out an agenda before the presentation? Background information required?

7. Visual aids  – Is a  projector required ? Boards?

8. Style  – Structure or unstructured, discussion style? How assertive should you be? How should the meeting items be organised?

12. Choose the signals to give to your audience

Before the presentation, think about these 5 topics:

• Eye contact
• Facial gestures
• Body language

Decide how you will use each of these to reinforce your message. Use the table below for help.

Additional courses to help you prepare for your presentation:

• Presentation Skills Training Courses

Example from Steve Jobs

Think about these 10 techniques while you are preparing your presentation..

• Planning in Analog.  Tell a story, create stunning visuals and videos to complement video, use demonstrations and other speakers, keep the audience engaged.
• Creating a Twitter-Friendly Description  Single description sentence, condensed his message into 140 characters.
• Introduce the Enemy  Story needs villains or a problem to be solved. Jobs highlighted IBM and useless mobile phones (during iPhone release) as his villains.
• Focusing on Benefits  Keep reinforcing the benefits of your product, create top 10 lists, understand this is what customers care about.
• Sticking to Rule of Three  Classic Literary technique, things are best remembered and reinforced in threes. Read this article on  Literary Techniques  for more detail.
• Sell Dreams, Not Products  Create a vision people believe in, create a vision which will make people’s lives better
• Create Visual Slides  Use as few words as possible and use colourful graphics on the slide to highlight points.
• Make Numbers Meaningful  Compare large numbers to things people understand.
• Use Plain English  Use easy to say and easy to remember words, keep it simple.
• Large Reveals  Due to Apple secrecy, Jobs was able to deliver unexpected products to the world at his product launches.

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10 things you should have in your presentation kit

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A good presenter has a mental bag of tricks to rely on. In fact, the presenter is the presentation. Add a powerful visual element, such as a PowerPoint show, and you can’t go wrong… until something goes wrong. A presentation kit with most of the following items could help you quickly recover from or even avert a disaster. ( Note : This article about the 10 things you should have in your presentation kit is available as a free PDF download .)

1: The presentation accessories

Many things you’ll want in your kit are specific to the presentation at hand. The following items belong on your checklist, even though the tangibles will change with each presentation:

• Handouts for the audience
• A printout of your presentation and notes using large fonts (for you)
• A backup copy of the presentation on CD or thumb drive
• A map of the conference room and your layout design
• Evaluation forms
• Contact information for the site’s technical support personnel

2: The equipment

Your laptop is an obvious choice, but a few other vital pieces of equipment might be easy to forget. Be sure to pack the following:

• Projector and replacement bulb
• Mouse and mouse pad
• Remote (the ones with the built-in laser pointer are nice)
• Headphones (if you use them)
• Appropriate cables, including a dual mini plug if you use a boom box for sound (#9)
• Video adapter (many projectors want VGA) if your laptop doesn’t output VGA

Most conference facilities will supply some or all of these items, but working with your own equipment has its advantages: You’ll be more at ease with your own equipment and you’ll be able to quickly troubleshoot most problems. Also consider the addition of a portable screen. A blank wall works in a pinch, but it isn’t the best way to present yourself, your product, or your company.

3: Electrical access

One extension cord is probably enough if you also have a power strip (carry at least one). The cord’s length is up to you, but the longer the better. Just be prepared to secure it (#5) and stow the coiled up excess in a safe spot, perhaps under your table or on a podium shelf. Also carry a plug adaptor; older buildings still have two-prong outlets.

4: A battery of batteries

Carry a second battery for your laptop, even if yours is new and promises a long life. (They all do.) The day you don’t have the extra is the day your battery will die and an electrical source won’t be handy. Better yet, invest in a universal power supply; they’re cheap and getting smaller and lighter.

You’ll also want an extra set or two of batteries for every battery-powered device you use. Take inventory and have plenty of extras on hand. If your client or conference room staff agrees to supply these devices, ask if they also supply fresh batteries.

5: Duct tape

You can purchase duct tape in travel-size rolls. At the very least, you should secure electrical cords in high-traffic areas. Don’t forget your own small space either. Tripping on a cord in the middle of a presentation is embarrassing and could displace equipment or even bring the presentation to a halt while you replug, reboot, and regroup.

6: Rubber doorstop

Always stash a rubber doorstop in your kit. Projectors are notorious for being uneven and wobbly. A doorstop will quickly put things right and steady.

7: Portable timer

Most monitors display the time, but it’s a small indicator and not easy to see from a distance. If it’s critical that you stay on track to accommodate time restrictions, use a portable timer — something with a large display but that’s otherwise discreet.

8: Security cable

Consider using a security cable to protect your laptop if you know you’ll be in and out of the conference room. A cable won’t stop a truly determined thief, but it’ll slow one down.

9: Sound equipment

Sound files will usually feed directly into the room’s sound system. If not, consider external speakers. The larger the room the more powerful the speakers should be. Nowadays, you can purchase small speakers with a lot of power without spending a lot of money. A boom box with auxiliary input might also do the trick. You’ll need a cable with mini plugs on both ends; plug one end into the headphone jack on your laptop and the other into the auxiliary jack in the boom box. (Not all boom boxes have an auxiliary jack.)

10: Bottled water

This last one sounds a bit contrived: You can get water anywhere, can’t you? Usually, you can. But if you can’t, you’ll be miserable. Put a couple of sealed bottles in your kit. If you don’t have access to water, you’ll have a backup, and any headache will be the result of thunderous applause and not dehydration!

More presentation survival tips

• 10+ keyboard shortcuts to help you deliver a smooth PowerPoint presentation
• Preflight checklist for your PowerPoint presentations
• Five PowerPoint add-ons that go beyond ordinary slide shows
• 10+ things to check when your presentation runs into technical problems

Other essential items?

What else do you make sure to take with you when you’re delivering a presentation? Share your recommendations with fellow TechRepublic members.

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Blog Data Visualization 18 Presentation Design Tips For Success

18 Presentation Design Tips For Success

Written by: Midori Nediger May 15, 2023

Bad presentations. We’ve all had to sit through them.  Heck, we’ve probably all given one or two. I know I have.

You know the type: twice as long as they need to be, slides chock-full of text, no visuals in sight. 

How can you ensure you don’t fall victim to these presentation faux-pas when designing your next presentation for your team, class, or clients?

In this blog, I’ll walk you through tips on how to design an impactful presentation along with presentation templates that can help you deliver it with style to leave a lasting impression.

Tips for designing and delivering an impactful presentation

What makes a presentation memorable?

It usually comes down to three things:

• The main idea.
• The presenter.
• The visuals.

All three elements work together to create a successful presentation. Just like how different presentation styles serve different purposes, having a good presentation idea will give the audience a purpose for listening.

Here are some top tips to consider to help you design and deliver an impactful presentation:

• Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design
• Identify one core message to center your presentation design around
• Eliminate any information that doesn’t immediately support the core message
• Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused
• Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying
• Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide
• Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide
• Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged
• Use text size, weight, and color for emphasis
• Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction
• Split a group presentation by topic
• Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest
• Use presentation templates to help you get started
• Include examples of inspiring people
• Dedicate slides to poignant questions
• Find quotes that will inspire your audience
• Emphasize key points with text and images
• Label your slides to prompt your memory

1. Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design

According to David Paradi’s annual presentation survey , the 3 things that annoy audiences most about presentations are:

• Speakers reading their slides
• Slides that include full sentences of text
• Text that is too small to read

The common thread that ties all of these presentation annoyances is text. Audiences are very picky about the text found in presentation slide decks .

In my experiences speaking at conferences and in webinars over the past few years, audiences respond much more positively to presentations that use visuals in place of text.

Audiences are more engaged, ask more questions, and find my talks more memorable when I include lots of visual examples in my slide decks. 

I’m not the only one who has found this. We recently surveyed nearly 400 conference speakers about their presentation designs and found that 84.3% create presentations that are highly visual.

A great example of a high visual presentation is the iconic AirBnB pitch deck design , which includes no more than 40 words per slide. Instead of repeating the speaker’s script on the slides, it makes an impact with keywords, large numbers, and icons:

Learn how to customize this presentation template:

To help you take your presentations to the next level, I’d like to share my process for creating a visually-focused presentation like the one above. I’ll give you my top presentation design tips that I’ve learned over years of presenting:

• Class presentations
• Online courses

You can then apply this process to our professional presentation templates  or pitch decks , creating unique presentation decks with ease! Our user-friendly editor tools make customizing these templates a breeze.

To leave a lasting impression on your audience, consider transforming your slides into an interactive presentation. Here are 15 interactive presentation ideas to enhance interactivity and engagement.

We’ll cover the most important steps for summarizing lengthy text into a presentation-friendly format. Then we’ll touch on some presentation design tips to help you get visual with your slide decks. Read on for the best creative presentation ideas .

2. Identify one core message to center your presentation design around

We know from David Paradi’s survey that audiences are easily overwhelmed with lots of text and data, especially when presentations are long.

(You when you see a presentation with lots of text and data and it’s long)

So unlike in a white paper , report , or essay , you can’t expect to tackle many complex ideas within a single presentation.

That would be a recipe for disaster.

Instead, identify a single central message that you would like to communicate to your audience. Then build your presentation around that core message.

By identifying that core message, you can ensure that everything you include in your presentation supports the goal of the presentation .

As seen below, a great presentation tells you exactly what you’re going to learn (the core message), then gets right to the facts (the supporting information).

To ensure you create an asset that’s clear, concise, impactful, and easy to follow, design your presentation around a single core message.

3. Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused

Think of your outline as a roadmap for your presentation. The outline will shape the  presentation structure  and guide you through your content. Creating a strong presentation outline straight away helps make sure that you’re hitting all of the key points you need to cover to convey a persuasive presentation .

Take this presentation outline example:

• Introduction and hellos
• Vision and value proposition
• Financial profit
• Your investment
• Thanks and questions

These are all things that we know we need to talk about within the presentation.

Creating a presentation outline makes it much easier to know what to say when it comes to creating the actual presentation slides.

You could even include your presentation outline as a separate slide so that your audience knows what to expect:

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

4. Eliminate any information that doesn’t support the core message

Next, use that core message to identify everything that doesn’t belong in the presentation.

Aim to eliminate everything that isn’t immediately relevant to the topic at hand, and anything remotely redundant. Cut any information that isn’t absolutely essential to understanding the core message.

By cutting these extra details, you can transform forgettable text-heavy slides:

Into memorable slides with minimal text:

Here’s a quick checklist to help you cut out any extra detail:

Get rid of:

• Detailed descriptions
• Background information
• Redundant statements
• Explanations of common knowledge
• Persuasive facts and figures
• Illustrative examples
• Impactful quotes

This step may seem obvious, but when you’re presenting on a topic that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to get carried away with extraneous detail. Use the recommendations above to keep your text in check.

Clarity is key, especially if you’re presenting virtually rather than in-person. However, Lisa Schneider (Chief Growth Officer at Merriam-Webster) has had plenty of experience making that adjustment. She recently shared her tips for adapting in-person presentations into virtual presentations on Venngage that you can check out. 

Watch: How to design a presentation [10 ESSENTIAL TIPS]

5. Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying

According to presentation guru  Nancy Duarte , your audience should be able to discern the meaning of your slides in 6 seconds or less.

Since your audience will tend to read every word you place on each slide, you must keep your text to an absolute minimum. The text on your slides should provide support for what you’re saying without being distracting.

Never write out, word for word, what you’re going to be saying out loud. If you’re relying on text to remember certain points, resist the urge to cram them into your slides. Instead, use a tool like Venngage’s speaker notes to highlight particular talking points. These can be imported into PowerPoint — along with the rest of your presentation — and will only be viewable to you, not your audience.

For the actual slides, text should only be used to reinforce what you’re saying. Like in the presentation design below, paraphrase long paragraphs into short bulleted lists or statements by eliminating adjectives and articles (like “the” and “a”).

Pull out quotes and important numbers, and make them a focus of each slide.

6. Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide

As I mentioned above, audiences struggle when too much information is presented on a single slide.

To make sure you don’t overwhelm your audiences with too much information, spread out your content to cover one major takeaway per slide.

By limiting each slide to a single simple statement, you focus your audience’s attention on the topic at hand.

My favorite way to do this is to pick out the core message of whatever I’m talking about and express it in a few keywords, as seen in this presentation slide below.

This helps ensure that the visuals remain the focus of the slide.

Using the text in this way, to simply state a single fact per slide, is a sure-fire way to make an impact in your presentation.

Alternatively, pull out a significant statistic that you want to stick in your audience’s minds and make it a visual focus of the slide, as seen in this popular presentation by Officevibe .

This might mean you end up with a slide deck with a ton of slides. But that’s totally ok!

I’ve talked to many professionals who are pressured by their management teams to create presentations with a specific number of slides (usually as few as 10 or 15 slides for a 30-minute presentation).

If you ask me, this approach is completely flawed. In my mind, the longer I spend sitting on a single slide, the more likely I am to lose the interest of my audience.

How many slides should I use for a 10 minute presentation?

A good rule of thumb is to have at least as many slides as minutes in your presentation. So for a 10 minute presentation you should have at least 10 slides .

Use as many slides as you need, as long as you are presenting a single message on each slide, (as seen in the lengthy presentation template below). This is especially important if you’re presenting your business, or delivering a product presentation. You want to wow your audience, not bore them.

7. Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide

As important as having one major takeaway per slide is having visuals that highlight the major takeaway on each slide.

Unique visuals will help make your message memorable.

Visuals are a great way to eliminate extra text, too.

You can add visuals by creating a timeline infographic to group and integrate information into visual frameworks like this:

Or create a flowchart  and funnels:

Or by representing simple concepts with icons, as seen in the modern presentation design below. Using the same color for every icon helps create a polished look.

Using visuals in this way is perfect for when you have to convey messages quickly to audiences that you aren’t familiar with – such as at conferences. This would also make the ideal interview presentation template.

You can alternatively use icons in different colors, like in the presentation templates below. Just make sure the colors are complimentary, and style is consistent throughout the presentation (i.e. don’t use sleek, modern icons on one slide and whimsically illustrated icons on another). In this example, presentation clipart style icons have been used.

Any time you have important stats or trends you want your audience to remember, consider using a chart or data visualization to drive your point home. Confident public speaking combined with strong visualizations can really make an impact, encouraging your audience to act upon your message.

One of my personal favorite presentations (created by a professional designer) takes this “key message plus a visual” concept to the extreme, resulting in a slide deck that’s downright irresistible.

When applying this concept, don’t fall into the trap of using bad stock photos . Irrelevant or poorly chosen visuals can hurt you as much as they help you.

Below is an example of how to use stock photos effectively. They are more thematic than literal and are customized with fun, bright icons that set a playful tone.

The content and visual design of a presentation should be seamless.

It should never seem like your text and visuals are plopped onto a template. The format and design of the slides should contribute to and support the audience’s understanding of the content.

8. Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged

It’s easy for audiences to get lost during long presentations, especially if you have lots of slides. And audiences zone out when they get lost.

To help reorient your audience every once in a while, you can use something I like to call scaffolding slides. Scaffolding slides appear throughout a presentation to denote the start and end of major sections.

The core scaffolding slide is the agenda slide, which should appear right after the introduction or title slide. It outlines the major sections of the presentation.

At the beginning of each section, you should show that agenda again but highlight the relevant section title, as seen below.

This gives audiences the sense that you’re making progress through the presentation and helps keep them anchored and engaged.

Alternatively, you can achieve a similar effect by numbering your sections and showing that number on every slide. Or use a progress bar at the bottom of each slide to indicate how far along you are in your presentation. Just make sure it doesn’t distract from the main content of the slides.

You can imagine using this “progress bar” idea for a research presentation, or any presentation where you have a lot of information to get through.

Leila Janah, founder of Sama Group, is great at this. Her  Innovation and Inspire  talk about Sama Group is an example of a presentation that is well organized and very easy to follow.

Her presentation follows a logical, steady stream of ideas. She seems comfortable talking in front of a crowd but doesn’t make any attempts to engage directly with them.

9. Use text size, weight and color for emphasis

Every slide should have a visual focal point. Something that immediately draws the eye at first glance.

That focal point should be whatever is most important on that slide, be it an important number, a keyword, or simply the slide title.

We can create visual focal points by varying the size, weight, and color of each element on the slide. Larger, brighter, bolder elements will command our audience’s attention, while smaller, lighter elements will tend to fade into the background.

As seen in the presentation template above, this technique can be especially useful for drawing attention to important words within a long passage of text. Consider using this technique whenever you have more than 5 words on a slide.

And if you really want your audience to pay attention, pick a high-contrast color scheme like the one below.

When picking fonts for your presentation, keep this technique in mind. Pick a font that has a noticeable difference between the “bold” font face and the “regular” font face. Source Sans Pro, Times New Roman, Montserrat, Arvo, Roboto, and Open Sans are all good options.

The last thing to remember when using size, weight, and color to create emphasis on a slide: don’t try to emphasize too many things on one slide.

If everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.

10. Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction

Audiences are quick to pick out, and focus on, any inconsistencies in your presentation design. As a result, messy, inconsistent slide decks lead to distracted, disengaged audiences.

Design choices (fonts and colors, especially), must be applied consistently across a slide deck. The last thing you want is for your audience to pay attention to your design choices before your content.

To keep your design in check, it can be helpful to create a color palette and type hierarchy before you start creating your deck, and outline it in a basic style guide like this one:

I know it can sometimes be tempting to fiddle around with text sizes to fit longer bits of text on a slide, but don’t do it! If the text is too long to fit on a slide, it should be split up onto multiple slides anyway.

And remember, a consistent design isn’t necessarily a boring one. This social media marketing presentation applies a bright color scheme to a variety of 3-column and 2-column layouts, remaining consistent but still using creative presentation ideas.

11. Split a group presentation by topic

When giving a group presentation it’s always difficult to find the right balance of who should present which part.

Splitting a group presentation by topic is the most natural way to give everybody the chance to attempt without it seeming disjointed.

When presenting this slide deck to investors or potential clients, the team can easily take one topic each. One person can discuss the business model slide, and somebody else can talk about the marketing strategy.

Top tips for group presentations:

• Split your group presentation by topic
• Introduce the next speaker at the end of your slide
• Become an ‘expert’ in the slide that you are presenting
• Rehearse your presentation in advance so that everybody knows their cue to start speaking

12. Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest

Page after page of the same layout can become repetitive and boring. Mix up the layout of your slides to keep your audience interested.

In this example, the designer has used a variety of combinations of images, text, and icons to create an interesting and varied style.

There are hundreds of different combinations of presentation layers and presentation styles that you can use to help create an engaging presentation . This style is great for when you need to present a variety of information and statistics, like if you were presenting to financial investors, or you were giving a research presentation.

Using a variety of layouts to keep an audience engaged is something that Elon Musk is an expert in. An engaged audience is a hyped audience. Check out this Elon Musk presentation revealing a new model Tesla for a masterclass on how to vary your slides in an interesting way:

13. Use presentation templates to help you get started

It can be overwhelming to build your own presentation from scratch. Fortunately, my team at Venngage has created hundreds of professional presentation templates , which make it easy to implement these design principles and ensure your audience isn’t deterred by text-heavy slides.

Using a presentation template is a quick and easy way to create professional-looking presentation skills, without any design experience. You can edit all of the text easily, as well as change the colors, fonts, or photos. Plus you can download your work in a PowerPoint or PDF Presentation format.

After your presentation, consider summarizing your presentation in an engaging manner to r each a wider audience through a LinkedIn presentation .

14. Include examples of inspiring people

People like having role models to look up to. If you want to motivate your audience, include examples of people who demonstrate the traits or achievements, or who have found success through the topic you are presenting.

15. Dedicate slides to poignant questions

While you might be tempted to fill your slides with decorative visuals and splashes of color, consider that sometimes simplicity is more effective than complexity. The simpler your slide is, the more you can focus on one thought-provoking idea.

16. Find quotes that will inspire your audience

A really good quote can stick in a person’s mind for weeks after your presentation. Ending your presentation with a quote can be a nice way to either begin or finish your presentation.

A great example of this is Tim Ferriss’ TED talk:

Check out the full talk below.

17. Emphasize key points with text and images

When you pair concise text with an image, you’re presenting the information to your audience in two simultaneous ways. This can make the information easier to remember, and more memorable.

Use your images and text on slides to reinforce what you’re saying out loud.

Doing this achieves two things:

• When the audience hears a point and simultaneously read it on the screen, it’s easier to retain.
• Audience members can photograph/ screencap the slide and share it with their networks.

Don’t believe us? See this tip in action with a presentation our Chief Marketing Officer Nadya gave recently at Unbounce’s CTA Conference . The combination of text and images on screen leads to a memorable presentation.

18. Label your slides to prompt your memory

Often, presenters will write out an entire script for their presentation and read it off a teleprompter. The problem is, that can often make your presentation seem  too  rehearsed and wooden.

But even if you don’t write a complete script, you can still put key phrases on your slides to prompt jog your memory. The one thing you have to be wary of is looking back at your slides too much.

A good presentation gets things moving! Check out the top qualities of awesome presentations and learn all about how to make a good presentation to help you nail that captivating delivery.

Audiences don’t want to watch presentations with slide decks jam-packed with text. Too much text only hurts audience engagement and understanding. Your presentation design is as important as your presentation style. 

By summarizing our text and creating slides with a visual focus, we can give more exciting, memorable and impactful presentations.

Give it a try with one of our popular presentation templates:

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10 Presentation Aids To Enhance Your Presentation

Table of contents.

You’re putting together a presentation and you’ve considered using presentation aids but don’t know where to begin?

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran presenter or new to the industry and looking on how to become a better presenter , we’ve got you covered with tips and tricks and everything you need to know about presentation aids.

We’ve put together this comprehensive list of 10 presentation aids you should incorporate in your next presentation, seminar, public speaking event or any other audience engagement to ensure your key messages are retained and you remain at the forefront of people’s minds.

Whether it’s visual aids, creative design or new ideas you wouldn’t necessarily think of to use in your line of work, we’ve broken down the bias to help give you a fresh mind on some presentation aids you should use.

What Are Presentation Aids?

A presentation aid is a complementary tool you can and should use in order to have your presentation stand out and enhance it.

They are sensory aids to help elevate your speech, performance or powerpoint presentation.

Where words fail, presentation aids come in to support.

A presentation aid can be used alone or in combination with other presentation aids. More often than not, it is encouraged to combine a couple of presentation aids to target the different senses – hearing, vision, smell, & taste.

The more senses you target, the more likely your presentation will be remembered.

For example, audio and video clips might be sprinkled throughout your presentation slide deck. Although these are all different presentation aids, using them in a combined way will enhance the overall presentation and increase audience engagement.

Presentation aids work because they tap into the presentation psychology ; the underpinning of our minds and how we perceive and remember great presentations. Whether someone is an auditory or visual learner, using additional presentation aids that target these senses will help take your presentation from average to phenomenal.

Why Do Presenters Use Presentation Aids?

Every presenter has their reasoning for selecting the presentation aids they use.

With the advancement of technology, presenters have been using more and more visual aids in their presentations in order to enhance the overall audience experience and create a great visual presentation .

Whether your presentation is in-person or instead a virtual presentation , the objective is always the same. Get your key messaging across with minimal miscommunication. Getting your key message across to your audience members can be done with the help of effective presentation aids.

Both informal and formal presentations incorporate some degree of presentation aids.

Presentation aids provide many benefits to a presenter. A presenter may use a combination of both visual aids and auditory aids to increase audience engagement and to help deliver their message.

Let’s break it down as to why a presenter would use visual aids and why a presenter would use auditory aids.

At a high level, it first depends on the audience. You should always begin crafting your presentation by understanding who your audience is and what you want them to take away from your presentation. This will help define the aids you select.

If your audience has a shorter attention span such as young adults or children, consider using more visual aids like videos or imagery. You may do this by adding videos into your PowerPoint presentation or adding images.

Perhaps you want your audience to remember things or act on something after the presentation has already concluded. A brochure or presentation handout might be a great aid to use as it leaves a physical, tangible item with the audience.

Trying to get funding or convert audience members into sales? A demonstration or live performance of the product can help people envision themselves using the product.

Presentation aids are used to help deliver your message and influence people. Understand your audience and the message you want them to take away and you’re halfway done deciding which complementary presentation tool you should use.

10 Types Of Presentation Aids

Before we begin going through the list of presentation aids you should use, we want to first preface with a word of caution.

Don’t overdo it.

As tempting as it may be to incorporate all 10 presentation types of presentation aids into your allotted time, don’t. You may be doing yourself a disservice.

Too many presentation aids may begin to distract your audience rather than support your messaging.

If you give your audience a handout, have them glance at an image with some written text all on one slide all the while you’re speaking over everything, there is too much going on. Your audience won’t know where to place their attention.

Also, some presentation aids don’t work in the environment in which the presentation is being held.

For example, if your presentation is virtual with absolutely no in-person audience members, a demonstration or live performance might not make practical sense.

Use these tools sparingly.

With that being said, let’s dive into the top 10 types of presentation aids we believe you should incorporate into your next presentation based on presentation feedback we’ve received over the years as presentation designers.

1 – PowerPoint Slides, Google Slides & Prezi Slides

One of the very first presentation aids we’ve all been taught to use and have more than likely used at least once in a school or work environment is a presentation slide deck.

Almost all presentations nowadays have a slide deck accompanying the presentation since it has been engrained in our minds as an essential for every presentation.

Whether it’s a motivational speech, client pitch presentation , RFP presentation , virtual presentation or an investment pitch presentation , they typically always use a slide deck.

Slide decks are great because they’re often easily customizable and there are plenty of well designed templates you can find online.

Slide decks such as PowerPoint Slides, Google Slides and Prezi Slides also allow a presenter to incorporate additional presentation aids such as videos, images or graphs seamlessly. Rather than having to jump back and forth between tabs, monitors or computers, a presentation slide deck consolidates all the information into one place.

When presenting to a large audience, a slide deck also allows audience members who are seated at the back of the venue to still take away the key points you’re trying to highlight. When highlighting key points, they will often be mentioned in the slide deck which is often displayed using a large projector and screen or video monitor.

Lastly, a presentation slide deck is a great tool to use as a reference.

The key details should be illustrated in the slide deck. Once the presentation is over, the slide deck can be a stand alone takeaway the audience or client can reference at a later date once the presentation has long past.

2 – Visual Aids, Audio And Video Clips

At a minimum, you should have at least one of the following presentation aids – imagery, audio or video.

Imagery can be more than just a photo. Imagery encompasses your slide deck, the color theory you use such as brand colors, how you embellish quotes and more.

For example, rather than sticking a text block on your slide deck with a quote, try enhancing the quote with the some visual appeal. You may consider adding a photo of the person who said the quote, stylizing the font with script writing so it seems more humanized and lastly using colors to highlight key words you want to bring to the audience’s attention.

Audio is another great tool to use, especially if you plan on incorporating motion graphics in your presentation. It also adds a layer of depth.

Since the audience will likely be hearing you speak for a majority of the presentation, having a pre-recorded narration over motion graphics will help create a “unique moment” in your presentation – almost like a bookmark. This will help your audience segment your presentation and retain information better.

Finally, videos have continued to grow in popularity as it is a combination of both visual aids and auditory aids.

Your video can be a live action video with real actors or it can be a stop motion animation. Whatever video style you decide, a video clip will help get your message across and enhance audience memory.

By combining all three aids, you’re targeting a combination of both visual and auditory senses. This combination will help your presentation stick out as human learning occurs visually and through auditory.

3 – Sizzle Reels

Although similar to videos, sizzle reels add a bit of flair traditional videos often lack.

Sentiment wise, videos can be positive, neutral or even negative while a sizzle reel’s sentiment is usually always positive.

Sizzle reels are very promotional in the sense that they are created with an intended purpose to have the audience act or feel in a certain way.

Unlike a video which may be used to support an argument or provide raw, unfiltered visual dialogue, a sizzle reel is typically created with a specific purpose for persuasion or selling.

Oftentimes, a sizzle reel is used to demonstrate or highlight a specific idea, product or sample of work usually presented with positive connotation. The presenter is trying to get the audience to be on the same page as them.

Like a video, a sizzle reel can be live action or animated – it is the intention of the video which makes it a sizzle reel or not.

4 – Motion Graphics

Keep your audience’s eyes stimulated by incorporating motion graphics into your presentation.

Motion graphics use the illusion of motion or rotation to make something which is typically stationary to appear as though it’s moving.

Motion graphics are great when they are used effectively. Too much motion graphics or improperly used motion graphics takes away your presentation’s credibility as it may begin to appear too animated and comical.

Depending on your presentation niche, motion graphics can really help enhance your presentation.

If your presentation primarily deals with lots of text, consider using motion graphics to help liven things up.

PresGeek Portfolio - Flowmill Explainer Video from Presentation Geeks on Vimeo .

You may be thinking to yourself, “Well, why not just use video?”. To that we say video isn’t for every industry. Although video may seem like the best option, it can often hurt your presentation more than it benefits it.

Consider a historical speech, one with a powerful message. Would you rather just watch a video of the person speaking, or perhaps a carefully curated kinetic typography motion graphic?

In this instance, although a video is still acceptable, you would be better off with motion graphics.

Motion graphics aren’t to be confused with animation. The difference between motion graphics and animation is motion graphics convert a typically stationary object into a moving one. Motion graphics don’t follow a typical storytelling narrative.

Animation on the other hand takes the audience on an emotional journey through storytelling which is an additional presentation aid we will discuss.

5 – 3D Modeling & Animation

If motion graphics aren’t enough, try using 3D Modeling and animation to bring your ideas to life and help tell a story!

3D Modeling and animation help bring hard to conceptualize ideas into a more tangible reality.

For example, if you’re presenting a prototype of a car, home or the latest piece of tech, spending money into developing a fully functional or full-scale product may not be feasible – especially if you’re merely pitching the idea to get funding in the first place.

3D modeling allows your audience to see how the product will look and perform if it were real.

Animation helps connect your messaging to your audience through the art of storytelling. Animation allows you to tell stories far beyond the scope of what is in our reality and can really help emphasize your brand’s essence.

For example, Red Bull did a great job with their advertising using the art of animation. Red Bull’s slogan of “Red Bull gives you wings” is personified through animation as their animated characters are given wings after drinking their product. They’re also put in high-intensity situations. Although often comical, animation helped bring the brand essence to life.

This could still be done with live-action actors and CGI, but the cost is far more than animation.

Animation is a cost-effective storytelling tool to bring even the most extremes of situations into a digestible reality.

6 – Maps

Our world has shifted to become a global village.

It is almost impossible to go about your day without hearing a piece of international news.

Whether it’s news, politics, culture or business, we are connected to different nations around the world. As you progress in your life, you’ll soon encounter yourself presenting to people around the world whether virtually or in-person.

If you are presenting to people around the world whether it be for politics, culture or business, adding a map is another great presentation aid to help visualize the interconnectedness between each other.

A map can be used to highlight geographical hotspots, geographical trends and more.

Here are some examples we’ve put together of when you would use a map.

Planning to expand your business? Why not include a map pinpointing all your existing locations relative to your new expansion.

Planning to show how diseases spread throughout the world and relative hotspots of infections? Consider adding a map with varying degrees of color to highlight infection densities.

Maps don’t need to be international either depicting every country – they can be used for small businesses showcasing a localized region.

Lastly, maps help put things into perspective. Tying back to presentation psychology, people are more likely to express emotions or feel connected to something the closer they are to it, physically. By using a map, you can put your message into perspective for your audience.

7 – Infographic Charts & Graphs

Rather than simply putting a few numbers up on a slide deck and calling it a day, try inputting these numbers in a chart or graph.

You have to consider your audience and not everyone learns or absorbs information by simply reading. They need to visualize comparisons and differences. Charts and graphs are one great way to do this.

Let’s take a look at the example above. It could’ve been easy enough to show there was a 280% increase in energy saving, but we were missing a big chunk of the story which was expenses were declining. You also don’t see the scale of energy savings relative to expenses with just words.

Instead, opting to put numbers into a visual format, the audience members can easily understand the advantages and compare it to the change over time.

Remember – try and avoid very complex graphs. When you start to input complex graphs into a presentation, you’ll begin to lose the audience as they will be too busy focusing on understanding the graph.

If possible, leave the audience with resources they can look back to after the presentation such as a brochure or handout where they can take as much time as they need to digest more robust graphs.

8 – Infographic Diagrams

Unlike charts and graphs which primarily focus on data and numbers, a diagram focuses on the appearance, structure, flow or workings of something.

A diagram is a great presentation aid to use as it helps break complex ideas into step-by-step sections the audience can follow along with.

Not only does it provide clear steps, but it can help speak to key points of a product or timeline.

For example, this diagram goes over the structure of an EV charger.

Rather than just showing an image of the charger with bullet points off to the side, a diagram provides clear connection lines from the point being made and where it’s located on the final product.

Diagrams also help illustrate flow. Whether it be the customer journey, your product development or your company’s growth, diagrams are great ways to show consistent progression in a logical, step-by-step pattern.

9 – Brochures & Presentation Handouts

One way to really connect with your audience and almost guarantee they’ll leave the presentation remembering something is with a brochure or handout.

A brochure or handout is a physical printout which could be a combination of images, written text and diagrams.

Oftentimes, brochures and handouts are used to elaborate on information already being presented but in further detail. Depending on the scope of your presentation, you may want to opt to have a brochure or presentation handout.

If the nature of your presentation requires thorough research, data and insight such as business or healthcare, a handout can allow your audience to review the information at their own pace at a later time.

A brochure or handout also allows audience members to jot down information.

This is important if you’re trying to encourage audience participation.

By enabling the audience to jot down their own notes and have time near the end of your presentation for them to collaborate and speak to points throughout your presentation, you’ll be engaging in a discourse with your audience.

10 – Demonstration or Live Performance

The last presentation aid we recommend is also one of the hardest to pull off – a demonstration or live performance.

A demonstration or live performance is when you’re presenting the truth and validity of something. For example, you might do a demonstration of how your product performs. Or, instead of playing music, you could have a live performance.

One of the most well-known presenters to do demonstrations or live performances is Steve Jobs. At the unveiling of any new Apple product, Steve Jobs was there on stage with the product in-hand ready to demonstrate its state of the art capabilities.

Demonstration or live performances are one of the best presentation aids to use as they often go hand in hand with public relations. Whether the performance goes well or bad, you can almost be sure there will be press coverage of it afterwards.

A great example of a demonstration which went south was Tesla’s Cybertruck and their armored windows . What was supposed to be strong, armored glass came to a shattering end when a Tesla employee threw a steel ball at not just one window, but both the front and rear window leaving both of them shattered. The hope was for the steel ball to ricochet off the window to demonstrate their durability, but instead they failed.

Although this might seem like a failure, the coverage it got after the presentation was a complete publicity success.

Advantages & Disadvantages Of Using Presentation Aids

As with everything in life, there are always two sides of the coin – positives and negatives.

The same goes for using presentation aids.

Rather than experimenting yourself and learning the hard way of advantages and disadvantages, we’ve put together this short yet informative section to help guide your decision making.

Presentation aids are great complementary tools you should use in every presentation. They allow you to connect with audience members in new and unique ways.

One of the advantages of using presentation aids is to appeal to different audiences.

Everyone has a different attention span. Everyone also learns and absorbs information differently. By disseminating your key message using new and unique methods, you’re able to appeal to a larger audience.

Secondly, presentation aids allow the lifespan of your presentation to be extended.

Imagine your presentation was only you speaking. The moment you’re done talking, the presentation is over and it begins to fade from people’s memory. With the help of presentation aids, you avoid this outcome and extend how long your presentation is remembered for.

For example, if you used a slide deck to accompany your presentation, the slide deck can be made available to audience members after the presentation to reference.

Lastly, presentation aids help reduce the attention that’s put on you and allow you to take breaks while presenting.

If you’re a beginner, it can be intimidating to be the center of attention. With the added use of presentation aids, you can break up your presentation to allow the aids to do the work. If you have a video, once you begin to play it, the audience’s attention will be redirected to the video. This will allow you time to pause, recollect your thoughts, take a drink of water if needed and continue on with the presentation afterwards.

Disadvantages

Presentation aids are not the miracle solution.

If you don’t have a solid foundation on which your presentation is built upon, it doesn’t matter how many or which presentation aids you decide to use. You need to ensure your presentation is properly structured from the beginning.

Presenters can also get carried away with using too many presentation aids.

When you don’t take the time to reflect on the presentation aids you are using and just begin spitballing every presentation aid into your presentation just because you know of these tools, doesn’t mean you should. They begin to become a distraction and takeaway from the messaging you’re trying to get across.

Conclusion – Should You Use Presentation Aids?

The short and sweet answer is yes. You should absolutely use presentation aids.

Unless your plan is to only be a storyteller letting the audience create an image in their mind, then you should consider using at least one of the presentation aid types mentioned above.

Not only will presentation aids help your audience learn and retain the information better, it may actually help you!

Presentation aids require you to contribute more work to the final product. It requires you to carefully think of the story you’re trying to convey to your audience and which best method to do so. By taking this extra bit of time to sit down and reflect on your presentation and actually produce well-crafted aids, you’ll be setting yourself up as a thought-leader on the topic.

If You’re looking for a Pitch Deck Design Agency , we can help. Just click the button below to start your journey!

Author:  Ryan

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Effective Presentation Handouts: A Step-by-Step Guide

Discover how to create handouts that captivate and educate your audience. From layout to content, learn easy-to-follow techniques to make your presentation handouts stand out. Start now and make a lasting impression

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

• Nostrum non voluptas alias sit ut corporis perspiciatis nihil molestiae. Vitae quidem aut aut quia quia porro explicabo. Similique occaecati sit quo. Enim enim dolor ut. Et error alias nam fuga voluptas inventore placeat et. Eligendi similique officia provident magni aut quasi soluta qui.
• Deleniti totam eius similique repellendus. 
• Deleniti totam eius similique repellendus. Doloremque sunt nihil et. Tenetur delectus velit ut. Pariatur velit ipsa.

3 Static and dynamic content editing

4 static and dynamic content editing.

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

5 Static and dynamic content editing

6 static and dynamic content editing.

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any pa ge and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

"Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system."

Presentation handouts can play a significant role in the process of effective presentation delivery if you know how to use them to your benefit. These supplementary means can back up your main message and make sure that your presentation creates a lasting impression.

Many people think that handouts for a presentation are something they used to work on while in college. However, these additional materials, if they are well-thought-out and relevant, can assist business professionals, educators, and students equally well.

Today, we'd like to discuss the main purpose of presentation handouts. We'll show you how to plan and design effective handout material. Moreover, we will also share a few handy tips and useful tools to amplify the effect of your supplementary means.  

Does that sound like a plan?

Understanding Presentation Handouts

Jerry Weissman , the author of 'Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story," compares the notion of a presentation handout to a bridge between your presentation and the long-term memory of your audience. We want to simplify the definition a little. Presentation handouts are additional materials that you share with the audience to support the central message of your presentation and improve the level of comprehension.

If you put a handout and a presentation face to face, the first one will remain the static source of additional information that the viewer can refer to at any time. At the same time, presentations are a dynamic source of information, and a viewer does not have any control over its pace.

Usually, a presentation contains multiple vital aspects for the audience to focus on and digest. The main aim of handouts for presentations is to enhance viewer engagement and ensure a lasting impact even when the presentation is over. You can refer to the handouts at any time during the presentation or after it, so the materials improve retention and help to recall specific essential details.

The handouts mustn't replicate the presentation. They should complement it.

Planning Your Handouts

A great example of a handout for a presentation is a well-planned one. It means that you shouldn't treat your handouts as a last-minute task.

Key information

As you brood upon the data to include, you can start with additional statistics, relevant details, and facts that support and strengthen the core message of your presentation. Choose information that helps the audience understand some field-specific or overly complex notions.

Highlight the main aspects that you want the audience to remember in your handouts.

Audience needs

Another critical part of the handout planning is the audience you will interact with. You should consider the level of expertise, needs, and preferences when working on supplementary materials. There will be little use of handouts that are irrelevant, overly simplified, or too complicated.

Format and structure

Even the best handouts will lose their impact if they are unappealing, illogical, and unorganized. A neat structure topped with relevant visuals will enhance user perception and trigger their productivity. That is why you may want to play around with different headings, supporting images, graphs, bullet points, colors, and fonts.

Designing Effective Handouts

A quality presentation handout template relies on effective design as much as it depends on the informative component. There are a few principles to stick to when you design your handouts.

Basic design

Whitepage pitch deck design agency outlines three principles that may assist you in creating a successful handout for presentation.

Use these practical tips to move in the right direction:

• Present different types of content in complementary but distinguishable fonts
• Section information with the help of headings and subheadings
• Outline the main aspects through bullet points
• Ensure that all the data is easy to read, avoid unclear and small fonts
• Use the same color palette and theme throughout the presentation and the supplementary materials 
• Add brand logos to stress consistency

The right visuals make any information twice as easy to remember and digest. Whitepage professionals share the following advice:

• Use charts, tables, graphs, and other visuals to deliver complex notions concisely and more comprehensively.
• Intertwine text content with images that complement the core narrative
• Symbols and icons aid in better understanding

Appeal and informativeness

It is not enough to design visually appealing presentation handout templates. They should carry out an informative purpose as well. You can do the following to achieve the desired effect through your presentation handouts:

• Use different colors to highlight vital points and trigger the reader's interest
• Use whitespaces to define the structure of your handouts
• Use contrast to attract user attention to critical aspects of the presentation

Content Creation for Handouts

We may be stating the obvious, but your handouts should contain clear and concise content. You don't want to distract the audience from the presentation as they are trying to make out some complex notions written in the supplementary materials.

A professional handout sample for presentation should:

• Deliver the main message without unnecessary details mentioned
• Steer clear of tech-savvy language and slang and preserve an accessible tone
• Present essential data through lists and bullet points

On top of that, you can complement your handouts with relevant and appealing, not to mention appropriate visuals. Different charts and images can improve information perception and enhance retention.

Lastly, handout ideas for presentations prove to generate better results when spiced up with well-thought and strategic CTAs(Call-to-Action elements):

• Give the audience clear instructions if any action is requested
• Use questions and activities to promote engagement
• Provide contact information in case someone decides to contact you later

Utilizing Technology in Handout Creation

After you come up with a desired design and content, you will naturally start to wonder how to make a handout for a presentation. Luckily, many tools and software solutions come of use.

Platforms like Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign, Canva, Venngage, and Inkscape present multiple features to create and enhance handouts. Some of them are free. Others include paid options. You can work on text, visuals, and charts using these tools.

However, if you want to make your presentation handout example a little more interactive, you should implement such interactive elements as QR codes and online resource links. You can find free QR code generators online to succeed with the task effectively.

QR codes can serve as a linking piece between physical and digital supplements. As the audience exploits their devices during the presentation, they will find additional facts and details that intensify the primary message. The same applies to online resource links if you use digital handouts only.

We would like to stress the fact that a balance of printed information and digital addition will add more dynamics to the learning process. Such an approach ensures that you cater to every user's needs and provide a better and more memorable experience.

Printing and Distribution

You can present your handout examples for presentation in two formats – either physical or digital. Each comes with a set of perks and downsides.

Physical handouts

The physical template for the presentation handout is a good old sheet of paper that contains all the information you want to share with the audience. It is material, you can touch it, and you don't require additional devices to interact with it. On a slightly less bright side, print paper has a negative environmental impact, which is a concern for many. You can try to decrease that impact by using recycled paper, vegetable ink, and double-sided printing.

Digital handouts

Digital examples of handouts for presentations that do not pose an environmental threat can be shared within seconds through email and other online platforms. They can be enhanced with all sorts of multimedia and interactive elements. However, digital handouts can't be accessed without electronic devices that support the format. While that isn't much of a challenge in today's world, the use of various devices can distract the audience from the presentation.

Distribution timing

There's an ongoing debate as to when you should plan to distribute a presentation handout: before, during, or after the presentation. Different timing can have a diverse effect on the audience.

Before . Some of the viewers may get curious and leaf through the material before you start. This means they will know what to expect from the presentation. It isn't entirely a bad thing, but it may have a distractive effect.

During . You can share your handouts to support the presented message and help the audience understand some points or learn more about the subject.

After . If you want to ensure that the message sets in, you can share the handouts after the presentation is over. In this case, you should include your contact information in the handout to make sure that the audience can reach out to you in case of any questions.

Examples and Templates

If you still feel a bit uncertain about how to make a handout that is well-structured and appealing, you can make use of downloadable templates.

Education handouts

A good teaching plan will have a positive effect on the students. You can enhance their interest and involvement with an elegant and straightforward handout template.

Business handouts

Any business plan presentation highlights a fair share of statistics and analytical information. With a template like this, you can coat complex notions into simple visuals and improve user experience, which leads to better understanding and positive actions.

All-purpose handouts

Some templates can be suited for any purpose. While they are subtle and non-specific, they remain well-structured and appealing.

If you need more presentation handout ideas to inspire from, our experts suggest you check these sources out:

• Template.net
• WPSTemplate

Common Mistakes to Avoid

As you try to keep away from making presentation design mistakes , you should try to minimize handout errors as well. There are a few common pitfalls to stay clear of:

• Information overload – use white spaces to avoid clutter and hand-pick information you want to add to the template.
• Poor readability – choose clear and legible fonts, and don't try to overdecorate the handout.
• Color distraction – try to use complementing and subtle colors so that the color palette doesn't hurt the eye and make the viewer's mind wander.
• Absent interactivity – while static content is necessary, you should combine it with such interactive elements as QR codes and links to relative resources.
• Low content quality – you must proofread your handouts before sharing them with the audience to avoid any typos and errors that can put your professionalism under question.

Advanced Tips for Professionals

Is there any professional advice on how to make handouts that promote successful presentations? Professional presentation design services point out a few advanced tips you can benefit from:

• You can use more than a single QR code and place them strategically so that one complements the other and boosts user engagement.
• Make your infographics interactive if you are using digital handouts. Implement additional details that the audience can find by hovering over certain icons. Make sure you highlight those interactive parts.
• Leave blank spaces for the users to write down critical points and make notes.
• Modern design is all about minimalism. Consider the trend when designing your template.
• Consider investing in responsive design when using digital handouts.
• Make sure that your digital handouts work across multiple devices.
• Create collaborative templates that allow different members to interact and discuss some crucial points.

What is a handout for a presentation? It is a practical link between your presentation and the audience. A quality presentation handout can enhance subject perception, improve understanding, and promote desired impact.  

If you consider your audience's needs, keep up with modern presentation trends, and create concise and well-structured supplementary materials, you can count on projecting a lasting impression and succeeding with your project goals.

Wonder how to hire a presentation design agency to help you achieve the desired result and get ahead of the competition? Whitepage team is only a phone call away!

Download "What Should Be in a Pitch Deck Presentation" for free!

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• 15 Free Resources to Improve...

15 Free Resources to Improve Presentation and Public Speaking Skills

6 min read · Updated on October 12, 2022

It's common for all of us to have to present or speak in front of others at some point in our careers.

It might be for small events like a team meeting, or larger events like company employee meetings, or even larger events like a conference for which your company requested you to present. For me, it didn't matter if I was presenting in front of five people or 500, I still got those butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Plus, my nerves presented in a physical way—my face and chest turned beet red! When your face turns red, it's kind of hard to hide the fact that you're nervous, and eventually, I just had to get used to it.

With time and practice on my public speaking skills, however, I've gotten better at presenting and speaking in front of crowds, and so can you, with the help of professional development resources. Even if you don't speak or present in front of others regularly, honing your presentation and speaking skills can help you advance in your career when the moment arises to give an acceptance speech, during an interview, or when teaching a class.

Yes, I understand that public speaking and presenting is one of the most nerve-racking things for people to do, and several studies support this. In fact, per the Psychology Today article, " The Thing We Fear More than Death ," studies show we fear public speaking more than death (as the title implies).

However, if you focus on your end goal of improving your public speaking skills and the fact that you're among co-workers that generally want you to succeed at work, then it makes presenting easier. Plus, there are several very cool and free (or low-cost) professional development resources available to help you hone in on your presentation and speaking skills, many of which I've shared below.  

1. Toastmasters International

Toastmasters has been helping people become better presenters and speakers for years. It's worth it to see if there's a local Toastmasters class in your area. They also offer a lot of other professional development resources like free tips—from accepting awards to creating sales pitches—on their Public Speaking Tips page.

2. Garr Reynolds

Garr Reynolds is a speaker and best-selling author of the award-winning  Presentation Zen book , The Naked Presenter , and Presentation Zen Design . His website offers a lot of free presentation tips and information. His site, Presentation Zen , has a blog with great tips and resources for public speaking and presenting, as well.

3. Networking events

At many networking events, you're asked to give a quick elevator pitch of what you do. This can be a great, inexpensive way to overcome nerves and fear due to speaking in front of people. The more you practice on your public speaking skills, the better you'll be. Not to mention, you'll have an opportunity to network with like-minded individuals, as well.

4. WordStream

WordStream is an online advertising and search marketing firm. Their blog, 20 Ways to Improve Your Presentation Skills , offers some valuable tips, from how much information to present to ways to actively engage your audience.  

5. TED Talks

You're likely familiar with TED's slogan, "Ideas worth spreading."  TED has grown in popularity in recent years, and many cities now have a local TED event. To study and hone your presentation and public speaking skills, I suggest watching TEDTalk videos and attending a TED event if you can.

6. MindTools

MindTools' career development organization's blog, " Better Public Speaking ," offers some good insights into the importance of presenting and how to become better at it. Their communication skills page also offers a lot of free information on how to be a better communicator, which ties into presenting and public speaking.

7. Self-evaluation

A great, low-cost way to improve your speaking and presentation skills is to have a friend record you on camera in front of a practice audience, or even solo will work. This will help you to see what your body language says about you , how your voice sounds, the types of expressions you make, and more. Practice makes for improvement.

8. American Rhetoric

American Rhetoric has a lot of free speeches and information. Their online speech bank has more than 5,000 speeches you can listen to for free, including speeches from John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.! Listening to great public speakers can help you improve your own public speaking skills.

9. Coursera's University of Washington intro to public speaking course

I love Coursera with all of their free courses and professional development resources, some of which offer certificates upon completion. In the Intro to Public Speaking Course, you'll learn everything from speech preparation to mastering impromptu speeches. The six-week course can be taken at any time and is taught by University of Washington Department of Communications Instructor, Dr. Matt McGarrity.

10. Portent

Portent is a Digital Marketing Firm. Their blog, 3 Surprising Ways to Instantly Improve Your Public Speaking Skills , has some good insights as to what you're doing wrong and how to fix it when speaking in front of an audience (such as voice speed, and so on).

11. Ginger Public Speaking

Ginger is a firm that supports individuals in becoming better public speakers, as they boast "we turn communicators from nervous wrecks into public speaking leaders." In addition to their low-cost programs and courses, Ginger Public Speaking also offers free webinars you can attend to improve your skills.   

AllTop is an online magazine that allows you to filter topics to create your own AllTop magazine. The AllTop Speaking page has a large collection of Public Speaking and Presentation resources to peruse.

13. The Public Speaking Project

The Public Speaking Project offers a range of tools to support users in improving their public speaking skills. The information is offered by "a variety of speech professionals who are dedicated to providing free and low-cost instructional materials..." You'll find a free virtual classroom, e-book, and more on their site.

14. The Accidental Communicator

Dr. Jim Anderson shares his wealth of knowledge on The Accidential Communicator blog to help individuals communicate and speak more effectively. You can also sign up for The Accessidental Communicator free newsletter .

With a mission of "everyone speaks," Ignite helps people build public speaking skills while having fun by giving them five minutes to present 20 slides. Events occur throughout the country and around the world.  

Presenting and public speaking are highly sought after skills, yet unpleasant to many. If you're one of those people who would rather die than speak or present in front of a crowd, hopefully, these professional development resources will help. For some additional free resources to support your speaking and presentation skills, I highly recommend reading the Inc. article, " Nine Places to Learn Public Speaking for Free ," by Larry Kim.

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51 Best Presentation Slides for Engaging Presentations (2024)

Written by: Chloe West

When you're creating a presentation for a live audience or embedding it on a webpage for visitors to access on their own time, you want it to be engaging. And unfortunately, too many presentation slides are boring and forgettable.

But with Visme, we've put together 51 of our top presentation slides to help you find the perfect template for your next presentation.

To make navigation easier, we've broken them down into six categories. Browse through each below to find your next presentation slides.

Here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more below:

51 Best Presentation Slides for Engaging Presentations

Business Presentation Slides

Finance presentation slides.

• Sales & Marketing Presentation Slides

Education Presentation Slides

Pitch deck presentation slides, nonprofit presentation slides, presentation slide faqs.

There are so many reasons you might need to give a presentation in your business or career. And we’ve got just the right templates to get you started.

After all, you’re probably spending enough time creating the content and rehearsing your presentation deck. You don’t need to worry about your presentation slide design at the same time.

Here are a few of the best presentation slide ideas based on topic material, like the ones you’re regularly using. And if you're racing against the clock, tap into Visme's AI presentation maker to create eye-catching presentations in seconds. Just input your prompt, provide more context, select your preferred style and watch the tool generate your slides. Customize every part of your presentation with our intuitive editor.

1. Meeting Agenda Template

Customize this presentation template to make it your own! Edit and Download

Sick of seeing team members nod off or lose focus during your team meetings?

Put together your meeting agenda ahead of time using these presentation slides to help keep your team engaged and informed throughout.

This template comes with 15 premade presentation slides that cover everything from project management to charts showing performance and overall meeting objectives. Whatever you need to share in your meeting, you can find in this theme.

Plus, you can completely customize these business slides to match your company colors directly in Visme!

2. Company Goals Template

It’s important to ensure everyone on your team knows and understands the company’s goals. After all, everyone’s work should be geared towards achieving those goals.

You can use these nice business slides to put together a background of your company and how far it’s come, as well as detail your upcoming goals, launches and more.

3. Company Overview Template

If you’re speaking to a networking group about your company or pitching to investors, you likely need to give an overview of your company, its leadership team and its offerings.

These are the perfect presentation slides to help you put together a minimalistic design that draws focus towards your company and its mission.

Plus, all of these good-looking slides are perfectly set up to highlight your company’s most important assets.

And best of all, they’re completely customizable. Add in your own brand fonts and colors to create the perfect presentation for your business.

Make the goal-setting or design process a collaborative activity with the help of Visme’s collaborative feature . Team members can edit your presentation, leave feedback and draw annotations in real-time or at their own pace.

4. Project Status Report Template

When it comes to project management, you could always just send over a boring email or report update, but a better way would be to put together a presentation updating your team and/or your supervisors on the status of the project and the remaining timeline.

This presentation theme comes with 14 different slides to help you put together a status report that covers all aspects of your project: the various phases and how far along each one is, the timeline for your project, a project health card and more.

You can also gain even more inspiration for your project timeline slides from these timeline infographic ideas .

5. Business Annual Report Template

Want to show your boss how the company is doing? Or share how your team’s efforts have affected the bottom line? Put together a presentation that shows your business’s results over the year.

While this presentation template comes with a fun geometric accent pattern, you’re able to swap out any of these shapes for ones that more accurately represent your business or your message right in Visme’s design dashboard.

Working on this design with your team? Effectively manage the process with Visme’s workflow management tool . You can assign different sections of the slide to your team members to work on set deadlines, manage progress, track corrections and more.

6. Business Plan Template

Are you starting a new business? You might be looking for investors, or perhaps you want to pitch the idea to a potential cofounder. You need to deploy the best presentation slides possible.

You can use this theme to put together a polished business plan presentation that showcases your business idea, the market summary, the industry opportunities and more.

You can also use Visme’s color themes to find the perfect color scheme for your presentation and your upcoming business. After all, your brand colors can say a lot about your business.

7. Product Introduction Template

Put together a presentation that introduces a new product idea to your boss, your board of directors or your investors. Take advantage of the charts and graphs in Visme’s design dashboard to showcase various studies and statistics that prove why your idea will be profitable.

Or you can utilize this presentation theme to introduce a product to the public. If your company is in the process of developing a new product to release, a presentation introduction can be a great and engaging way to share it with your audience.

8. Product Presentation Template

Whether you’re launching a new product or sharing the features of an already existing one, you can show off your product through a presentation with nice slides.

You can share your presentation on social media, on your website or at a large company event to announce it to your audience. Include bright, high-quality photos of your product and a list of its best features to really highlight your new release.

9. Visual Brand Identity Template

There are many different ways to create a brand style guide for your business. One great way is with a presentation.

These presentation example slides allow you to seamlessly input your fonts, colors and other visual guidelines into a single presentation so that you can easily share your brand with the designers, marketers and other members of your team.

10. Special Business Presentation Template

These presentation slides can help you easily put together a business introduction template for a conference or networking event.

Just click above to edit in Visme, switch out your background with one of the thousands of options in our photo library, add in your own key facts, vision and values and download!

If you’re running out of ideas for your presentation , you can use Visme’s Writer AI to produce high-quality drafts, proofread your content or adjust its tone.

11. Industry Trends Template

Put together a presentation to showcase upcoming trends in your industry. You can leave the patterns and colors the way they are in these existing presentation slides, or you can add in your own brand colors or product colors.

Understanding developing trends in your industry each year is important so that you know where your business should focus its efforts.

Sharing a presentation with your team is a great way to stay ahead of the curve.

12. Services Template

Use these slide presentation examples to showcase your services and what you can offer your clients/customers. If you have a visual business, a presentation is an excellent way to highlight your work and show it off to prospective leads.

Swap out each photo in the example slides with photos of your work, update the fonts to match your brand voice (or upload your brand fonts) and add in the services you offer.

13. Slideshow Template

A slideshow presentation is a great way for you to showcase photos of your work alongside your service offerings. This template even includes social media icons on the last page so that viewers know how to find the business online.

Again, you’ll want to swap out all of the photos with your own work, but this presentation theme is a great way to get started.

14. How To Presentation Template

Are you presenting a tutorial or step-by-step guide on how to do something? Using example slides to put together your content is a great idea.

It’s a disservice to your company and your customer to assume that everyone automatically knows how to use your product or service. Showing your audience exactly what to do is essential to your customer service strategy.

Spice up your presentation by adding stunning, high-resolution images and stock photos , videos , icons , widgets and other design elements.

Didn’t find any photos that caught your eye? We’ve got you. Use Visme’s AI image generator to whip up captivating images that match your presentation theme and design.

Even if you have photos that need editing, use Visme's AI Edit tools to touch up, unblur, upscale, erase and replace images with one click.

15. Survey Results Template

Putting together a customer survey is a great idea to understand how your audience feels about your industry or even your company. Grab those results and insert them into these presentation slides to share with your team.

You can also put together a blog post or webpage with survey results and embed this presentation directly into it so your audience can understand the state of the industry as well.

Visme’s design dashboard allows you to add in various charts and graphs that adjust automatically based on the numbers you input. After all, ain’t nobody got time for manually adjusting the sizes of bar graphs and pie charts.

16. Company Overview Presentation Template

Utilize these beautifully designed presentation slides to create a brief overview of your company and its offerings.

Having a readily available presentation overview of your company is a great idea for when you’re pitching investors, journalists for coverage and more. You don’t need to recreate a presentation each time. Instead, put together a visually appealing and informative one-size-fits-all overview.

You can add in your own photos or choose from Visme’s photo library to keep the same beautifully minimalistic appeal.

When sharing financial information, it’s always helpful to put together some kind of visual aid. This can be used to further emphasize your content, whether it’s about going over budget, showing off exciting revenue increases and more.

Check out these finance slide presentation examples to find the perfect template for your goals.

17. Financial Report Template

Use this template to put together a presentation that goes over your company’s expenses, sales, profits and more.

The built-in data visualization options allow you to showcase your point with more than just numbers. Add in a table of contents to keep your report organized and cohesive, letting your team know exactly what information they’ll find inside.

18. Statistical Presentation Template

Need to report some financial statistics and data? These presentation slides are perfect for helping you insert cold, hard facts into your presentation.

Each slide includes a different type of chart or graph for you to choose from to fully represent your data and statistics. You can easily switch your color scheme by inputting your own brand colors or by choosing a preset color theme from Visme’s dashboard.

19. Map Presentation Template

It’s important to know where it makes the most sense to market your product geographically. Showcase sales and overall company growth and profitability by location.

Knowing your revenue based on geographic location is essential for a global company, and this presentation template is perfect for the job.

Create a stunning presentation in less time

• Hundreds of premade slides available
• Add animation and interactivity to your slides
• Choose from various presentation options

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Sales and Marketing Presentation Slides

When it comes to sales and marketing for your company, there is a lot of data and information that can be represented visually. Creating sales and marketing presentations helps with keeping your team on the right track, but can also be a great way to make a pitch.

Learn more about creating essential sales and marketing presentations with these templates.

20. Visualization for Sales and Marketing Template

When you’re putting together a sales and marketing plan, you have to present it to your boss for approval, then to your team for implementation.

Use these presentation slides to help visualize your sales and marketing plan , including each of the upcoming tactics and strategies and the steps for putting them in place.

Having a presentation to refer back to allows your team to ensure they’re implementing the strategies properly.

21. Simple Marketing Presentation Template

Whether you’re introducing new marketing ideas to your team, pitching a new marketing strategy to your boss or to a new client, a presentation with nice slides is the perfect format.

Grab this presentation template that helps you to define your new ideas and share specific tactics for how they should be implemented for the business. Then get ready to rock your pitch and share your awesome new ideas.

22. Market Analysis Template

Review market trends with your team so you know where to take your company’s marketing messaging. You can send out a customer survey or take a look at a few studies that have been done surrounding your industry to put together your market analysis report.

Input all of your findings into this presentation template so you can easily present it to your team or grab the link and send it in an email. Even if you’re not standing up to give a presentation, these presentation slides are still an engaging way to share necessary information.

23. Marketing Plan Template

Building a new marketing plan for your business? Put together  great presentations for your marketing plan to share with your team.

Presenting your new marketing plan to the company is a great way to get everyone motivated and on board with new strategies and ideas.

You can add in your goals, objectives and even user personas with this ready-made marketing plan template.

24. Sales Report Template

Your sales team should be regularly providing insight on how much revenue the company is generating. And a great way to do that is through a sales report presentation or slideshow.

It’s important to stay informed of sales growth throughout the year. Share graphs of sales quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year to see where the company/sales team needs to improve.

25. Press Release Template

Don’t just write a boring old press release to send out to journalists and media publications. Instead, create an interactive press release showcasing your launch.

A presentation press release will help your business stand out from the dry press releases most publications receive, offering even more incentive for them to highlight your business and its products/services.

Edit this business slide to add in your own brand touches, voice and launch information before grabbing the link and sending it off.

26. Social Media Report Template

Sharing results of any marketing strategy is always essential. This is how you keep your team updated of any strategies that are working, and any strategies that need some adapting.

This presentation theme is a great way to share your current strategy and results. Input your platforms, your strategies and your metrics before presenting it to your team. Customize the presentation slides so that they cater perfectly to your company’s strategy.

27. Social Media Strategy Template

Pitching a social media strategy to your boss can also be done well with a presentation. Showcase why social media is important to invest in, what your plan is and how it will affect the bottom line.

This presentation template already gets you started in perfectly pitching your own strategy. Simply adjust it to your brand colors and fonts and update the information with your own.

Presentations are huge in educational settings.

Whether you’re a teacher looking for an interactive way to share your lesson plan or a student trying to finish up a school project, we’ve got the presentation templates for you.

Take a look at our education presentation slide options to find one that works for you.

28. Training Plan Template

When working one-on-one with a student or mentee, it can be a good idea to put a training or education plan into place. These presentation slides are the perfect start to your lesson and can help to visualize the content and learn in a different way.

Putting together educational content in a presentation helps offer different formats for learning. Students are often not provided with all of the tools they need to learn the material, and an interactive presentation is a great place to start.

29. Book Report Template

Putting together a book report to present for your class? Get started with a presentation theme that you can fully customize for your specific book.

These presentation slides allow you to seamlessly enter in the information about your main characters, the theme of the book, its timeline and any other pertinent information you need to share with the class.

Don’t worry about presentation design in your next project. We’ve already got it all put together for you! Simply click edit, insert your book content and download your presentation.

30. Trivia Template

Help your class remember fast facts before a text with this trivia template. It’s a great way to host a study session in your classroom, and the content is easily interchangeable.

Or if you’re a student, put together a presentation study guide to help you memorize the most important key facts and information from class. A trivia presentation format can make for a fun study sesh before the test.

31. Lesson Plan Template

Don’t waste time putting together a dry Microsoft Word or PowerPoint lesson plan. Instead, create an interactive lesson plan that helps you stay on message during your class, and helps your students to know exactly what’s going to come next.

32. Group Project Template

Group presentations just got a little more exciting. Blow the rest of your class’s projects away by using these presentation slides to compile your overall project objectives and results.

You can easily adjust colors and fonts, add in your team members and insert copy relevant to your class and your group project.

Don’t forget to thank your classmates and your teacher for listening in the end.

A pitch deck is an essential presentation for all businesses and entrepreneurs to have. There are many times you might need to pitch your business, whether it’s to investors for funding, journalists for media coverage and more.

Using a presentation template to put together your pitch deck is a great idea so that you can focus on pitching your business without having to worry about the design.

Browse through the pitch deck presentation slides below to find one that works for your business and its goals.

33. Airbnb Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Give this Airbnb-inspired pitch deck presentation theme a go when putting together a slideshow for your business. In your company slide, include the solution that your business provides its customers, product/service information, and excerpts from press acknowledgements.

34. Front Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Showcase your business with this geometric pitch deck template inspired by Front. Add in the planned acquisition channels for your business, your leadership team and more.

Your pitch deck is meant to showcase your business to people who may want to work with you, so it’s important to share the most imperative information.

35. Buffer Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Showcase the state of the industry and your business’s role in it with this pitch presentation slides idea inspired by Buffer. The information these presentation slides include helps you to share the impact your company has had on your industry.

Since industries are ever-changing, you can easily update the information within your pitch deck in Visme and it will automatically sync to the webpage where you embed this presentation.

36. Comms Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Use these presentation slides inspired by Intercom to give your audience an idea of what your product is going to look like and how it will work.

This is the perfect pitch deck template to take advantage of when launching a new SaaS product or app so that you can share what the technology will look like and how it will work.

Showcasing specific features and tutorials is a great way to get people talking about your product.

37. WeWork Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Is your company helping to fuel a movement? Share how your company is changing the industry with this pitch deck template inspired by WeWork.

It’s exciting when your business is doing more for your industry than simply adding another product or service. Focusing on a movement that really switches up the way your industry does things is an incredible feat.

Utilize a pitch deck template like the one above to showcase how your company is involved.

38. Buzzfeed Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Does your business focus on content? Or perhaps you’re creating a new kind of media outlet?

Show off your content and analytics with this Buzzfeed-inspired pitch deck presentation template. Getting advertisers on board and other media outlets to talk about you is important for success.

This is why you need to be putting together a pitch deck that shares that kind of information. No one will want to work with you if you keep your analytics in the dark.

Use dynamic fields to ensure your brand information and other key details stays consistent across slides and other projects. These fields are customizable and change automatically based on input or predefined conditions.

39. Investor Pitch Deck Template

Starting a new venture that you need funding for? Use these presentation slides to put together a pitch for investors in your business.

From showcasing the problem in the industry to your business’s solution, along with your business plan and pricing table is a great way to get potential investors interested in what you’re selling.

40. LinkedIn Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Compare and contrast what processes look like with and without your business with this pitch deck template inspired by LinkedIn.

It’s a great idea to take care of this in your pitch deck so that you make the job of any media outlet or writer covering your business even easier. After all, you’ve done the hard work for them.

They were going to share how your business helps. You’ve already visualized this in your pitch deck. This increases the chances that people will cover your business.

41. Mattermark Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Use this pitch deck presentation theme inspired by Mattermark to put together key questions about the industry that showcase why your business is so essential.

Launching a startup is hard work, and that’s why a pitch deck is an essential marketing tool to have. Creating a pitch deck that already answers the why and how questions of your business is a great way to introduce who you are and what you’re doing to investors and reporters.

42. Foursquare Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Put together an overview of how your product works with this pitch deck presentation template inspired by Foursquare.

With presentation slides already in place to showcase a step-by-step tutorial, all you have to do is input your content and publish your presentation.

43. Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Presentation Template

If your company has been doing some awesome stuff lately, you want your potential investors and those looking to work with your business to know about it.

Show off your company achievements with this pitch deck presentation template inspired by the famous Fyre Festival pitch deck.

44. Biogrify Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Use these presentation slides inspired by Biogrify to excite people about how they can use your product. If you have a unique product or service, you just need to drum up a little excitement and attention!

A pitch deck is the perfect way to do that. Add in your company’s logo, mission and unique selling proposition to get people looking forward to becoming customers/users.

45. Launchrock Pitch Deck Presentation Template

Influencer marketing is a huge marketing strategy that can generate some serious results. What better way to pitch influencers about your business than with this pitch deck inspired by Launchrock?

Don’t email off some boring PDF or Google Doc. Create enticing pitches to influencers with this pitch deck theme, and start watching the replies from influencers pour in.

Working with influencers to promote your product is a great way to increase your audience base and word of mouth about your company.

When you’re running a nonprofit, there is a lot of pitching your organization, talking to donors and working on events to increase donations. This is why you need great slide presentations.

Putting together a presentation for your nonprofit is a great way to showcase what your organization does and why people should donate to it.

Here are a few nonprofit presentation slides to choose from, where all you have to do is insert your information, change colors and fonts and present.

46. Nonprofit Report Template

Put together a report that covers what your nonprofit is working against as well as your nonprofit’s achievements each year.

47. Nonprofit Art Template

Use this presentation slides idea to provide an overview of your nonprofit and its main projects. To generate even more support and donations, it’s important to provide clear insight into your key products and objectives.

48. Nonprofit Environmental Template

This presentation theme is perfect for showcasing the key issues your nonprofit fights for and its process for doing so.

Being transparent about what your nonprofit works on is important so that your donors know exactly where their money is going. Being secretive can generate some bad press, so it’s better to be open with your supporters.

49. Nonprofit Animals Template

These presentation slides use earthy colors to convey their nonprofit’s connection to animal rights. Use this to showcase your nonprofit. You can use the current colors or update it to match your nonprofit’s brand/industry.

50. Wildlife Conservation Template

Use these presentation slide examples to cover why your nonprofit matters and why donors should consider contributing.

A nonprofit only exists when people donate, so putting together a compelling pitch deck showcasing why your nonprofit is so important to your main issue is important. These slides are perfect for sharing your goals and mission.

51. Pet Adoption Slideshow Template

If you're looking for stunning presentation slide ideas , we've got more than enough. This pitch deck presentation template is perfect for SPCAs and other animal societies working on finding forever homes for their animals.

However, it can also be adapted to any other nonprofit or business need. The great thing about these presentation slides is how versatile they are. Each one is completely customizable to fit your specific needs. For example, you can turn it into a video presentation .

Q. What is a PowerPoint Slide Deck?

A PowerPoint slide deck is a collection of slides that are created using an online presentation maker. These slides are used to create presentations for various purposes, like sales , marketing , research , case studies , webinars , onboarding and business in general.

PPT presentation slides typically consist of a series of slides that contain text, images, charts, graphs, and other multimedia elements that are used to communicate information to the audience in an engaging and visually appealing manner.

So why is it called a slide deck? In the early days, presenters would create slides by photographing images or text onto transparent film. These slides would then be loaded into a slide projector and displayed on a screen. The collection of slides was referred to as a "deck," and the presenter would advance through them one by one. Today, the term "slide deck" is still used to refer to a collection of slides or presentation materials, even though most presentations are now created and displayed digitally.

Q. What is a good presentation slide?

A good presentation slide is one that engages your audience and effectively communicates your message.

Here are some key characteristics of a good presentation slide:

1. Keep your slides simple and uncluttered: Avoid excessive text and use bullet points or concise phrases to convey your main points. Use clear and legible fonts, and maintain a consistent design throughout the presentation.

2. Visual appeal: Incorporate visually appealing elements such as relevant images, charts, graphs, or diagrams. Use high-quality visuals that enhance understanding and make the content more engaging

3. Make it readable: Use a readable font size. Stick to a maximum of two or three font styles and sizes. Blend bright and dark colors for the text and background to ensure visual contrast and good visibility.

4. Consistent structure: Use consistent formatting, such as font styles, colors, and alignment, throughout the presentation.

5. Make it interactive: Include animation and interactivity to add flair to your presentation. It can make your presentation powerful and memorable.

Q. How do you make a good presentation slide?

There are lots of presentation software available for creating presentations. But Visme offers users a wide range of features to create visually stunning and engaging presentations.

All you need to do is choose a template from our extensive library of over 500 presentation templates and customize it with your text. You can edit content, change image(s), apply custom colors, input your own fonts and logo, and more. You can visualize data using our wide range of customizable charts and widgets.

Spruce up your presentation by adding audio, video, animations and other interactive elements. Download it as a PDF, PPTX, MP4, and HTML5 to share with your recipient , or generate a shareable link for online sharing.

Q. How do you design a presentation?

Here's a step-by-step guide to help you design some of the best business presentations:

1. Define Your Objective: Determine the purpose of your presentation and identify the main message or key points you want to convey

2. Plan Your Content: Outline the structure and flow of your presentation. Divide it into sections or key topics to ensure a logical progression. Read this article to learn more about creating an effective presentation outline .

3. ​​Create a Storyline: Craft a compelling narrative that ties your key points together. Storytelling can help engage your audience and make your presentation more memorable.

4. Choose a Design Theme: Select a visually appealing design theme or template that aligns with your topic and audience. You can use the ones we've shared above as your presentation inspiration.

Visme’s branding kit streamlines on-brand content creation and ensures you stay consistent across all channels. With our AI-powered brand wizard , you can automatically generate branded templates fitted with your brand elements.

5. Use Visual Elements: Incorporate relevant visuals such as images, charts, graphs, icons, or diagrams to enhance understanding and engagement.

6. Maintain Visual Hierarchy: Organize your content with a clear visual hierarchy. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to guide the audience's attention and emphasize key points.

7. Use Transitions and Animations: Apply transitions and animations to enhance the flow and engagement of your presentation.

8. ​​Practice and Test: Review and rehearse your presentation to ensure a smooth delivery. Test your presentation on the actual equipment or platform you'll be using to ensure compatibility and optimal display.

9. Seek Feedback: Before delivering your presentation, consider sharing it with a trusted colleague or friend for feedback. Ask for their input on the content, design, and overall effectiveness. Incorporate their suggestions to improve your presentation.

Q. Which slide is best for presentation?

The best slide for a presentation highly depends on the topic and the target audience. For example, if it's a pitch deck presentation, the financial projections or business model slide would be the best.

However, here are some of the most common slides you should know about:

1. Title Slide: It announces the presentation's topic and introduces the speaker. It grabs the audience's initial attention.

2. Agenda Slide : This gives the audience an idea of what to expect throughout the presentation.

3. Content Slide : These are dense with information. They're best when broken down into bullet points for readability.

4. Visual Slide: Slides with infographics, charts, or other visuals can improve understanding and retention of complex data.

5. Interactive Slide: Encourages audience participation and engagement, especially in virtual presentations.

6. Conclusion/Summary Slide: Reinforces your presentation's key points or takeaways.

7. Question & Answer Slide: Allows interaction and clarification, ensuring the audience fully grasps the presented materials.

8. Contact Information Slide: Provides follow-up information for further questions or networking.

Q. What are the 3 main types of presentation slides?

While there's no one-size-fits-all rule for making presentation slides, you can group them into three main categories:

Introduction and Closing Slides

These slides bookend your presentation. The introduction slide typically includes the title of your presentation, your name and any relevant introductory information. The closing slide summarizes key points, provides a conclusion and often includes contact information or a call to action.

Content Slides

Content slides make up the core of your presentation and contain the primary information you want to convey to your audience. They can include text, images, charts, graphs and other visual or textual elements supporting your presentation's message.

Transition Slides

Transition slides signal a change in topic or create a smooth flow between different sections of your presentation. They often feature a brief title or heading that previews the upcoming content. Transition slides help guide your audience through the presentation and make it easy to follow.

Q. What are the 4 types of presentation?

The four types of presentations are informative, instructional, persuasive and arousing.

1. Informative Presentations: These are used to educate the audience on a particular topic. They present facts, data and information to increase the audience's knowledge and understanding.

2. Instructional Presentations: These presentations provide step-by-step guidance or training on a specific task, process or concept. You can use this type of presentation for teaching or coaching purposes, emphasizing learning and development.

3. Persuasive Presentations: The primary goal of these presentations is to influence the listeners' attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. Use this presentation type when you want your audience to accept certain arguments or propositions.

4. Arousing Presentations: These presentations aim to evoke interest and awaken curiosity about the topic among the audience. They often aim to inspire, motivate or raise awareness about an issue.

Q. How do you make a 5-minute presentation interesting?

Creating an intriguing 5-minute presentation may be challenging due to the time constraint. Yet, you can deliver an impactful and engaging presentation with a focused approach and attention to detail.

Here are some of the ways to do it:

1. Focus on a single core message : Since you have limited time, choose a specific topic and stick to it. Present only the crucial information that will help the audience understand your point.

2. Engage from the start: Start your presentation with a compelling story, anecdote or a surprising fact. This will grab the audience's attention and spark curiosity.

3. Keep slides simple and visual: Avoid cluttered slides with too much text. Use visuals such as images, graphs or infographics to illustrate your points clearly and concisely.

4. Tell a story: A narrative structure engages the audience and helps them follow your message. Consider using metaphors or anecdotes to explain complex ideas.

5. Encourage questions or interaction: Since time is limited, you might opt for a brief Q&A session, ask a rhetorical question or request audience feedback for further discussion later.

6. Finish strong: Conclude with a powerful statement, call-to-action or takeaway summarizing your main point. Leave your audience with a lasting impression of your message.

Q. How many slides should a 20 minute presentation be?

The number of slides you should have for a 20-minute presentation can vary depending on several factors, such as the complexity of the topic and the pace of your speech.

However, the general rule of thumb is to allocate at least 1-2 minutes per slide, which suggests 10-20 slides for a 20-minute presentation.

Q. What Is the 5 5 5 Rule for Presentation?

The 5 5 5 rule is a framework that ensures your presentation is clear and remains engaging. A presentation should have no more than five words per line of text, five lines of text per slide and five slides that apply the first two rules in a row.

Q. How Do You Make a Presentation Slide?

With Visme’s presentation software, creating a presentation slide is a breeze. Follow these steps to create a presentation slide with Visme.

Step 1: Log in to Visme and choose from hundreds of beautifully designed presentation templates . Each template is equipped with various intuitive layouts, typography, color themes, data widgets and graphics. Or Use Visme’s AI presentation maker to swiftly create a presentation based on your specific needs.

Step 2: Customize your presentation with your company’s logo, colors and other brand items. Upload your own creative collateral or use our assets library to add photos, images, graphics, icons and animations to your content.

Step 3: Once you have finished editing and are ready to share, download your presentation as a live webpage, video, PDF, or HTML file, a customizable PPTX, or embed it on your website.

Q. What Is the 10 Rule for Slides?

The 10 rule for slides is part of Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule which emphasizes that no presentation should have more than 10 slides, last longer than 20 minutes, and contain fonts smaller than thirty points.

Q. Which is better Google Slides or PowerPoint?

When it comes to PowerPoint vs Google Slides , both have they're pro's and con's. You'll need to decide what's worth the trade if you should pick one over the other, or simply choose Visme.

Ready to Create Engaging Presentation Slides?

Ready to get started with creating your presentation? Choose from any of these 51 slides for presentation, or browse Visme’s complete template library to find the perfect match for creating your own presentation.

Each one of these presentation themes can be adapted to match your business, school, nonprofit and other needs so that you can create something perfect for your goals and objectives. Create your free account to start customizing with our drag-and-drop presentation maker.

And once you’ve finished creating your presentation, check out our video to help you present like a pro and wow your audience.

Create beautiful presentation slides with Visme

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About the Author

Chloe West is the content marketing manager at Visme. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more. During her spare time, she enjoys exploring her home city of Charleston with her son.

Handout Essentials: A Guide To Creating Memorable Presentation Handouts

Hrideep barot.

• Presentation

Creating effective presentation handouts is a crucial aspect of enhancing audience engagement and understanding during and after a presentation. The choice of tools plays a vital role in shaping the quality and visual appeal of these handouts. Various tools, from traditional word processors like Microsoft Word to design-focused platforms like Canva and Adobe InDesign, offer unique features and functionalities. Each tool caters to different user preferences, design needs, and collaboration requirements. In this context, exploring the pros and cons of popular tools becomes

• What Are Presentation Handouts?
• What Is The Importance Of Presentation Handouts?
• Ways To Create Memorable Presentation Handouts.

Tools One Could Use For Creating A Presentation Handout.

• Conclusion.

What Are Presentation Handouts? 

Presentation handouts serve as valuable tools to complement and reinforce information shared during a presentation. These materials are typically distributed to the audience before, during, or after the presentation , offering a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

In printed form, handouts may include outlines, summaries, charts, or key visuals, providing tangible references that attendees can follow along with during the presentation and keep for future reference . By offering this supplementary material, presenters aim to enhance the learning experience and ensure that the audience retains essential information.

Whether in print or digital form, presentation handouts play a crucial role in knowledge transfer and retention. They serve as valuable reference materials, offering the audience a roadmap to navigate complex information. Additionally, well-crafted handouts can facilitate post-event reflection and encourage further exploration of the presented topic, transforming a one-time presentation into an ongoing learning experience for the audience.

What Is The Importance Of Presentation Handouts? 

The importance of presentation handouts lies in their ability to enhance the overall effectiveness of a presentation and contribute to the audience’s learning experience. Here are several key reasons why presentation handouts are valuable:

1. Comprehensive Reference:

Presentation handouts provide the audience with a tangible and comprehensive reference to the information presented . Attendees can follow along with the speaker, refer back to key points, and have a structured outline of the content, aiding in better understanding and retention.

2. Reinforcement of Key Concepts:

Handouts reinforce the key concepts and messages of the presentation. By combining visual and written elements, handouts can emphasize important information , making it more likely that the audience will grasp and remember key takeaways.

3. Post-Presentation Review:

Handouts serve as a post-presentation review tool. Attendees can revisit the material after the event, reinforcing their understanding and allowing for a deeper exploration of the topic . This supports long-term retention of the information.

4. Customization and Personalization:

Presenters can customize handouts to suit the specific needs of their audience. This might include additional resources, references, or supplemental material that can further engage participants and cater to diverse learning styles.

5. Audience Engagement:

Handouts encourage audience engagement during the presentation. Attendees can annotate, take notes, and actively participate in discussions. Interactive elements in digital handouts can further enhance engagement.

6. Accessibility:

Digital handouts, especially in formats like PDFs or PowerPoint presentations , are easily accessible. Attendees can access them on various devices, fostering convenience and ensuring that the information remains available long after the presentation concludes.

7. Sustainability:

In the context of environmental sustainability, digital handouts offer an eco-friendly alternative to printed materials . This aligns with modern trends toward reducing paper usage and promoting greener practices.

8. Continued Learning:

Well-crafted handouts can serve as a starting point for continued learning. They can include additional resources, recommended readings, or links to relevant websites , encouraging the audience to explore the topic further.

Check this out to also know how to ace group presentations:

In summary, presentation handouts play a crucial role in supporting the presenter’s message, engaging the audience, and facilitating a more thorough understanding and retention of the presented material. Whether in print or digital form, these materials extend the impact of a presentation beyond the event itself.

Ways To Create Memorable Presentation Handouts

Creating memorable presentation handouts involves thoughtful planning, visual appeal, and alignment with the presentation’s goals. Here are strategies to make handouts more memorable:

1. Visual Design:

Consistent Theme: A cohesive theme reinforces the brand and aids in recognition. Ensure that fonts, colors, and imagery align with the overall aesthetic of the presentation, creating a seamless visual experience for the audience.

Graphics and Images : Thoughtfully chosen visuals enhance understanding. Infographics, charts, and relevant images break down complex information, making it more digestible for the audience.

2. Clear Structure:

Logical Flow: Arrange information in a sequence that mirrors the presentation. A logical flow allows the audience to follow along effortlessly, enhancing comprehension.

White Space: Purposeful use of white space prevents visual overload. It provides a visual break between elements, making the content more digestible.

3. Engaging Content:

Concise Text: Brevity is key. Each point should be succinct, conveying essential information without overwhelming the audience. This facilitates better retention.

Use of Examples: Real-world examples bring concepts to life. They provide context and relevance, making the content more memorable for participants.

4. Interactivity:

Spaces for Notes: Dedicated areas for notes encourage active engagement. Participants can jot down thoughts, questions, or personal reflections, fostering a sense of involvement.

QR Codes or Links: Incorporate QR codes or links to additional resources. This not only enhances interactivity but also allows participants to delve deeper into topics of interest.

5. Incorporate Branding:

Logo and Brand Elements : Prominently display the logo and relevant branding elements. Consistent branding across materials reinforces the presenter’s identity and message.

Quality Printing (for Physical Handouts):

High-Quality Paper: Opt for a paper that feels substantial and professional. The tactile experience of quality paper can contribute to a positive perception of the handouts.

Readable Fonts: Choose fonts that are easy to read, even from a distance. The goal is to make the content accessible to all participants.

6. Digital Enhancements:

Hyperlinks and Multimedia: Hyperlink relevant sections for easy navigation in digital formats. Including multimedia elements, such as videos or interactive content, adds dynamism to the handouts.

Responsive Design: Ensure that digital handouts are responsive to various devices. A user-friendly design accommodates different screen sizes and devices.

7. Highlight Key Points:

Emphasis Techniques: Utilize formatting tools to emphasize crucial information. Whether through bolding, italics, or color, draw attention to key points for better focus.

Post-Presentation Resources:

Additional Reading: Provide a curated list of readings or resources for further exploration. This demonstrates a commitment to ongoing learning and offers participants avenues for continued engagement.

Contact Information: Include clear contact details for presenters or subject matter experts. This facilitates post-presentation communication, encouraging participants to reach out with questions or feedback.

8. Feedback Section:

Survey or Feedback Form: Design a concise survey or feedback form. Collecting participant feedback is invaluable for refining future presentations and tailoring content to the audience’s needs.

9. Call-to-Action (CTA):

Pro: End with a clear call to action for the audience to take the next steps. A well-crafted CTA guides the audience on what actions to consider after reviewing the handout.

Con: Unclear or demanding CTAs may lead to inaction . If the call-to-action is ambiguous or if it requires too much effort from the audience, it may result in a lack of follow-through. Ensure that your CTA is straightforward, feasible, and aligns with the goals of your presentation.

Check this out to know how to research for a presentation:

By meticulously implementing these strategies , presenters can create handouts that not only serve as supportive materials but also elevate the overall presentation experience for participants.

Creating a presentation handout involves selecting tools that offer flexibility, design capabilities, and ease of use. Here are some tools you can consider for crafting effective presentation handouts:

Microsoft Word:

Pros: Familiar interface for most users, extensive font and formatting options, compatibility with various file formats, ability to track changes and collaborate through Microsoft 365.

Cons: Limited design features compared to dedicated design tools, potential formatting challenges when collaborating with users of other word processors.

Google Docs:

Pros: Excellent real-time collaboration features, cloud-based accessibility from any device, auto-save functionality, and integration with other Google Workspace apps.

Cons: Basic design options, may lack advanced formatting features needed for complex layouts.

Pros: User-friendly with a drag-and-drop interface, extensive template library for quick design, and a diverse range of visual elements and icons, suitable for both beginners and professionals.

Cons: While many features are free, some advanced elements and templates are paid, and may not be suitable for intricate designs.

Adobe InDesign:

Pros: Industry-standard design tools, precise control over layout, advanced typography options, and support for complex document structures.

Cons: Steeper learning curve, may be overwhelming for beginners, subscription cost for full access.

Microsoft PowerPoint:

Pros: Familiar interface for creating presentations, easy integration of multimedia elements, ability to convert presentations to printable handouts.

Cons: Primarily designed for presentations, not as feature-rich as design-specific tools for complex layouts.

Google Slides:

Pros: Seamless collaboration features, integration with other Google Workspace apps, cloud-based accessibility.

Cons: Limited design options compared to PowerPoint, may not support intricate formatting needs.

Lucidpress:

Pros: Online collaboration, templates available for various document types, professional-grade design tools.

Cons: Some features may require a subscription, and may not be as widely known or used as other tools.

Piktochart:

Pros: User-friendly interface, suitable for beginners, focuses on infographics and visual storytelling.

Cons: Free version limitations, may not be as versatile for general document creation.

Conclusion .

Selecting the right tool for crafting presentation handouts depends on factors such as design complexity, collaboration needs, and personal familiarity. Microsoft Word and Google Docs provide straightforward solutions with collaborative features, while design-specific tools like Canva, Adobe InDesign, and Visme offer advanced creative options. The choice between PowerPoint, Google Slides, Lucidpress, Piktochart, Venngage, and design software like Adobe Illustrator depends on the balance between user proficiency, required features, and budget considerations. By weighing the pros and cons, presenters can make a strategic choice that aligns with their presentation objectives and enhances the overall impact on their audience.

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• How You Can Plan Your Presentation Material
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Your presentation material planning is an effective first step to getting your presentations just right. That’s because your choices will help you to engage with your audience. So it makes sense to think about your presentation material, particularly if you want to vie for the title of  world’s best presentation ! When you use the right material it will help you to convey your message as you present. Because your audience will respond to good material. That’s a fact. So, you have some choices and some decisions ahead.

Presentation Material Planning For Your Next Event

Your Presentation Material Planning Decisions

However, those choices aren’t that tricky. Just remember that you can consider:

• PowerPoint  or  Keynote presentation slides
• Videos and multimedia
• Whiteboard or flip chart diagrams

So you have a range of options. Plus you have a range of choices to make. However, it’s not a bewildering choice, since you can use many of these materials together. Because that’s their beauty…

Your PowerPoint presentation slides might be the very first thing you work on. Just remember to keep things simple. So, you could consider these presentation design choices to help you.

Videos and Multimedia work really well in a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. However, do make sure that the quality is top drawer. And also check the media applications are loaded before you actually start the presentation. Then you are ready.

Sort Your Materials And Engage With Your Audience

Whiteboards and flip-charts might seem old-fashioned. Don’t believe it. So, use them. Then inject some passion into your presentation material and watch the results. Just amazing.

Props are a key presentation aid. So, think hard how you can use them when you have to present. Because they can be very useful when you want to explain something or get your audience involved.

Keep your handouts to the end of your presentation. Thus, you aim for your audience to be a watching and listening audience and not a reading audience. Don’t print your slides, if you have used them. So, aim to prepare something else. Perhaps, a one-page summary of your presentation would be enough.

How You Can Plan Your Presentation Materials

You can always boost your presentation with good use of presentation materials.

• Use simple  PowerPoint slides .
• Aim to use top quality multimedia  in your slides.
• Whiteboards and flip charts work every time so be confident with them.
• Use props to help you demonstrate products or features. It's not the best use of a prop, but this example certainly went viral for this President Ramaphosa covid speech .
• Keep your handouts to the end of your presentation.

You can learn more  skills and techniques  with a public presentation training course at one of more than  40 training centres in the country. Alternatively, why not consider a one-to-one presentation coaching session. Or, perhaps a team-based training event. Please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

“PowerPoint presents minimal evidence with maximum clutter, probably the worst signal/ noise ratio of any known method of communication.”

Edward Tufte

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50 Free Resources For Presentation Design

• Presentation design /
• Visual communication

Translating ideas into presentations is not as easy as it might seem, which I’m sure you know by now. How many hours have you spent searching the web for resources for presentation design, preferably free ones?

Sometimes opening a new presentation is a bit frightening. Organizing your thoughts in this beautifully designed document is a real challenge especially if you’re pressed for time or are juggling multiple tasks.

Here, at Visual Hackers, we want to help your creative juices flow faster so we’re going to share some of our favorite websites that offer free presentation design resources such as templates, icons, images, vectors, fonts and more.

All inclusive (images, vectors, icons, etc.)

1. creative market.

Creative Market is a platform for handcrafted, mousemade design content from independent creatives around the world. This is truly a design heaven. You can purchase any type of photos, graphics, templates, themes and fonts at a great price. But they also have a section of free goods , to get you to become a Creative Market believer.

You can find anything you need here, from icons, illustrations, photos, fonts and templates to add-ons and textures.

2. Free Design Resources

Free Design Resources is a site dedicated to help you find the high quality design resources for free. You can use the resources listed here for any number of personal and commercial projects for yourself or on behalf of a client. You may modify the resources to fit in the requirements of your projects.

No link or attribution required, but they do appreciate if you want to give one. Some item may have a different license, in which case it’s best to read additional notes in the description of the item’s page.

3. Creative Tail

CreativeTail.com is a fresh new design community. The website collects the best open source files from a variety of top quality, handpicked designers. When ready, the files are published as open source, free to use for private and commercial use. All their free product on this site are under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Browse their icons, images and backgrounds to create memorable slides in your presentation!

4. Inscribe Mag

Inscribe Mag is an online publication dedicated to provide the best quality resources and articles for designers and developers. They provide fresh articles for topics like web design & development, wordpress, UX design, photoshop, coding, graphic design and more.

Here you can find free resources including fonts, icons, web templates, mock-ups, PSD design resources, UI kits, backgrounds, tutorials and much more. Check out their freebies section.

Also read: Top 10 Design Trends in 2020 and How to Use Them in Presentations

5. CSAuthor

CSS Author is a design and development related blog for web designers and developers. They offer free PSD design resources, daily design inspirations, articles, roundups, tutorials and the latest web trends and techniques.

Most resources are provided under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

6. Free Goodies for Designers

Created by a small group of designers and art directors, Free Goodies for Designers offers free icons, textures, mockups and everything else you could need.

You can choose to donate if you find the resource useful and if you want to support the website.

7. Graphic Burger

GraphicBurger is a buffet of premium quality design resources offered for free to the community. Here you’ll find exclusive PSD files “cooked” in-house along with featured top-notch freebies from creatives around the world.

You are permitted to use the resources in any number of personal and commercial projects for yourself or a client. No attribution or link back to this site is required, however any credit is appreciated.

8. Smashing Magazine

Smashing Media  is a well-respected international online publication for professional web designers and developers. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re in for a real treat!

The famous publication also has a freebies section. Every resource presented here has a detailed section about how you can use it and what license applies.

Featured Download:  An Easy Guide To Repurposing Content Get your free copy

9. Design Bundles

As the name says it you can find here a bundle of free elements to use, graphics, mockups, icons, templates, backgrounds & textures. Their team provides top selections of free designs, but also premium resources they practice a reduced price.

Illustrations

10. humaaans.

Illustrations are in high demand, they are in top design trends for a few years now, this is where Humaaans comes with resources. They are a design library of mix-&-match illustrations of people with templates for every occasion. Pablo Stanely made free his creations for commercial and personal use. 

Ouch.pics is a project of Icons8 dedicated to free vector illustrations for user interface. They would give a clean, trendy look to your designs. Find there a variety of vector subjects and styles and don’t forget to appreciate them giving the credits for their work.

12. Drawkit

Drawkit offers hand-drawn vector illustration resources for your next project, Get their free illustrations or go premium to get customisable illustration to suit your needs.

13. Undraw Illustrations

A very easy way to get the illustrations you need is to search them on Undraw . They have an on-the-fly color image generation to match your brand identity.

Videos are the content that everyone is looking at right now, they get your attention and deliver the brand’s message in a few seconds. Coverr appeared as a project built in order to provide entrepreneurs  with Free beautiful looking videos, for the products they were building.

15. Motion Place

Motion Places is a curated collection of beautiful footage you can use for your projects. T hey provide creatives with free stock footage from around the world . Their clips in HD are for free or for $99 the 4k clips.

Videvo offers free stock videos and motion graphics for use in any project. You may use these video clips free of charge, in both personal and commercial productions. Choose from their variety of categories the video that you need.

17. Videezy

The same team of Vecteezy and Brusheezy ( we will talk about them a bit later ), also made a website for video resources called Videezy. Discover free HD stock videos, b-roll, backgrounds, and other cool free video footage.

The same rule applies – all the videos are free to download and, depending on the license, free to use in your projects.

18. Wedistill

Distill offers for creatives curated videos for personal and commercial use. You can get 10 free HD videos every 10 days, but also by joining their community you can submit your own videos.

19. Pixabay

Pixabay is a community of creatives, sharing copyright free images and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist – even for commercial purposes.

You can copy, modify, distribute, and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission or giving credits to the artist. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity or privacy rights so make sure you read their list of exceptions.

If you’re sick of stock photos this website will lift your spirits instantly. All photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means the pictures are completely free to be used for any legal purpose –  the pictures are free for personal and even for commercial use, you can modify, copy and distribute the photos without asking for permission or setting a link to the source. So, attribution is not required.

The only restriction is that identifiable people may not appear in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive, unless they give their consent. You should also make sure the depicted content (people, logos, private property, etc.) is suitable for your application and doesn’t infringe any rights.

Also read:  Spice Up Your Reports With Visual Data

21. Unsplash

Another favorite of ours, Unsplash offers over 200,000 free high-resolution photos, courtesy of the world’s most generous community of photographers. All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes.

You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible. A credit can be as simple as adding their name with a link to their profile or photo.

22. Stocksnap

Similar to Unsplash, Stocksnap offers beautiful free stock photos, curated nothing from a pool of submissions.

All photos uploaded on StockSnap are released for free under Creative Commons – CC0 and do not require attribution.

Similar to Stocksnap,   Pikwizard is also a great stock photography website, with a lower cost licensing model.

23. Freeimages

Freeimages is another alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work. The site has evolved into the massive community you see today — there are over 2,500,000 registered users and around 400,000 photos online.

All of the licensed content is owned by either FreeImages.com or the artists who supply the content. You do not need to include a photo credit for commercial use, but if you are using content for editorial purposes, you must include the following credit adjacent to the content or in audio/visual production credits: “FreeImages.com/Artist’s Member Name.”

24. Picjumbo

Viktor Hanacek, a 22-year-old photographer and online entrepreneur created Picjumbo in 2013 as a website that offered free pictures. He was also the first person ever to sell a package of photos on Creative Market. Generally, Picjumbo users are from the ranks of bloggers, theme developers, marketers, web designers, app designers or even whole design agencies from all around the world.

“As a web designer I know every designer needs high quality photos in full resolution. That’s why I created Picjumbo.”

25. Startup Stock Photos

A platform addressed to startups, bloggers, publishers, websites, designers, developers, creators, but also to everyone else. Startup Stock Photos was started as an outlet for photos taken on a regular basis, and now offers free photos to organisations all over the world.

26. Font Squirrel

These guys worked really hard to find fonts that are free for commercial use licenses. The fonts available here have free desktop licenses, meaning they can be used in commercial graphics and images free of charge. Make sure to read the license for more information on what you’re allowed to do with the fonts.

Each font has an row of symbols indicating what typical uses we think it allows for free. Please read the license though on any font you plan to use just to make sure. They also have an amazing tool called Font Identifier .

Also read: How to make an efficient remote presentation

27. Google Fonts

One of the best directories of open source designer web fonts. All the fonts in their catalog are free and open source, making beautiful type accessible to anyone for any project. Google Fonts takes care of all the licensing and hosting, ensuring that the latest and greatest version of any font is available to everyone.

The open source fonts in the Google Fonts catalog are published under licenses that allow you to use them on any website, whether it’s commercial or personal. Search queries may surface results from external foundries, who may or may not use open source licenses.

DaFont offers a huge archive of freely downloadable fonts, categorised by style, theme. Typography is an essential part of your presentation, choose a font that represents your brand.

The fonts are free, but if you want to support the author of the font there is the possibility to donate.

29. Befonts

Free fonts for creatives with beautiful script type, professional sans serif font and more. Befonts is a high quality resource that can be used for personal and commercial use.

30. Freepik.com

Freepik offers users, high quality graphic designs, most of which are free to use. They offer illustrations and graphic resources that can be used in both personal and commercial projects.

However, you have to give attribution to the designers that created the resources. Around 1% of the content that they offer comes from third parties. In these particular cases, although they are not frequent, you should check their licenses. If you download Freepik’s resources for free you must include the attribution line “Designed by Freepik” on the products you are willing to sell.

31. Vecteezy

This vector graphics community makes it easy to explore thousands of graphics created by vector artists from all over the globe.

Most of the files are free to download and, depending on the license, free to use in your projects. Almost all licenses will require attribution, so be sure to include credit every time if it does.

32. Brusheezy

The same people who brought you Vecteezy also created Brusheezy, a place to find free Photoshop brushes and other Photoshop-related resources. Here you can explore and discuss the creations of other artists from around the world, or just find that perfect little freebie for your next Photoshop project.

Brusheezy makes it easy to explore thousands of resources created by artists from all over the globe. All the resources are free to download and, depending on the license, free to use in your projects.

33. Themezy

Last one in the series, Themezy is a directory for free website templates. Make sure to abide by the license on each file you download–they are often not the same, so read each license carefully and if there is a README file attached to the download.

To quickly view the license for each video, click on the artist’s username next to “copyright” on the same page as the preview image.

34. Paaatterns

In presentations are used a lot of time patterns as backgrounds. As you could already tell, Paaatterns comes with a free collection of patterns. They come in all vector formats so are easy to customise and edit. 

35. Venngage

Infographics are a big part of presentations, but it’s not always simple to make a good-looking one. Venngage is the tool you need to tell your stories and present your data with infographics. 

There are 3 steps in creating your free of charge infographics, first choose a template, then add charts and visuals and finally customise your design by changing colors, shapes, fonts.

36. Squid Ink

Squid.ink offers thousands of handcrafted, consistent and pixel perfect icons ready to use. Their icons have been specially built to match the current design trends and to help you expand on your projects.

You can find flat icons, line icons and solid icons for every presentation. Their free sample includes 50 free icons for unlimited personal and commercial projects. If you need more than that, you can buy a 2000 icons pack for $45.

37. Flaticon

One of the largest search engines of free icons, Flaticon offers users, high quality graphic designs. Their free pack contains 511,000+ icons (39,500+ every month). They also have Premium content for Premium Users.

You can use all Flaticon’s Selection and Premium icons with no need of attribution with both monthly and annual subscriptions. It doesn’t matter if you are going to use them for a commercial purpose or a personal project. However, it’s probably a good idea to go over their terms of use.

38. Boxicons

Boxicons is a simple vector icons set carefully crafted for designers and developers to use in their next project. You can play there with the categories, they also have different styles of icons and the section of logos.

39. Feather Icons 

Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open source icons . Each icon is designed on a 24×24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency, and flexibility.

At its core, Feather is a collection of SVG files. This means that you can use Feather icons in all the same ways you can use SVGs (e.g. img , background-image , inline , object , embed , iframe ).

40. The Noun Project

The Noun Project has free icons for everything, over 2 million curated icons created by a global community. New icons are added daily by the creator community. 

Bring your presentation to life with some free mockups from Dunnnk . They generate mockups of Android and Apple devices where you can add visuals and customise them for your needs.

42. Mockup Free

Mockup Free is a website with a huge collection of Free PSD mockups for business and entertainment. They create a lot of different themed mockups that can be easily customised and used for both private and commercial projects.

All the mockups on there website are fully layered and very qualitative and all of them have a clear design structure.

43. Mockupworld

Mihai, our founder recommends Mockup World. Mockup World is a collaboration of high quality best free mockups including Apple Devices, Branding, Logos, Print, Digital Art, Fashion, Apparel & More.

Color Palletes

44. coolors.

Generate color schemes to play with in your presentation. Coolors  is a tool that gives you access to more than 700K color palettes designed by its users. It also lets you create your color palette and export it in a couple of clicks. 

There is a free trial of 3 months where you can create the color scheme for your brand.

45. Adobe Color

Adobe also made available a color wheel that helps you create a color scheme. You have 10 types of color schemes from where you can choose, analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary, shades and more.

Discover there current color trends in different industries from the creative communities on Behance and Adobe Stock.

46. CSS Gradient

CSS Gradient is a happy little website and free tool that lets you create a gradient background for websites. Besides being a css gradient generator, the site is also chock-full of colorful content about gradients from technical articles to real life gradient examples like Stripe and Instagram.

Design inspiration

47. behance.

This is a name that all designers know. Behance is a platform for creative professionals around the world to showcase their own work and to discover the creative work of others.

Their community has a lot of members so you will see a lot of projects from different areas, from different perspectives, with different styles. So it’s an excellent source of inspiration.

48. Dribbble

On Dribbble you will discover top creatives and designers that are showing their work to the world. It is a fantastic place to get inspiration for your graphic design project,  also has a vast archive of various free design elements.

49. 99Designs

99Deigns is a global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love. They connect more than one million talented freelance designers with creative people, genius entrepreneurs, savvy businesses… anyone who needs great work.

Their Discover page is a great resource for browsing logos, brand identity packs, icons, illustrations and more created by professional designers from all over the world.

50. Typewolf

Are you interested in what’s trending in Type? Go to Typewolf for more than just fonts, they have also recommendations, a collection of lookbooks, blog posts, guidelines. If you are looking for inspiration you find it there.

That’s it for our list of freebies and inspiration websites. What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below!

Are you ready to take your presentations to the next level?

Our team can help with everything from researching your project, writing the content, designing and building your slides, and even creating handouts.

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Great list! You should add Textures4Photoshop to your list as it has lots of free textures and backgrounds:

http://www.textures4photoshop.com/tex/

Thanks John!

Hi, great resources also check out https:// 366icons .com our project with free icons. Thanks.

One of the most needed articles to help us with managing our creativity ability for the business presentation. I am going to explore these resources and see how can I use them. You can visit https://presentationexperts.co.uk/presentation-training-london/ to know more about PowerPoint presentations.

Thanks, I love most of the resources. https://thecreativeclippingpath.tumblr.com/

Awesome List of site in every aspect. thanks for sharing

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• PRESENTATION SKILLS

Organise the Presentation Material

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Presentation Skills:

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Regardless of whether your presentation is going to be delivered formally, such as at work or informally, for a club or perhaps a Best Man's speech. You should always aim to give a clear, well-structured delivery.  That is, you should know exactly what you want to say and the order in which you want to say it. 

Having thought about and planned a good structure will also help to alleviate any nervousness you may be feeling in the build up to your talk.

Clarity of ideas and good organisation should help result in a lively, logical and compelling message, delivered in a confident and professional way

Organising the presentation material may include:

• Blue Sky Thinking (the ideas).
• Selecting the main points.
• Deciding whether to illustrate.
• Introduction and conclusion.

Blue Sky Thinking (The Ideas)

Keeping your objectives in mind ( see our page: Preparing Your Presentation ), write down all the points you wish to make, irrespective of order.

For an introduction to Blue Sky Thinking, see our section on Brainstorming - part of our guide to problem solving.

Select Your Main Points

The talk/presentation should be divided into three sections:

• Introduction (beginning)
• Main Content (middle)
• Conclusion (end)

A useful structure would be the following:

Tell the audience in the introduction what your subject is and how you have organised the presentation (by stating the key elements).

Then tell them the details of the key elements and/or messages (by expanding and qualifying the key points in more detail and providing supporting evidence).

Then tell the audience what you have just told them (by summarising the key points, concluding with the main subject again).

Work on the main content first.

From your notes decide on the most important things that need to be said. If you have too much material, be selective.

As a guide:

3 key points are sufficient for a 10-15 minute presentation.

6 key points are sufficient for a 30 minute presentation.

8 key points are sufficient for a 45 minute presentation.

Arrange the key points in logical order and expand them with supporting material - discussion, argument, analysis and appeal.  If you are hoping to persuade people then it is advisable to address potential objections within the presentation so that you present a reasoned, well-balanced view.

Decide Whether to Illustrate

Most talks benefit from personal anecdotes, real-life situations or hypothetical examples to bring them to life. 

If the presentation is short and informal it is probably not necessary to use any visual aids.  Use visual illustrations if anything requires expanding, clarifying or simplifying.  Illustrations of any type should be relevant and fully explained.  Bear in mind that a talk will last longer if visual aids are used.

PowerPoint or other presentation software is often used to support a presentation, although care needs to be taken to ensure that this technology aids the presentation and does not detract from the main essence of your talk. Do not use visual aids or PowerPoint just for the sake of it or to show off your technological prowess, there is nothing more distracting than whizzy and pointless PowerPoint animations in a presentation.

See our page: Visual Aids for more information.

Introduction and Conclusion

The introduction should give a preview of what you are going to say and should gain the attention of the listeners with a statement of purpose.  Make it clear whether you wish to accept questions as they arise during the presentation, thereby breaking your flow and risk being side-tracked, or will invite questions at the end.

The conclusion should repeat the main points but this time try to use different words and summarise the main point and argument.   End decisively, so that no-one is in any doubt that your presentation is finished. This is also the time to ask the audience whether they have any questions.

Continue to: Writing Your Presentation Working with Visual Aids

See also: Deciding the Presentation Method | Managing the Presentation Event Coping with Presentation Nerves | Dealing with Questions

• Effective Presentation Skills Tutorial
• Designing Effective Presentation Materials

Visual aids can enhance a presentation by illustrating complex content, sometimes better than actually talking about it. However, visual aids can detract from an oral presentation if they do not support the message or are used inappropriately.

Depending on the type of presentation and delivery technologies available, you will have to select appropriate presentation tools or audio-visual aids to deliver your presentation.

The audio-visual aids in general can be presentation slides, audio (music, sounds, narration), video clips, real or scaled objects, etc.

The audio-visuals you select must be suitable for the size of the audience, room layout, lighting, sound system, etc. For example, in a large auditorium with an audience of several hundred people, showing a video clip with audio may not work well if there is no sound system.

You should have a good idea about the presentation set up from the preparation stage to select the appropriate audio-visual aids for delivery.

Did You Know?

People remember 65% of information from a visual and oral presentation, 35% from a visual presentation, and 10% from an oral-only presentation.

Audio-Visual Aid Design Principles

The following are general principles to remember in designing audio-visual aids:

Use Simple or No Background in Presentation Materials

Keep your presentation materials simple. Do not use complicated background designs that can distract from the content.

Use Colors That Provide Adequate Contrast and Make it Easier to Read

For example, use dark letters on a light background; and do not use light letters on a light background or dark letters on a dark background. It is better to use black or dark blue letters on a white background.

Slide With Light Background and Dark Text

Slide with dark background and light text, slide with light background and light text, slide with dark background and dark text.

If colors used have meaning, remember that people with color blindness or visual impairment may not recognize the meaning.

Use Adequate Font Size That Allows Easy Reading of Text From the Last Row of the Room

Prepare a sample presentation screen, and see if you are able to view it from the last row of the room (if you know the location and have advance access to it).

Use Distinct Font Sizes for Titles and Section Headings

Use distinct font sizes for titles or section headings compared to points covered in those sections, and make sure they are consistent throughout. Turn off any "auto size" feature in presentation software to help with this.

Limit Bullet Points to Four to Five Points per Slide, and Not More Than Seven Bullet Points

Slide with four bullets, slide with more than seven bullets, limit each point to no more than two, or at most three, lines of text.

Do not have whole paragraphs of text on the screen as the audience may not be able to read it.

Slide With Two Lines of Text

Slide with many lines of text.

Note that bullet points need not be complete sentences (unless it is a quote or a definition) and can be partial sentences or phrases.

Sample Slide With Bullets in Phrases

Sample slide with bullets not in sentences, ensure images are legible from the last row of the room and convey the intended content.

If you have a large figure, show a high-level outline of the figure and then focus on the specific details of the figure on the following slide.

Ensure Animations or Transitions Don't Distract

When using animations or transitions in presentation materials, make sure they do not distract from the content and do not have a jarring effect, as some transition styles can cause seizures for people with certain disabilities.

Ensure Chart Scales Don't Mislead

If you use graphs or charts in your presentation materials, make sure axis scales do not mislead the audience on the trends. Stacked bar graphs are also difficult for the audience to comprehend when you move through the slide quickly.

Sample Bar Chart

Stacked bar chart.

Example graphs below show the same data in both charts but the first chart can mislead the audience about the data trend.

Chart Showing Misleading Trend

Chart showing realistic trend, show video clips at easily viewable size.

If you include video clips, make sure the size of the clip (¼, ½ or full size) on the screen is viewable for the audience.

Do Not Use Offensive or Stereotypical Visuals

If you use cartoons or animations or clip arts, make sure they are not offensive and do not stereotype people.

Play Audio at Easily Heard Levels

If you use audio clips, the sound system in the room should be adequate for the audience to hear.

Share Real or Scaled Objects at Easily Viewed Sizes

If you show real or scaled objects during your presentation, make sure they are viewable from the last row or use a document camera to display it.

Test Audio-Visual Aids in Advance

Test the audio-visual aids, especially if you use special plug-ins or players or different versions of software for display.

Design Your Audio-Visuals So All Members Can Experience Them

If you will have audience members with particular disabilities, then you will have to design the audio-visuals accordingly. Common disabilities may include color-blindness, visual impairment, hearing impairment, etc.

Proofread and Spell-Check

Proofread and spell-check presentation materials for grammar and spelling errors. Even minor errors will be glaring on a large screen!

When Using the Board or Flip Charts, Write Large Text and in a Logical Flow

If you plan to use the board or flip charts, learn to write in big letters or draw appropriately-sized figures so that the audience can view the information easily.

When writing on the board or flip charts, write from left to write and from top to bottom, so the audience can follow the logical flow of information.

Cite Sources Properly

If you include content from external sources in your presentation, include in-text citations where necessary and list the corresponding references at the end of the presentation materials.

Acknowledge Your Contributors

Acknowledge those who helped you with the presentation, including your team members, at the end of the presentation materials.

Remember Your Visuals Are To Enhance and Not Distract

Most importantly, design materials to enhance your presentation and help you deliver the content effectively, not to distract from it!

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• Preparing for the Presentation
• Organizing the Presentation
• Rehearsing the Presentation
• Delivering the Presentation
• Handling Questions and Answers
• Presentation Skills Quiz
• Presentation Preparation Checklist
• Common Reasons for Ineffective Presentations