Making the design of your PowerPoint better isn't difficult. By applying the basics of design you can visually improve your PowerPoint graphic designs. Learn how to design PowerPoint (PPT) slides in this tutorial.
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Want to learn how to design PowerPoint slides? Great presentations are supported by a good PowerPoint layout. Most PowerPoint graphic design you see is rather invisible. When something is wrong with a slide design, you'll notice.
In this PowerPoint design tutorial, we cover the basics of presentation design. It's a strong way to approach how to make a good PowerPoint presentation design. As you'll notice, subtle details go a long way. You'll learn:
We'll look at how you can apply all these techniques to your designer PowerPoint ideas.
Jump to content in this sectionAre you looking to use ready-made presentation slide designs to shorten the process? I recommend checking out the trending PowerPoint templates on Envato Elements. It can save valuable time when you need to get a beautiful presentation, done quickly. It also takes some of the guess work out of how to design PowerPoint slides.
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We're going to talk about PowerPoint graphic design, but first we need to understand what that means. After all, it's not enough to open PowerPoint and start clicking. If you want to know how to design PowerPoint slides, you've got to understand the principles.
We'll look at how important structure and slide layouts are to content. You can also learn how the fonts and colors you choose affect the whole presentation. We'll also look at any details you can add to improve design.
We're going to dive deeper into these principles of design. They're behind a great PowerPoint presentation:
Any type of design starts with visual hierarchy. What exactly is visual hierarchy? This refers to the arrangement of elements in a way that it implies importance. You can influence how we perceive what we see with contrast.
The theory of visual hierarchy helps you define the structure of your PPT design slides. Good visual hierarchy assures that the right elements are catching your attention.
You can achieve visual hierarchy through several PowerPoint graphic design techniques:
The above concepts are known as adding visual weight to an element. How does this work in practice? How does this help us learn how to design PowerPoint slides?
Below, you see two slides with the same copy. One's got no visual hierarchy applied. The other one uses simple color and typography. You'll learn more about later. It's used to apply visual weight.
Remember, some content will appear more important than other content. That's correct use of visual hierarchy. This is a PowerPoint graphic design principle you should use to your advantage. Ask yourself what needs to stand out in your presentation.
You're giving a financial presentation. You want your audience to recall that the third quarter performed poorly and why.
It's unrealistic is to believe your audience will recall exact data. A presentation gives a lot of information in a short time span. Unfortunately, the attention of people is quite brief. Focus on key messages and use visual hierarchy to make those ideas stick out. It will help people digest your objective and key takeaways slides in PowerPoint.
You can apply visual hierarchy to create effective PowerPoint presentation slide designs. It's one of the corner stones of how to make a good PowerPoint design.
The trick is to understand what the most important message is. Through PowerPoint design principles, that this will be the content that people remember.
This goes further than just designing one simple slide background. For example, you might have a few slides in a row about the same topic. But the final slide with the conclusion could be the slide to add that extra visual weight. For example, by adding an image for the first time or making the text bigger as usual. This is applying visual hierarchy to your slide layouts as well.
One of the most effective PowerPoint graphic design tricks to apply is that less is more, in most cases. When you've got key statistics, the following method helps:
This is known as letting your design (and content) breathe. The idea you should keep in mind is that you should try and give your content (and thus your design) a hidden order.
Repetition is another trick to help you emphasize a key message. For example, try displaying a graph. Then try an individual statistic on two separate slides. This is a good example of effective repetition. It will also help your designer PowerPoint ideas stick with an audience.
If you're looking for some inspiration for slide layouts, dive into this curated selection of trending PPT presentation designs:
