How do you optimize your slide design for online and remote presentations?

Opting for a simple, consistent slide layout is crucial for online presentations. It prioritizes the message, eliminates distractions, and maintains audience engagement. By strategically using white space, alignment, & contrast, presenters create a visually appealing, impactful presentation. For instance, in a sales presentation, a clean layout with minimal text and consistent fonts highlights key features, while contrasting colors draw attention to important details. This approach ensures clarity, enhances comprehension, and leaves a professional impression on the audience. Remember, in slide design, simplicity isn't just a virtue, but also the ultimate sophistication. Keep it sleek, focused, and captivating to leave a lasting impression!

It is essential to use symmetrical approach while designing each element of the presentation slides. The overall look and feel should be colour coordinated, following a colour theme suited to the entire presentation, in sync with the brand colours of the organisation. Further, the graphics, images and A/V used in the slides should be relevant to the topic, well suited for the target audience.

Instead of "white" space I like to use a single colour dark background. Especially for online presentations, it is so much nicer to look at a darker screen then a bright white screen. If you do not want to go dark, think about using off white.

Also make sure that when you use images there is no big watermark over them. Invest in a tool that gives you good quality images you can freely use. Check for your images the copyrights so you are able to use them freely!

No matter what types of visualizations you choose, always remember to cite your sources for various visualizations and data sets. You don't want to pull focus from your presentation by your audience wondering where you got the information from or if it's credible.

Charts are tricky. They most often overwhelm your listeners, especially when you don't give them the time to digest the chart (while you simply say nothing). To master visual storytelling, you ideally build the chart up piece by piece by using the simple "appear" animation. For example, let's say you show revenue bars for the last years: Show first the x-axis, describe what it visualizes (e.g. the year), then let the y-axis appear and describe it (e.g. "Here we see our revenues in Million USD), then let the bar for one year appear after each other.

Too much interactivity is sometimes seen as unprofessional. However, it’s necessary, especially during long presentations. A short video may be interesting, but unless it’s very relevant shouldn’t be included. People come to the webinar/presentation/speech to hear (from somebody special) about something specific. If they wanted a video, they’d go on YouTube. Engagement, on the other hand, aids listeners to understand the content being explained or shown. Questions should be encouraged, and an anonymous Q&A at the end is always helpful. Mentimeter is helpful and also shows interactive clouds to share opinions real-time.

There’s nothing worse than a plain presentation with bullet points. I do not use any bullet points in my presentations, I find images and videos are far more powerful with lots of colour and proper tend to absorb the information better.

Don't use bullet points, and try to use no text at all. If you use text, give your listeners time to read it – and don't just repeat the text on your slide. You're the messenger, not your slide.

Let elements on a slide appear one by one when you start discussing them. Never show something you'll talk about later – listeners will read it no matter what the moment you show it. While they read, they won't be able to follow your words; this is how our brains work (or not work).

If you give a lot of presentations, it is worth having 2 screens at home. This means you can use presenter mode. One screen will display the presentation as your audience sees, you will see the current slide, your notes and the next slide. Great for helping you build your story and not having tons of text on your slides.