It’s a beast that makes a lot of assumptions. You draw a simple square shape and it assumes that you want it to have a drop shadow, a bevelled edge and a blue gradient running from top to bottom. “How about I make those decisions for myself”, you think as you search around the menu panels trying to turn these gimmick effects off. The fact of the matter is, that it’s a piece of software that has been ingrained in the culture of office workers globally since the dawn of desktop publishing back in the early to mid 90’s and you have to give it it’s due, it’s lasted the test of time so far. The frustrations of PowerPoint are a common talking point over a beer or two for us designers (we know how to have a good time!), but the good news is, we, at The Launchpad Creative have tamed the beast and are proud to offer an excellent Presentation design service to our customers.
But is PowerPoint really the problem?
For those of us accustomed to the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, the Microsoft apps are difficult to get used to, and you feel like you’re having to wrestle with the software but as time has gone by we’ve noticed that the software itself is only partly to blame. It’s the process of creating a presentation that is equally as clunky in most cases. Here’s what we suggest you consider when getting a presentation designed or being tasked with designing one.
What’s the brief, what are we aiming for? Is there an existing template. If the look and feel is bespoke or new, what are we trying to convey? If things start to go awry at any point, go back to the brief, remind yourself what the goal is.
If the content has been roughly created, the designer can take the time to audit the content and work out a suitable structure and art direction but understand this will take a substantial block of time, best case, one full day. You’ll also need to allow enough time for designing the slides, 30 per day is a good rule of thumb.
If the content has not been created, the key decision maker needs to communicate the brief to the designer, the designer can then create some template slides and once those have been approved, brief the content team on what the slides should look like and how to use them. A brief tutorial on this is usually a good idea. That way, when the populated slides come back into design, they will be in a better place and a lighter design touch will be required. In short, content and design need to work with each other in mind, much like the Copywriter/Art Director partnership you get on advertising campaigns.
If we have a lovely range of master layouts but the same ‘basic’ one is being used by the people writing the content, there was no point in creating the template in the first place, hence the need for the team to be briefed on how to use the template.
The best decks have a sense of consistency and variation at the same time. Avoid a long run of white background slides, look for opportunities to add large imagery, or solid background colours, if you have a run of content heavy slides, try to break them up with something more digestible. Always avoid overcrowding a slide, focus on clear communication.
Make sure that the process is communicated to all key decision makers and that they are kept in the loop at each key phase. Make sure everyone agrees on the brief, then make sure everyone agrees that the Art Direction meets the brief, then you can go full steam ahead designing the slides.
And lastly makes sure assets are decent quality. You can have the most beautiful template in the world but if you're chucking in pixellated images and stretching them and god knows what else, it's all in vain.
We create fully functioning templates, tailored to your needs
Creating a template sounds straightforward and quick, but like any design brief, it’s essential to make sure we understand the client’s requirements first. So, we research the nature of the content that our clients tend to create. Do they use a lot of graphs, charts and diagrams, are there a lot of infographics and statistics, or is it more, big, striking imagery, with minimal text? Or of course a bit of a combination? Then there’s the brand look and feel to take into account, obviously we want the client’s presentations to tie in visually with the rest of their communications.
As well as that, it’s important to empathise with the range of proficiency that staff in an organisation will have. Some will be very confident using PowerPoint and have a good understanding of how to get the best out of it, others not so much. So we create master layouts that allow more advanced users to create beautifully designed slides but at the same time if you’re a novice, you’ll still be able to build a slide that looks professional. We also always show a range of slides in normal view which demonstrate how the master layouts are to be used, which guides the end user on the general look and feel we’re aiming for.
Bespoke video tutorials
On top of this, we offer a service where we create video tutorials using our client’s template which demonstrate how to do certain things. The way this usually works is the staff compile a list of problems they’re experiencing each month, and then we create a video tutorial which addresses those. There are, for example certain things you see a lot in PowerPoint presentations which significantly downgrade the appearance of slides. For example, low resolution images, so we show our users how to source better quality images and how to crop them properly in PowerPoint. Simple things like this can add up to make the presentation look a whole lot better than it would otherwise. The great thing about these video tutorials is that our clients and their staff can watch them back in their own time and at their own pace.
We also create fully designed presentation decks
If you’re pitching for new business, putting forward a business proposal to an existing customer or even creating a presentation for internal purposes, we can produce a fully designed PowerPoint deck based on your content. Just get in touch with us by phone on 020 3813 0272 or email info@thelaunchpadcreative.co.uk so we can discuss the brief further.
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