Mastering Presentation Design: Everything You Need to Build Better Slides

1. Class Trailer: we've all sat for a bad presentation, and if you're anything like me, probably even given one yourself. That's why I decided to take a class on how to avoid you. Ever give a bad presentation again? Hey, I'm lar Evens, and this is mastering presentation design in this class. I'll teach. You had effectively used visuals and language to create a stronger, more effective presentation. I'll teach you how to do visual research, create mood boards, tell a compelling story. Designs drawing layouts and customize slides to help sell your skills. Your ideas for the class project. You'll then use what you've learned to create your own fully customized slide deck. You can uses a template for future presentations or client projects. You don't need any graphic design experience to take this course. You don't even need to be a creative. This class applies to anyone in any industry. Whether you're a freelancer, side hustler or full time professional, you can take the skills that we're learning here and apply them to your job in lots of different ways. That said, if you are a designer spying, creative, this class is great for you to because I'll be providing concrete tips on presenting creative work, and I also push you to really flex your creative muscles in the class project. But they represented creative work, pitching new business or just explaining a fresh idea. Some co workers. This class will completely change the way that you perch presentation, making Let's get started. 2. What you'll learn: The practice for today's class is to design a presentation for Ethos, a fictional hair care company in Greece Steve just started to work for. They've asked you to design the presentation that they give to stores when they encourage them to stock their products. You can download the client brief for more information on the company and the exact requirements for the presentation. Throughout this class, I'll be completing the same brief but for a different fictional client, so you can directly see how the skills and teaching you apply to your own project in presentation making by completing the project will not just be able to use all the new skills you're learning in this class, but you can actually use what you make for. The project is a slide designed template for your future presentations. Don't feel overwhelmed. This project is brought enoughto quite anyone in any industry and the skills that you'll if I will always come in handy because the assignment contains lots of different slide elements like facts and figures, product rundowns, images and more. Plus, you can use any South for you like to complete it like Power Point, Kino illustrator or whatever you like to make presentations in the project also contains an optional section of making some extra branding like a mock up. So if you're creative or inspiring designer, here's where you can go that extra mile to create some cool stuff. Look for the video labeled optional to get some tips on making mock ups. When you're done, remember to upload your project here, seeking at feedback on your layouts and designs. I'm excited to see what you come up with. 3. Story Shapes: The very first thing you'll need to start a presentation is a good understanding of storytelling. So in this video we'll be talking about story shapes, what they are and how to apply them to presentations. The best way to convey any information is by telling a story. Help people connect with your material and helps prevent people from just tuning out. You're presenting what I tell a story. I don't mean throw ins and personal anecdotes. The spice. I mean, look at your presentation of something that needs an overarching narrative structure, like a book or a film does, but without fictional characters. So does that mean exactly one of the clearest ways of understanding narrative structure was presented by Kurt Vonnegut? We're not actually getting into any of those books today, but instead we're talking about his rejected master ceases for anthropology. The basic idea was that the ups and downs of a character's journey could be graft to reveal the shape of a story shaped so simple that even computers could understand them. Story shapes air mapped on to simple axes from bad to good fortune on the vertical and beginning to end on the horizontal. That's listen to Kurt Vonnegut's explanation of a classic shape. Okay, we call the story Mannino, but be about a man needs to be about somebody getting in the hole. But later, remember, somebody get into problem. Good job of it again. People love that story. Another classic example is the boy meets Girl shape. Wouldn't it's girl. They fall in love and it's great, but I'm no He lost her thin been the ones were back again. I am everything old is all gone. Well, if I was writing a book houses a vitamin presentation. Well, the least interesting shape that I can think of is this no up snow downs, just a series of facts and statements from beginning to end. That's exactly what you want to avoid when you're presenting, but creating tension in your presentation, those highs and the lows. You keep the audience interested, keep them on their toes and guessing about what's coming next. But most importantly, you can help them create an emotional connection to what you're talking about. So that's exactly why having a strong story is key to delivering a successful presentation . So let's apply a story shape to a presentation creation Let's say that you're a door to door insurance salesman, then, following a shape like the boy meets girl shape could be perfect for you. You tell a new client that they live in a great house with an amazing wife, but, oh, no, What if it floods? And they're worried. That was absolutely everything within Africa. Tabara. Their new insurance policy saves the day, finally talks about some great shapes, But don't be afraid to pre euro for your presentation. Just remember to create those points of high and low tension. Let's talk about a couple shapes that I like to use when I'm making presentations. The groundbreaker. It's a shape Veronica didn't mention, but it's something I use often when I'm creating pitch decks for acts, for example, we begin with some problem in the world. That's all very bad. But then we had an amazing idea, and it's gonna make life so much better care. Financials aren't great right now, but that's where you come in, but infinite happiness and profits for what if your company tax you to solve a problem they have. You could just tell them solution, or you can take them on a journey. Start with a problem. We had no idea how to fix it. Was researching understanding, started getting really confident. And then we had no ideas that we talked to Brett Accounting. He pointed us to this huge bill that showed us that tractors need a lot of wheels. When we thought about eliminating wheels and then boot flying tractors for gardens of the industry. And people don't just want to hear the solution, they'll have an easier time accepting it and connecting to it if they come on the journey to the idea with you. If you felt in ah ha moment coming up with it, let them feel it by telling them exactly what it waas. You can download a cheat sheet of a few basic shapes, and the resource is section. Knowing these basics, you can either use one of these curves is starting point for your presentation or create a unique one? Just be cautious to avoid ending up with a flat shape that lacks intention. Before you can select or create the right story shape for your presentation, it's important to know what mistakes to avoid and with some good practices are to keep in mind when you're telling that story, so we'll cover those two topics and then we'll circle back to how to choose the right story shape for your quiet or presentation. So now that you know what it takes to tell a good story, let's talk about what not to do. 4. Common Mistakes: there's in common over two mistakes people make when they're creating presentations. So let's quickly discuss the main ones. We'll get into specific writing design mistakes, a few videos from now. The first mistake I see often is not customizing your presentations. Every presentation should be added to match the audience in the project. Doing so will help people connect and feel represented. You can customize sides not just through color and design, but also through language. I'll teach you how to do that. A few videos from now on the steak Number two cliche storytelling. Even though we talked about storytelling and including personal anecdotes, remember not to fall into the trap of cliche storytelling like third party stories, for example, Barbara has a job in the city and no time to work out. She needs our June personally as an audience member. I don't really care about Barbara, and I don't want to feel forced to try to connect with her. I want to know how the story applies to me. So whenever you can try to make your audience feel represented in the stories that you're telling, rather than just relying on presentation cliches, another mistake. People often make is thinking about what they want to say rather than what the audience wants to hear. You may have a lot of great information ideas to present, but try not to overwhelm people and make sure that you're curating your information toe only fit your audiences interests. Building on that remember that less is more. Don't over sell because you can lose the ability to create a connection with people, and that should always be the main goal of your presentation. Instead, keep it simple and don't exaggerate what you're talking about or get too bogged down in the details. Finally, a good thing to remember is that you never want to end on something like a thank you. Slide has a real sense of finality and can have a negative impact on your presentation. Your last impression is as important as your first. Do you want to make sure they lend on something that keeps the story going that puts the ball in their court? And that says to be continued rather than the end? Now that we've covered what not to do, let's shift gears into some practical tips of what you should dio 5. Tips & Tricks: What if your mom to your phone password? That's right. The first tape, his Tips and Tricks section, is having a strong opening. There's lots of great ways to get people's attention as a present statistic and interesting anecdote. We're in the case of this video. A what if question that catches people off guard. Getting people's attention quickly will help them stay focused on your presentation tip number to make it personal if it's relevant to what you're talking about, including a personal anecdote can breathe a little life into your presentation, and they could make it more relatable to your audience. Tip number three Tell a story like we talked about in the storage shapes video. Make sure that you're keeping that overarching narrative in mind as you're making and delivering your presentation. Telling a story feels a lot more inviting than just listening to a list of facts and figures. Tip number four, including Aha Mama. Maybe a bumpy road field you to invent better suspension or a brain freeze inspired a new variety of peppermint. Whatever fuelled your creativity can help inspire others to relate to your ideas. Last the most important goal of any presentation is creating an emotional connection. People might forget what you said, but they won't forget the way that you made them feel that they recovered the do's and don't of presentation making. Let's start with the last thing we need to know before we get into the hands on stuff. 6. Get to know your Audience: any time we're doing a presentation being in house or to a new company, you should always tailor your slides to match the style and mood of your audience. So let's do a deep dive on how to translate a company's branding into storytelling and design elements. As we've said before, you should always try to make an audience feel present in your presentation style foster connection. So before you begin any presentation, think of what you're presenting to compile a basic profile for them. This profile should include their logo, their color pilot there font in their voice. You'll use these elements of the brand profile to create a presentation that has a sense of familiarity to them, although unless you're part of the company or creating presentation for them, it shouldn't necessarily include all those elements literally. But more on that later, locals are a good element, clocked up France until often and abusing them. One title slides. It's a great places at the tone for the presentation and shows the audience. His presentation is custom. To them, you can find most low was by a quick Google search or on the company's website, for example, let's say I want to download the local for the gap. My first stop is gonna be on their website. If I click and drag this logo, I can tell that it's transparent, so there's a high chance is gonna be high quality file. I'll just right click it and open it in a new tab. And as you can see, it's an SPG. So that's a great factor and which file type that I can work with. So I just download that from a presentation. Although vector image files like that's figure the best option because they allow you to scale the logo without it becoming blurry, you can also look for higher is P and G's with transparent backgrounds just so you don't end up with that unfortunate white edge around a logo. So let's say we couldn't find the high quality logo on the Gap website. Then we check Google image. I'll just go into tools and said it toe large because I don't want a low quality logo, and immediately I have some great options pop up that I can save. I can use the black version of their logo here, or there is also a transparent back or an option that I could download from local media, which, as you can see, also has a nice high resolution. One. Sit down with loco. I'll pop it into a file on my computer into which I'll upload the rest. The elements of the basic profile. Let's move on to color. For example, Let's say you're presenting to Starbucks. Then it might be a good idea to include pops of color that are familiar to their brand like green and avoid ones that are associated with their competitors like pink. That said, you don't really want to overdo it. At the risk of come across is over eager or even brown nosey. But we'll go into more detail on brand colors in the design practices a few videos. For now, I like to use the free colors ilex and trying Google Chrome Teoh easily pick brand colors on websites I have to do is click the extension pick color from Page and click the point whose color you want and then copies all that color data onto this color picker for you. So you can just screenshot that data and pop it into the folder that you made for your profile. If you don't use Google chrome, you can also screenshot the website and just use the eye droppers and Power Point keynoter illustrator and PowerPoint and Kino. You basically just create a shape come up to fill it more, click the eyedropper and then click on the color that you want to apply to the shape you made and hate Okay to re color that shape. Now let's look at funds. Most companies have custom front, so the odds you'll be able to download a specific wonder Slim. I usually just try to find something that stylistically similar to the front that a brand or company uses. So let's say that your customizing a presentation for The New York Times that I might go with him work classic front with tariffs. But if I'm presenting Toe Apple, on the other hand, that I'm looking for a cleaner, minimalist sand Sarah fun to quickly bring it down syrups or the features at the end of strokes. So San Serif Font is one that does not have those features. Try to look at the front of the audience that you're working on and see what makes their front distinct is it, Sarah, are the lines thicker? Thin is every around it or angular. Making these notes will help you choose a foreign that matches their aesthetic. If you want to take it a step further than the front selection you have available on your presentation software of choice, check out some open source platforms that lie to download fronts for free. Like Google fronts. Here, you can scroll through hundreds of free to use Frantz, and you can narrow it down based on the notes you made earlier to different categories like Sarah. If San Serif hand written and you can even use sliders to look for different thicknesses lancer with When you found a front, just download. Install it quick tip for creatives. If you haven't Adobe subscription, check if it covers access to the type kit. This also contains hundreds of free to download and use funds for your creative projects. The last step in completing the brand profile is noting their voice. After collecting all this data on your audience, try to get a feel for their personality. Are they serious and impressive, like a bank or quirky and young understanding their brand personality is key to selecting images, composing layouts and what language to use, for example, of brand like cards against humanity has a simple black and white image. But it has this really strong, funny out there voice, so we know I can push the envelope a bit when I'm presenting to them and he shouldn't come across is to corporate. But a brain like Barclays, on the other hand, is very serious and straight to the point, so quirky jokes or Atlanta stories would not do well for the audience. Now that we've compiled all this research of our audience, we're gonna put it all together to begin to set the tone for a presentation. In my case, I'm working for a company called Tallow who wants me to create the presentation they'll use when talking to boutiques about stocking their products. When I looked through the branding material the company provided me, I can tell my presentation should be minimalist, very simplistic and clean and not too frilly. They're relatively traditional and exude a sense of sincerity and serenity. So I'll be using language, design and a story shape that reflects that brand personality. We've covered the basics we've gotten to know the plan, and now it's time to dive into phase one of the presentation, The outline 7. Creating Outlines: After doing all that research, it's time for the first step of customizing your slides, choosing and developing a story shape for your presentation through an outline. As we've talked about a few times now, one key element of a successful presentation is telling a compelling story, and the first step of that process is choosing the right story shape. When you're choosing a story shape, it's important to keep both the audience and the situation in mind. Who are you talking Teoh and what are you trying to achieve? For example, You're trying to convince someone of something. Then you're gonna want to look for a shape that allows you to deliver a strong punch. But are you trying to inspire hope for positivity? Then you're gonna want to look for a shape that allows you to end on the best possible note . And remember to give the audience in mind when you're choosing a shape to, For example, if you're presenting to a playful company, go for an unexpected shape. If you're presenting to more serious company, looked for a shape that matches their composure. Let's move into a concrete example of choosing the right story shape for the purposes of teaching. I'm working on a project similar to your class project. I'm working for a company called Talaq who wants me to create the presentation they'll use when talking to boutiques about stocking their products. There's lots of story shapes I could apply here. Essentially, I'm looking for a shape that allows me to create the desired effect around the product, which is to convey the idea that the product Selves some problem. Where makes things better. So all three of these story shapes would work because they have strong inflection points. Double allow me to capitalize on the narrative structure of the story shape, toe link, that positive feeling to the product and brand. For this particular plan, I'll probably go with man and whole starting on a strong positive vibe, explaining some problems and ending on the even better note than we started with. The reason is treason. This one over the others is because of what we know about the brand. So this is where that brand of research already really starts coming into play. As I mentioned before, they exit kind of serenity and sincerity so I won't get too playful or quirky with my report to this presentation. For that reason, I'll be picking a curve that matches their brand personality best. Nothing too dramatic and soft highs and lows. I use the story shape to influence my language, design choices, visuals and, most importantly, slide order. So the first step in starting my design process is laying out the slide order to start matching this story shape. So in this case, on my first light, I'm just gonna write working title. And I've already dropped an image of the story shape from using for reference. It's just a screenshot from a cici. They want this to be a fairly short presentations will need to achieve this story shape and not to money slides. Since this is just the first step, don't worry about getting too bogged down in details here, essentially, to use a bullet point to talk about the type of information that's gonna be on each side. Just taking a look at the brief again. There's a few specifics, like types they want to do, including the presentation, and I can add as many as I see fit on top of that, as long as it doesn't exceed the 5 to 10 minute mark. So I'll keep those notes of mind is I'm starting this outline. So first I will need to set a positive opening tone. So my first light is gonna be an introduction side about tallow with maybe some cool visuals or some positive text. Now we're going to start transitioning into that downward movement. In this case, I'm gonna be talking about problem than our competitors is offerings, maybe unaddressed skin care issues or poorly made products. Now we find ourselves right in the bottom of the hole. So here will lean into that and talk about all the research and statistics about the gaps on problems in the market. Now we start in that positive upward momentum again, and we'll talk about how tallow gets us out of the hole. So here we're gonna introduce the idea for the solution and the traditions that our products are based on By talking about specific ways that tallow tackles some of the market and competitors issues that we just set ourselves up for in the previous two sides, capitalising on the upward momentum. This is where we'll reveal the skin care products that achieve all of these things that we've been talking about. The client mentioned in their brief that they won't once life for product type, so we'll do one each hair and, if possible for each product type will try to echo some of the problems that itself into really make it seem like tallow is fixing the issues. Next, we want to keep that upward momentum going. So here will hype stores up with him, promising sales projections. And then things get even better with some highlights from some of the best reviews of our current customers. Finally, and most importantly, we're gonna want to end on a call to Action Side. In this case, I'm gonna end on a contact side where stores and see exactly who to contact once they're ready to start stocking these awesome products. So that's my basic outline for the story shape in presentation. But remember, there's lots of different story shapes you can apply or create. Try to brainstorm and think of what you can do for your class project during next presentation to keep audiences engaged and emotionally invested in what you're talking about, if you're for them in creative work. For examples, three ideas or sketches for a brief. You might wanna try the idea. Sandwich shape. Three distinct creative ideas. Your safest and most on brief. First to show clients that you've understood what they're looking for, then your second safest, slightly more daring idea and finally, our most out there concept. Oftentimes I find the in disorder clients can feel more comfortable going slightly out of their comfort zone that are more inclined to pick the second option. Conversely, if you put the second most enrique option second, they might be more inclined to go with that idea then, because they'll be excited to see what they were expecting to see and are therefore down to choosing it. Although it doesn't work 100% of the time, you can use these ideas to try to influence your client's choices fit. But remember to never present an idea that you're not excited about to a Korean, because in my experience they will pick that idea 100% of the time. Now that you've nailed down the story, you want to tell it's time to move on to developing the visuals for your presentation. 8. Laying the Groundwork: you've got your outline. I'll set up. You researched your audience. Let's talk about a begin styling your presentation so one of the most important tools you'll use is a mood board. A mood board is essentially a collection of images or materials that represent the visual style that you're going for in your presentation. The reason it's crucial toe always start with the MoD Board is that presentations take a while to make sometimes weeks or months. So during a lengthy design process, it might not always be noticeable to you if you're style is becoming a little inconsistent . But remember to an audience member of presentation only last a few minutes. So to them, changes in style are really drastic and really noticeable. So whether it's a quick turnaround presentation or a long term presentation that you're working on with the big team, taking the time to set up a mood board before you begin really pays off and you'll find yourself going back to what is your working? One of the best ways to start a mood board is on Pinterest. It's free to use it as a lots of images and resource is available when you're ready. Just create a new board, name it and make it private if you like, Then you concert Pinterest for inspiration. Try freezes likely at inspiration, editorial layout or slide design to help you get the ball rolling. You can also search for other visuals to help you against fire that matched the brand profile you established earlier. For example, I'm working with a client tallow, so search for words they used in their brief and freezes. I associate with, um, like Minimalist magazine or clean Lay up and get a Navy in graphic design. Since the company's based in Iceland. When you find something you like, choose the correct board to pin it to. From the drop down, you can also click on a pin you like and scroll down to see more pains like it. Here's a small list of a few key words I often served for When I'm developing my mood boards. Remember to add in adjectives that describe your brand audience or project. The great thing about using Pinterest is that it also has a free in browser extension for chrome that you can install. This extension allows you take any image you see on any website and add it to your boards. For example, let's say a pound a cool image somewhere that matches the move. My presentation. I can just hover over it, and the Pinterest local appears in a red box. I click save and just like that taken. Select the board that I want to save something to. What so convenient about installing that plug in is that it allows me to create a mood board of items from all around the Internet rather than just pins. I kind on Pinterest. So now I essentially have this online board full of convenient links. But instead of a page with a bunch of HTML links, I see the images right away. So if you're sourcing free stock photos, for example, you don't have to download them all once you can just go through and pin them and then download the ones you like when you need them. It's also ideal if you're working on a presentation with a team, as multiple people can access the board at all times and add to it. If you prefer not to use Pinterest, there's other ways of making lewd boards to weaken screen charter, download in which is you like and lay them out on a document. If you decide to go that route, remember to add a side of links to each of the items that you pin, so it's easy to go back and find the sources of your pins in case they link to other relevant visuals or websites. So be sure to really flesh out that mood board pin items that match the color, the personality of your audience or brand. Choose visuals that set the tone for your presentation or match your story shape and keep an eye out for layoffs that inspire you. They may not always be slide layouts. We can also get cool ideas from magazines, pamphlets or even business cards. Oftentimes, you'll need to present mood boards to clients to when you're doing that, we sure toe only select the images that best encapsulate the style or the movie you're going for and try to use layouts that reflect the clients aesthetics as well. For example, here's a mood board that I presented toe a minimalist natural client. I went with a really freeform approach, even though the images themselves air really muted and simple on The other hand here is a very colorful mood board that I presented to a really serious client. As you can see, her used a more standard layout, even though the images themselves a really playful Now that you know the basics of move boarding, let's get into some core design principles to keep in mind when you're developing your presentation style. 9. 10 Design Principles: congrats. You laid out all the groundwork and you've set yourself up for success. Now it's time to get into the nitty gritty and begin designing. So let's get into 10 principles of good presentation design. I ran out. Wait. A great analogy. When it comes to design, she's at the design is like a refrigerator. When it works, no one notices, but when it doesn't, it sure stinks. And it's true that everyone takes the time to properly design their slides, and it quite literally shows. So let's take a look at some examples of bad presentation design and how to fix them with good design principles. Less is more Abram minimalism over maximalist Um, you've heard it before, but I never tire of saying it less really is more when it comes to presentation design. The last thing you want to stand in front of an overcrowded slide that's full to the brim with text. Instead of a busy layout like this, trim the fat and don't be afraid of white space thinking it is breathing room for the elements on your slide. Sides like this can overwhelm people. And don't assume that lots of texts and information impresses people. Clarity can have a much stronger impact. So that say, you did research and discovered lots of amazing facts. Picture toe only include the absolute strongest figures. So here's an improved version of that slide. Lots of breathing room and more balance. Even though there's a lot of key information on this slide, it's a lot more digestible. It will keep the audience focused on you rather than reading. The blocks of text. Have compressed most of paragraphs two simple bullets and showcased only the strongest points. Curating your information can also help tell your story by allowing you to narrow down your point. One idea per slide, continuing on the same ideas. The previous slide. One way of ensuring that you're not overcrowding your sides is making sure that your only expressing one key idea per slide. So this side, for example, talks about KP eyes of the product as well as financial projection. As you can see, this life is overwhelmingly full. I noticed that sometimes people think it's better to have a lower number of sides and end up overcrowding accidentally, but it's always better to keep Your presentation is clear and as simple as possible, even if it means adding a few slides. So here's a simple solution. Just move each of them onto their own slide and boom. Each section is clearer and focuses distinctly on just one idea rather than to. While we're here, let's talk about role three. Sticking to a color scheme. Here's a side by side of the same to slide, but with inconsistent colors. As you can see, it just doesn't flow well together, and the pieces of information seemed is connected. This is where the mood board brand research you did really come into play by sticking to a color scheme. Your whole presentation will feel well curated, and all the elements you're discussing will flow seamlessly into each other. Diverging from the color scheme, on the other hand, will be jarring to audiences. As we've discussed, it's important to customize your slides to feature your companies branding for the branding of your audience. When you're doing that, however, be sure not to overdo it, as you can see in this example, to show the impact of it more clearly, I've done a draft of a slight design Biopharm who's pitching our potatoes to McDonald's in this example, you can clearly see they've gone too far in terms of Brandon decides for their audience. Even though this is a presentation, it almost looks like a McDonald's ad instead of a pitch by the farm. So here's the fix. I've stuck to settle brand cues but still remain true to the farms corporate identity. I'm using a soft, red overly that's reminiscent of, but not identical to the McDonald's Red, and I'm using a medium san serif font that's reminiscent of the McDonald's fun. I've also done a local lack up of the farm loan next to the McDonald's logo to give that idea of partnership presence and customization, but without the brown nosing. Don't just center everything in terms of overall composition. There's two great approaches to keep in mind when you're designing a slide. The first is to avoid centering everything. It's a go to approach for a lot of initial layout designs, but it can end up looking repetitive or even boring. So instead of centering, aim for violence. So here's the balance version. Immediately, it looks more visually interesting. Rather than being heavily weighted towards middle, the information is spaced out and carries the audiences eyes across the screen. You can also use his approach to create a sense of either duality, so similarity between two halves of a slide or even contrast if you want to highlight differences between elements. Another great alternative dis entering is the rule of thirds. Dividing a slide into three equal parts allows for more dynamic and appealing layouts. Here's the same centered presentation we saw earlier, and here's the fix. I've divided the campus into three. The image now takes up 1/3 of the space, and the text is in the other 2/3 of the space. You can switch this up in lots of ways, and it's a really versatile approach to lay out design a picture really does say 1000 words and a blurry one says All jokes aside, low quality images and graphics can really take away from your presentation and even be distracting. Here's an example of how bad images and icons can take away from a slide. Even though the composition is strong, it feels awkward because of the visuals on it. When I say low quality images and graphics, I don't just mean blurry ones. I also mean tackier overused ones like cheesy stock photos or graphic elements that cracks with the rest of the presentation style. Also never place an image with the watermark on your slides. That's a huge no, no, and it will make your presentation look unprofessional. Here's a fixed version of that slide. As you can see, I didn't touch the layout at all. I just alter the visuals. I swapped out the photo for royalty Free stock Photo from Pixels Be sure you're always using high rez, high quality images that you can use for commercial purposes. Don't just screenshot images on Google as those could be copyrighted. I've also swept at the graphic for a simple shape I made in Kino. It's okay if you can make integrate graphics yourself. Just a simple shape in the color scheme you're using can add the pop that you're looking for. If you have time with the software making some simple icons on illustrator or another, design software is great. But if that's not an option for you, it's a better idea to avoid graphics completely than to add in some that don't match. So make sure to take the time to find high quality images and creator source. High quality graphics. Otherwise, you can risk devaluing your message. Finally, let's move into Texan Frantz. A fair warning. I am a full time designer, so I'm really sorry. I get to intends about funds. All funds carry a certain mood with, um, they're actually designed to do so. A famous example is Comic Sans, which comes across is playful and jokey because that's what it's designed to feel like. It will be very cautious of which front you pick. Let's look at my two least favorite bonds, piras and lobster. They're absolutely everywhere and carry really strong impressions with, um, Piras honestly is only appropriate for 1/6 grade presentation on Pyramid's or the Avatar movie poster. Apparently, for everything else, it's just a no go. You'll find a lot relation to, for example, teas, massage studios, beauty parlors, etcetera. But using it definitely detracts from your message and can devalue your presentation or brand. Same thing goes for a lobster. This fund is everywhere. You can walk for your local grocery store and find out on dozens of packages. The poorly executed retro handwritten style and years of overuse have rendered it super tacky and associate it with low quality brands and items. So be sure to choose your friends carefully since they have a strong effect on your presentation. And a bad one can really devalue your message. Here's a short list of absolute no girlfriends and here's a list of Foncier Excellent choices. The good friends I listed either come preinstalled on the computers or free to download viable fonts, sighs your type appropriately, although there's no hard and fast rule for what side that front should be. When you're designing slides, there's a few mistakes you can make. You want to make sure that your text is large enough that anyone listening to your presentation can read what's on the screen. The context you're in one presenting can strongly affect what you're minimum tech sizes. I usually up for minimum font size somewhere on the 25 to 30 point mark for body text. But the best way to ensure that your front is legible is to test the size of the screen you'll be presenting on and making sure the maximum distance from which you can clearly read the text is far enough to account for the furthest audience member a great rule of thumb to follow for choosing a front size is the multiples rule. Have your body text size to get your footnote size. By that, I mean text that doesn't necessarily have to be legible during a presentation like Sore citation. Any text you add to your slide should be some multiple of the footnote text size. He needs that role to create, for example, really big contrast between poppy titles and body text, or to indicate some betters. Keeping font sizes consistent for the multiple rule really adds to the overall cohesion of your presentation format. Your text. The final design principle to follow when designing your slides is four. Minding your text as you can see here of use justification on these text blocks, which has created these really awkward spaces in between my words and an unnatural flow instead up for a left central or right alignment, depending on your layout. Even though this type of alignment doesn't have those sharp lines, that justification makes it avoids that unnatural look. Also, be sure to never hyphenate resize your text boxes or adjust your spacing to avoid cut off words. Those were just a few simple rules to follow. But the most important thing is to design with experience in mind. Ask yourself if I were an audience member, but what I want to see in here by designing for your audience. First, you'll end up naturally, creating an inviting and easy to follow presentation. Now that you understand those key design principles, let's talk about some tips to communicate effectively by discussing the power of language and your presentation. 10. Good Writing: the title of this video pretty much summarises the point. The language using your presentations has a huge impact on how your worker ideas air perceived. So in this lesson, we'll talk about a listening, desired responses from audiences, but covering word clouds, strong writing tips and an extra tip for creatives. First things first. A helpful tip when you're crafting a presentation is to make a word cloud, just like you made a mood board for your visuals. Creating a word cloud for your writing is a great way to keep your tone and your language consistent threat. Your presentation, For example, Here's a word cloud I made for the title project I'm working on. I used a Web site called Mining Meister to make this. I basically just wrote down words they associate with a brand as a result of the research I did earlier, as well as words describing the project when you're developing your own word cloud. That research he did is a great jumping off point. And be sure to jack down other notes to like what you're trying to achieve during your presentation. In my case, I'm trying to persuade stores to stock the product I used to persuade here rather than sell , because I'm already conscious of the language I put into this word cloud. I don't want the presentation to feel corporate or stuff here like an ad, so it with persuade instead of cell to indicate relationship, development and conversation rather than marketing. When you're done with your word cloud, you can save it here or screenshot it and save it on your computer is reference to look at while you right now the even understanding a word clouds. Let's dive right into some tips on good writing. Stick to atone by echoing the audiences, personality or brand voice and bearing in mind the attitude that's appropriate for the presentation. You'll be able to strike a chord more easily with your audience if their bank don't for a knock knock jokes. But if there a door to door salesman, maybe dio basically read the room ahead of time by doing your research on the personality and then use corresponding language and adjectives to amplifier points and connect with your audience. Also, be sure to keep your language and visuals consistent in terms of totality. They should always match, not contrast. Tell them what they want to hear. Clarity and conciseness are the best ways to approach any presentation. Beating around the bush are getting bogged down in details, can bore your audience and make you seem unfocused instead. Saying right on Lee What's critical to advancing your presentation and focus on bringing important information and ideas. Toe light. Don't be verbose. Choosing difficult words or saying more than you need Teoh can prevent clients from connecting with your ideas or even make them feel insulted. That's not to say you need to dump your presentation down, but try to avoid words that are commonly used in your audiences industry and certainly don't go on the source to find a more impressive synonym for what you're trying to say. Just be clear. Nobody really likes math. Be sure to pick this Tuesday. Six. You choose to include in your sides carefully. A few could be seriously impactful, but if you have too many you with turning her presentation into a school lecture. Don't use cliches. Cliches in seriously take away from the quality of the writing. People might have personal contentions to them already that might not flatter your ideas or you could come across is un relatable for even dated don't include inspirational quotes, inspirational quotes more often than not, make people roll their eyes rather than feel inspired, including these types of quotes in your presentation can often have a negative effect and come really cheap in your brand or ideas. They can come across his hottie or pandering and, verily, actually inspire an audience. So be cautious when including quotes include a rhyme. This is definitely a boulder tip, and it isn't appropriate for every client or presentation. It kind of sounds like silly advice, but if something rhymes, people tend to believe it. There's different types of ramming their standard and driving we're all familiar with, like fake it till you make it. But there's a few other types of rhyming, like initial obliteration, a k a. The reputation of the initial sounds of award, like she sells seashells by the seashore. There's also initial accidents, which is 12 or more Words close to each other. Repeat the same vowel sound but have different constant sounds like free as a breeze. Rhyming techniques can be a great way to create a memorable phrase or idea that could get stuck in audiences heads and can help convince them of certain ideas or beliefs, which is why you'll spot it. Being used commonly is a device and advertising or even law with things like I like Ike. Or if the glove don't fit, you must acquit again. Make sure you understand your audience in situation clearly before committing toe around your presentation. If you successfully, it could be persuasive. But overdo it on this technique and you'll risk sounding like Dr Seuss. Lastly, a quick practical tips for creatives. If you're presenting creative work, be sure to include language from the brief that the client gave you in your presentation. Using that similar wording can help convince a client that your idea and matches what they're looking for. One final point in this lesson that might actually be the most important is toe. Always spell check, and I don't mean just running the spell. Check on your computer because remember that fact and fart are bolt spelled correctly. But no one wants to hear 10 little farts about your company. So be sure to read over your presentation with a fine tooth comb and ask someone else to do the same for you. I can't stress enough how important spelling is. Now let's talk about finding some free, high quality images for your presentation. 11. Sourcing Images and Graphics: one key aspect of presentations that can really help you express your ideas are visual aids like pictures or graphics. So let's talk about some great places to source images and some tips on creating some simple graphics yourself. Pictures can be a stellar way to liven up your presentation and can add a lot of depth or even humor to your sides as we've mentioned before. Finding high quality, high resolution pictures is crucial since you don't want to use copyrighted or blurry photos. Two of my favorite websites to go to for pictures or unspool, ash and pixels. Both of these websites of huge image libraries the inscribed through to find great high quality images to download for your presentations, try searching for words that are similar to the tone and movies set out for your presentation. So in my case, for example, since I'm working from moderns getting care client, I might just want to look for simple images relating to showers or washing. So search, for example, for skin care and just like that about great looking options already. So definitely check out those two websites for some awesome pictures or even videos for your slides graphics. This could be a lot harder to source. And if you don't have access to design software like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshopped, it could be difficult to change the colors and styles of pre made graphics to match the silent tone of your presentation. So instead, let's focus on what's already available to you if you a Pino, which comes preinstalled on all Apple computers. Given absolutely huge election of built in customizable graphics to choose from in your document, just click on the shapes option, and you can scroll through loads of icons and different topics. You can also customize their style to match your presentation. So, for example, I'll select this hand and let's say have been using this. Cute yellow has come over here and fill in yellow. You can also fill it with a Grady in an image or leave it transparent for me. I'm just gonna make it yellow duplicated and overlay it with his other hand. And that one I was gonna make transparent gave it a border not too thick and upset it a bit . And I have this cool effect, So if you have Kino, you have access to loads of easy ways to make cool, unique graphics for your sides. If you have power point, you also have some built in shapes in the shape section and loads of icons that are super customizable in the icon section. Not only can you change the fill in line colors, too, but there so many awesome options to customize the graphics and stylized them. To match your presentation, you can add drop shadows you can miss with their transparency and size. You can add glows, and you can even make them three D objects and rotate them in three dimensions. The level of customization and power point for these icons is super high. Now, if you're creative, you'll probably end up using Adobe Illustrator in design for most of your side signs. I almost always after illustrator, since it just feels a lot more user friendly to me, especially in terms of creating unique assets, get inspired by your mood board and then take the time to create fully custom icons in the style of your slides. Using different colors, line waits, textures and effects, remember to apply all the same rules of cohesion and color schemes, toe all the graphs and charge in your presentation as well. All three programs I just went over allow you to customize the colors of any charts. I'd really recommend recreating charts to place in your presentation rather than using non stylized charts that you might have gotten from your research. So that was a quick run down of everything you need to know to get started on sourcing high quality images and customizing some graphics and common presentation software. Now, if you're a creative a graphic designer or you're interested in learning how to quickly and easily make a mock up in Adobe Photoshopped, check out this next optional video for a walk through. If you're not into that, you can skip that video and move on to the video called Creating Strong Layouts Where you guess it, I'm gonna teach you how to create strong layouts 12. (Optional) Creating Mockups: If you're feeling creative and you have access to design software like Adobe Photoshopped, creating your own walk ups can add a real punch to your presentations. Often times you could find yourself presenting on subjects or ideas that how many have been realized. So making a mock up can have a really big impact on your audience because it makes what you're talking about seem real and almost tangible. My usual go to to create markups is just using an image I life and adding my branding or designed to that. Let's dive in. So I found this cute picture on pixels that I want to use is a market for my presentation. It's simple and clean and minimalist, so it matches the aesthetic of the brand that I'm working on. So first things first. I need to get rid the logo on this bottle. That would force they're doing any edits. I'm gonna quickly duplicate the original photo, so I can always use that as a reference. Later, the keyboards work had to do that is command J on Mac Control J on Windows, and I'm gonna quickly rename it tallow. All right, so now we can start moving into removing the local from this bottle. To do that, I'm gonna pull up my clone stamp tool he in selected here or use the keyboard. Turcotte s so holding on all our option is let me select a specific area of this layer for me to be sampling from as I'm using the clone stamp tool. I was going to use a soft edged brush to gently go through and stand about the logo. And we've been careful strokes and I'm re sampling quite often. All right, so that's looking pretty good. So now we're gonna come in and create a placeholder, and that's gonna be where we will be dropping her packaging or logo into. So I'm gonna come over here and grab the rectangle tool and draw simple rectangle that covers the entirety of the front of the bottle right here. Once that's done, I'm gonna go to filter and choose convert for smart filters that's gonna allow any place, whatever we want in there later, and it basically turns this rectangle into its own psb within the original file. Now, at the time of recording this video, Photoshopped, 2020 is having a bit of a bug. When it comes to the warp tool and smart objects, work grids aren't displaying correctly. So what I'm gonna do is just quickly create my own three by three grid inside this more object PSB we just made so I can see how our warp and distortion is affecting the rectangle . Hopefully at the time that you're watching this, it will fix that bug. So you may not need to worry about completing this step. Now that I can see what I'm doing, I'm gonna select my rectangle again, hit command or control t to bring up the transform option. And then I'm gonna right, click it and choose Distort. So what we want to do with this stage is just carefully dragged the inches of the rectangle to the edges of the bottle. Don't worry too much about the curve on the bottle will get to that in a minute. We just want to make sure that the edges of the rectangle are aligned to the edges of the front of the bottle. I'm personally not gonna be putting any of my design on the top of the bottle, so I'm not too fussed about that. A case another that's all set. I'm gonna come back and right click the rectangle again, and this time I want to select Warp. Now what I'll do is use the busy handles here to carefully dragged the edges of the rectangle out to those around edges of the bottle. What's great about this technique and turning the wrecked England to a smart object is that Photoshopped remembers how you edited the rectangle. So it's gonna apply all this rounding and warping to whatever you place inside that place holder layer we made earlier. Same thing goes for perspective. If you were to adjust the shape to match, the perspective of a different image will be stretched into that shape. So that's pretty cool. So that's looking pretty good. But I sell of the straight lines at the center of the bottle, and I know I'm gonna want that area to be war, because that's where my logo is going to appear. So this is where it's convenient to still have that reference image of the original bottle , and now we can use that as a reference for how we should be warping the center bit. So I want this to be a little more rounded, so I'm just gonna come in and reopen the warp tool. I just gently pull on this intersection right here with my mouth to create around edge that roughly matches the shape of the original rounding on the bottle. I say that's looking pretty good in sin and that that's all done. Let's double picker placeholder earlier. And now we're in that separate PSV document for that rectangle placeholder. I don't need this great anymore. Someone's gonna come in and delete it. And now I'm gonna drag my bottle label in here. I just designed a super simple label illustrator. Nothing fancy, but it's mostly just to show the idea of the technique for the markup. You can create a design on illustrator and import that the way I'm doing, just copying and pasting it in. Or you can also use the tools available in Photoshopped Creator label design inside this PSB. All right, so now let's close this PSB and hit save and there you go, just like that. Our label is now on the bottle, so it's definitely shaped to the bottles curvature, but it's still looking pretty fake, so we're gonna correct that with colors and light. So first things first. We need to decide whether we want to change any of the colors or other elements in this photo. Overall, it's nice and clean, but it's a bit pink and orange in the company that I'm working for. Uses lots of blues and greys. So I'm definitely gonna want to change the color of the bottle and the background. So to give myself a nice, clean slate here, I'm gonna add a human adjustment layer to the photo background and decrease the saturation to about negative 88. It might be different if you're working on a different photo, but what you're kind of going for is a really neutral, white, grayish jumping off point so that any colors you add are true to their originals. And then I'm also gonna add in a touch of darkness you at negative five to really bring out the textures in that background. Okay, great. So that's looking nice and neutral. I don't need that just yet, so I'm gonna turn that out for now. Now we're gonna come in and do is select our bottle. So I was gonna use the quick selection tool here, which, as you can see, is making a rough shape, but still including a lot of that background. So let's start cleaning that up a little bit of a key on my key word, because it's my preferred way of adjusting a selection, and now it's going to use the paintbrush. My foreground color said to black and then just start fainting. Right now, when you're painting with black, you're actually de selecting areas of the photo, so I'll show you what I mean. The area are painted black has become de selected, and the inverse is true for white. So if you were to paint with a white brush, that area would become selected. So what I like to do when I'm cleaning up selection like this is I'd like to set my brush smoothing really high, maybe something like 90 or 100%. I have a pretty shaky hand, and I find that when I said that smoothing high, it kind of helps me create a much crisper look because I'm not wobbling the brush around much. But as you can see, it's still pretty slow going here. So I'm gonna cut ahead and meet you when I've finished cleaning up this election. All right, so there we go. That's my selection. All done here. So now what I'm gonna want to do, start adding in color so it's gonna come down here and add a new solid Phil Layer. I'm gonna be working the bluish greater spectrum from my clients are gonna come in here and pick a blue color that I want the bottle to be all right. Great. So we re colored our bottle that actually became clipped when it really said So we re colored our bottle. As you can see, it's looking really artificial. It's the first way to adjust. That is to change the blend mode. And I'm gonna set mind to overlay So it's already looking pretty good, but it could still be a bit better. So I'm gonna add in a hue and saturation adjustment layer, and I'm actually gonna bring the saturation way down, and I'm gonna bump the light a little bit. And when it comes to adjustment layers like this, it depends a bit on the original photo that you're working on and the color scheme that you're trying to move into for me I'm going for a lot of really neutral light grey age, really lightly pigmented colors. So I don't want something that's too heavily saturated. I'm gonna bring the opacity down, so you want some color to come through, But I won't mind to be a really muted kind of blue. If you're going for brighter colors or different color schemes and play around with your adjustment layers to get the effects that you want, I'm actually also gonna add one more adjustment layer of brightness and contrast adjustment layer. I don't think the brightness needs too much work here. Probably just bump it up to about three. And then for the contrast, I am gonna bump that pretty high brother said about 30. And that's just gonna help me see those shadows and highlights a bit better. All right, so there we go wreak alert her bottle to something that matches our brand a lot better. So now basically, just gonna repeat this process for the background. So now I've selected the background of this image, but I don't want to include the bottle, because if I'm changing the cause of the background, I don't want it to affect the color of the bottle. But instead of coming in and having to redo this election for the bottle, I can actually come over here to the bottle mask, right? Click it and select Subtract mass from selection. And now, as you can see, the background selection is removed the bottle area. So that's a pretty good time saver. And now the same presidents before we're gonna add it in as a new solid color layer. Again, I'm working in the blue greyish area, so I'll just select a really light shade for now. I'm gonna move that behind my bottle. So for the blend mode for this one, I actually don't think I'm needs overlay because I really only wanted to be very lightly tinted, so I think I was gonna set it to color Burn here, and I'm gonna play around with the opacity of it may bring it down to 77%. Adjusting the blend modes is a great way to get some cool effects for your image. So definitely play around with different blend modes for your color schemes in your image to get colors looking the way you want them to. Okay, so now that the colors are all set up. Let's tweak our label designed to match the bottle a little bit better. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add in a super like God and blur here because I feel like the lines and edges and everything. Or just way too crisp for real life from the copter filters and hit gods and blur. I didn't have to be anything to intense, Probably somewhere in the one or two pixel mark. But the good thing is that this blur stays edible. So if we change our minds a bit later, we can just come in and readjust this. But about at 1.2 pixel blur here should do the trick again. I don't want a logo to look blurry. It just looks a little too Chris for real life. Now, I'm gonna come in and adjust these colors a little bit more. I'm gonna come in and just these colors a little bit more. First thing I'm gonna add a hue and saturation adjustment layer. Being sure to clip that over the label and I'm gonna bring the saturation down. Teoh. Negative 31. Just cause again Those colors look a little to break for real life. And I'm also gonna come in out of brightness and contrast Adjustment layer gonna bring that brightness back down. Just darkening it a bit, too. About negative 34 adjusting my contrast to negative seven so that I can still see the colors of my original label. But they're not as crispy as they would look on a computer screen, so it's looking a lot better already, but I still wanna add a few touches to make it look a bit more realistic. So I'm gonna add a super simple shadow and highlight on top of the label. The original image doesn't have a strong shadow that we can amplify, so we'll just have to make our own. To do that. I was gonna create a new layer, and then with a large size black brush, I'm just gonna paint a large stroke like this, and I'm gonna copy this layer mask. Please. Only want the shadow toe appear on the bottle. So holding alter option. I could just drag this layer mask over and apply it to our shadow. I'm gonna set the blend mode to vivid light, and I'm also gonna add a Gaussian blur to this. To get those soft edges of a shadow is these. They're just too hard. Let me get pretty big just so I can see the curvature of the bottle of it better sending it to somewhere around 80. Now, I'm gonna come in and just this opacity to something really light. So it looks a little more realistic. Probably about nine to do the trick. Maybe 10 rights are turning that on and off. You can see that's added a really nice level of Dimension tour bottle on our logo. I was gonna come in and do the exact same thing for the highlight just coming in. But this time with a white brush. During that large paints worked where I want to highlight to be duplicating that layer mask , adding in a cosy and blur. This time I'm gonna just the blend mode to color burn, and I'm gonna reduce the A pass iti to maybe something around 30% 32%. And that's looking a lot better already. It's really add to the dimension of the bottle, and it makes our logo look a lot more realistic. But I still think we can take it one step further? I still feel like those edges. They're just a little bit too sharp. So for the last adjustment, we're gonna come into our place holder, and we're going to select the edges of our design. In my case, that's these two circles here, and I just want to soften those edges a little bit because they're just too crisp. Someone coming to select and choose selected mask Now, in the properties over here, I have these sliders, smooth feather, in contrast. And basically, by adjusting these around, I can get a really nice soft feathered edge on my original label. So I'm just gonna play with those three adjustments until I get something that I've like. I don't want it to be to Chris, but I don't want it to be too faded. I just kind of wanted to look a little bit like that Natural. Believe that you get when you print something, so that's looking a lot better. Nothing too crazy. Just a really nice soft edge. And I feel like that makes it look a lot more realistic on the bottle, too. But now that I'm looking at it feel like maybe or gauzy. Blur is a bit high, So since it's edible, I'm gonna come in here and I'm actually gonna bring it down 2.6. I feel like that matches the sharpness of this image a little bit better. And then for the last step, firms can add a really, really light noise filter to this again just to make it look a bit more textured and to match the image a little bit better when you said it to something super super low at a uniform distribution of about 1.5% Again, I don't want to be too noticeable oven effect. I just want to really lightly create that idea that was printed onto the bottle. All right, so there we go. That's how you quickly and easily turn any image into a markup for your project or your presentation, such as quickly turned this group on enough to see what we started with. This was our original image, and now we've made something much more branded and much more custom to the client that we're working for. So, using those simple steps and techniques, you can turn pretty much any image that you find online into a custom markup for your presentation or your idea. You can save this Photoshopped project and use as a template any time you need bottle mark ups in the future. So have fun with it. Play around and create some cool stuff. Night. Apply all the skills you learned here to greet a cool mock up of your own for the class project. When you're done, remember to upload it here. I'm excited to see what you come up with. Now it's transition into layup design. 13. Designing Strong Layouts: Now that you have your story all laid out, your brand focal fleshed out and your word but mood board and ready to go, it's time to movinto layout design. Let's quickly touch on aspect ratios. Thea Specter issue of your sides is the ratio of its with to its height. Most programs like Kino Power Point have an automatic aspect ratio set at 16 by nine, which is commonly refer to his widescreen and translates in 1920 by 10 80 pixels of HD quality. They should be your go to choice because it's the same ratio. Is most computer and TV screen displays as well as the standard size and was projectors display? So let's move until layout creation. In one of the earlier videos, we discussed 10 principles of good presentation design. Now let's combine all those ideas with the single most important principle of layout design . Establishing a visual hierarchy. When you're designing a presentation, you want to control the way all information you're presenting is perceived. Visual hierarchy basically describes the process of arranging items or elements to imply their importance, and that could be achieved in a variety of ways. Most happened through size color or contrast. So let's move into the application of combining the idea of visual hierarchy with some design principles we discussed earlier. So let's start off on the introduction side that I'm making for this presentation. In this case, I want to make sure the major focus of the side is the presentation topic. But I want to use the slide to establish what we're talking about and get the audience curious about what's coming next. In my case, I'm introducing a brand tallow, so that's the single most important item on the slide. And, like I said and what the audience to be curious about what's coming next. So adding a sub better, alluding to one of the more interesting points of the presentation now for this slide, the most important element is the brand, and I'm gonna use Size two indicates visual importance, so I want to make sure the lowest, substantially larger than the sub better now. One key element of visual hierarchy is that people don't observe layouts and slides from top to bottom or left or right. More often than not, they taken information on the page from largest to smallest. So if I flip it and put the subhead or above the logo that even though it's on top, because it's so much Muller. The first thing you'll still notice on the slide will be the logo because it's the largest . So that's a really simple example of establishing a visual hierarchy. But what about when there's more onscreen? So on the next side, we're talking about the basic introduction to the company now and decide. I'm gonna want to provide a brief overview of the company's ideals, but we're calling my story shape. I want to emphasize positivity on the slide. So I'm gonna make the focal point of the slide, this great picture I found on pixels that looks almost like someone standing on the edge of the Blue Lagoon and Iceland. So I want to mimic that sensation of wanting to dive right in into the lagoon or, in this case, into the presentation or product. So I want to make sure that my image is the largest element on the screen since I want to make sure that the audience is drawn to that first, so I'm gonna make it really large. But I'm also going to use one of our design principles and use the rule of thirds. So I make this image roughly 1/3 of the slide in terms of horizontal sides, and I'll move it over to the side and vertically, center it. Now, I've still got this title and body copy here. I want the title to be the next most important element. So I'm gonna make that pretty large. I'm gonna use the multiples rule here to size that out of it since my body Texas 30. And I want a pretty high contrast to make sure that my title is the second thing the audience looks at and not the body text chunk. I'm gonna make the title about 90 points, and then I'm gonna use that rule of thirds again to align this chunk of text to the bottom 1/3 of my image vertically and have it pretty strongly out already where the first thing someone's gonna look at will be the image. In fact, I could add something over the image like a descriptor, for example, Icelandic healing properties, talking about the water. But I could make it the size of the body text and add in the line pointing to the water. And now, even though it's the highest thing on the slide and it's partially covering my image, it's still gonna be the last thing you look at on this page is an audience member, because it's the single smallest element. And if I were to even at a colorful circle right here in the background, right at the center of the screen, the image is still gonna be the first thing you look at because the circles still smaller and more muted. So one simple way of remembering visual a Cherokee is that oftentimes it just boils down to biggest to smallest. So let's look at how I designed a few more of the sides of my presentation to cover some more approaches. Toe layout design in visual hierarchy, visual hierarchy. Unless is more so. Here's an example of balancing the principles of less is more in a strong visual hierarchy . So I've compressed a lot of key research and statistics into a simple slide and selected only the strongest information. I've decided that the most important element on the slide isn't my strongest statistic in this case that 83% of Gen Z purchases organic or natural skincare products. This advances the narrative I'm establishing that tell if it's a specific market gap, and since it's my most important element, I've made it the largest in terms of fun. I've used the multiples rule here again and made this five times larger than all the other body text on the page. As you can see, I've also distilled the other selected statistics down to the attention grabbing keywords to simplify all the content as much as possible. And even though I have some colorful background elements here, they're not actually interested to the visual hierarchy of the slide because of their low contrast. So the established visual hierarchy here is a single statistic in the largest blue circle, followed by the Boulder summaries, followed by a breakdown of those points. So that's an example of using size and contracts to establish visual hierarchy, visual hierarchy and balance in this light. I want to make sure that the first thing you look at is the image of the product, because it's what we're showcasing in the slide. But instead of the rule of thirds this time of applied the principles of balance we discussed earlier and scale the image to take up 1/2 of the screen. Now, even though it's the same size as the background, it's still the most prominent element because the background color is relatively soft and muted. The next most provident item is the title describing the product, which is the second largest element on the slag, not including the background. And, incidentally, you're. I have also drawn to it by the downward motion of the image guiding lines and shapes like Back and help strengthen your visual hierarchy or Hindery, if you think correctly, so keep an eye out for natural lines created by shapes or images in your slide. So that's an example of how color of violence and visual hierarchy can work together on the slide Figel hierarchy and contrast. So let's look at the last slide in my presentation, which in my case is a call to action contacts. Light. Now the first thing that draws the attention here is the title. The literal call to action. Tell the audience exactly what I want them to dio, which is to join the tele skincare renaissance. The next thing that catches your eyes. The contact information in the blue circle here that's on the edge of the large orange circle. This contains the contact information for who they need to reach out to when they're ready to join. So use the principles of visual hierarchy to establish a sort of A to be in terms of the action I want the audience to undertake. Now, even though the single largest element here is is massive Warren Circle, it's not the first thing that catches your eye, because again, it's not a very high contrast color. So it registers very quickly. Is blank space the title, on the other hand, of the very high contrast color to the light background? So this is an example where visual hierarchy is established both by contrast or lack thereof as well a size. So those were just a few examples of how you can use the simple principle of visual hierarchy in combination with the design principles. We discussed in an earlier lesson to set up strongly outs to help you visually curate the content on your slides and tell a better story. Now that you have a good grasp of layouts, let's first things up a bit with some custom backgrounds 14. Customising Visuals: you're in the final stretch, you've got your presentation, all eight outs, and now it's time to start bringing in those visuals. The last step of any presentation is adjusting the visuals to match your style. So in this lesson will be covering unique visuals and specifically will be talking about creating custom backgrounds and shapes and editing and customizing images. Since executing these practical skills varies from South Korea software, this video is gonna be split into three parts, each covering the same design and elements in their respective software's. Let's talk about creating custom backgrounds and shapes and Power Point. So in your class project, you're working for ethos, a colorful company with lots of natural shapes. So let's talk about how to make any custom, shape or background. You want Fire Point. They re creating the record of this mood board slide. So on a new slide, I'm gonna insert a new shape. I'm choosing the Ellipse here, since it's the closest jumping off point to the shape that I'm trying to make now, right? Click it and choose edit points, and now I have a shape with adjustable busy handles and points that I can move around toward the shape. I can also add in additional points by hovering over the shape edge until my cursor changes to this cross. And then just quick, any of a brand new point that you can manipulate you great as many points as you like, and you can even believe them by right clicking and selecting delete. So now it's going to take a minute to recreate the shape on the mood board as closely as possible, using these adjustable handles and points. Okay, so that's pretty close to the shape. And now I'm gonna change its color. So come up to the shape format shaped Phil. Click more and use the ad dropper told to select the white fill that I can see from the previous slide. And I'm gonna like now at line, because we don't want the shape to have a stroke, and it's that easy. Also, add in the blue background behind the shape by creating a rectangle and using eyedropper tool to changes color to and then all right, click it and select send to back. Looks like I didn't says Merrick tingle. Quite right. Let me just that. So there we go. It's super easy, and you can use this technique to create lots of different backgrounds and custom shape for in presentation. If I'm working on a presentation that has lots of organic shapes like this, I have to find that I could get cool effects by just duplicating and rotating the same shape a couple of times, layering it and putting in different colors. It's kind of like this, but for now, let's keep recreating that mood board. Let's Advil. Oh, go to the slide will hit Commander Control. See to copy it and Commander Control be to face it into this life. Now, this image has both the logo and the slogan, and I only actually want the logo. So it's gonna come into picture format and then use the crop tool to corrupt the slogan out of this PNG. Okay, so now the only issue is that if I want to move this logo into the corner, it becomes eligible because the background color the slides, the same was the logo. But no worries. We can actually just change the color of this loco, so I'm gonna come up into my for my pain. And here there's lots of effects that you can apply to the logo like a glow, for example, and into the P and G was no background. It actually adds the glow to the letters and the bounding box, which is pretty cool. But I don't actually want a glow. I just need to re color it. So I'm gonna come up to the picture in my shape options and under the color correction drop down, I'm gonna click on presets. And here there's already loads of color jumping off points for me to change the logo, too. I'm gonna go with this one, since I'm trying to make it white. That's close, but it's still pretty blue. Somebody use the saturation and temperature siders to adjust it to a white that matches the circle a bit better. And there we go. That's how easy it is to change the color of a PNG. Taking the time to adjust the colors of your logos can really make a slide film or cohesive so you can use all those same techniques to create small shapes to not just backgrounds. For example, these color Babic, creative for the interest sides are all just shapes that I made a power point. And like we talked about in an earlier lesson, you can feel any shape with an image, and you can also do that for unique shapes that you create yourself. So let's choose this one. And then here's a new ones that I inserted into my document earlier. Now, for images and Power Point, you already have lots of effects available to edit the image like transparency, color, corrections and there's a lot more to play with. But if I want the image to have a unique shape like this, all I have to do. Is it commander control? See on my keyboard? So now the images. One copy to my clipboard. Then I'll select the shape. And in the fill options, I'll choose picture texture, Phil, and then click clipboard right here. If your images and already show up automatically. Okay, so now I can move the shape around on my image will adjust with it, or, if you want to rotate the shape without affecting the image, you can disable that by un checking. Rotate with shape. Now you may have noticed on the image warps a bit inside the shape. Unfortunately, when you feel a shape with an image Empire point, it can often distort it. So here you'll need to come in and manually readjust that by selecting the shape coming up to picture format and hitting crap. Here, he can resize and reposition the image and shape separately to get the desired layout. So overall Power Point is really flexible when it comes to creating and editing custom visuals. So if you pin some unique shapes or cells to your mood board, remember that you already have all the tools you need to recreate them right here in Power Point. Now let's take a look at creating custom visuals and Kino. Okay, so here's a few slides from the brief for your class project. Let's focus on recreating a background like this. Okay, so let's make a new slide, and I'm gonna add in a circle here because it's the closest jumping off point to the shape that I'm gonna want to end up at now. All I need to do is right. Click and select, make edible, and suddenly I have all these points around my circle that I can click and drag to adjust that shape, you'll notice. It's also generating little opacity handles around the edges of the circle is a moving around. You can click on these tow, activate them and ADM or edit herbal points to your shape. You can also double click on a point to make it straight. But let's undo that so I can start working towards making the organic shape from the mood board slide. I'm going to slowly dragged out points from the shape, sometimes creating more until I end up with a cool, natural shape. Don't be afraid to scale and move it around your working. Okay, so that's looking pretty close. Now it's out of the colors. I was gonna come up to fill choose Mawr and then used the eyedropper to select the white color that I can see in this small thumbnail of my slide here. All right, greats. And I was gonna add in a rectangle the size of my slide. And then when I drop her it blue and send it to back. So now all the sign needs is the logo. So that's come up into the interest side. Hit Commander Control seated. Copy it and commit her control V to paste it on tour slide. OK, so in this PNG have the logo and the slogan, but I don't actually want slogan. So I'm gonna go into image click on Edit Mask And now I can adjust this mask to cut out the slogan. All right, great, but the logo still in the wrong color. It's electable on this blue background, so we'll need to change the color of the logo in here. So with my local pandey selected, I'm gonna come into adjustments under image and toggle the advanced adjustment tool. Now in here, I can drag all these ciders around to adjust the color of the logo to whatever you like. So in my case, I'm trying to go from blue to white, so use the levels tool here to drag it over toy. And it's easy. Just like that, we re colored are PNG. All right, let's scale that. And it looks great so you can use these techniques to make all kinds of cool backgrounds like overlapping shapes and different colors and rotating them. You can also make small shapes as elements in your presentation. All of these shapes, for example, are just simple shapes that I made right here. in Kino. Earlier, we also talked about how you can feel any shape with an image. You can do that with your custom shapes to so it's a commander control see to copy the shape and will come into this light here that I pasted a picture onto that I imported earlier. As you can see, you can add lots of different kinds of effects and Kino. But what we want to do is clip it to a shape. So it's a commander controlled with a pace that shape in now selector shape here and come over to fill image Phil now, because I've been working with my image earlier, it was already selected. But if your image doesn't appear right away, just hit. Choose and navigate for your documents. To select the energy like here, you can now adjust your image, scale it tilted and even rotate it with your new shape. Subs a quick breakdown of a few tools that you can use to customize your own visuals and Kino. It has lots of options for customizing your presentations, so don't be afraid to experiment. And now let's move into illustrator illustrators. Actually, my preferred software to design slides and because it's the most intuitive and user friendly to me. So it's talking about how to create a custom background like this life from your class Project brief. First, I'm gonna make a new art board, and then I'm gonna rearrange the airport so I can put the mood board in this life that I'm working on next to each other. Now all I need to create the shape is the pencil. I use this to click and drag on points to create this curved shape. As you can see, it's super easy to just quickly create a shape like this using the rental. And if you want to change any points of your busy handles when you're done, you can just use the direct selection tool and adjust them like this. Now I'm gonna bring up my eyedropper tool using the keyboard. Charcot, I and I'm gonna click the white color. I'd like the shape to be. Now let's get rid of the excess shape that's spilling over the edges of my our board. I'm going to use the rectangle tool to create a rectangle the same size in my our board. And then I'm gonna like both a rectangle and the shape I'm gonna right click and I'm gonna hit, create clipping mask. I'm also going to create another rectangle the size of the art board. He's the eyedropper again to make it blue, and then I'm gonna send it to back. You can use this technique to quickly and easily create lots of fun backgrounds, even by simply duplicating the same shape, overlapping it and rotating it and putting in different colors. You can get some really quick and easy cool effects, but let's go back to this mood board. Pelayo. So now if you want to add a logo toe a slide, ideally you'll have the vector file like GPS or SPG so you can simply adjust the color of the logo with the eyedropper tool. But oftentimes you'll find yourself stuck with A P and G. So in that case, let's talk about how to change its color, and I'm gonna start by creating a clipping mask over just the local part because I don't actually want to include the slogan. Now I want to make sure that my image is embedded, and then I'm gonna come over to edit edit colors, adjust color balance and turning on my preview here, I can now use these sliders to change the color of my logo toe whatever I want. However, as you can see, I can't quite make white but doesn't really matter because I can still create black. I'm gonna make it black, and then I'm gonna crompton edit edit colors. And this time I'm gonna select invert colors. And just like that, now I have a white version of my bloo PNG logo. Easy peasy. You can also use that same color adjustment tool to change the colors of images in your presentation to create some cool effects. There's also even more cool effects under effects affect gallery and here you can apply all kinds of interesting textures and styles to your images. And, of course, you can also create clipping masks for images. So let's click. This image was one of these organic shapes that I made, and now my images clipped to that shape. And if you double click it, you can still come in drag and edit this image inside the clipping mask. So that was a super quick run down of the tools you need to create unique backgrounds and do some damage. Edits in Adobe Illustrator but it really is a super versatile tool. So if you're using this to create your presentations, you can pretty much execute any style. Now the presentations complete, So all that's left to do is some final touches. 15. Final Touches: you've told a story, you've laid out well designed slides. Now all that's left to do was just breakfast till it's perfect. The easy bit right at this point, your presentation. It's best to practice asides a few times over to a friend or a colleague. If you can try to ask for feedback. And at this point, if something doesn't feel right to you, be sure to go back and edit layouts or language, or maybe even slide order until you get the presentation to flow the way you want it to. 16. It's Easier Than It Looks!: you've just completed a crash course in presentation design, So let's recap a couple key points to keep in mind in the future. When you're designing presentations, tell a story helped people connect to your material for a compelling story shape. Always customize the presentation, whether it's the first or four hundreds time you're presenting to a certain client for about an idea, always take the time to update your slides, language design and work less is more. Don't get bogged down in details. Instead, trim the fat and keep it simple. Keep a Coetzee's of your story. Design and language should all have the same tone. Create a connection and emotional connection is the ultimate goal of all your presentations . Getting people to feel something about your idea is worth more to them than remembering what it waas. Now it's up to you. You've learned everything you need to know to make killer presentation, So download the client brief in the project section to flex your new creative muscles. This is a great way to put your new skills to the test on. By completing the project, you left create a design template and an inspiring mood board that he uses a jumping off point for your next presentation or project. And then when you're finished, remember to upload it here so you can get feedback on your layouts and designs. I'm excited to see what you come up with.