Ever had just an hour to design a crucial presentation?
What should you focus on if you’re rushed and can’t do custom slide design?
Here are the 3 crucial design tasks I’d prioritize.
1. Align all elements to the grid
This is non-negotiable. To look polished, all your elements need to align to each other and the slide grid.
Without this step, your presentation will look sloppy, random, and uneven.
2. Standardize the font hierarchy
If you’re in a rush, focus on the slide titles and body copy, i.e. on the most prevalent copy types. Make sure all of these are consistent font sizes throughout.
Presentations often have additional copy types, like subtitles, image captions, graph labels and more. Ideally, standardize these as well if you have the time.
3. Update colors to the brand
If non-branded colors have carried over from copy and pastes or staff have been using the default Microsoft colors, update all of these to your brand’s colors.
PRO TIP
Focus on just one to two brand colors (main and highlight)
Don’t attempt to use them all!
Bonus: what else to tackle if you have more than an hour:
Edit content down (Ensure folks are listening to you, not reading your slides. Make the slides a highlight of what you say verbally, not a transcript)
Add imagery (photos, infographics, illustrations)
Simplify your tables and graphs