Presentation is more than just talking in front of audiences with several slides created in the simplest ways. Presentation design tips emphasize the actual slides, treating them as important parts instead of just supporting tools. If you want to make your presentation session memorable, make sure to create slides that look professional.

Modern presentation slides come with professional features every businessperson need. However, you must also apply certain design strategies to create compelling, professional slides. Because presentation designs have trends, make sure that every strategy is in line with what modern presentation audiences expect to see from your slides.

List of Presentation Design Tips to Try

Choosing professional templates is one of the easiest presentation design tips anyone can try. However, make sure you apply proper design strategies to keep your slides from looking distracting, unclear, or unprofessional. Here are tips to try for your next presentation.

• Plan Your Explanation Flow

Nothing can turn away your audiences faster than an unstructured presentation with poor information delivery. However, a good presenter also knows to apply storytelling technique to make the materials more interesting. The key is to balance the explanation flow (and points) with good delivery.

The first point to understand when making slides is determining the goal of the presentation: to persuade, inform, inspire, or entertain. Make sure your audiences know the goal from the beginning. Use the slides as “pointers” to explain more details in your presentation. Start from the most general information and continue to the most detailed things behind it.

• Use Fewer Than Six Lines

A big “no” in modern presentation design tips is using too many texts on your slides. Many presenters treat their slides like main materials instead of guidelines. You want to make people listen to what you say in the presentation, with the slides as the guidelines to follow the structure better. The audience cannot do that if they must read excessive texts at the same time.

To avoid distraction, use fewer than six lines of words in each slide. Use bullet points and functions like all caps or different sizes to create emphasis. They should be enough to attract attention and inform audiences without distracting them from your presentation.

• Create Strong Color Contrast

Have you ever seen presentation slides that are so uncomfortable to see, they become distracting? Background and text colors that are too similar makes your slides hard to see. It would be best to create a strong contrast, such as white background with dark texts or dark blue background with pale beige texts (and vice versa).

Red and blue or green and red should be avoided. These combinations are uncomfortable to see because they strain the eyes. There are also visual issues for colorblind people, who will not see the contrasts between red and green. 

• Keep the Main Colors Minimum

After finding the right colors, make sure you keep the main colors minimum. Keep them in the next slides to ensure consistency. If you want to create variations with other colors, they should become accents instead of main color combinations.

One of the easiest presentation design tips is using professional templates. They come with various color schemes that you can pick to match your topic. One professional template usually offers several different color schemes for variations.

• Use Bullet Points the Right Way

Bullet points are tools to make outlines, making sure your audience follow your path of explanation. Avoid using them to write sentences so your slides will not look cramped. If you use unique styles for bullet points, make sure they are consistent throughout the entire slides.

You can also use different formats other than bullet points. For example, group your points in rectangles or as icons with texts. This way, the audience will not get bored seeing the same bullet points throughout the presentation.

• Maximize the Use of Images

When using images for the presentation, choose relevancy before aesthetic. Images without connections to the content of slides will clutter and distract. For professional presentation, make sure you choose photos or well-made illustrations. Avoid clip arts and uncredited commercial photos.

Your images must also act as presentation tools, representing your content. Aside from photos and illustrations, graphs, diagrams, infographics, and other data visualizations should be parts of your explanations.

• Use Proper Font Sizes

There is no exact measurement for font size, but every presenter must make sure that everyone in the room can see the texts. Size 32 to 40 points is the average number for the title font, while 24 to 32 points work for the body font. You can use Bold and Underline functions to make emphasis. Avoid excessive Italic and all caps since they make the texts hard to read (in the case of all caps, they look like shouting, which is unfavorable).

• Use Color to Highlight Important Parts

Apply different colors to certain parts of your presentation texts. They are better for emphasis instead of using different font sizes; the latter will make your slides look inconsistent. However, make sure each highlighted part is really important to memorize. Too many highlights will distract your audiences.

Examples of Good Presentation Slide Designs 

The best way to apply all these presentation design tips is by choosing professional slide templates. Whether for Keynote, PowerPoint, or Google Slides, they come with standard color schemes, fonts, and images suitable for professional presentations.

Here are some template recommendations to download:

• Terra (Google Slides)

Terra is a great example of using bold colors and unique fonts without sacrificing professionalism. The neon color schemes are parts of new design trends but are still comfortable for the eyes. All the graphs, charts, and diagrams provide complete and legible data visualizations. The picture placeholders allow you to display photos in interesting ways, complete with a drag-and-drop function.

• Brusher (Keynote)

Brusher combines clear fonts, monochromatic color schemes, and minimalistic design; everything is recommended in presentation design tips. However, Brusher makes your slides less boring with brush-style visual effect and unique picture placeholders. It also uses creative images such as stacked charts with icons to emphasize your presentation points.

• Adventure (PowerPoint)

Adventure is a good example of simple, professional, and straightforward slide design with flairs. The green color creates a “fresh” break between the usual black and white contrast. It also has slides for grid albums, wide layouts, and handcrafted infographics, making your presentation more attractive.

• Executive Person (Google Slides)

Many presentation design tips warn against a dark background for visibility problem. However, the dark-themed Executive Person is perfect for an elegant, modern presentation slide design that still offers good visibility. The white texts against the dark background are easy for the eyes, and the template uses yellow as accent color or emphasis on the texts.

• Waterloo (Keynote)

Waterloo is a great example of using colors for creative presentation without sacrificing visibility and professionalism. While it has colorful patterns in its design, they are muted and do not dominate the entire slides or ruin the text visibility. The texts use legible fonts, and there are options such as unique picture placeholders, infographics, and data visualizations to support your presentation.

• Vogue Monal (PowerPoint)

Vogue Monal keeps the minimalistic aspect of a modern template design, with predominantly white slides, dark grey texts, and muted brown accent color. However, the slides still look interesting with elegant layouts, handcrafted infographics, professional data visualizations, and creative layouts for the picture slides.

• Startup (Google Slides)

Startup is one of the minimalistic designs that “follow the rules” of professional presentation design tips. It uses black and white color schemes, standard legible fonts, and clean lines for the layouts. However, it makes your presentation more interesting with data visualizations that incorporate bright colors like yellow and green. The picture placeholders are nothing fancy, but they are arranged in creative layouts.

• Casper (Keynote)

Another minimalistic template, Casper uses handwriting font for its main title. However, the other slides still use legible black fonts against the white background. The template uses bright yellow to highlight certain parts of the texts, but the tone is still visible on the white background. Casper also offers icons, squares, and handcrafted infographics as alternatives to bullet points.

• Floralist (PowerPoint)

Instead of the usual black or grey, the Floralist template uses various shades of muted brown and beige as its color scheme. Despite having a minimalistic style, Floralist makes the slides more interesting by using plant-themed illustrations, including handcrafted infographics. These elements make your presentation interesting despite the professional air.

• Sandy (Google Slides)

If you want to use a dark-themed presentation template, make sure you deliver the material in a well-lit room, with extra focus on images instead of texts. Sandy is a Google Slides template with layouts emphasizing images, with a drag-and-drop function to insert photos or illustrations easily. The infographics and data visualizations use neon colors like blue, pink, and purple to make them more interesting for the eyes.

• Modern Real Estate (Keynote)

Since the presentation design tips place images as important components, why not choosing a template that focuses on images? Modern Real Estate has slides with wide image layouts, unique placeholders, and albums for photos or illustrations. The slides also have unique layouts for texts, giving great alternatives to boring bullet points. The dark theme is only used for opening and closing slides, which is comfortable for the eyes.

• Creative (PowerPoint)

At first glance, Creative seems to “violate” presentation design tips by pairing yellow background with white texts (and vice versa). However, the overall look is still professional and comfortable for the eyes, with yellow being used as text highlights. Yellow is also used for icons, illustrations, and data visualizations, making your presentation compelling.

• Autumn (Google Slides)

Autumn uses a beautiful seasonal theme to make presentation slides more interesting. The use of dark brown background with autumn-themed colors is perfect for design, art, and photography topics. While it uses handwriting font for the main title, the other texts use different, more legible fonts, which are shown consistently throughout the slides. The leaf design is also used to create unique infographics.

• Amarish (Keynote)

Using calming, “cool” colors are included in presentation design tips to make your presentation look more serious. Amarish uses teal as the major color scheme, but it still applies black-and-white contrast between the body texts and background (except for the quotes, which use teal background and white texts). It also uses hexagonal design as a base to create picture placeholders and infographics.

• Vexana (PowerPoint)

Vexana uses quite a lot of bright colors as parts of the slides. However, the design focuses on pastel tones as accents on neutral background. The bright colors are applied on data visualizations such as diagrams, charts, and infographics since they are important to attract attention. Vexana is great for art, design, and photography topics since it has layouts for galleries.

• Fractions (Google Slides)

Fractions apply the best presentation design tips in its template, with muted color scheme, good contrast between background and texts, and rich graphics like icons and charts to explain important points. However, it still looks interesting and compelling, thanks to the creative layouts, unique picture placeholders, and various alternatives to bullet points. It is a great template for presentation in formal settings.

• Himense (Keynote)

Monochromatic template is perfect for a professional setting, but it might look boring. However, Himense makes your presentation compelling with different shades of grey, clean lines, and various icons and graphics. The drag-and-drop picture placeholder functions allow you to insert relevant pictures anywhere. It is another good option if you look for an ideal template for a formal setting.

• Wixa (PowerPoint)

Wixa is a great template if you want to create interesting data visualizations. It comes with handcrafted infographics, charts, and diagrams with bold colors and unique designs. The infographic slides are perfect for explaining things like trends, marketing studies, demographic explanations, and many more.

Applying presentation design tips for your slides will do wonder for your presentation quality. Download these templates and combine them with presentation techniques to create a flawless, informative session for your audiences.