When creating the perfect slide deck, following proper presentation design rules is essential. Whether preparing for a big pitch or leading a team meeting, sticking to these rules can make all the difference. Good PowerPoint presentation design goes beyond just making things look pretty. It’s about structuring your message for clarity and impact. From choosing the right fonts to ensuring proper visualisation, applying these presentation design principles helps keep your audience engaged. And, let’s face it, the benefits of presentation design go beyond aesthetics—they help deliver your message effectively. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at key rules that will elevate your PPT design game.
We’ll break down everything you need to know, starting with “What are Presentation Design Rules?” and “Why Presentation Design Rules Matter.” You’ll also get insights into key PowerPoint presentation design rules to follow and practical tips on “How to Apply Presentation Design Rules for Business Success.” Finally, we’ll explore the role of professional presentation designers and how they can perfect your deck. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting, this guide has something for everyone.
What are Presentation Design Rules?
Presentation design rules are simple guidelines that help organise your slides and make them look better. These rules keep your PowerPoint design clear, easy to follow, and interesting for your audience. By following these rules, you can make sure your key points are easy to understand. They also help balance how your slides look and how easy they are to read. This makes it simpler to create an effective presentation that stays in the audience’s mind.
The main purpose of these rules is to build a story that looks good and works well. For example, rules like the 5/5/5 and 10/20/30 make sure your slides don’t get too crowded. This helps keep the audience focused. These rules guide your PPT design to deliver a message that stands out, using well-organised text and images. Overall, presentation design rules help you create a slide deck that people remember and find visually appealing.
Why Presentation Design Rules Matter
Following presentation design rules is key to making your slides more effective. These rules help organise information professionally, and engagingly. When done right, your slides don’t just look good—they communicate your message better, making it easier for the audience to follow along. This is especially important in business settings, where presentations often involve multiple slides and need to convey concise messages without overwhelming the viewer.
Improving Audience Engagement and Message Clarity
Using presentation design rules keeps your slides simple and focused, which helps maintain audience attention. By reducing clutter, structuring content, and using a consistent style, your message becomes clearer and easier to follow. This approach also boosts your professionalism, ensuring the presentation flows smoothly without confusing the audience. Good slide design grabs attention and leaves your audience with a lasting impression of your main points.
Business Benefits in Corporate Settings
1. Boosts Efficiency
Incorporating structured rules into PowerPoint design helps create effective presentations that are easy to understand. This reduces the need for lengthy explanations, making your message more concise and time-efficient, which is essential for business meetings.
2. Enhances Professionalism
Consistent use of fonts, colours, and layouts throughout the presentation adds to its professionalism. This makes your slides visually appealing and well-organised, helping your audience take the information in without distractions.
3. Improves Information Retention
Following these rules makes your presentation clearer. This helps the audience absorb and retain the key points. This can be especially useful when you need to convey complex data in an accessible format, helping your audience remember the information more easily.
4. Strengthens Brand Consistency
A structured approach to slide design helps reinforce your brand’s image, whether through colour schemes or logos. This helps businesses ensure their branding is present throughout the presentation, increasing recognition and recall.
These principles apply whether you’re presenting internally or to external clients. By following presentation design rules, your message is understood and remembered.
Key PowerPoint Presentation Design Rules to Follow
Presentation design rules are essential for creating clear, engaging, visually appealing slides. These rules help simplify complex information and keep the audience focused. Let’s dive into some of the most important PowerPoint presentation design rules.
The 5/5/5 Rule
The 5/5/5 Rule is a simple yet effective way to prevent information overload. It means limiting each slide to only 5 bullet points, with each point containing no more than 5 words, and ensuring no more than 5 slides with similar content are shown in a row. This rule keeps the presentation focused, reducing cognitive load for the audience and improving legibility and engagement. By following this, your audience can absorb key ideas more easily and avoid feeling overwhelmed.
The 10/20/30 Rule
Guy Kawasaki introduced the 10/20/30 Rule to help keep presentations concise and impactful. It advises having only 10 slides, presenting for 20 minutes only, and using a font size of at least 30 points. This rule works especially well in business pitches or a startup pitch deck, ensuring the content remains concise and easy to follow. The larger font size also enhances visual consistency and keeps the focus on key points without clutter.
The 7×7 Rule
The 7×7 Rule suggests that slides should have no more than 7 lines of text, where each line contains no more than 7 words. This rule ensures that slides are easy to read and understand at a glance, helping to maintain audience attention and improve message retention. This rule is perfect for maintaining a balance between text and visuals, which is key for an effective presentation.
Other Important Rules
The 3-second Rule
This guideline suggests that each slide should be easily understood in just 3 seconds. This rule pushes presenters to keep slides simple and focused, ensuring that viewers grasp the message quickly.
The 6×6 Rule
This rule advises using no more than 6 words per line and 6 lines of text per slide. Like the 7×7 Rule, it helps prevent slides from becoming text-heavy and overwhelming. It encourages a cleaner, more focused design, allowing the audience to absorb the key points better.
The Rule of Thirds
Borrowed from photography, the Rule of Thirds divides a slide into three equal parts horizontally and vertically. Placing key content at the intersections of these lines helps create a balanced, visually appealing slide. This technique draws the audience’s attention to important points.
The Contrast Rule
This rule focuses on using contrasting colours for text and background to ensure legibility. For example, light text on a dark background or vice versa. It enhances readability, especially for audiences seated farther away or viewing the presentation on smaller screens.
These presentation design rules are designed to help PPT designers and businesses deliver messages that are clear, visually appealing, and memorable. Following these principles helps you craft a presentation that leaves a lasting impression, whether you are hiring a presentation design agency or designing your slides.
Tips for Applying Presentation Design Rules for Business Success
Following presentation design rules can significantly enhance how businesses communicate and present their ideas, especially in the UK corporate landscape. Here are six practical tips to help professionals create structured, compelling presentations:
1. Use Consistent Design Elements
Consistency in design elements like fonts, brand colours, and layout ensures that your slides look cohesive and professional. This strengthens your branding and improves readability, making it easier for the audience to follow and focus on your key points.
2. Limit Text to Focus Your Audience’s Attention
Avoid overcrowding slides with text. Stick to key points and leave space for visuals or verbal elaboration. Limiting text keeps the audience’s attention on you rather than making them read off the screen, leading to better engagement and retention of information.
3. Incorporate Visuals Thoughtfully
Visuals like high-quality images or infographics can simplify complex information and add impact. Relevant visuals help break up text-heavy slides and provide a fresh perspective, making your message easier to understand and more memorable.
4. Choose Fonts and Text Sizes for Legibility
Select readable typefaces and appropriate text sizes for your presentation. Sans-serif fonts like Arial or Calibri are clean and easy to read while maintaining at least 24pt font for body text ensures that your content remains legible, even in large settings.
5. Use Animation Sparingly
Animations can enhance your presentation if used correctly. However, too much animation can distract from your message. Stick to subtle transitions and animations that support, rather than overwhelm, your content, keeping the focus on your message.
6. Simplify with White Space
White space, or space around your content, keeps slides uncluttered and draws attention to key elements. By not filling every inch of the slide, you create a cleaner, more organised layout that enhances clarity and communication.
Applying these tips and presentation design rules can help businesses make more impactful presentations that resonate with their audiences, improve communication, and enhance their pitch effectiveness.
The Role of Professional Presentation Designers in Perfecting Your Deck
Outsourcing presentation design to agencies specialising in this field can greatly improve your presentations’ quality. These professionals follow presentation design rules to ensure your slides are visually appealing and structured to communicate your message. Here are 10 key benefits of outsourcing presentation design:
1. Access to Expertise
Professional designers have extensive experience in creating engaging slides that follow the golden rules of presentation design. They know how to make your presentation stand out and communicate your message clearly, using the best design practices.
2. Time and Resource Savings
By outsourcing, you free up your team to focus on core business activities. Professionals handle the design, ensuring a faster turnaround and a polished product, without diverting internal resources.
3. Consistent and Cohesive Design
Presentation agencies ensure cohesion in your design, using consistent brand colours, fonts, and styles across all slides. This results in a unified and professional look, making a strong impression on your audience.
4. Tailored Solutions
Agencies provide customised design solutions that meet specific business needs. Whether you need a sales pitch or a report, professional designers can adapt the presentation style to fit your requirements.
5. Enhanced Visual Appeal
Outsourcing ensures that your slides are visually engaging, with the right balance of text and visuals. Professionals use high-quality images and multimedia elements to focus their audience’s attention on key points.
6. Cost-Effective
Hiring a full-time designer can be expensive. Outsourcing allows you to pay only for the services you need, making it a cost-effective option for businesses with fluctuating presentation demands.
7. Scalability
Outsourcing enables businesses to scale their presentation needs with ease. Whether you need a single deck or multiple presentations, agencies can handle the workload without needing in-house staff.
8. Expert Use of Design Tools
Professional designers stay updated with the latest design trends and tools, ensuring your presentations are modern and engaging. They can incorporate features like animation and multimedia to enhance your slides.
9. Improved Audience Engagement
Well-designed presentations help maintain audience interest. By following key design rules, professionals create decks that keep your audience engaged from start to finish, improving message retention.
10. Quick Revisions and Feedback
Working with an external team allows for quicker revisions based on feedback. Agencies can swiftly implement changes, ensuring you meet tight deadlines while maintaining quality.
In the UK corporate landscape, outsourcing to a professional presentation design team helps businesses scale their presentation needs efficiently. Agencies deliver high-quality decks that follow all the essential design principles, ensuring uniformity and professionalism. By entrusting experts to make your presentation visually impactful, companies can focus on delivering content, confident that their message will be effectively communicated.
Perfect Your PPTs with Presentation Design Rules and Presentation Support
Incorporating presentation design rules into your business presentations ensures clarity, professionalism, and engagement. Following key rules like the 5/5/5 or 10/20/30 guidelines, helps you structure your slides for maximum impact, making your content more memorable. If want to create more effective presentations, outsourcing to experts can be a game-changer. At Presentation Support, we specialise in creating compelling decks tailored to your brand and audience, with clients across various industries in Europe and worldwide.
Explore our Portfolio to see how we’ve helped businesses like yours. Ready to get started? Contact our UK-based team today by emailing [email protected], or share your requirements through our Contact Form for a quick response. Let us help you craft presentations that truly resonate.
