In college, students encounter a wide variety of academic tasks and projects, regardless of their major. While some assignments, such as essays and research papers, are more habitual, others might seem more unusual, especially when faced with them for the first time.
One such task is a PowerPoint presentation. Unlike conventional essays, this kind of task requires students to present the findings from their research in a much shorter, coherent way, providing clear and persuasive arguments. It also often requires giving an oral presentation alongside your slides. But most importantly, making a college presentation requires you to apply all your design knowledge and skills to make your presentation sound and look great.
On the one hand, if you’re assigned to make a PowerPoint presentation for college, it’s logical to think that the factual content of your presentation (aka your findings, facts, and arguments) is all that matters. However, that’s not quite true.
All prestigious schools emphasize the importance of proper slide design for the overall success of the presentation. According to Harvard University’s Writing and Communication Center, slide design helps draw the audience’s attention, enhance the information provided in your presentation, and also boost data understanding and retention. Long story short, proper presentation design helps create the best experience for your audience, and you learn to make strong presentations that resonate.
Before we give you practical design tips, let’s get clear with the basics.
There are five core elements of a good presentation design that you need to learn and use in practice:
Now that you know about the basic design elements that should be used in your presentation, you can start working on your own slides.
Here are a few core tips that should help:
Spend enough time to organize your research findings into coherent, logical, bite-sized points. Remember that text content shouldn’t overload your presentation. It should emphasize the most important ideas and help keep the audience engaged, whereas the biggest part of your findings will be presented through your speech.
If you’re having a hard time preparing your content, consider requesting professional help. Reputable websites that offer online essay writing service in English typically offer aid with different types of written tasks and can prepare the content for a PowerPoint presentation for you. This can help you ensure the best quality of content while letting you focus on the design of your slides.
To make your presentation visually appealing and create a hierarchy, you will need to use some colors – ideally, two or a maximum of 3 colors for background and additional accents.
Pick colors for your slides mindfully. You can use color psychology to make the right choices, or you can stick to golden standards, such as blue and white, gray and yellow, etc. Most importantly, make sure that the colors you use contribute to readability, aren’t obtrusive, and create a good balance.
For readability, pick clear and clean fonts like Times New Roman, Roboto, Helvetica, Verdana, and similar. In terms of font size, pick a specific size for headings and subheadings and a different size for the rest of the content. Keep in mind the screen size and venue where your presentation will be shown to pick sizes that will make your text easy to see.
Headings and text jumping from one position to another in different slides look bad and give out your amateur approach to a presentation. To avoid this, pick the optimal positioning and alignment.
Once you select colors, fonts and font sizes, alignment, and positioning, stick to your choices in every slide to create a uniform look.
Also, be sure to use animations and other styling techniques sparingly to create balance and ensure you don’t distract the audience from the presentation’s content.
Although presentation design is important, handling it on your own can be hard. Luckily, well-designed presentation templates can help you save time.
Here are a few templates you can try for your college presentation:
A uniform and wise design of every slide can enhance your PowerPoint presentation and help you score the highest grade for it. Use the knowledge and tips we shared with you in this guide to nail your next college presentation without a hassle. And don’t hesitate to leverage customizable templates to save your precious time.
Сontent writer Nicole Hardy is celebrated for her detailed and thoughtful journalism within the realms of education and the arts, with a special emphasis on performing arts education. Over the course of her decade-long career, Hardy has earned a reputation as a trusted expert in her field. Her writing is marked by thorough analysis and a captivating style of storytelling. She earned her Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Arts, with a focus on arts and culture journalism.
