WORKSHOP HAND-OUT

Presentation design tips

Thanks for attending our presentation workshop! Download the hand-out from this workshop, and read a summary of our most important wisdom, tools, and links below. Don’t forget to fill out our feedback form below so we can make this workshop even better!

Questions? E-mail me at liesbeth@theonlinescientist.com

Message, goal & audience

Before designing anything, think about your message, goal, and audience:

  • What is your message?
  • What is the goal of communicating your message?
  • Who is your audience?
  • What medium & design best supports this?

Make your message relevant

Don’t make the mistake of only thinking about what you want. Think about why your message is relevant for your audience and how you can help them! In other words: don’t make them think, and don’t assume they know everything already.

Avoid the main frustration of your audience

The top-3 frustrations of people who are watching presentations are:
  1. Speakers who are reading the text on their slides out loud
  2. Slides with too much text
  3. Text that is too small to read

So we need to develop slides that have at most a single sentence, avoid bullet-points, and make it easy for people to follow your story.

Structure your story with a storyboard

A storyboard can help you structure your story. Think of your presentation as a book with chapters. You have an introduction (what is the problem), a middle (show the evidence and unique solution to the problem), and end (summary and call to action).

Create layouts for slides

You can write out your entire presentation in the notes of each slide. And then you can choose which slide design would fit your story best. Below are the slides you probably want to create in your style (these are included in the template).

  • Introduction slide
  • Chapter slide (this design needs to stand out from all other slides)
  • Quote slide
  • Main message slide
  • Number slide
  • Graph slide
  • Diagram slide
  • Question slide
  • End slide

 

Avoid these PowerPoint mistakes

  • Adding unrelated images that do not help your audience understand or remember your message
  • Adding the name or date of the conference to slides
  • Using word-art
  • Adding logos, page numbers, and dates in the footer of each slide
  • Using different style images

Develop presentations fast with the Slide Master

If you want to avoid wasting time with the design of each slide and create presentations more efficiently, then you need to take advantage of the Slide Master. This way you separate the design (colors, layouts, typography) of the slide from the content (text and images).

Design tools & resources

Free copyright-free images:

Professional stock photography pond5.com, 123rf.com,dreamstine.com, istockphoto.com

Icons: thenounproject.com, flaticons.net, biorender.com, scidraw.io, bioicons.com.

Create your own amazing designs with these free tools:

E-book & Design package

Read our e-book Cause an Effect, A practical guide to designing science presentations that engage & inspire where we share all our tips and tricks on great presentation design. The design package includes:

  • Ebook Presentation design
  • PowerPoint template for researchers, with 28 pre-designed slides, 22 slide master layouts, 100+ icons, and fully customizable design & color scheme.
  • Video tutorial on how to use the slide master
  • Slide design inspiration guide

Share your feedback!

We hope our workshop made you a better science communicator. As we often say: “Feedback turns good into better, and better into best”. So we’d love to hear from you what you liked and how we can improve. We’ll be eternally grateful for your feedback!

[[[["field22","contains","Yes"]],[["show_fields","field1,field2,field7"]],"and"],[[["field17","less_than","60"]],[["show_fields","field32"]],"and"]]
1 Step 1
Which workshop or lecture did you attend?
Trainer

How did we score on the following topics?

Would you be interested in more workshops about science communication?

Great! Check out our workshops to organize one yourself!  

OPTIONAL: Can we contact you to ask more questions about your experience, so you can help us make the workshops better? 

Read our privacy statement to learn how we use the personal data you submit with this form.

keyboard_arrow_leftPrevious
Nextkeyboard_arrow_right
FormCraft - WordPress form builder

Read more tips in our science communication blog