Slideshow design – like fashion, architecture, or web design – has its trends that vary over time. What are we seeing the prominent presenters and PowerPoint mavens doing so far in 2017?
What’s Hot: Flat Design
What’s Not: 3-D Shapes
For a long time, we have been manipulating all our shapes and images with shadows, highlights, bevels, frames, and textures to make them look more layered and three-dimensional. This was supposed to make things look more realistic and interesting, but more often than not, it contributed to a distracting and cluttered feel. That trend is on its way out; “flat” design is coming in. You’ve probably been noticing this trend in web design already; it’s now seeping into presentation design as well. At the moment, we’re seeing an interesting mix of both styles – often a flat design featuring one 3-D effect to make a single element pop.
What’s Hot: Vectors
What’s Not: Busy Photographic Images
Along with the trend toward flat design and cleaner images, we’re seeing more vectors and less photography. Images can be too busy and distracting for a clean slide design; again, the focus should be on the content, and any accompanying images should be relevant enough to reinforce the point yet simple enough not to distract. As a bonus, vector images can often be manipulated in ways that photographic images can’t – we can often convert them to our company’s color theme, for example, or resize them without losing too much detail.
What’s Hot: Symbolic Icons
What’s Not: Basic Bullet Points
Instead of bullet points, many presenters are opting for small, evocative icons that are related to the subject matter. It’s so much more interesting to see tiny cars or colorful mini-logos instead of those plain, identical dots – and if they are carefully selected, they can reinforce your points and help direct your audience’s attention. So much power potential in such a tiny package!
What’s Hot: Infographics
What’s Not: Complex Data Dumps
Are we seeing a theme here? Along with vectors and icons, we’re seeing more visual representations of information in the form of graphs, charts, or multi-panel layouts that show data in a distilled, simplified form, mixing flat images with short data points. It’s so much easier to grasp the information at a glance this way, not to mention the aesthetic appeal of a tastefully designed pie chart when compared to ye olde bullet list.
What’s Hot: Broad Color Palettes and Colored Backgrounds
What’s Not: Boring Blues and Greys on White
Presenters are finally veering away from the safe, “professional” and oh-so-boring dark-on-white, blue/black/grey look that has dominated the business world for so long. Warmer, brighter color palettes are becoming more acceptable, as are colored backgrounds. The visual interest afforded by the new range of colors and the less stuffy, formal approach to palette design is a welcome and long overdue shift.
What’s Hot: Widescreen Views
What’s Not: The Old PPT Aspect Ratio
If you’re still using PowerPoint 2010 or older, you may not even be aware of this, but the default slide view in the newer versions of the program are widescreen – and it’s fantastic. This layout is far better at accommodating video content, not to mention offering designers a broader frame to work within, allowing for wider graphs, extra columns, more information – and many more options when it comes to layout.
Getting On Trend
In general, the movement is toward a less formal, more visual approach, and the focus is shifting back onto the content, rather than on fancy 3-D images and stock photos.
If you’re still stuck in the rut of boring old bullet points and black-on-white color schemes, check out all the template options in newer versions of your slideshow software, and explore online sources for flat-design vector and icon images. There are so many more attractive options than there used to be that there’s really no excuse for making a boring PowerPoint slideshow!
Baker Communications offers leading edge Presentations Training solutions that will help we address the goals and achieve the solutions addressed in this article. For more information about how our organization can achieve immediate and lasting behavior change that leads to success during presentations in any setting, click here.
