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Blog Beginner Guides 8 Types of Presentations You Should Know [+Examples & Tips]

8 Types of Presentations You Should Know [+Examples & Tips]

Written by: Krystle Wong Aug 11, 2023

From persuasive pitches that influence opinions to instructional demonstrations that teach skills, the different types of presentations serve a unique purpose, tailored to specific objectives and audiences.

Presentations that are tailored to its objectives and audiences are more engaging and memorable. They capture attention, maintain interest and leave a lasting impression. 

Don’t worry if you’re no designer —  Whether you need data-driven visuals, persuasive graphics or engaging design elements, Venngage can empower you to craft presentations that stand out and effectively convey your message.

Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface, extensive presentation template library and customizable design options make it a valuable tool for creating slides that align with your specific goals and target audience. 

Click to jump ahead:

8 Different types of presentations every presenter must know

How do i choose the right type of presentation for my topic or audience, types of presentation faq, 5 steps to create a presentation with venngage .

When it comes to presentations, versatility is the name of the game. Having a variety of presentation styles up your sleeve can make a world of difference in keeping your audience engaged. Here are 8 essential presentation types that every presenter should be well-acquainted with:

1. Informative presentation

Ever sat through a presentation that left you feeling enlightened? That’s the power of an informative presentation. 

This presentation style is all about sharing knowledge and shedding light on a particular topic. Whether you’re diving into the depths of quantum physics or explaining the intricacies of the latest social media trends, informative presentations aim to increase the audience’s understanding.

When delivering an informative presentation, simplify complex topics with clear visuals and relatable examples. Organize your content logically, starting with the basics and gradually delving deeper and always remember to keep jargon to a minimum and encourage questions for clarity.

Academic presentations and research presentations are great examples of informative presentations. An effective academic presentation involves having clear structure, credible evidence, engaging delivery and supporting visuals. Provide context to emphasize the topic’s significance, practice to perfect timing, and be ready to address anticipated questions. 

2. Persuasive presentation

If you’ve ever been swayed by a passionate speaker armed with compelling arguments, you’ve experienced a persuasive presentation . 

This type of presentation is like a verbal tug-of-war, aiming to convince the audience to see things from a specific perspective. Expect to encounter solid evidence, logical reasoning and a dash of emotional appeal.

With persuasive presentations, it’s important to know your audience inside out and tailor your message to their interests and concerns. Craft a compelling narrative with a strong opening, a solid argument and a memorable closing. Additionally, use visuals strategically to enhance your points.

Examples of persuasive presentations include presentations for environmental conservations, policy change, social issues and more. Here are some engaging presentation templates you can use to get started with: 

3. Demonstration or how-to presentation

A Demonstration or How-To Presentation is a type of presentation where the speaker showcases a process, technique, or procedure step by step, providing the audience with clear instructions on how to replicate the demonstrated action. 

A demonstrative presentation is particularly useful when teaching practical skills or showing how something is done in a hands-on manner.

These presentations are commonly used in various settings, including educational workshops, training sessions, cooking classes, DIY tutorials, technology demonstrations and more. Designing creative slides for your how-to presentations can heighten engagement and foster better information retention. 

Speakers can also consider breaking down the process into manageable steps, using visual aids, props and sometimes even live demonstrations to illustrate each step. The key is to provide clear and concise instructions, engage the audience with interactive elements and address any questions that may arise during the presentation.

4. Training or instructional presentation

Training presentations are geared towards imparting practical skills, procedures or concepts — think of this as the more focused cousin of the demonstration presentation. 

Whether you’re teaching a group of new employees the ins and outs of a software or enlightening budding chefs on the art of soufflé-making, training presentations are all about turning novices into experts.

To maximize the impact of your training or instructional presentation, break down complex concepts into digestible segments. Consider using real-life examples to illustrate each point and create a connection. 

You can also create an interactive presentation by incorporating elements like quizzes or group activities to reinforce understanding.

5. Sales presentation

Sales presentations are one of the many types of business presentations and the bread and butter of businesses looking to woo potential clients or customers. With a sprinkle of charm and a dash of persuasion, these presentations showcase products, services or ideas with one end goal in mind: sealing the deal.

A successful sales presentation often has key characteristics such as a clear value proposition, strong storytelling, confidence and a compelling call to action. Hence, when presenting to your clients or stakeholders, focus on benefits rather than just features. 

Anticipate and address potential objections before they arise and use storytelling to showcase how your offering solves a specific problem for your audience. Utilizing visual aids is also a great way to make your points stand out and stay memorable.

A sales presentation can be used to promote service offerings, product launches or even consultancy proposals that outline the expertise and industry experience of a business. Here are some template examples you can use for your next sales presentation:

6. Pitch presentation

Pitch presentations are your ticket to garnering the interest and support of potential investors, partners or stakeholders. Think of your pitch deck as your chance to paint a vivid picture of your business idea or proposal and secure the resources you need to bring it to life. 

Business presentations aside, individuals can also create a portfolio presentation to showcase their skills, experience and achievements to potential clients, employers or investors. 

Craft a concise and compelling narrative. Clearly define the problem your idea solves and how it stands out in the market. Anticipate questions and practice your answers. Project confidence and passion for your idea.

7. Motivational or inspirational presentation

Feeling the need for a morale boost? That’s where motivational presentations step in. These talks are designed to uplift and inspire, often featuring personal anecdotes, heartwarming stories and a generous serving of encouragement.

Form a connection with your audience by sharing personal stories that resonate with your message. Use a storytelling style with relatable anecdotes and powerful metaphors to create an emotional connection. Keep the energy high and wrap up your inspirational presentations with a clear call to action.

Inspirational talks and leadership presentations aside, a motivational or inspirational presentation can also be a simple presentation aimed at boosting confidence, a motivational speech focused on embracing change and more.

8. Status or progress report presentation

Projects and businesses are like living organisms, constantly evolving and changing. Status or progress report presentations keep everyone in the loop by providing updates on achievements, challenges and future plans. It’s like a GPS for your team, ensuring everyone stays on track.

Be transparent about achievements, challenges and future plans. Utilize infographics, charts and diagrams to present your data visually and simplify information. By visually representing data, it becomes easier to identify trends, make predictions and strategize based on evidence.

Now that you’ve learned about the different types of presentation methods and how to use them, you’re on the right track to creating a good presentation that can boost your confidence and enhance your presentation skills . 

Selecting the most suitable presentation style is akin to choosing the right outfit for an occasion – it greatly influences how your message is perceived. Here’s a more detailed guide to help you make that crucial decision:

1. Define your objectives

Begin by clarifying your presentation’s goals. Are you aiming to educate, persuade, motivate, train or perhaps sell a concept? Your objectives will guide you to the most suitable presentation type. 

For instance, if you’re aiming to inform, an informative presentation would be a natural fit. On the other hand, a persuasive presentation suits the goal of swaying opinions.

2. Know your audience

Regardless if you’re giving an in-person or a virtual presentation — delve into the characteristics of your audience. Consider factors like their expertise level, familiarity with the topic, interests and expectations. 

If your audience consists of professionals in your field, a more technical presentation might be suitable. However, if your audience is diverse and includes newcomers, an approachable and engaging style might work better.

3. Analyze your content

Reflect on the content you intend to present. Is it data-heavy, rich in personal stories or focused on practical skills? Different presentation styles serve different content types. 

For data-driven content, an informative or instructional presentation might work best. For emotional stories, a motivational presentation could be a compelling choice.

4. Consider time constraints

Evaluate the time you have at your disposal. If your presentation needs to be concise due to time limitations, opt for a presentation style that allows you to convey your key points effectively within the available timeframe. A pitch presentation, for example, often requires delivering impactful information within a short span.

5. Leverage visuals

Visual aids are powerful tools in presentations. Consider whether your content would benefit from visual representation. If your PowerPoint presentations involve step-by-step instructions or demonstrations, a how-to presentation with clear visuals would be advantageous. Conversely, if your content is more conceptual, a motivational presentation could rely more on spoken words.

6. Align with the setting

Take the presentation environment into account. Are you presenting in a formal business setting, a casual workshop or a conference? Your setting can influence the level of formality and interactivity in your presentation. For instance, a demonstration presentation might be ideal for a hands-on workshop, while a persuasive presentation is great for conferences.

7. Gauge audience interaction

Determine the level of audience engagement you want. Interactive presentations work well for training sessions, workshops and small group settings, while informative or persuasive presentations might be more one-sided.

8. Flexibility

Stay open to adjusting your presentation style on the fly. Sometimes, unexpected factors might require a change of presentation style. Be prepared to adjust on the spot if audience engagement or reactions indicate that a different approach would be more effective.

Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and the best type of presentation may vary depending on the specific situation and your unique communication goals. By carefully considering these factors, you can choose the most effective presentation type to successfully engage and communicate with your audience.

To save time, use a presentation software or check out these presentation design and presentation background guides to create a presentation that stands out.    

What are some effective ways to begin and end a presentation?

Capture your audience’s attention from the start of your presentation by using a surprising statistic, a compelling story or a thought-provoking question related to your topic. 

To conclude your presentation , summarize your main points, reinforce your key message and leave a lasting impression with a powerful call to action or a memorable quote that resonates with your presentation’s theme.

How can I make my presentation more engaging and interactive?

To create an engaging and interactive presentation for your audience, incorporate visual elements such as images, graphs and videos to illustrate your points visually. Share relatable anecdotes or real-life examples to create a connection with your audience. 

You can also integrate interactive elements like live polls, open-ended questions or small group discussions to encourage participation and keep your audience actively engaged throughout your presentation.

Which types of presentations require special markings

Some presentation types require special markings such as how sales presentations require persuasive techniques like emphasizing benefits, addressing objections and using compelling visuals to showcase products or services. 

Demonstrations and how-to presentations on the other hand require clear markings for each step, ensuring the audience can follow along seamlessly. 

That aside, pitch presentations require highlighting unique selling points, market potential and the competitive edge of your idea, making it stand out to potential investors or partners.

Need some inspiration on how to make a presentation that will captivate an audience? Here are 120+ presentation ideas to help you get started. 

Creating a stunning and impactful presentation with Venngage is a breeze. Whether you’re crafting a business pitch, a training presentation or any other type of presentation, follow these five steps to create a professional presentation that stands out:

• Sign up and log in to Venngage to access the editor.
• Choose a presentation template that matches your topic or style.
• Customize content, colors, fonts, and background to personalize your presentation.
• Add images, icons, and charts to enhancevisual style and clarity.
• Save, export, and share your presentation as PDF or PNG files, or use Venngage’s Presentation Mode for online showcasing.

In the realm of presentations, understanding the different types of presentation formats is like having a versatile set of tools that empower you to craft compelling narratives for every occasion.

Remember, the key to a successful presentation lies not only in the content you deliver but also in the way you connect with your audience. Whether you’re informing, persuading or entertaining, tailoring your approach to the specific type of presentation you’re delivering can make all the difference.

Presentations are a powerful tool, and with practice and dedication (and a little help from Venngage), you’ll find yourself becoming a presentation pro in no time. Now, let’s get started and customize your next presentation!

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The 8 Types of Presentation Styles: Which Category Do You Fall Into?

Updated: December 16, 2020

Published: September 24, 2018

Types of Presentations

• Visual Style
• Freeform Style
• Instructor Style
• Coach Style
• Storytelling Style
• Connector Style
• Lessig Style
• Takahashi Style

Everyone on the internet has an opinion on how to give the “perfect” presentation.

One group champions visual aids, another thinks visual aids are a threat to society as we know it. One expert preaches the benefits of speaking loudly, while another believes the softer you speak the more your audience pays attention. And don’t even try to find coordinating opinions on whether you should start your presentation with a story, quote, statistic, or question.

But what if there wasn’t just one “right” way to give a presentation? What if there were several? Below, I’ve outlined eight types of presentation styles. They’re used by famous speakers like Steve Jobs and Al Gore -- and none of them are wrong.

Check out each one and decide which will be most effective for you.

Free Presentation & Public Speaking Kit

Everything you need to become more comfortable and effective during your next presentation, including:

• Free Guide on Best Practices
• PowerPoint Presentation Templates
• Video Examples of Great Speakers

Types of Presentation Styles

1. visual style.

What it is: If you’re a firm believer slides simply exist to complement your talking points, this style is for you. With this speaking style, you might need to work a little harder to get your audience engaged, but the dividends can be huge for strong public speakers, visionaries, and storytellers.

When to use it: This style is helpful when speaking to a large audience with broad interests. It’s also great for when you need to throw together slides quickly.

Visual style presenter: Steve Jobs

2. Freeform Style

What it is: This impromptu style of presenting doesn’t require slides. Instead, the speaker relies on strong stories to illustrate each point. This style works best for those who have a short presentation time and are extremely familiar with their talking points.

When to use it: Elevator pitches, networking events, and impromptu meetings are all scenarios in which to use a freeform style of speaking. You’ll appear less rehearsed and more conversational than if you were to pause in the middle of a happy hour to pull up your presentation on a tablet.

Freeform style presenter: Sir Ken Robinson

3. Instructor Style

What it is: This presentation style allows you to deliver complex messages using figures of speech, metaphors, and lots of content -- just like your teachers and professors of old. Your decks should be built in logical order to aid your presentation, and you should use high-impact visuals to support your ideas and keep the audience engaged.

When to use it: If you’re not a comfortable presenter or are unfamiliar with your subject matter (i.e., your product was recently updated and you’re not familiar with the finer points), try instructor-style presenting.

Instructor style presenter: Al Gore

4. Coach Style

What it is: Energetic and charismatic speakers gravitate towards this style of presenting. It allows them to connect and engage with their audience using role play and listener interaction.

When to use it: Use this presentation style when you’re speaking at a conference or presenting to an audience who needs to be put at ease. For example, this style would work well if you were speaking to a group of executives who need to be sold on the idea of what your company does rather than the details of how you do it.

Coach style presenter: Linda Edgecombe

5. Storytelling Style

What it is: In this style, the speaker relies on anecdotes and examples to connect with their audience. Stories bring your learning points to life, and the TED’s Commandments never let you down: Let your emotions out and tell your story in an honest way.

When to use it: Avoid this style if you’re in the discovery phase of the sales process. You want to keep the conversation about your prospect instead of circling every point or question back to you or a similar client. This style is great for conference speaking, networking events, and sales presentations where you have adequate time to tell your stories without taking minutes away from questions.

Storytelling style presenter: Jill Bolte Taylor

6. Connector Style

What it is: In this style, presenters connect with their audience by showing how they’re similar to their listeners. Connectors usually enjoy freeform Q&A and use gestures when they speak. They also highly encourage audience reaction and feedback to what they’re saying.

When to use it: Use this style of presenting early in the sales process as you’re learning about your prospect’s pain points, challenges, and goals. This type of speaking sets your listener at ease, elicits feedback on how you’re doing in real time, and is more of a dialogue than a one-sided presentation

Connector style presenter: Connie Dieken

7. Lessig Style

What it is: The Lessig Style was created by Lawrence Lessig , a professor of law and leadership at Harvard Law School. This presentation style requires the presenter to pass through each slide within 15 seconds. When text is used in a slide, it’s typically synchronized with the presenter’s spoken words.

When to use it: This method of presentation is great for large crowds -- and it allows the speaker to use a balance of text and image to convey their message. The rapid pace and rhythm of the slide progression keeps audiences focused, engaged, and less likely to snooze.

Lessig style presenter: Lawrence Lessig

8. Takahashi Style

What it is: This method features large, bold text on minimal slides. It was devised by Masayoshi Takahashi , who found himself creating slides without access to a presentation design tool or PowerPoint. The main word is the focal point of the slide, and phrases, used sparingly, are short and concise.

When to use it: If you find yourself in Takahashi’s shoes -- without presentation design software -- this method is for you. This style works well for short presentations that pack a memorable punch.

Takahashi style presenter: Masayoshi Takahashi

Slides from one of Takahashi’s presentations:

Whether you’re speaking on a conference stage or giving a sales presentation , you can find a method that works best for you and your audience. With the right style, you’ll capture attention, engage listeners, and effectively share your message. You can even ask an AI presentation maker tool to create presentations for you in your preferred style

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The 6 types of presentation (and why you need them)

Hrideep barot.

• Presentation , Public Speaking

We all have been exposed to different types of presentations right from school years.

Group presentations, lectures by teachers and professors, seminars, webinars or online presentations, e-learning, e-conferences, etc., are all different types of presentations that we come across in our daily lives.

But each of them work for different settings.

In this article, we will take a look at 6 such types of presentations and when and why you need them.

1. Informative Presentations

This is the most common type of presentation, be it in an educational setting or business or corporate setting.

The aim of an informative presentation is to give detailed information about a product, concept, or idea to a specific kind of audience.

They are often analytical or require a rational analysis of the data presented.

Training sessions or one-day workshops are good examples where this kind of presentation is used.

Here is an example of an informative presentation on public speaking and presentations.

Now, there are different situations where you can use informative presentations.

a) Reporting

Although a report is a written explanation of an event, it can also be verbal.

A perfect place to use informative presentations is news reporting , as it requires the presenter to present information systematically.

b) Briefing

This involves explaining both positive and negative aspects of a particular topic in a few words.

It is providing information quickly and effectively about an issue to influence decisions or to come to solutions.

Hence, the decision-making bodies of an organization can make use of this kind of presentation to save time and effectively come to conclusions.

c) Research

Informative presentations are often used to present research findings to a specific audience , as it involves reporting the findings and briefing it to the audience.

Hence, almost everywhere where research takes place, be it in an educational context or occupational , can make use of this kind of presentation.

Tips for giving informative presentations

• As there would be a lot of technical information and statistics, focus on the main points or agenda first and if you have more time, you can add them at the end
• Keep your presentation simple and clear . Avoid complex sentence structures and graphics
• Tell the outline of your presentation briefly in the introduction for a better flow
• Make sure that your presentation does not stretch for too long. 10-15 minutes is what your audience can concentrate on
• Restate your keyphrase at the end and briefly summarize all the important points of your presentation

Speech topics for an informative presentation

• Cropping techniques
• Organic Farming
• Corporate Farming
• Hydroponics
• Sustainable Agriculture, etc
• Climate change
• Environmental issues
• Eco-friendly ways of management
• Eco-politics
• Eco-feminism, etc
• Gender studies
• Gender and education
• Religious studies
• History of education
• Philosophy of education, etc
• Ethnic cultures
• Indigenous cultures
• Multiculturalism
• Popular culture
• Cultural trends, etc
• Business administration
• Business ethics
• Business models
• Promotion and marketing communications
• Finance, etc

2. Persuasive presentations

Persuasion is the art of motivating or convincing someone to act or make a change in their actions or thoughts.

If you are planning to give a persuasive presentation, and are looking for how to give a persuasive speech, check out our article on A Comprehensive Guide to Writing a Persuasive Speech to gain in-depth knowledge about the art of giving persuasive presentations.

Persuasive presentations are also widely used form after informative presentations.

There are various circumstances where persuasive presentations can be used.

a) Policy-making

Government bodies make use of persuasion almost every time, be it the legislative or decision-making bodies, executive bodies, or even courts.

Even election campaigns involve using persuasive presentations as an instrument of their pre-determined goals of swaying the citizens.

For that matter, any executive or management body of an organization can make use of these kinds of presentations.

b) Value judgment

This kind involves answering the question “why” and supplementing it with possible benefits.

Most Ted talks and YouTube videos try to persuade the audience and fall into the persuasive presentation category.

Even religious heads use this as a means of persuading their believers to follow their belief system.

Deciding on a procedure or telling an audience the correct procedure of doing something is another situation.

An example of a persuasive presentation

Bailey parnell: is social media hurting your mental health.

This TED talk by Bailey Parnell is a good example of a persuasive presentation.

She starts strong by asking rhetorical questions that set the mood for her further points.

We can also see how the speaker is genuinely concerned regarding the issue, engaging the audience till the end.

Tips for giving a persuasive presentation

• Start your presentation with a relevant quote or statistics about your topic to establish credibility
• Tell personal anecdotes and examples wherever necessary to develop an emotional connection with your audience
• Deliver your presentation with passion and genuine interest to motivate your audience to think
• Answer the question “why” for better understanding and clarity in your presentation
• State your viewpoint clearly and clarify doubts if your audience seems to have any

Speech topics for persuasive presentations

• Is animal testing ethical?
• Should cosmetic surgery be banned?
• Can the death penalty be the only solution to the rising crime rates?
• Should the legal age be 18?
• Should immigration laws be revised?
• Why you should never add your parents on Facebook
• Guys are more interested in gossip than girls
• It is your major duty to annoy your parents
• You are not enjoying student life if you are not procrastinating
• Endless memes can be made on my life, etc
• Is taming wild and exotic animals ethical?
• The importance of emotional support animals
• Why are bunnies the perfect pet?
• Why do animals make the best companions?
• Why there is a need for patients to have emotional support animals, etc
• How and why there is a need to do business analysis before opening your business?
• Why small businesses are successful and more profitable?
• Why do sales and customer service departments need to be paid more?
• Why does the HR department need to be polite and understanding?
• Why should you not do business with a family member?
• How charity is a means of converting black money to white?
• Why is detaining people on the suspicion of terrorism justified?
• Should euthanasia be made legal?
• Should violent crime offenders be sentenced to death?
• Should foreigners be allowed to buy a property?

3. Demonstrative presentations

This involves demonstrating a process or the functioning of a product in a step-by-step fashion.

So, a master class on communication skills or making a product model is an example of a demonstrative presentation.

Usually, the audience is an active part of such presentations and these can work in any context where you want the audience to learn a new skill.

a) Instructions

This involves giving guidelines or steps of a process or work .

Teaching how to make a car model step-by-step is a good example where you can use this kind of informative presentation to guide your audience.

Another instance can be at the workplace , to train the employees or introduce them to a new product at work.

This type also works with demonstrating recipes and cooking workshops.

An example of demonstrative presentation

The easy guide on making just about any smoothie.

In this recipe demonstration, he tells his audience how many ingredients are involved and briefs them about the outline of his presentation at the start of his speech.

He also shows all steps in real-time so that the audience have a better understanding of the process and keeps them engaged.

Tips to give a demonstrative presentation

• Introduce your product and its function to your audience before telling them how to go about with the steps
• Explain the steps with diagrams or show them in real-time along with the audience
• Give equal time to every person in the audience for clearing doubts, if any
• Keep your introduction short. Not more than 5 minutes
• Discuss options or variations that the audience can try at the end of the presentation

Speech topics for demonstrative presentations

• How to administer CPR
• How to wrap a gift professionally
• How to budget your monthly income
• How to choose a car insurance
• How to restore a piece of antique furniture

4. Inspirational presentations

As the name suggests, this type of presentation involves inspiring others!

The main aim of an inspirational presentation is to motivate or move your audience and is also known as a motivational presentation.

Using techniques like storytelling, narrating personal anecdotes , or even humor work wonders as your audience develops an emotional connection to the message.

This TED talk by Luvvie Ajayi Jones is humorous but a lot more inspirational. Check it out!

Tips for giving an inspirational presentation

• Start with a question that will leave the audience thinking. Pause for some time and then begin with your presentation
• Develop a sense of connection by narrating personal incidents and experiences to grow empathy
• Have some main points that you want to emphasize on
• Make use of humor ! It instantly builds a connection with the listener
• Non-verbal elements like paralanguage, body language, speech modulations, tone, etc., makes a huge difference

Speech topics for an inspirational presentation

• Importance of diversity and inclusion
• Building mental resilience
• Need for change management
• Valuing small victories in life
• How procrastinating is your enemy

5. Business presentations

In the corporate world, presentations are the go-to solution to do anything: planning or strategizing, articulating company goals, screening candidates, status reports , and many more.

Let us take a dive into the different types of business presentations.

a) Sales presentation

Also known as sales pitches , sales presentations involve providing information about a product or a service to sell it.

It has a pre-defined strategy of initiating and closing the sales deal.

This can be done in person or nowadays, on the phone, or via e-communication .

b) Training sessions

Often employees have on-the-job training sessions that are aimed to increase the knowledge and skills of the employees.

This kind can also involve the audience to participate , like in demonstrative presentations.

c) Meetings

Meetings can be called for for different reasons and can be of different forms as well.

Conferences ( both video and in-person), board meetings, informal team meetings, daily reporting, etc., are all various contexts of meeting in a business setting.

d) E- presentations

E- presentations existed before the COVID pandemic as well but were used seldom.

But, with the ongoing pandemic, e-presentations or remote presentations have replaced all other types of presentations and will be with us for a while longer.

However, on the brighter side, it is an eco-friendly alternative to normal face-to-face kind of a set-up, and it also saves transportation and other costs !

e) Seminars

Seminars are widely used in the health sector , usually involving a panel of speakers on a topic. The audience is anywhere between 10 to 100.

It ends with a question and answers session , and the audience gets to take handouts with them.

f) One-on-one or 1:1

Interviews are usually one-on-one and involve presenting your achievements and capabilities to your prospective employer.

Apart from interviews, 1:1 meetings are also used in sales and marketing to crack a business deal.

Tips for giving business presentations

• Include key phrases and other important details on your slides and make them bold
• Avoid casual slangs and informal tone of speech
• If you are giving a sales presentation, explain your product or service in simple and clear words , and list the reasons why it is beneficial for your potential clients
• Make sure to be on time ! Delaying your audience will work against you and leave a bad impression on you and your company
• Know your material or content thoroughly to answer the questions asked by your audience

Speech topics for business presentations

• Implementing an Agile Project
• Introduction to data modeling
• Introduction to UML(Unified Modeling Language)
• Social Media strategies for a successful business
• Business writing for managers

6. Powerpoint presentations

PowerPoint presentations or PPTs are the most effective ones among all types of presentations simply because they are convenient and easy to understand .

They are available in different formats and are suitable to use in practically any type of presentation and context, be it business, educational, or for informal purposes.

There are various types of PowerPoint presentations that you can use depending on the context.

a) PPTs for general audience

• For general audiences, avoid using jargon terms

If you feel that you need to use them, provide the audience some background information about the field or topic being covered

• Avoid using more than 8 words per line, as anything more than that becomes difficult to remember
• Use bullets or a numbered list for better retention
• Try not to read from your PPT
• Give handouts or record your presentation in case anyone wants it

b) PPTs for teaching

• In this case, the PowerPoint is content-based
• Make sure that the words on the slides are visible
• Use bigger font and avoid fancy fonts
• Add relevant pictures and graphics to keep your audience engaged
• You can also add documentaries or relevant videos to aid in understanding

c) Repurpose PPTs

• This involves reinventing an earlier ppt or combining 1 or more than 1 PowerPoints
• Giving new touches to an earlier PPT or changing the format
• You can take any slide of your PPT and upload it on social media for growing your brand or business
• You can even convert your PPT into mp4 , i.e, video format
• You can even add voice and save the mp4 format, and you have a good marketing plan!

d) PechaKucha

• This type of PowerPoint presentation comes from the Japanese word PechaKucha meaning sound of a conversation or chit-chat
• This involves changing slides every 20 seconds
• There can be a maximum of 20 slides , which means your presentation lasts for only 6 minutes and 40 seconds
• The PPT mostly has graphics and fewer words
• This type of presentation is best suited for telling a story or a personal anecdote

e) Multimedia presentations

• This is the best kind of PPT to engage your audience
• It contains texts along with pictures, videos, infographics, music, illustrations, GIFs , and many more
• Add higher resolution images and videos , or even a 360-degree snapshot if you are in the sales and marketing industry
• Adding infographics such as charts and graphs makes the process of understanding easier and saves time
• Music in a PPT helps your audience to be relaxed, at the same time making them alert and engaged

Types of slides in a presentation

PowerPoint presentation slides are broadly classified into 3 categories: Text, Visual, and Mixed slides.

1. Text slides

As the name suggests, this category of slides involve words or texts.

You can format the text as plain sentences or pointers.

You may even arrange them all in a single slide or one line per slide.

The slide seen below is an example where every point is mentioned in a single slide.

2. Visual slides

This type of slide has visual elements such as images or videos , and are better known as conceptual slides since they are a better option than text slide to explain a particular concept.

You can use them at the start of the presentation to better visualize and grasp the meaning of the presentation.

The slide right below is a good example of a visual slide.

3. Mixed slides

Mixed slides combine the texts and visuals to give a comprehensive understanding of any concept or a speech.

Graphs and charts are the best examples of mixed slides.

Mixed slides have an advantage over the other slides; they keep your audience engaged, listening and participating more actively!

Types of Oral presentations

So far we came across 6 types of presentations, and they all share one common feature. They are all one of the types of oral presentations.

Oral presentations involve the use of verbal and non-verbal elements to deliver a speech to a particular or general audience.

All the types we discussed fall into these 4 broad categories:

1. Extemporaneous presentations

This type of presentation involves making short pointers or key phrases to aid while speaking.

You do not memorize, but organize the points and structure the speech way in advance.

Hence, on the day of your presentation, by just looking at the key points , you expand on them and move to the next point.

2. Impromptu presentations

Impromptu presentations are spoken without any preparation . It can be nerve-wracking for many, and hence not many are in favor of it.

There is a valid reason for their fear, as you have to make your speech as you say it!

However, those who are experts in their fields and are called upon to share a few words can easily give this type of presentation.

3. Manuscript presentations

The other extreme of the spectrum is manuscript presentations.

Here you have a script and you speak from it, word by word.

News anchors and show announcers usually engage in this type, since there are a lot of specific details that cannot be said wrong, and also, time constraints.

Usually, a prompter is used, from which the speaker speaks to their audience.

Nowadays, there are teleprompters , that are heavily used in the entertainment and media industry.

It is a digital screen that displays the contents, and the speaker speaks from it.

4. Memorized presentations

This type does not have any notes or cues , but you memorize or rote learn the whole speech.

School and some presentations at the workplace involve using this kind of presentation.

In most cases, we recommend not to memorise your speech in most cases. We’ve made a video on the same and how it could lead to you potentially blanking out on stage. Highly recommend you view this quick vid before choosing memorisation as a presentation path:

But, if you do choose it for whatever reason, since you are free from notes, you are free to focus on other aspects, such as body language and gestures.

Types of presentation styles

There are various presenting styles, but they do not work for all types of presentations.

Let us get familiar with them, and know which style works with which type.

a) The storyteller

This style of presentation involves the speaker narrating stories and engaging the audience emotionally .

This technique works best with persuasive and inspirational types of presentation.

So, how to tell a story in a presentation?

• Understand and know your audience : Knowing your audience will help you with how you will frame your story, at the same time gauging the relevance of your narrative
• Know your message : Be clear with what you want to convey through your story or how you are connecting the story with your actual presentation
• Try narrative a real-life story : Inspiring presenters often take their own stories or the stories of people whom they know as a supplement to their presentation. When the audience listens to your real-life examples, they become genuinely interested in your story
• Add visual aids : Using visual aids such as pictures, videos, multimedia, etc., increases the memory retention and engagement of your audience
• Use the “you” attitude : Tell the story keeping your audience in mind because ultimately they are going to be the receivers and hence, the story should be relevant and should include their point of view as well

Want more storytelling tactics? Mystery, characterisation and the final takeaway are some more key elements of a good story for your next presentation. We’ve gone deeper into this topic in this video if you would like to know more:

b) The Visual style

Most of us are visual learners, making visual information easy to understand and retain.

Visual aids like graphics, images, diagrams, key pointers or phrases , etc., are very useful when giving any type of presentation.

Some tips of presenting with visual style:

• Include only important pointers in your PowerPoint presentation and highlight or bold them
• Try including visuals that complement what you are saying and use them as a supplementary tool to aid in understanding your audience
• If you are giving a business presentation and want to include visuals, instead of plain texts, include graphics and charts to make information simpler to present and understand
• Avoid overly complex visuals as it will confuse the audience more
• Avoid using more than 6 lines per slide

c) Analytic style

If you have data records or statistical information to be presented, an analytic style will be more helpful.

It works best for Informative and Business types of presentations.

Tips to deliver in analytic style:

• Give handouts so that the audience is on track with your presentation and the information will be easier to comprehend
• Focus and speak on selected data as too much data statistics can be overwhelming for the audience
• You can make use of humor and personal anecdotes to keep the presentation interesting and engaging
• If you have too much data and are worried that you will not be able to explain it in the time frame given, avoid writing content of more than 2000 words

Quick tip: In case you have a PDF to present and want to edit the data points, there are multiple software programs that you can use to allow you to easily do this. Check out this list of the Best Free Recording Software Programs to know more.

d) The Connector

The connector style of presentation involves the speaker establishing a connection with the audience by pointing out similarities between them and the listeners.

This style works well with Sales and marketing presentations.

How to give a presentation using connector style?

• Have a Q & A round with the audience at the end of your presentation for clarifying any doubts and avoiding miscommunication
• Use audience polls at the start of your presentation to know your audience and tailor your speech accordingly
• Make use of body language and gestures for delivering your presentation effectively. If you are confused or want to know more about the aspects of how to use body and gestures, check out our article on To walk or stand still: How should you present when on stage?
• Ask questions to your audience at regular intervals for a better audience engagement
• Make use of multimedia sources to keep your audience engaged and entertained

Which type of presentation is best?

Although all the presentation types have their own bonuses and are suitable for certain circumstances, some are universal and can be used with a little bit of modification almost everywhere!

These are persuasive presentations!

You can use them in various settings; from political, business to educational.

Just remember to choose the right topic for the right audience, and a style that you think is the most suitable and you are good to go!

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To conclude

We saw 6 types of presentation and understood it in detail.

We also gained some tips on how to make our presentation more engaging and also came across things to avoid as well.

We then explored the types of slides that you can use, and also the types of presenting orally.

We also gave you some tips and a few topic ideas that you can incorporate in your next speech!

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PowerPoint.Guru

Types of Presentations

Presentations can be called ideal objects for visualizing ideas. Slides allow you to focus on important things in more detail or discuss complex things. There are usually some types of visuals for presentations that are extremely effective in illustrating the relationships between things and processes. You can use images, text, drawings, graphs, charts, and screenshots when creating slides. But how to design a presentation? What are the nuances you need to know before crafting slides? For starters, you should know the difference between presentation types.

Why Do You Need to Craft Slides?

There is a simple rule of storytelling: if you can't tell something, you have to show it! That is why people of different professions and fields of activity should use presentations. A set of slides greatly simplifies the visualization and systematization of various information nuances. In addition, presentations are a great addition to public speaking, reporting, or academic debates.

Presentations: Types of Slides and Their Purpose

Any presentation is not just a set of slides. Instead, your goal is to keep important aspects related to the general topic, goals, and ideas. But how to design a presentation? And where to start in the first place? To begin with, you should pay attention to the types of presentations and their purpose. Such knowledge will give you the key to further action.

Presentations for Business

Your presentation graphic design will be very different from standard slides. Much of the difference will come from the goals of your presentation. For example, a business needs clear statistics, direct answers, and slide control. Here are the types of presentations you should know.

As a rule, pitch deck presentations help young entrepreneurs get funding by showing business prospects. Such slides allow you to list your company's benefits, the number of new customers, or revenue growth over a certain period. In other words, each slide is a demonstration of your attractiveness in a commercial sense.

In addition, pitch deck presentations allow you to present to investors the project team, new talented employees, or growth paths that will become real by investing in your project. In some way, such a presentation is analogous to a shop window where representatives of business structures can see the most important things.

Sales Presentation

Imagine that your company has been successful for a certain period. Surely you need details to report to investors or the project team. That is why you need a sales presentation because it can show how profitable and effective the period of the company's activity was through such a presentation. For example, you can show the gross income, operating profit, the growth rate of your product, and other information.

Sometimes such a sales presentation aims to promote new teams within the company based on the statistics of the goods or services provided. You can also add selling propositions, pricing information, testimonials, and other things that will show the positive growth dynamics of your company.

Marketing Presentations

Most marketing presentations consist of slides designed to promote products and services. Your goal as a presentation creator is to find effective ways to promote your sales pitch. For example, you must show how profitable cooperation with you is or how good your products or services are.

As a rule, marketing presentations contain graphic elements designed to create a solid image and reputation of a good company worth trusting. That is why you should choose bright facts that allow you to gather a loyal audience. Also, such slides may include future business plans or goals that can be implemented through certain actions.

30-60-90 Day Plan

Many people who want a good position in any company should create a 30-60-90 day plan. So this is a strategic action plan for thirty, sixty, and ninety days. In other words, you must show what you intend to do in a new position to justify your trust.

In a way, your 30-60-90 day plan is a manifesto and a demonstration of your ambitions. Showing the action plan on slides demonstrates the steps you are ready to take and the tools you use to implement all the ideas. In addition, such a presentation aims to achieve loyalty among the company owners or top managers.

Business Plan

And here is the most important type of presentation for startups. Your business plan is a step forward to attract investors and show the prospects of your ideas and the possibilities of their implementation. Moreover, you are selling an idea that will become a reality if someone gives you money.

In addition, a business plan is a type of presentation that should show the niche you want to occupy. Perhaps you should also point out your competitors and the ways you are using to leave them far behind. As a rule, such presentations should be concise and provide the final audience with a summary of the prospects for your business.

Budget Presentations

Most startups and companies need budget presentations, as they allow you to determine the appropriateness of certain financial flows. In addition, slides with data are needed to visualize spending on payroll projects and purchasing goods and services. In other words, most financial processes can be visualized through the presentation.

Let's say the company's management wants to optimize the costs of managing subsidiaries and decides to hold a meeting. With detailed budget presentations, they can quickly consolidate their focus on those transactions that can be reduced in number.

Slides for Teachers

Presentation graphic design can be especially amazing if you are a teacher. Your task is to prepare for classes and create a comfortable springboard for students ready to gain knowledge. That is why every slide must be polished. Here are examples to help you learn more.

Lecture Presentation

Many teachers must create slides to visualize information and a springboard for academic activities. For example, a good lecture presentation allows you to focus on certain facts, terms, or research results. In other words, slides are vital for visualizing important lecture facts. The lecture presentation has a classical academic structure, graphs, images, tables, and diagrams.

Course Presentation

Each course presentation is a set of slides vital to condense a piece of learning content in a structured and interactive format. All slides are based on information relevant to the main topic. In addition, the course presentation should contain key ideas, goals, and tools to achieve them. In general, these are academic slides that make it extremely easy to visualize the tasks of your course.

Lessons Plan Presentation

Teachers must craft lessons plan presentation weekly to interact more effectively with students. As a rule, such a set of slides allows young people to learn more about what information they will receive during the lesson. In addition, the lessons plan presentation is a springboard for teachers who do not want to forget important details while explaining new topics.

Research Presentation

Typically, the average research presentation includes a short intro, your hypotheses, a brief description of the methods, and graphs related to your findings. Here you will interpret the data and be able to show how valuable your finds turned out to be. As a rule, any research presentation is a springboard that helps students understand exactly how students should approach the visualization of the results of their work.

Interactive Planner

Sometimes your main goal may be to create a so-called interactive planner. So this is a presentation, the purpose of which is to create a systematic approach to the company's development. It is all about the visualization of goals that can be changed in the future. In other words, your interactive planner is a set of slides aimed at systematically analyzing a business or individual goals in the context of a common (global) idea.

Case Presentation

As a rule, any case presentation is a way of interaction between the professor and the audience. Such a set of slides allows you to organize the most important information related to the academic or medical process. In other words, your case presentation is a way to tailor complex terms and key data to the needs of a specific audience.

For Students

Every student should know how to design presentation slides right. But your slides' type and visual style depend on your academic assignment. Here are the most popular presentation types you should know about.

Thesis Presentation

As a rule, creating a solid thesis presentation can take time. The fact is that such a set of slides should describe in detail the goals, research methods, and results of your work. Each thesis presentation slide is a brick that forms a solid wall of information relevant to your topic. Here you can add graphs, charts, images, and tables to visualize in detail the work you have done.

Dissertation Defense Presentations

While writing your dissertation, you must prepare data to defend your position and research. Typically, you will need to create data comparison slides, research graphs, and visual patterns to help build a base for your judgments. So this is why dissertation defense presentations are so important. They should become a mix of your ideas and an auxiliary source for your speech. Try to sort your slides according to the order of your paragraphs. And do not forget about the data you will use during your performance. That is why dissertation defense presentations should copy the general paper structure.

Research Paper Presentation

Imagine that you have to write a research paper and craft a dozen slides to support your idea. Usually, a research paper presentation is a basis that is needed to emphasize certain parts of your paper. As a rule, students must craft 10-15 slides with background information, key ideas, results, and data interpretation. In other words, your research paper presentation is important for you and your professor, who will probably analyze the results of your work.

Admission Presentation

As a rule, each first-year student must create an admission presentation as an addition to the essay. This work is part of the admission process to show that the future student is worthy of becoming part of the academic community. Usually, the average admission presentation is a set of slides that contain key ideas, goals, ambitions, and sources of your inspiration. Plus, colleges and universities don't have strict formatting and style requirements, so you can craft your slides to suit your inspiration.

Presentation Design Tips: Everything You Need to Know About Slides

Surely you want to craft your slides well and stick to certain rules. That is why you should check out these design tips for presentations. Read each tip carefully, and you will surely be able to create a good presentation.

1. Stay Away From Bullet Points

The bullet points aren't necessary. Moreover, they can turn an original presentation into a trivial PowerPoint template. Instead, list important aspects of your presentation using the paragraph form. Such a presentation graphic design idea will allow you to stick to the original approach and say no to the boring enumeration of dozens of parameters. Try to keep your slides lighter regarding the amount of content on the page.

2. Insert a Single Animation Style

The animation style is important for storytelling because your audience should not be distracted from key information. In addition, different animation styles when switching slides can confuse your audience. Try to choose only animations that work and look natural. Surely you are not interested in visual effects that will lead to total design presentation failure.

3. Highlight Key Points

Try to use shapes, bright fonts, or characters pointing to put a visual emphasis on some piece of information. This strategy is extremely effective as it allows you to focus your audience's attention on the things that matter most. In addition, highlighting key data using graphic elements helps to prioritize zones and makes it easier to perceive any information.

4. Incorporate Data Visualization

Data visualization is what you need to make your presentation look solid. Use pie charts, bar charts, graphs, and other types of content that allow your audience to understand certain nuances quickly. For example, you can add a percentage pie chart describing the percentage of people who do not subscribe to streaming services. Visualization is the key to simplicity and elegance.

5. Keep Your Slide Design Consistent

You may love variety and vibrant color combinations, but your presentation needs to be solid. Keep your slide design consistent, and you'll see how much better your visual style will get. Use the same fonts, color elements, and data visualization types. This approach is extremely important for those who want to achieve effective presentations.

6. Break Up Sections

One of the key secrets is to break up sections. This strategy allows you to separate important information blocks and prepare your audience for new slides. For example, use blank slides with pictures, large print for subtitles, or even short videos. Your visual content should create a clear transition that will help the audience prepare for a new block of slides ahead of time.

7. Limit A Single Takeaway Per Slide

Some people like to create 3-5 slide presentations and add a few paragraphs to each page. But such a strategy is not profitable in advance since it will be difficult for your audience to focus on important things. So instead, center all your text and visuals around one takeaway or idea. First, this strategy will allow you to make each slide lighter and more visually appealing. Secondly, each page will be like one of the chain links that look monolithic.

Final Words

As you can see, there are quite a few types of presentations depending on the goals you are pursuing. Knowing a clear differentiation and approach to create each slide will help you stand out from the crowd and craft something special. And don't forget about tips to help you avoid common mistakes. Many ideas are simple enough that you won't have to analyze them for long.

Keynote vs Powerpoint

Presentation design techniques

Types of presentations

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Different types of presentations

Get your team on prezi – watch this on demand video.

Meghan Ryan July 29, 2022

Before you start building a presentation, you need a good structure. Ask yourself the purpose of your presentation – why are you getting in front of your audience? Are you trying to convince them to care about an issue and take action? Who are you speaking to – colleagues, customers, or investors? Asking yourself these questions will help you start to determine the type of presentation and structure it accordingly. Read on to discover different types of presentations and how to structure them.

Persuasive presentations

What is a persuasive presentation.

A persuasive presentation is one that tries to convince the audience to accept a certain position and to take action. It uses facts, logic, and emotion to help the audience understand the impact of a certain situation and see it from a different perspective.

How to make a persuasive presentation

• Start your presentation off strong and make the first 30 seconds of your presentation count. This presentation type needs a good hook that draws the audience in and starts getting them invested in the topic.
• Introduce the problem that needs to be solved and compare it with your solution.
• Build a narrative around your solution. Use evidence, back up your ideas with statistics and findings, and use emotion to pull your audience through the narrative. You should be building to a strong conclusion at this point.
• End with a summary of your points and relate them back to the actions that your audience takes.

This type of presentation requires confidence. Show that you feel passionate about your topic and believe in your solution to your audience. They need to feel trust in you to follow your ideas. Rehearse your presentation, but not to the point that you have every single line memorized. You want to sound authentic, not as though you’re rattling off facts and figures.

Persuasive presentation examples

Some of the most common types of persuasive presentations are product or business pitches, but there are so many more out there. Seeing how someone persuades their audience might give you some inspiration, so here we’ve compiled a few of our favorite examples of this type of presentation.

Watch this product pitch by Thriftplan, a workspace-saving solution helping companies retain their talent and employees manage their long-term savings.

This presentation on deforestation shows the effects that deforestation has had on the planet and introduces ways to become a “tree hugger” and combat it:

Learn more about what goes into an effective persuasive speech by reading our article on the topic.

Informative presentations

What is an informative presentation.

An informative presentation is a type of presentation that is just there to provide information. Unlike a persuasive presentation, you’re not necessarily delivering it to get your audience to take action or change their minds. This type of presentation is often analytical. It may just “report the facts,” but you might also want to include some analysis of the information.

How to make an informative presentation

• This type of presentation needs to be about a specific topic, so research your topic thoroughly. Whether that means gathering data from your team or colleagues, or going to the library or interviewing experts, you’ll want to take every step you can in order to seem like an expert in front of your audience.
• Consider your crowd and write this presentation type for them. If your audience knows a lot about your topic, you can skip some of the background information, like when you deliver a report to your team. A teacher will want to go into much more detail if they’re preparing a lesson plan, though.
• Write a thesis statement and organize the presentation around that. This will help you structure all the data and information that you’re discussing, rather than just doing a data dump.
• End on a call to action. This type of presentation is of course different from a persuasive presentation, but it’s good practice to give your audience something to do with the information you just presented.

Informative presentation examples

You have likely come across this type of presentation often throughout your workday. Here’s one by Devin Banerjee describing parental leave policies in the financial sector.

Motivational presentations

What is a motivational presentation.

Motivational speaking might be one of the most enviable types of presentations for people. Motivational presentations can turn a mere story into an inspiring tale. Very similar to a persuasive presentation, a good motivational presentation will convince you to do something, rather than just waiting for it to happen. It has a clear purpose, often pulling from a personal story written for a specific audience, and inspires the audience to make a change in their lives.

How to make a motivational presentation

• Know your purpose. This is important for any type of presentation, but none more so than for this presentation type. You need to know the purpose of your presentation and build upon a singular message.
• Understand your audience and write your content for them.
• Start your presentation with a strong hook, like a question, a personal story, or a compelling statistic.
• Include a personal narrative or a story that your audience can closely relate to. This helps them understand the core message of your presentation and feel more compelled to take action at the end.
• Conclude your presentation with a call to action. Your audience is motivated to make a change, so they need an outlet to do so.

Motivational presentation examples

There are so many motivational presentations out there, and many of them live here on Prezi. Look at this presentation on climate change, which compels you to take action and combat climate change on your own.

Instructive presentations

What is an instructive presentation.

An instructive presentation provides specific directions to accomplish a task. It might be a little longer than most types of presentations because you’ll need to discuss it step by step. In the end, your audience should walk away from this type of presentation more informed and with a new skill.

How to make an instructive presentation

• Determine exactly what you want your audience to learn at the end of your presentation. This type of presentation goes beyond just sharing facts. People want to learn how to do something, so make sure you have a clear idea of what that is.
• Map out the steps. Be clear about all ideas and information that is packed into your presentation.
• Have an understanding of your audience’s level of knowledge. Are they an informed audience or fresh to the topic you’re presenting? This type of presentation will be different depending on the audience you’re with.
• Use visuals and examples throughout your presentation so people new to the topic can more easily follow along.

Instructive presentation examples

Teacher Nucleo Vega teaches how to play and understand eighth-note subdivisions in his instructional video:

For even more examples of instructional presentations, read our article on the best instructional videos on Prezi.

Training presentation

What is a training presentation .

A training presentation is like a lesson that uses pictures and talking to teach something. People use it to help others learn about a specific topic or how to follow a certain process. It’s like a teacher’s tool to share information, show examples, and make sure everyone understands. You might see these types of presentations in school, at work, or in workshops to help people get better at something or understand new subjects. 

How to make a training presentation

• Start by clarifying the main goal of your presentation. Are you teaching a new skill, explaining a process, or sharing important information? Understanding your purpose will help you structure your content effectively.
• Consider who your audience is and what they already know about the topic. Tailor your presentation to their knowledge level, interests, and needs. This will make your training more relevant and engaging.
• Structure your presentation logically with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Use headings, subheadings, or an outline to create a coherent flow of information. Make sure your key points are easy to follow.
• Use visuals like images, charts, and diagrams to complement your text. Visuals help explain concepts and make your presentation more visually appealing. However, keep visuals simple and uncluttered to avoid overwhelming your audience.

Discover more insights and tips on online training and Prezi’s impact.

Training presentation examples

This Prezi on effective onboarding for PMs is a great example of a training presentation. It goes into detail about onboarding methods. This would be useful training material for product managers or their supervisors looking to provide instructional advice when taking on a new role. 

Status update presentation

What is a status update presentation .

A status update presentation typically includes information about what has been done, what is currently being worked on, and any challenges or issues that need attention. It’s a way for a team or organization to communicate openly about the state of their projects and ensure everyone is on the same page. These types of presentations are often given in meetings to keep stakeholders informed and make decisions based on the project’s progress.

How to make a status update presentation

• Clearly communicate the specific timeframe covered in your status update, whether it’s a weekly, monthly, or project milestone report. This ensures your audience understands the context and timeline of the information presented.
• Identify and focus on the most relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your project, such as completion rates, milestone achievements, or budget status. These metrics should succinctly convey the essential aspects of your project’s progress.
• Employ charts, graphs, or visuals to illustrate progress effectively. Visual representations, like Gantt charts depicting project timelines and task dependencies, aid in conveying complex information clearly and concisely.
• Proactively address potential risks or challenges that may impact the project’s timeline or goals. Clearly communicate any issues and provide mitigation strategies to demonstrate transparency and preparedness in managing project uncertainties.
• Clearly outline the next steps for the project and assign responsibilities. Summarize key action items, including upcoming milestones, tasks, and deadlines, to make it easy for your audience to understand what requires attention or action in the upcoming period.

Example of a status update presentation

The structure of this Prezi provides a comprehensive year plan. It includes dynamic segments that offer a creative outlet for setting goals. The presentation covers setting goals, tracking progress, and getting started with your plans, which also makes a great base structure for a well-rounded status update presentation.

Pitch presentation

What’s a pitch presentation .

A pitch presentation is like a quick talk where someone explains their business idea, product, or service to persuade others to get on board. It shows why the idea is good, who it helps, and how it can succeed. People often use these types of presentations when they want support, financial investments, or to team up with others. They share key details about the problem their idea solves, who it’s for, and why it’s a great opportunity. The goal is to grab the audience’s interest and convince them it’s worth backing or investing in. You often see these types of presentations in startups or when someone is trying to get support for a new project.

How to make a pitch presentation

• Start with a strong intro to grab attention. Clearly state the problem your idea solves, keeping it brief and impactful.
• Explain the problem your idea tackles and introduce your solution. Keep it straightforward, emphasizing how your idea provides a solution.
• Present info about the market opportunity, including target audience, market size, and relevant trends. Use data to show that there’s a real need for your solution.
• Highlight your idea’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Clearly state the benefits your solution offers, focusing on what makes it stand out.
• End with a clear call to action. Summarize key points and provide a way for your audience to follow up or get involved.

Remember, keep it simple, engaging, and tailored to your audience’s interests and needs. Discover more tips on how to create a successful pitch presentation and investor pitch deck .

Pitch presentation examples

The Elevator Pitch Prezi is a good example of a pitch presentation. The presentation starts by stating the problem and then providing a solution, ending with a call to action – which is great for persuading potential investors. Discover more good sales pitch examples in this article.

Crisis communication presentation 

What’s a crisis communication presentation .

A crisis communication presentation is like a talk that happens when there’s a serious issue or emergency. It’s a way to share important information and updates with people who need to know—like employees, stakeholders, or the public. In these types of presentations, you’d cover what the crisis is, what steps are being taken to deal with it, and what the next moves are. It’s about keeping everyone informed and on the same page during challenging times. The goal is to be transparent, provide clarity on the situation, and let people know what’s being done to handle the crisis. It’s a crucial tool in managing and addressing unexpected and difficult situations.

How to create a crisis communication presentation

• Identify the nature of the crisis and tailor your message to the concerns of your specific audience.
• Your presentation should address what happened, its impact, ongoing resolution efforts, and preventive measures for the future. Keep the language simple and direct.
• Demonstrate understanding and empathy for those affected. Maintain transparency about the situation, including uncertainties, and commit to providing updates.
• Anticipate and prepare for potential questions, including difficult ones, to maintain control of the message.
• Support your message with helpful visuals like charts or timelines. Practice delivering your presentation confidently, with attention to non-verbal cues like body language.

By combining these elements, you can create a sense of trust with your audience and convince them you’re handling the situation effectively. Remember, honesty is key when it comes to these types of presentations. 

Prezi for all types of presentations

Prezi is a presentation platform that stands out for its dynamic features, making it ideal for various presentations. Its unique zooming user interface allows presenters to create visually engaging presentations, moving easily between ideas and topics.

The versatility of Prezi enables presenters to convey various moods and emotions effectively. Whether you’re delivering a corporate report, an educational lesson, or a personal story, Prezi’s array of templates and design options can be tailored to fit lots of different types of presentations. This flexibility means that your presentation aligns perfectly with your content, from serious and formal to playful and informal.

Moreover, different types of presentations require different presentation styles. Learn about presentation styles and explore what suits best for you and your presentation type by watching the following video.

Prezi Video

Prezi Video adds another layer of engagement by allowing you to present live alongside your content virtually. This feature is particularly useful in today’s hybrid work environments, as it fosters a more personal connection with your audience. With Prezi Video, you can interact with your visuals in real-time, creating a more immersive experience across all types of presentations. This blend of visual storytelling and live presentation helps to keep the audience engaged and improves the overall impact of your message.

Prezi’s AI text editing tool

Creating Prezi presentations just got even easier! With Prezi’s AI text editing tool , you can easily create all types of presentations in less time. This feature helps you shorten, expand, highlight, and summarize content to help you communicate your ideas better. It simplifies the process by offering relevant suggestions, making it easier to create cohesive presentations. 

Prezi with all its accessible features makes it easy to create content for any industry, from different types of business presentations to classroom and learning environments, Prezi’s versatility makes it a great platform for all. 

Final thoughts on different types of presentations

There are a lot of types of presentations out there, but they’re only effective if you understand the structure of each and utilize the structure to your advantage. Find more examples of presentations in our presentation gallery , or check out Prezi to start creating your own presentation today.

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Module 15: Creating and Using Presentation Aids

Types of slide presentations, learning objectives.

Recognize different types of digital slide presentations.

Slideware is a generic term for the software used create and display slide shows such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, Zoho Show, and others. Comprised of individual slides, collectively known as the slide deck , slideware is a de facto standard for presentation visual aids despite criticisms and complaints about the format. In truth, the problem is not with the software but in the use of the program.

Prezi’s fast-moving images and, at times, unusual movement can make users dizzy or disoriented. Careful work is needed during planning and practice so that the point of the talk isn’t the wow factor of the Prezi software, but that your visuals enhance your presentation. The best way to learn more about this emerging tool is to visit the Prezi website to view examples (http://prezi.com/explore/). If opting to use Prezi in a corporate environment, you should strongly consider one of the paid options for the sole purpose of removing the Prezi logo from the presentation.

Pecha Kucha involves speaking for 20 seconds about 20 slides

Pecha Kucha is a method of presenting using a slide deck of 20 slides that display for 20 seconds per slide, advance automatically, and generally contain no text. This method began in 2003 as a way to “talk less, show more.” [2] Because of the restrictive format, Pecha Kucha–style presentations help the speaker practice editing, pacing, connecting with the audience, focusing on the message, and using images in place of words. [3]

• Thielsch, Meinald T.; Perabo, Isabel (May 2012). "Use and Evaluation of Presentation Software". Technical Communication . 59 (2): 112–123. AQI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint ↵
• Wikipedia contributors. "PechaKucha." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. ↵
• Beyer, Alisa Miller. "Improving student Presentations: Pecha Kucha and Just Plain PowerPoint." Teaching of Psychology 38.2 (2011): 122-126. ↵
• Types of Slide Presentations. Authored by : Sheila Kasperek. Provided by : Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA. Project : Public Speaking Project. License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Used by permission
• Powerpoint. Provided by : Microsoft Corporation. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft_Office_PowerPoint_(2018%E2%80%93present).svg . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• Google slides. Located at : https://www.freepnglogos.com/pics/google-slides . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
• Prezi. Provided by : Prezi Inc. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prezi . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Pecha Kucha. Authored by : Emil. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PechaKucha#/media/File:PechaKucha-Night-Cluj-Editia-2-11.jpg . License : CC BY: Attribution

A step-by-step guide to captivating PowerPoint presentation design

november 20, 2023

by Corporate PowerPoint Girl

Do you often find yourself stuck with a lackluster PowerPoint presentation, desperately seeking ways to make it more engaging and visually appealing? If your boss has ever told you to "please fix" a presentation and you didn't know where to start, you're not alone. In this article, we'll walk you through a straightforward method to transform your PowerPoint slides into a visually captivating masterpiece. 

Let's dive right in! 

Clean up your slides 

The first step in this journey to presentation excellence is all about decluttering your slides and elevating their impact. Say goodbye to those uninspiring bullet points that often dominate presentations. Instead, focus on what truly matters – the key call-out numbers. By increasing the font size of these numbers, you ensure they take center stage, immediately drawing your audience's attention. 

To make those numbers pop, consider breaking the text after the numbers into the next line and adding a touch of color. The contrast created by pairing a dark color with a lighter shade, like dark teal and light teal or burnt orange with peach, can work wonders. This simple adjustment makes your data more engaging , enhancing the overall impact of your presentation. 

Add dimension with boxes 

Now, let's introduce an element of depth and organization to your slides. By adding boxes, you'll create a visually pleasing structure that guides your audience through the content. In the "Insert" menu, select "Table" and opt for a one-by-one table. Change the table color to a light gray shade, elongate it, and position it neatly to the left of your text. 

To improve readability and aesthetics, increase the spacing between text phrases. A small adjustment in the before spacing setting (setting it to 48) significantly enhances the visual appeal of your slides. 

Insert circles 

To further enhance the visual appeal and engagement of your slides, let's introduce circles. In the Insert menu, navigate to Shapes and choose the circle. Adjust the circle's height and width to 1.2, ensuring it complements your content seamlessly. Match the circle's shape fill color with the corresponding text color for a harmonious look. 

Avoid using colored outlines for the circles, as they may distract from the overall aesthetic. This simple addition of circles adds an element of visual interest to your presentation, making it more captivating. 

Choose icons 

Now, it's time for a touch of creativity. Selecting icons to complement your text can elevate the clarity and appeal of your slides. In the "Insert" menu, you can search for relevant keywords to find the perfect icon from PowerPoint's extensive library . 

For instance, if your text discusses investment portfolio yield, search for "growth" and choose an upward arrow growth icon. These icons add an extra layer of visual appeal and clarity to your content, making it more engaging and informative. 

Final touches 

To wrap up the transformation process, we come to the final touches that give your presentation a polished, professional finish. Align your icons with their corresponding circles and change the shape fill color to white. This simple adjustment creates a crisp, cohesive look that ties everything together seamlessly. 

In conclusion, by following these steps, you've embarked on a journey to enhance your PowerPoint presentation . These initial steps are just the beginning of your exploration into the world of design elements and styles that can cater to your specific presentation needs. The key to a stunning PowerPoint presentation lies in the details. By following these steps, you can turn a lackluster set of slides into a visually engaging and dynamic presentation that will captivate your audience. So, the next time your boss says, "Please fix," you'll know exactly where to start. Happy presenting! 

Related topics

Presentation

8 Types of Presentation with Examples and Tips

Table of Contents

Every presentation is different, reflecting your unique business and the information you share. But, some common presentation types are used across various fields and teams. Before diving into specific slides or organization, consider the type that best suits your audience.

Here are some questions to get you started: Is your goal to inform or entertain? Who will you be speaking to: colleagues, investors, or potential customers? By thinking about these questions, you can choose the presentation format that best supports your message.

SlidesAI can help you simplify this process even further by providing descriptions of different presentation types.

Why Do We Need Different Types of Presentations?

Presentations are a great way to share ideas and information in different situations, depending on who you’re talking to. What you want to achieve with your presentation can change who it’s for and how you present it. For instance, if you’re trying to sell something, you might want a presentation that convinces people and is visually interesting. On the other hand, teaching something might require a more step-by-step approach with lots of details.

The best type of presentation depends on a few things, like what you’re trying to accomplish, the audience’s interests, and what you’re good at as a presenter. By choosing the right kind of presentation, you can get your message across clearly and achieve what you set out to do.

What are Different Types of Presentations?

1. educational presentations.

Educational presentations are a great way to introduce a new topic to people who aren’t familiar with it. They can be especially helpful when you want to explain something complex, like a process, or share important facts in a clear way. Whether you’re a teacher in a classroom or a trainer at a company, educational presentations can be a powerful tool for learning.

These presentations often use visuals like pictures or diagrams to make things easier to understand. They might also include step-by-step instructions to guide the audience through a process. Companies use them a lot to teach new employees about how things work at the company. The length of the presentation can be short or long, depending on what you’re trying to teach.

2. Instructional Presentations

Instructional presentations help people learn more about a topic and sometimes even guide them on what to do next. They’re similar to presentations used for education, but they might include some extra details or specific steps for the audience to follow.

Think of webinars or training sessions – these are examples of instructional presentations. They give people new information and help them develop new skills. For instance, if you’re in HR, you might create one to explain how employees can sign up for the new insurance plan.

Checkout Our Business Presentation Templates Download Free Business Presentation Templates Now!

3. Persuasive Presentations

Many presentations aim to convince the audience of something, like a new idea, product, or way of doing things. They often address a specific issue and use facts and figures to explain why their solution is the best. Business proposals and sales talks are common examples.

For instance, a new company seeking funding might create a presentation to convince investors to support their idea. This presentation could explain a problem they see in the market, how their company solves it, and how they plan to make money. A similar presentation could also be used to secure additional funding for growth and future plans.

4. Motivational Presentation

Motivational presentations aim to lift up the audience’s spirits and help them deal with challenges. They spark interest in a subject and share a particular perspective or message. These presentations can be useful when you want to inspire a group of people. Sometimes, they might even use a personal story to connect with the topic.

Leaders in organizations often use motivational presentations to boost employee morale and encourage them to work harder. Recruiters might also use them to showcase employee success stories and get potential hires excited about joining the company.

5. Problem-solution Presentation

Have you ever needed to present an idea to help people make a decision? Problem-solution presentations are a great way to do that. They focus on explaining a challenge or issue and then offering potential solutions for the audience to consider. While similar to persuasive presentations, the main goal here is to discuss the problem clearly and share research so decision-makers can weigh the options and choose the best path forward. These presentations can include details about the problem and a few possible solutions. They’re a handy tool for many business meetings and discussions within organizations.

6. Project Presentations

Progress presentations are a way to share how a project, campaign, or initiative is moving along. They’re similar to progress reports, but in a presentation format.

These presentations typically cover a few key points:

• Important measurements : This could include numbers or data that show how the project is doing.
• Current status : An update on where things stand at the moment.
• Potential roadblocks : Any challenges that might come up down the line.
• Tasks still to do : What needs to be completed next.

Project teams often use progress presentations to share updates on their work. This allows clients, colleagues, or other interested parties to stay informed and ask questions if needed.

7. Storytelling Presentations

Presentations that use a story format can be a great way to connect with your audience and share information in a more engaging way. This approach can be useful in many settings, from classrooms to company meetings. It can be especially helpful when you want to grab the attention of a specific group of people and make them feel involved.

Storytelling presentations might include personal stories or examples that relate directly to the main topic. For instance, if you’re in marketing, you could use a story format to present a case study to your colleagues about a competitor’s product and its success.

Checkout Our Templates for Your Product Marketing Download Marketing Presentation Templates Now!

8. Visual Presentations

Presentations come in many forms, but some rely mostly on pictures, charts, and other visuals instead of text. These are called visual presentations. They’re a good choice when you have limited time or your topic is easy to understand with pictures.

The goal of a visual presentation is to help people grasp the information quickly and keep them engaged. Businesses often use them to show what their products or services can do. For instance, a company selling shampoo might use before-and-after pictures to show the results.

Tips for Delivering an Effective Presentation

• Taking Notes: To help remember what to say during your presentation, jot down some brief notes. Keep them simple and focused on keywords or short directions. This will allow you to connect with your audience and avoid missing any important points.
• Knowing Your Audience: A little research about your audience before your presentation goes a long way. Understanding who they are and what they might be interested in helps you tailor your presentation to better address their needs and expectations.
• Planning for Interaction: Think about how much audience interaction you want based on the length, purpose, and type of information in your presentation. This may involve allocating more time for questions and discussion.
• Know yourself: Think about how comfortable you feel speaking in front of a group, especially if you don’t know everyone. Consider your strengths and weaknesses as a presenter and how you can play to your strengths and improve on your weaknesses.
• Practice Makes Perfect: Practicing your presentation beforehand, regardless of your experience level, can boost your confidence and help you identify areas for improvement. Go through each slide while talking to solidify the flow. Recording yourself can also be helpful.
• Be Prepared: Technical problems can happen, so having a plan can help you avoid delays. If it’s an in-person presentation, arriving early allows you to check the venue and ensure the equipment works properly.

How Does Slides AI Help with Presentations?

As you’ve explored, presentations come in various forms, each serving a distinct purpose and requiring a tailored approach. But regardless of the type, creating an impactful presentation can be time-consuming. This is where Slides AI steps in to streamline the process.

By leveraging SlidesAI’s functionalities – from generating outlines and suggesting designs to offering content recommendations – you can significantly reduce the time and effort invested in crafting your presentation. This frees you to focus on the finer details, like refining your message and practicing your delivery.

A well-organized and visually appealing presentation can really grab your audience’s attention and help them understand your message better. SlidesAI can help you achieve that, turning you from someone who just puts slides together into someone who can communicate confidently and leave a lasting impression.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How can i grab attention at the beginning of my presentation.

There are several ways to hook your audience from the start. Try opening with a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question, or even a short, interesting story related to your topic.

How long should my presentation be?

Ideally, aim for a presentation between 10-20 minutes. This timeframe allows you to cover the important points without losing your audience’s attention.

What are the 5 keys to a successful presentation?

Here are 5 keys to delivering a pitch-perfect presentation:

• Know your audience
• Master your material
• Make it a conversation
• Be adaptable
• Show empathy

Which presentation software should I use?

Several popular options are available, including Microsoft PowerPoint, and Google Slides . The best choice depends on your specific needs and comfort level. Additionally, SlidesAI.io is a helpful tool for creating visually engaging presentations. Consider your needs and choose the software that best suits you.

Save Time and Effortlessly Create Presentations with SlidesAI

10 Types of PowerPoint Slides for Convincing Presentations!

When it comes to creating presentations, PowerPoint is indispensable. Obviously, the most important part of any presentation are PowerPoint slides with the right content to communicate your message.

We’ll show you 10 types of PowerPoint slides that you can use in your presentation. We’ll also explain the benefits of each slide type and the added value they can bring to your presentation.

PowerPoint slides: Different slide types for your presentation

A presentation lives and dies by its PowerPoint slides and content. Have you ever noticed how many diverse types of PowerPoint slides there are? Text and picture slides usually have different layouts. And this is just the beginning – there are so many more slide types and layouts.

In the following breakdown, we’ll show you what PowerPoint slides are out there and how to use them to create a professional presentation!

10 types of PowerPoint slides

1.    the text slide.

You’re sure to have at least one text slide in very presentation. Text belongs in your presentation . This type of slide is unavoidable if you want to simply convey information .

Be sure to use text in measured doses ; no one wants to read large blocks of text anymore. Less is definitely more . As soon as you display your slide, your audience will begin to read the text to themselves. This limits their capacity to focus on your presentation.

Use the 5×5 rule or reduce your text to one key message per slide . Click here to find out how the 5×5 rule works and how you can further reduce text .

You can also play with the design of text slides!

2.  The picture slide

You’re probably no stranger to PowerPoint slides with picture elements. This slide type is the perfect way to underscore your statements and visually enhance your presentation – true to the motto, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Moreover, the right use of images will inspire emotions in your audience and grab their attention .

But just like text, images should be used wisely . Pictures that are meaningless and only used to fill empty slides look unprofessional and out of place. Also make sure to use professional images and avoid stock images as much as possible, as they don’t add any individuality.

Take a look at these articles for more information about images in PowerPoint:

• Insert images quickly with the Scan&Paste app
• Compress pictures
• Flip pictures
• Make images transparent
• Optimize images in presentations
• Highlight pictures with a grid design

3.   Introduction and closing slides

These PowerPoint slides belong in every presentation. Whether it’s a business or university presentation, introduction and closing slides will bookend your presentation perfectly .

With an introduction slide, you pave the way for a strong start to your presentation . With a closing slide, you summarize the main points of your presentation . This guarantees that by the end of your presentation, these points are clear to your audience and will stay fresh in their minds.

Tip: Looking for tips on how to end your presentation on the perfect note ? This post summarizes some effective ways to do just that. We also have helpful tips for kicking off your presentation in this post .

4.    The agenda slide

This PowerPoint slide should be included in every high-quality and professional PowerPoint presentation. The agenda slide provides an audience with a brief outline of the presentation’s content and structure right from the get-go.

It also provides you, the presenter, with a quick reminder of how the presentation will flow and gets you off to a good start.

This article explains how you can create your own PowerPoint table of contents for your agenda slide.

5.    The quote slide

The quote slide is effective and shouldn’t be overlooked. As the name suggests, this slide consists only of a quote, usually placed in the center, without any further expository text or images . Quotes are mostly short-form statements of opinion, either personal or from well-known individuals.

Why should you use this type of PowerPoint slide? How will a quote slide support your presentation?

Quote slides support your content . For example, you can use a quote from a famous person (e.g., successful entrepreneur) to support your data and key messages . The truthfulness of the quote also provides weight to your content and supports the veracity of your key messages.

6.    Chart and diagram slides

Chart and diagram slides are used often in presentations, particularly in presentations for companies within the financial sector.

Chart and diagram slides are similar to picture slides in that they underscore what is being said. Numbers and data can be clearly presented to the audience using a chart and diagram slide, making the content understandable without the need for any additional text.

Charts and diagrams also add visual appeal and variety to your presentation. By using a diagram, you avoid long blocks of text, which are often less interesting for your audience.

7.    The table slide

Similar to chart and diagram slides, table slides visually support your data and facts. They help declutter presentations and clearly convey your messages to your audience .

This type of PowerPoint slide also helps you avoid overly long blocks of text that honestly, your audience won’t read anyway.

8.    The link/hyperlink slide

Do you want to link to an internet page within your presentation? Maybe to a YouTube video that supports your topic or to an internal website with your products? Links can be used in so many ways in a presentation.

This PowerPoint slide type will also be a positive change for your audience. Calling up a link creates a new visual stimulus, which in turn helps you hold your audience’s attention.

Links reinforce your slide content and leave a professional impression on your audience.

Using a link slide can only benefit your presentation. Think about how you can use this PowerPoint slide type effectively for your topic.

9.    The animation slide

How about some moving images? With these PowerPoint slides, you’ll definitely grab your audience’s attention! Animations are visually engaging and offer the audience a welcome change from a presentation’s typically static slides .

The broad range of animation options is something you can really use to your advantage. For example, you can focus your audience’s attention by making text appear with a click of the mouse . This is especially effective with bullet points. When you display all the bullet points simultaneously, your audience will start reading through them, meaning they’ll be paying less attention to you and what you’re saying.

Or try using a unique GIF as an animation. You can find out how to do this here .

Other animation options are animation paths , such as flashing arrows, emphasis effects , color effects, etc. Read more about what you can do with animations here .

The important thing with animations is to stick to your presentation style and use them in moderation. A presentation full of flashing slides or pop-up images can be irritating and look unprofessional. Always use animations carefully and sensibly.

10.    The call-to-action slide

Even though you may not be familiar with this PowerPoint slide, you should really think about using it in a professional presentation. Especially if your presentation goal is to attract new customers or to sell products.

A call to action – what is it exactly? In short, it’s a prompt from a company or presenter to encourage an audience to perform an action . For example, this can be a request on what to do after the presentation (visit an online store to see products, write an email with questions, etc.). You can find more information in this post .

Do you want to make a request or invitation to your audience at the end of the presentation? Then this is the PowerPoint slide for you!

10 Types of PowerPoint slides: So many ways to make your presentation more varied and professional

No doubt you’ve already used some of the 10 types of PowerPoint slides from our breakdown and integrated them perfectly into your presentations.Maybe it’s time to try a novel approach and use a wide variety of PowerPoint slides to suit your topic .

Remember: The PowerPoint slides you choose should be cohesive , especially if you use different slide types.

A variety of slide types will always be a welcome addition to your presentation. So, ask yourself what might be exciting for your audience and incorporate these ideas into your presentation preparation .

Do you have questions about the 10 types of PowerPoint slides in this article or are you looking for PowerPoint help in general? Please feel free to contact us by email at [email protected] . We’d be happy to help you!

Looking to add variety to your slides, but would like to have the work of creating a presentation taken off your hands? No problem. Our team will create a professional presentation for you according to your wishes. Click here to get in touch.

These articles might also interest you:

• 6 modern ideas for your slide layout
• The ideal presentation structure
• Creating a presentation: Tips & tricks
• PowerPoint slide master
• How many slides does a presentation need?
• Viva presentations: Tips & tricks

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Presentation Design: Beginner’s Guide (Tips, Tools & Templates)

Written by: Chloe West

A good presentation doesn’t just rely on presentation design. There’s your public speaking , the ability to connect with your audience and how well you understand your topic.

However that doesn’t mean that presentation design isn’t important. Everything goes hand-in-hand when creating a presentation that will keep your audience engaged and talking about your topic for days to come.

Here's a short selection of 8 presentation design guidelines you can use when you edit, share and download your content with Visme. View them below:

Ready to design a presentation that knocks the audience’s socks off? We’ve put together a beginner’s guide to help you understand the types of presentations, beginner design tips and more.

Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

Why presentation design is important, what are the different types of presentations.

20 Presentation Design Tips for Beginners

5 Presentation Design Trends to Inspire You

15 presentation templates for various use cases.

A presentation is so much more than a simple stack of slides with text and images on it; or at least, it should be. Especially since creative, colorful visuals are so much more memorable than simple text on a screen.

Presentation design is important because with it, you can envelop your ideas, narrative, visuals, data and statistics all into one place and tell a compelling story that leads your audience to the conclusion you want them to reach. 

When you create a presentation with proper design, you then have the opportunity to share your point of view, grow your business and get your audience to see your vision and hear you loud and clear. 

The sad truth is that many people dread going to presentation meetings because of the long, visually lacking and non-stimulating slideshow designs. 

Although what someone has to say during their presentation might be crucial to the business or even life-changing, a listener might lose all interest simply due to the poor design of the presentation.

Hey marketers! Need to create scroll-stopping visual content fast?

• Transform your visual content with Visme’s easy-to-use content creation platform
• Produce beautiful, effective marketing content quickly even without an extensive design skillset
• Inspire your sales team to create their own content with branded templates for easy customization

Sign up. It’s free.

With proper presentation design, you can tell your story clearly, inspire your audience to take your next steps and have them engaged with what you’re saying all the way through.

Don’t miss a massive business opportunity just because of poor presentation design.

If you have an upcoming presentation but you don’t have the skillset of a professional designer, don’t worry. Just because you aren’t a designer doesn’t mean you can’t have a professional presentation like one.

With a tool like Visme, you can access professionally designed templates that will act as a guide for you to create your next inspiring presentation . Get started today for free.

There are a variety of different types of presentations and reasons that you would need one. Let’s cover the most common types so you know what to expect and when you might want to consider putting together your own presentation.

Type #1: Educational Presentations

There are a lot of reasons you might need to create a presentation for school – giving a book report, presenting an idea, sharing a hypothesis and study results, etc.

Additionally, teachers have to give presentations all the time, and are always looking for ways to create more engaging slides that keep students interested.

To help ensure your presentation is stunning, try using an educational presentation template like the one below.

Type #2: Investor Pitch Decks

This is an incredibly important type of presentation for startups and small businesses. Trying to get funding for your business idea? You’re going to need to create an investor pitch deck .

At Visme, we’ve actually put together the quintessential pitch deck theme with a variety of different slide ideas to help you craft the ideal, completely professional pitch.

Type #3: Webinar Presentations

Webinars are popular online presentations used for lead magnets and generating new sales and sign-ups. These tend to be informational presentations that lead to a sales pitch towards the end.

Here’s a great webinar presentation template you can use to get started with your own.

Type #4: Sales Presentations

A sales presentation or sales pitch deck is a type of presentation you might need to give if you’re pitching a product or service to a potential customer or client.

These often share your company’s unique selling propositions, pricing information, testimonials and the like.

Here’s an interactive sales presentation template you can use to get started.

Type #5: Report Presentations

Oftentimes, you’ll be asked to present a report based on sales and marketing performance, website data, revenue or some other data that your team or supervisors want to learn more about.

This can come in many different forms, like a business report document or even an infographic, but many people also love to give simple report presentations.

Utilize a template like the one below to set the stage for your report data.

Type #6: Keynote Presentations

A keynote presentation is more like a speech that is given in front of a larger audience. Think TED Talks and keynote speakers at conferences and events. While most of the speech is done by the presenter, slides are still helpful for keeping the audience engaged and on track.

A keynote presentation can use a template like the one below, that’s bright and includes only the main points from the presentation.

12 Presentation Design Tips for Beginners

Are you ready to master presentation design? We’ve got 12 easy-to-follow tips to help you create a slide deck that keeps your audience’s attention and has every audience member handing on to every word.

For other tips to help you create and deliver the best presentation possible, become a certified presenter with our free online course.

Let’s dig in.

Ready to create your own presentation in minutes?

• Add your own text, images and more
• Customize colors, fonts and everything else
• Choose from hundreds of slide designs and templates
• Add interactive buttons and animations

Tip #1: Use No More Than 6 Lines of Text

An effective presentation isn’t filled with copy. You won’t be reading straight off your slides, so you want to include only your main points and must-know information on your slides. Your speech fills in the rest.

Not only does this help make your presentation as a whole much more engaging, but it also improves your presentation design.

Take a look at the example below. The minimal text option looks way better than the slide with paragraphs of copy.

Tip #2: Stick to 2-3 Fonts and Colors

Our next tip focuses on your presentation’s typography and color scheme. While it may be exciting to use as many different fonts and colors as possible, design best practices dictate that you should only utilize two or three total.

Your fonts and colors should have jobs, as well.

Choose one font for your headers and another for your body copy. You might work in a third accent font as well.

Your color choices should be similar. Use one or two main colors throughout, then throw in an accent color for good measure. Make sure your colors work well together and help convey the right message.

Not sure why this is so important? Let’s show you an example of what we mean.

The slide on the left has too much going on. With all of those fonts and colors, it looks cluttered, and it’s hard to pay attention to the actual concept the slide is trying to convey.

But on the right, we see a nice mixture of three fonts and three colors, pulling the entire slide design together.

Tip #3: Pay Attention to Visual Hierarchy

One big thing to remember when adding text to your next presentation is visual hierarchy . Essentially, this means that the order someone reads something on your slide should be obvious, based on font size, color or weight.

Take a look at this example below. On the right, it’s easy to read and makes sense. On the left, the visual hierarchy is all out of whack, leaving the reader confused.

Tip #4: Take Advantage of Powerful Visuals

An engaging presentation takes advantage of visual elements. Think stock photos, icons, illustrations, videos, even charts and graphs. All of those can level up your Visme or PowerPoint presentation design.

You want to make sure that your visuals perfectly represent the words on your slides as well. Or, if you have no words on the slide, make sure they perfectly represent the words that you’re saying in your speech.

Visuals should always add to your presentation, rather than take away. But you also want to make sure that each of your slides has some kind of visual representation so you’re not sharing boring words on a slide, like in the example below.

The left slide is dull and boring. Sure, we can read what it says, but do we want to? On the other hand, the slide on the right is engaging, incorporating a high-quality image that visualizes the words on the slide.

Tip #5: Stay Away From Bullet Points

When learning how to create your first presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint way back in elementary school, one of the typical PowerPoint design tips was to use bullet points for each slide’s main points.

Don’t do that.

Any good presentation design tutorial these days will tell you that you should stay away from bullet points as best you can. They’re boring and outdated and there are better ways to showcase your content.

Take a look at the examples below. The left slide is already putting you to sleep. As we can see on the right, the bullet points aren’t necessary. 

It’s more engaging and conversational when the list is laid out in paragraph form, and it doesn’t look like the traditional PowerPoint template that we’ve all come to dread.

Tip #6: Insert a Single Animation Style

Our next tip for creating a memorable presentation is to only use one single animation style throughout the entire slideshow. 

With a presentation tool like Visme, you can easily access custom animation capabilities that make your design elements seem like they’re floating on the slide. However, you don’t want to throw too many different animation styles into a single slide or presentation.

This can overwhelm your viewer and take attention away from your value proposition and the story you’re trying to tell.

Instead, find one animation style that works and stick with it throughout your presentation.

Tip #7: Highlight Key Points

Using shapes, bright fonts, characters pointing to your copy and similar elements is a great way to highlight your key information on each side. 

Not only does this help keep attention on the page, but it makes your design even easier. Take a look at the example below.

Adding the pink rectangle around the page content helps to highlight the point you’re trying to make and allow your audience to more easily understand your message.

Tip #8: Incorporate Data Visualization

Another important presentation design tip is to incorporate data visualization when showcasing numbers and statistics in your slides.

This can be anything from a bar graph or pie chart visualizing different data in a chart or graph all the way to a percentage radial or a pictogram visualizing basic numbers.

Take a look at this example below. Look at how much more engaging the slide with the data widget is. Using design elements like these make both complex and simple numbers and statistics easier to understand and remember.

Tip #9: Keep Your Slide Design Consistent

Our next tip involves your slide design. This goes back to your fonts and colors as well as other design elements like icon styles, lines, shapes and more.

Each slide throughout your presentation should have a similar look and feel. You want to keep the design cohesive so that it’s obvious to your audience that your slides go together and you’re still talking about the same topic.

Take a look at the example below. On the right, we see a stunning, cohesive presentation design; on the left, we see a smorgasbord of colors, fonts and design elements that make no sense whatsoever.

You want your presentation to look like the example on the right.

Tip #10: Break Up Sections

Another pro tip is to break up the different sections of your presentation with section header slides. These can be anything from a blank slide with only a background photo, include a quote, share your new section’s title and more.

Take a look at the variety of section break slides we offer alongside our Modern presentation theme below.

Tip #11: Stick to a Single Transition Style

Your transition is how one slide exits off the screen and the next slide appears. While tools like Visme and PowerPoint offer a variety of transition options, it’s important to remember that simple is best.

With that being said, you only want to utilize one transition style throughout. Find a favorite or at least one you like for this presentation. If you have a few favorites, switch between them for each presentation you give.

Tip #12: Limit A Single Takeaway Per Slide

When creating a clean, crisp and clear slide design, you’ll want to center all your text and visuals around one single takeaway or idea.

If you crowd your slide with multiple main ideas, things look messy and unorganized, thus giving your presentation a poor design.

As you can see in our example below, when there are multiple main ideas and lots of crowded text, your slide will be immediately overwhelming and you’ll lose your crowd almost immediately.

But on the other hand, when you have a single takeaway with a few points to go along with your main idea, your slide is easily digestible and looks sleek.

If your presentation is on the longer spectrum, then it’s good to keep your slides moving and changing constantly as to not bore your crowd. 

Tip #13: Adjust The Size, Weight and Color of Your Font to Emphasize An Idea 

To enhance your presentation design, you need to ensure that each slide has a focal point; a place where the eye is immediately drawn to.

Typically, you want this focal point to be on your main idea. This way, your audience will immediately be guided to what you have to say next and what they can expect.

One way you can manipulate and direct the eye to go where you want it to is by adjusting the size, color and weight of your font, as you can see in our example.

To highlight your main point or the driving force of your statement, you can change the color of a single word or adjust the font weight to bold. 

This will bring your idea to the forefront of your slide design, thus making it your focal point and emphasizing your main idea. 

The opposite of this idea stands true as well. If you have less important ideas that you need to have on your slide to jog your memory, you can use a lighter font-weight or complementary color to the background to make it stand out less.

Tip #14: Keep Your Presentation Notes Separate

The main rule for having a visually appealing presentation design is to keep things simple. This means that the less text you have on the slide, the better.

Your slide should highlight only your main idea, as we mentioned in a previous point, a few supportive statements and visual elements. 

Thus, you should not have your presentation notes written plainly on the slide for all to see. This will make your slide look and feel chaotic for your audience. 

If you are worried that you’ll forget your main idea or supporting arguments, then you can use a presentation presenter like Visme that keeps your presentation notes separate.

This way, you can still rest assured that all the information you need to convey for each slide is stored carefully away and you can quickly access it, without overcrowding your slide and forfeiting beautiful slide design.

Tip #15: Dedicate an Entire Slide to a Crucial Question or Remark

No one likes presentations that are limited to just a few slides, therefore obliging them to stare at the same slide for 10 minutes.

To keep up a pleasant presentation design and pace, and to keep things visually interesting, you can create slides that are dedicated solely to an impactful quote or a crucial question that supports your entire presentation scope.

So while you may be tempted to add all the answers to your question and supportive data to your slide, it may be best to keep things simple and let your statement do just that; make a statement.

Tip #16: Embed Videos to Your Slides

If you have a video to share with your audience, don’t just boringly add the link to it to your slide; embed the video right within your presentation. 

This will bring your slide to life and will make things easier for you as a presenter, so you don’t have to leave your presentation and do the awkward dance of loading your video. 

You can use a presentation tool like Visme to help you create beautiful slides and embed your videos right into them.

Tip #17: Use Negative Space to Your Advantage

Negative space, or white space, is your best friend when it comes to making a visually appealing presentation slide. 

While many times overlooked or seen as a design inconvenience, you can use extra space to actually make your design look ten times better. 

Let me show you an example.

As you can see, by simply decreasing the size of the design elements and without changing anything else, we were able to achieve a more minimal and professional-looking slide.

Make sure that you maintain the same amount of space between elements to create design cohesiveness. 

Tip #18: Use a Contrasted Background to Make Text Jump Out

One common mistake we see in presentation design is the failure to use color contrast to make your text pop.

Many times, the text gets lost or mixed in with the background because of complementary color usage. 

While staying within the grounds of a color palette is a great idea, you want to make sure that you use contrasting backgrounds and font colors in order to get your text to stand out to the reader.

As you can see in our example, when the text has a complementary color to the background, it’s hard to read. But when the text has a contrasting color, it’s appealing to the eye and is easy for the reader to see. 

You can use a design tool like Visme to find professionally chosen, complementary-yet-contrasting color palettes to use for your presentation design.

Tip #19: Use Backgrounds to Bring Depth to A Visual

Why use a plain background when you can use shapes, photos, textures and more? 

If you want to bring some depth to your slide and really get your text and visuals to stand out, you can use high-resolution images or shapes as a background.

As you can see in our example, when you use a simple one-color background, it looks much plainer than if you were to add more to your background.

Do choose a background that matches your slide design, though. If you pick a busy design, you risk overwhelming your viewer and losing their attention.

So make sure you choose a “calm” design if you have a lot of texts and visuals and a more bold design if you have less text and visuals to display.

Tip #20: Use a Presentation Template

Want a presentation design tip that will never go out of style? Start with a template rather than trying to create your own slide deck from scratch!

With a presentation software like Visme, you can start with a stunning presentation template that has been professionally designed by our team of graphic designers.

Browse our presentation template library below.

Presentation Templates

Ecommerce Webinar Presentation

Buyer Presentation

PixelGo Marketing Plan Presentation

Technology Presentation

Product Training Interactive Presentation

Work+Biz Pitch Deck - Presentation

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Sometimes you just need a little inspiration to kick off your presentation design. 

If you want to create a show-stopping and attention-grabbing presentation, then it’s good to know what presentation design trends are in right now.

Here are 5 of the hottest presentation design trends that are popular amongst presenters.

B+W with a Splash of Color

One popular presentation design trend right now is to create your entire presentation in black and white and then to add a single pop of color to each slide. 

Take the presentation below.

Image Source

By using a black and white color palette and using a bold choice of color, you can bring attention where it is needed and create a strong focal point for your viewer.

It’s up to you to decide where, how often and how much color you will use per slide. 

Sometimes you only need to add in a tiny colored shape to bring attention to your slide, and other times you may want to add in two to three large colored visuals to your slide. The choice is completely up to you.

Unexpected Neon Colors

You heard it here first, bold and contrasting neon colors are the way of the future for presentation design.

This design trend is great for product presentation and pitch decks, but not only. You can use this technique to spice up any presentation that you’re worried could be potentially lacking in the speech department. 

Because using neon colors is so unexpected, you can use this technique to grab your viewer’s attention and keep them wanting to see more.

The trick is to not use an overwhelming amount of different neon colors, but instead to choose one or two and use them as accents against a contrasting background.

Monochrome Color Palette

Monochrome color palettes that are used in presentation design are always seen as sleek and professional. 

A monochrome color palette is a single color displayed in different strengths, for example, lighter or darker variants of the color blue. 

One way to use the monochrome color palette technique is to use the darkest color for the background and the lighter variants of the color for the text, visuals and graphic design elements. 

You can also try it the other way around and use the lightest colors for the background and the darkest ones in the foreground. 

Play around with the monochromatic design until you find the perfect fit for your slide.

Isometric Illustrations

If you haven’t noticed already, many companies have been transitioning from a minimal design approach to using isometric illustrations for their branding.

If you want to have a professional-looking presentation design and make a statement to your team, you can use isometric illustrations to achieve that.  

Because isometric illustration design is so versatile, what you choose to present while using this design technique is equally as versatile. 

Isometric illustrations will work perfectly for any type of presentation, from product presentations and corporate presentations to technical presentations and monthly reports.

Simple Minimalism

And finally, a design trend that will likely never go out of style is simple minimalism. 

Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it isn’t complex. Minimalism has always been show-stopping and that is because of the rule “Less is more.”

For each slide, a good rule of thumb is to convey just enough information for the reader to understand what’s going on and use a neutral color palette. 

Showcase your most important ideas in bold, use modern fonts and your minimal slideshow will have your audience captivated immediately. 

If you’re still hungry to find more presentation design trends, then no worries. We have an entire list of 100+ creative presentation ideas and design trends that we created just for you to draw inspiration from.

Ready to put some of these presentation design tips into action? At Visme, we have hundreds of presentation templates to help you get started. Take a look at these 15 presentation templates for various use cases below.

Template #1: Brand Guidelines Presentation Template

If you have brand guidelines created for your business, one great way to share them with your team and stakeholders is to put together a custom presentation showing off your style guide.

This presentation template makes it easy to display your font combinations and color palette for your brand. And if you’re just starting out or looking to rebrand, you can even design a logo in Visme.

Our Dynamic Field feature makes your presentation design quick and painless. You can create dynamic fields and change their values across your projects and presentations with a single click. 

Template #2: Pitch Deck Presentation Template

New businesses who are looking to secure funding for their startup need a clean and eye-catching pitch deck design for pitching investors.

Using a theme like the one above gives you access to a variety of different startup stories for you to choose from when creating your presentation and highlighting the most important aspects of your business.

Made in partnership with FounderSuite, this pitch deck presentation template is perfect for your next investor pitch.

Template #3: Competitor Analysis Interactive Presentation Template

If you’re going to have a successful business, you need to have a firm understanding of who your competition is and what they bring to the table. This will be essential in marketing, for your sales team and just as a general understanding for your company.

This competitor analysis presentation template comes with built-in interactive features to help you get a good understanding of who your competitors are and what potential threats they pose.

Template #4: Business Plan Presentation Template

Another essential business presentation is your business plan. This template offers the exact presentation structure you need to build out your business plan. All you need to do is replace the placeholder text with your own!

Template #5: Marketing Plan Presentation Template

And any good marketing team needs a thorough marketing plan. This presentation template is similar to our business plan presentation template in that we’ve laid out the entire presentation outline for you. All you need to do is input your own strategy.

Template #6: Webinar Presentation Template

One great form of lead generation is hosting a webinar . This webinar template allows you to insert all of the information and sales pitch you want to share with your webinar attendees, all in a stunning, cohesive design.

Simply insert your own info, then brand the design so it matches your company’s fonts, colors and other style guide elements.

Template #7: SWOT Analysis Presentation Template

Have you ever conducted a SWOT analysis for your business? It covers the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that your company faces.

Putting together a SWOT analysis is a great idea when starting a business or adjusting your marketing plan, and this template dedicated to laying out each section is the perfect place to start.

Template #8: Keynote Presentation Template

Are you going to be a keynote speaker at an upcoming event? You should only be focusing on creating stellar content that will wow your audience, rather than how to create your design. Use a template like this to make sure your design is eye-catching no matter what.

Template #9: Employee Handbook Interactive Presentation Template

If your business is bringing on new employees, you’ll likely need to put together an employee handbook to make sure everyone understands your company’s mission and the overall guidelines for working with your business.

An interactive presentation template like this one is a great starting point for creating and distributing your own employee handbook.

Not only can you insert helpful information within this presentation, but you can also link back to resources on your intranet or website and simply share the digital version of this presentation via a private or password protected link.

Template #10: Training Manual Presentation Template

In a similar vein, it can also be helpful to create a training manual for the different roles and departments that your company hires for.

Training manuals like this help new employees start off on the right foot, understanding exactly what’s expected of them in their role and day-to-day tasks. Customize this template with your own training information to share with new team members.

Template #11: Case Study Presentation Template

Another great use case for your next presentation is to share a case study . Showcase how your customers are using your tool and highlight success stories that could drive potential customers to sign up for your product or service.

Template #12: Informational Presentation Template

Regardless of who your audience is, presentations are the perfect format for sharing information. Create an informational presentation to embed in a blog post or share on SlideShare. Present important information to your team. Create presentations to share useful information at conferences and events.

There are so many different reasons you might need to create an informational presentation, and this template is the perfect fit.

Template #13: Creative Brief Interactive Presentation Template

When working with a freelancer, contractor or designer, sometimes you’ll need to present a creative brief so everyone working on the project knows exactly what the outcome is supposed to be.

Using an interactive presentation template like the one above is a great idea for conveying the information in an engaging way that will be easy to remember.

Template #14: Guy Kawasaki Presentation Template

Guy Kawasaki coined the 10-20-30 rule when it comes to presentations. 10 slides, 20 minute presentation, with fonts no smaller than 30pt.

If that’s what you’re looking for, this presentation template is exactly what you need.

Template #15: Ignite Presentation Template

Ignite is a special type of presentation. Speakers give a 5-minute presentation on their topic alongside 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.

This means you can’t have too much text on any given slide, as you need to keep the tempo of the presentation.

If you’re planning to give an Ignite presentation, this template offers up the perfect starting point for ensuring you’re not using too much text.

Create Your Own Stunning Presentation Design

Ready to get started designing your own presentation? Give Visme’s presentation software a try and create the best presentation design you’ve ever made. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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About the Author

Chloe West is the content marketing manager at Visme. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more. During her spare time, she enjoys exploring her home city of Charleston with her son.

6 Different Types of Presentations

Presentations should be as unique as your business and the information you’re trying to present. However, there are certain types of presentations that are common across industries and teams. Before you worry about which slides to include or how to organize your information, you’ll need to determine which type of presentation is best for your audience. 

To figure this out, ask yourself: Are you entertaining or informing? Are you speaking to colleagues, investors, or potential customers? Asking these questions will help you choose the type of presentation that supports you best. Beautiful.ai is here to make this even easier with a description of different types of presentations to help you choose.

Informative Presentations

An informative presentation is educational, concise, and to the point. While other presentations may entertain or inspire, the main goal of an informative presentation is to share information.

A good example of an informative presentation is a human resources benefits presentation. Human resources needs to explain what benefits employees receive, how benefits work, which important dates employees need to remember, where employees can find more information, and so on. 

An HR benefits presentation for new hires (or any informational presentation) should be short, straightforward, and easy to understand so that new employees will remember the information they’re given. 

Instructive Presentations

A presentation that teaches something is similar to an informative presentation, but it goes beyond sharing facts. It also instructs the audience on a specific topic. People attend or view an instructive presentation with the intention to learn, and they leave with a better understanding of the topic of the presentation.

There are many examples of instructive presentations. Workshops, training sessions, or webinars teach audiences a new skill or procedure by offering specific information or instructions. Explaining new policies to a company is another type of instructive presentation. For example, an HR benefits presentation for new employees may be informative, but a presentation for existing employees about policy changes might lean more towards instructive, especially if employees have to take action or need to ask questions.     

Persuasive Presentations

Many presentations hope to sell something or persuade the audience to take certain actions. Persuasive presentations often present a problem and explain their solution using data. Examples of persuasive presentations include business pitches or sales proposals.

For example, a startup company looking for initial funding may need a startup pitch deck or a Series A presentation to convince investors to back their idea. A startup pitch deck would explain a problem in the market, how their startup will solve that problem, and how they’ll monetize their business. A Series A presentation can help a startup secure more rounds of funding to grow their company and pursue further goals.

Motivational Presentations

One of the most prominent examples of inspiring presentations? TEDTalks. Many motivational speakers use TEDTalks to inspire people to think or change their behavior. 

Motivational presentations in the business world may not be as dramatic or life-changing as a TEDTalk, but they still aim to generate interest or gain an audience’s approval. A company overview presentation is a good example of a motivational presentation. It may present the information of a company — how it was founded, who is leading it, what the company does — but more importantly, it tells the company’s story. 

A company overview presentation connects with the audience. A manager may use it to boost morale at a team meeting. Or an executive may present a company overview to convince potential customers or investors to work with them. Or, an HR rep may use it to make new hires feel welcome and excited to join the company.

Decision-making Presentations

Need to make a decision within the company? A presentation that shares a problem, solution options, and their outcomes can help speed along the process. Decision making presentations might be found in business meetings, government meetings, or all-hands meetings.

For example, let’s say a company wants to improve engagement on their social media channels. There are many ways they might achieve their goal, including hosting giveaways, dedicating more resources to creating Facebook posts or Instagram stories, and researching their audience or competitors to see how they can improve. A marketing campaign plan template for a presentation would keep details of the problem, different options, and possible outcomes organized in one place. It would inform and guide everyone involved in the meeting, helping them make informed decisions on how to move forward.

Progress Presentations

Imagine our hypothetical company decided on a marketing strategy to meet their goals. Now that they have a campaign in place, they need to report on the progress of said campaign. This sixth presentation type shares status updates, progress towards deadlines, collected data so far, any obstacles popping up, and tasks that need to be added or adjusted.

A team stand up presentation is a great example of this type of presentation. Team stand up presentations usually include an agenda, talking points, deliverable updates, discussion topics, and time for questions at the end. This presentation keeps everyone organized and focused, ensuring that everyone is still on the same page and working towards the same end goal.

Whichever Presentation Type You Choose, Create it With Beautiful.ai

Now that you know which presentation type is right for your project, it’s time to create a beautiful and effective presentation. With Beautiful.ai , you don’t need to set aside hours of time to build your presentation, nor do you need design expertise to do it. Use one of our many presentation templates that can be customized for your needs in minutes. No matter what type of presentation you create, Beautiful.ai can help you do it.

Beautiful.AI Team

Beautiful is an AI-powered presentation tool that makes it fast and easy for anyone to build clean, modern and professionally designed slides that they can be proud of.

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10+ Outstanding PowerPoint Presentation Examples and Templates

Nobody said it’s easy to make a PowerPoint presentation . There are multiple design decisions to consider, like which layout is appropriate for the content you have to present, font pairing, color schemes, and whether to use animated elements or not. 

Making these choices when working under the clock is overwhelming for most people, especially if you only intend to make a report more visually appealing. For this very reason, we curated a selection of 11 good PowerPoint presentation examples categories in different niches to give you insights into what’s valued and how to take your presentations to a professional quality. All the templates used on each case will be linked for easy access.

Table of Contents

General Guidelines for Professional-Quality PowerPoint Presentations

Business pitch powerpoint presentation examples, marketing plan powerpoint presentation examples, company profile powerpoint presentation examples, quarterly/annual results presentation examples, project proposal presentation examples, training presentation examples, change management presentation examples, industry analysis presentation examples, financial planning examples, inspirational presentation examples, academic presentation examples, final words.

Before introducing our presentation slide examples, we need to discuss a list of factors that transform an average slide into a professional-quality one. 

Design Principles

For any professional-level slide deck, a consistent layout, color scheme, and font pairing are required throughout the presentation. The slides should remain uncluttered, with proper care of white balance across their composition, and stick to the 10-20-30 rule of presentations ’s concept of one concept per slide. 

Contrast between text and background color must comply with web design accessibility standards , meaning to work with a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text, with exceptions for larger text. You can find more information in our article on accessibility for presentations .

A general rule in any graphic design project is to stick with fonts with ample legibility, like Arial, Helvetica, or Calibri. These are known as sans-serif fonts, and they work better than serif ones (i.e., Times New Roman) for larger text blocks.

Avoid using more than two different font families in your presentation; otherwise, the overall design will lose cohesion. Since you ought to ensure readability, the minimum size for body text should be 18pt, opting for larger variations and/or bold text for titles.

Using a combination of font pairing and font sizing helps create a hierarchy in your slides’ written content. For more insights on this topic, browse our article on fonts for presentations .

Color Scheme

Sticking to a color palette selection is one of the first design decisions to make when creating a custom slide deck . Colors have their own psychological impact on presentations, as explained in our article on color theory , so presenters must stick to 3-4 colors to avoid mixing up content in the slides. That being said, the colors have to be carefully selected according to the typical color scheme configurations, and using contrast to highlight key points on presentation slides.

Slide Layout

We can apply multiple graphic design guidelines to create professional-quality presentation slides, but in order to simplify the process, here are the key points to take into account:

• Grids and Guides: Divide your slide into sections using guides in PowerPoint or Google Slides. Then, you can build a grid that helps place elements and catch the viewer’s interest as they follow a logical flow while looking at the slide.
• Whitespace : Empty space is not your enemy. Slides shouldn’t be dense or feel hard on the eyes to read; therefore, work with a minimum of 30% whitespace.

Multimedia Elements

According to our expertise, video presentations and animation effects certainly increase the retention rate of the content you present. This is because they reduce the tiresome 2D presentation layout and add dynamism to the slides. Testing their functionality across different devices is a must to incorporate these elements into your presentation, especially if we consider that not all PowerPoint animation effects are compatible with Google Slides animations . 

Sound can be distracting in many scenarios unless you opt for an interactive presentation and require an audio track for an exercise. Action buttons in the form of quizzes or multiple-choice questions are fine examples of how we can integrate hyperlinks in interactive presentations.

The first professional PowerPoint example we will cover is when creating a problem slide business pitch. This selected business pitch PPT template has a 50/50 image-to-content balance that allows us to add images from our organization (or stick to the corporate placeholder image design) and quickly summarize the issue or need that our business aims to solve.

Remember that the selected colors for the text background area and text color are not 100% pure values—they are slight variations to reduce eye strain, making this slide a perfect choice for any kind of meeting room. Ideally, you can present up to three different problems to solve; otherwise, the text will look too small.

Another fine example of a PowerPoint presentation comes at the time of delivering an elevator pitch . As we all know, this concise presentation format requires a considerable amount of presentation aids to briefly expose each point in the speech under the allotted time frame. In this Revenue Model slide, we can find the answers to typical questions that help us shape the speech, all of them with icons and cues to remember from which areas the information comes.

If we aim to create a sponsorship pitch deck , it is important to bring proof of past sponsorship experiences to build our credibility in front of prospective sponsors. With this best PPT template tailored for sponsorship pitch presentations, we can display such data in an attractive visual format. The neat layout balances whitespace with content, with three distinctive KPI areas to talk about your history in sponsorship experiences. 

Talk about the market segmentation strategies of your marketing plan with this creative infographic template. This slide clearly illustrates that not all examples of PowerPoint presentations follow the same structure in terms of graphics-to-text balance. You can introduce data on how purchasing habits, user status, and brand loyalty influence buying decisions. Present key information about demographic & geographic segmentation and how psychographic information can provide deeper insights into consumer motivations to purchase.

Another PowerPoint example comes in the format of presenting market opportunities in marketing plans . You can list up to four points, which can be extracted from the outcomes of a SWOT analysis or from retrieved data from polls or stakeholders’ insights. The icons are entirely editable, and the crisp layout makes readability much easier.

Marketing agencies can benefit from this presentation PowerPoint example, which illustrates how easy it is to customize the content and repurpose slides for different client meetings. This and the other slides of this marketing plan slide deck allow professionals to discuss their expertise, past projects, and proposals for their target clients. In this case, the agency in question is offering insights on their work ethics through a clean slide layout with icons to flag key areas.

Our next PPT presentation example is suited for a Company Profile presentation in which we have to disclose key financial data. Thanks to the pie chart, presenters can segment revenue streams or do a balance between investments and profit. Additionally, the box placeholders allow us to deepen our knowledge of precise areas of interest.

Organizations who are looking to create a company profile can opt for a one-page arrangement to introduce the team members in charge, the overall services or products, the business model, the market, competitors, and relevant strategy information. The text boxes placed in the right area are a perfect opportunity to highlight KPIs.

In any company profile presentation, we have to introduce the organization’s Mission and Vision Statements. This presentation sample slide allows us to creatively discuss those topics. Including icons, users can summarize the primary aspects of their mission statement in one single, professionally styled slide.

Quarterly reports don’t need to be depicted as boring PDF files. We can work with clean layouts that provide information in an easy-to-follow format that focuses on the core elements of the report. This quarterly report presentation example is perfect for detailed reports as we cover all essentials in a one-page format for an employee’s performance review.

If, instead, you opt for a department-by-department approach, this slide presentation example illustrates two out of four quarters in the annual report. You can compare the product’s performance by production, allowing room to perform further optimizations based on sales behavior.

The construction industry requires a detailed presentation that covers all planned and contingency strategies for a project. Such an approach builds trust in the client, and that’s why we believe this PPT template for contractors is an essential tool for securing business deals. This presentation example template shows how to deliver a project proposal in style with accurate cost estimates.

A generic PPT project proposal template allows us to repurpose the slide for many projects—ideal for agencies, consultants, and academics. With this visual project proposal timeline, you can discuss the different stages of a project, plan for resources (both material and workforce), seek funding, or prepare for contingencies.

Once the project proposal’s core aspects are approved, teams must align efforts for project deliverables, acceptance criteria, and delivery format. This PPT presentation example illustrates a slide in a multi-team meeting to fine-tune aspects of the project deliverables, with an accurate representation of the due date and expected products.

Team training requires a framework in which the objectives of the workshop, coaching, or mentoring programs are laid out for management. HR teams can benefit from this presentation example by summarizing the objectives about missed business opportunities or expansion plans for the organization.

Before even delivering a training program, HR teams discuss the content to cover with the head of each department, mainly to spot any missing area of knowledge required for optimal operations. Presenters can repurpose this slide for that kind of training proposal presentation or the training presentation itself.

Intended for the early planning stages of a training program, this diagram is a well-rounded presentation example of how to discuss all points in one single slide, from the training budget to how to process employee feedback. We can expand each of these six topics in companionship slides.

Companies undergoing change management processes can opt to apply the DMAIC or the ADKAR frameworks to orient the workforce. This presentation slide allows management to compare both methodologies and pick the one best suited for their organization.

Since data sharing is delicate in charge management situations, implementing an information flow diagram is a good practice to orient your team, get the new owners or management the required information, and exchange information between departments.

For change management directed at process optimization, this example slide allows management to stress the importance between the current situation and the expected improved state. This PPT template can also introduce the different milestones per stage and involve the management parties per area.

Startups often present their industry analysis to procure investment from venture capitalists. This industry analysis presentation example showcases a typical FinTech segmentation. Presenters can describe the different types of crowdfunding, credit, and factoring services and provide examples of companies or platforms in each subcategory. They can discuss areas like asset management, payments, and other relevant aspects in detail, with successful stories from referents that helped shape their business model.

STEEPLE stands for Social, Technological, Economic, Ethical, Political, Legal, and Environmental factors. This framework allows us to perform a multidimensional industry analysis in which stakeholders can evaluate the appropriate approaches for venturing into a new business niche, renewing their overall strategy, or pursuing new goals based on recent industry changes, even those we don’t initially acknowledge.

The Gap Analysis concept compares a company’s current status to a desired future state. By doing so, organizations can identify deficits or areas that require improvement in alignment with the future state. Presenters can work with this metaphorical gap analysis template and express the need for a plan that bridges such a gap.

The next example of a PowerPoint presentation is oriented to the financial area, in which a consultant can refer to an organization’s asset management. By Scope, we imply the extent and boundaries of the asset management activities within an organization. It outlines what will be included in the asset management plan and what will not. On the other hand, Inventory points to a comprehensive and detailed list of all the assets owned by an organization. It includes essential information about each asset to facilitate effective management.

In financial presentations, the information must be clearly arranged so decisions can be made easily. In this case, we observe how a financial dashboard template can represent an organization’s relevant KPIs.

Think about TEDx presentations or Pecha-Kucha . They all have one factor in common: quality graphics to talk about inspirational stories. Graphics can feel overwhelming for some presenters, which ends in picking low-quality pictures or stock images unsuitable for the context of your slide deck. For this reason, we highly recommend you implement vector illustrations into your motivational presentation slides. Easy to customize, they are a valuable asset to mix & match PPT templates and create your custom deck.

Aligning efforts toward a common goal requires a powerful visual communication language. Images are easier to retain than words, so imagine adding a storytelling factor and turning a goal into a mountain to conquer. Presenters can work with this mountain PPT template and signal the different milestones to reach prior to fulfilling a significant goal for the company/organization.

Another take in inspirational presentations is when we need to share our success stories with investors or in networking environments to inspire others. With this roadmap PPT template, presenters can go stage by stage and present the key stages that made them reach their success, or even project for expected goals to achieve.

Academic presentations don’t have to look dull or excessively formal. We can incorporate a sleek layout into our slides and use icons to highlight key points. In this case, we observe a project overview for a research project, and the icons represent the main aspects to cover in this research.

A thesis presentation requires properly introducing the methodology to demonstrate the hypothesis. Rather than adding complex figures, we can work with a minimalistic slide design and briefly describe the research methods. This slide deck is suitable for thesis presentations as well as academic projects, research papers , and more.

As we can see, counting with a professionally designed slide deck makes a difference in how your presentation is perceived by the audience. By working with SlideModel PowerPoint templates, we can reuse and repurpose our slide templates as often as required or mix elements from different slides seen in these PowerPoint presentation examples to create uniquely styled slide decks.

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30 PowerPoint Presentation Tips to Make Good PPT Slides in 2024 (+ 6 Expert Tips)

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Here are 30 quick PowerPoint presentation tips to help you improve your presentations. 

Plus, get PowerPoint tips on changing your slide design to make your content shine. We've even called on six presentation experts for their best tips.

How to Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation (Watch & Learn)

This screencast is a speed round of my very favorite PowerPoint tricks. It's a great resource to learn how to make a presentable PowerPoint. I'll walk you through ten of my favorite PowerPoint tips and tricks to create a better presentation.

Keep reading for an illustrated version of these good PPT tips (and more) that you can use to improve your PowerPoint presentations. You'll see 30 of our favorite PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, including techniques to update slide master PowerPoint 2024 designs.

Jump to content in this section:

• How Do You Give a Memorable PPT Presentation?
• Practice Makes Perfect
• Adapt Your Presentation to the Audience
• Use a Custom Font
• Use Contrast
• Avoid Too Many Animations
• Use the Rule of Three
• Use a Custom PPT Theme Design
• Make Use of Charts and Graphs
• Use the Built-in Slide Layouts
• Align Text Consistently
• Make Your Exports User-Friendly
• Try a Different Color Scheme
• Edit Slide Masters for Consistency
• Use the Alignment Feature
• Use Stock Assets
• Reduce Your Content
• Rethink Your Slide Order
• Use PowerPoint Animations
• Invite Collaborators
• Add Supporting Video Clips
• Use Infographic Templates
• Use Impactful Closing Techniques
• Include Data in the Appendix
• Alternate Between Solid Color and White Slides
• Present Information With Maps
• Keep the Design Best Practices in Mind
• Set a Time Limit
• Test Your Content Everywhere

30 Tips: How to Make Good PowerPoint Presentation Designs Fast in 2024

A few tried and true tips can help you speed up your PowerPoint presentation design. Check out 30 of my favorite PowerPoint tips to do just that. Each of these give you PowerPoint slideshow help to create good PowerPoint slides:

1. How Do You Give a Memorable PPT Presentation?

If you're learning the top PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, you're probably asking yourself: how do I give a presentation that won't be forgotten?

We all want to be remembered. The best PowerPoint slideshow help to make a mark on the audience. There are tried-and-true ways to do just that, and expert Neil Tomlinson shares expertise on being remembered:

Get your main point into the presentation as early as possible (this avoids any risk of audience fatigue or attention span waning), then substantiate your point with facts, figures etc and then reiterate your point at the end in a ‘Summary’.

2. Practice Makes Perfect

Also, don’t forget to practice your presentation. Go through your slide deck a few times to make sure you know it like the back of your hand when the big day arrives. Doing so helps you feel more confident. It'll reduce any anxiety and nervousness you might feel as the presentation day approaches.

What's the best way to rehears for a good PowerPoint? Here's one of the top PowerPoint presentation tips from expert presenter Sandra Zimmer :

Once slides are ready, practice one slide at a time aloud until you feel like you know it and like the flow of speech. Be willing to change anything that does not feel in flow. At the end of learning all your slides, practice the whole talk.

If you want even more great PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, check out the following post:

3. Adapt Your Presentation to the Audience

Let's say that you're a seasoned presenter with a pretty standard set of presentation topics. Maybe you're an expert in your field, and you're asked to give a PPT presentation frequently on similar topics.

That's the value of being an expert. You might have a standard spiel that you give your audiences, and your content won't totally change from one presentation to another. That's why it helps to make only slight tweaks to adapt your presentation to each audience.

Leading presentation expert Suzannah Baum offered up this advice:

Different audiences will have different needs and different challenges, which requires me to re-sequence the slides, or create new ones. I tend to do a lot of research on my audiences – via surveys, interviews, and conversations with the hiring manager – to help me better understand what information would be most relevant to them.

How do you adapt to your audience? Here are a few more tips:

• Learn about them. If you're asked to speak, talk to the curator of the presentation to learn more about the audience and their background.
• Ask about them! With contact details, send out a survey or a response link to ask for feedback and preparation info. Ask leading questions like "what do you want to learn?"
• Consider the environment.  If you're presenting via Zoom, your style will differ from presenting in person. The key is to acknowledge the difference and adapt to your environment.

Learn everything you can about your audience. Learning how to make a presentable PowerPoint is all about thinking of the recipient, not the presenter!

4. Use a Custom Font

A PowerPoint presentation tip that'll make your slideshow more interesting and more engaging is to use a custom font.

Fonts set the tone for your presentation. So, when you use a premium font, you’re opting for a high-quality font while also adding a personal or creative touch. 

When choosing a font, remember that you want everyone to read your text easily. 

5. Use Contrast

One PowerPoint trick is to use contrast to make some of your text stand out or make it easier to read.

If you’re putting text over an image on our PowerPoint slide, you may need to use a white box with black text in it to make your text easier to read. You can also use contrasting colors to highlight important text.

6. Avoid Too Many Animations

Another PowerPoint tip is to avoid having too many animations or transitions.

When you've got too many animations, it can be distracting to the audience. It’s not only distracting, but it's unprofessional.

It’s best to stick to one or two animations throughout your presentation. Also, if you've got any animations in your presentation, make sure to test them to see if they work before presenting.

7. Add Audio

Include audio on a slide on PowerPoint to increase audience engagement. Audio can be anything from fun sound effects to interview clips. You can even add an audio clip of your voice.

Audio gives you a break from speaking while also engaging the audience. Envato Elements has hundreds of premium audio clips if you want to add some.

8. Use the Rule of Three

One PowerPoint tip and trick is to follow the rules of PowerPoint.

One of those rules is the rule of three. It's where you start by dividing your presentation into thirds. Everything should come in thirds, so if you use bullet points, you should only have three. If you use icons, you should only have three.

When things come in threes, it's easier to remember them. For more information, read this informative article:

9. Use a Custom PPT Theme Design

Above all, consistently use custom PowerPoint themes. Microsoft has built-in themes that you can use for free, sure. But the premium themes that are on Envato Elements   are a major step-up from PowerPoint's built-in themes. 

When you subscribe to Envato Elements, you'll have access to unlimited downloads of all the PowerPoint themes. Right now, Envato Elements has almost 4,000 PowerPoint themes and that number is always growing. You'll learn tips for a good PowerPoint presentation by using the best templates.

10. Make Use of Charts and Graphs

Illustrate your data with the use of charts and graphs. Not only will you be able to make your presentation more visually appealing, but you'll also help your audience remember the information better.

Many PowerPoint templates already include chart and graph elements. Easily customize them to make your data and stats more interesting and easier to understand.

Want to learn more about how to use data? Turn to expert Adrienne J ohnston , a presentation professional:

When it comes to visualizing data in presentations, we have to remember that our audience does not need all the fine details of the data - they need the main takeaway and we need to make sure that's evident to them when looking at the slide.

11. Use the Built-in Slide Layouts

Inside of PowerPoint themes, you'll find layouts , which are custom slide designs.

Most themes include a selection of content layouts that you can use as a starting point for your own slide designs. You can leverage slide master PowerPoint 2024 designs with the help of layouts.

Layouts are like a starting point for your PowerPoint presentation slides. They contain combinations of placeholders for text boxes, images, and more.

Instead of clicking and drawing individual objects onto the slide, use one of these layouts to start your slide off. It's one of the top PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks to save time.

12. Align Text Consistently

When you're working with text on your slide, it helps to ensure that it aligns consistently. Keeping your text aligned in the same orientation really makes a slide look clean. 

In the example below, I've basically got three text boxes:

• list of bulleted points

Notice that all this text is aligned left. 

Aligning text was the " aha " moment that I learned when I started studying slide design. It's one of those steps that makes a slide look much neater and professional, so keep it in mind when designing.

13. Make Your Exports User-Friendly

No matter how great your PowerPoint presentation slides look, you need to think about how your user will use the presentation file. 

Any of these are likely scenarios if you're regularly sending presentations to other users:

• The viewer may not have PowerPoint installed on their computer.
• The recipient may be using a version of PowerPoint that renders the presentation differently.
• Maybe you don't want the user to be able to make any edits or see your notes in the presentation file.

In this case, my favorite tip is to export the presentation as a PDF. To do that, go to File > Export > Create PDF , and then save your presentation as a PDF.

This is sure to help most of your users see the presentation just the way you intended.

14. Try a Different Color Scheme

Many PowerPoint themes have more than one color scheme that you can apply to your presentation. On the Design  tab, click on the drop-down next to Themes to try out a different color scheme.

Typically, these will restyle your entire presentation. Premium themes that you might get from Envato Elements, for example, may have many versions inside the original presentation zip file.

15. Edit Slide Masters for Consistency

The slide master controls the design for your PowerPoint slide. Instead of making the same change to each slide, apply a change to a slide master. It'll affect all the PowerPoint presentation slides that use the same master.

It's ideal to apply a logo to the slide master itself, for example. This keeps the logo the same size and in the same position on each slide.

To do that, go to View > Slide Master.  On the right side, you're likely to see a variety of slide masters that control designs for many slides. Drop the elements that you want to remain consistent onto one of the slide masters.

16. Use the Alignment Feature

PowerPoint presentation slides look better when the objects on them are in line with one another. There's a certain visual rhythm that occurs when objects line up in the center or along certain boundary lines.

When you start dragging objects on your slide, you'll see guiding lines that pop up. These are very intuitive, and you'll likely notice that they help you line up your objects. You might seem them pop up when you've got a box that's equidistant between two other objects on the slide, for example.

This is one of the best tricks for improving the look of your PowerPoint slide. Spend some time making sure that your key elements line up cohesively.

17. Use Stock Assets

Earlier, I mentioned using Envato Elements to grab PowerPoint themes. But there's more that comes with an Envato Elements subscription for presentations.

That includes a wide variety of stock photos, graphics,  and custom designed fonts  that you can use in your presentation. Instead of reusing the same stock photo or clip art, Envato Elements has everything you need to supplement a presentation. 

Again, Envato Elements is the perfect subscription if you build presentations. It's a one-stop-shop that you can use to fill content.

18. Reduce Your Content

There's nothing that makes an audience tune out faster than being overloaded with slide content. Sometimes we try to make so many points that the audience misses all of them due to information overload.

Less is truly more. When you cut the weaker points of your presentation, the audience's attention will follow your key points accordingly.

It seems like cheating, but one of the best steps that you can take for your slide is to simply reduce the number of items that are on it. Convert some of your typed points to things you'll speak verbally.

19. Rethink Your Slide Order

Sometimes, I find that my presentations are out of order. I might spend too much time explaining my decision before I get to the conclusion.

In these cases, I like to use Slide Sorter View  to re-sequence the slides in my presentation. To access this view, go to View > Slide Sorter  on PowerPoint's ribbon.

From Slide Sorter view, you've got a top-down view of all the slides in your presentation deck. It sometimes becomes obvious that the slides can be reordered into a better sequence from this view.

20. Use PowerPoint Animations 

One of my favorite PowerPoint presentation tips is to complement your major points with a bit of animation. Using animation can bring a key point onto your slide with style!

Check out ten of the best PowerPoint tips for how to use animation from expert Sven Lenaerts below:

21. Invite Collaborators

Building a presentation often benefits from a second set of eyes. That's why it helps so much to invite a collaborator to work with you side-by-side in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Pushing your presentation up to OneDrive and inviting collaborators is easy. Thanks to the cloud-based approach, more than one user can edit a slide deck in real time. Learn how to do that in the tutorial below:

22. Add Supporting Video Clips

Building impactful presentations is all about adding other perspectives and angles to the content. One of my favorite ways to do that is to add a video clip. Maybe that's a production that you built on your own or found on sites like YouTube.

Either way, learn how to add and auto play a video clip in the quick tip below:

23. Use Infographic Templates

More presentations than ever will feature visuals that tell stories with data. But it's easy for an audience become overwhelmed with data. 

That's where infographics come into play. Learn to use them in PowerPoint in the tutorial below:

24. Use Impactful Closing Techniques

I've sat through many presentations in my life. I can only remember a few that really stick out, thanks to techniques that highlighted key points. You need PowerPoint tips and tricks that help leave your audience with an impact.

To do just that, make sure you use some of the techniques highlighted in the article below:

To do that, just drag and drop the thumbnails into the order you want. When you return to Normal view, the PowerPoint presentation slides will be in the resequenced order you set here.

25. Include Data in the Appendix

Many PowerPoint presentations include data in the form of charts and graphs. That means that you'll condense specifics into a few easy-to-follow charts.

But what if your audience wants more of the backing details? Maybe they want to validate and review the detail for themselves. In that case, a   set of  appendix slides  with extra data is sure to help.

Appendix slides are included at the end of a presentation deck for backup purposes. You might not present them, but your audience is certain to appreciate that you included them. That helps your presentation continue to be useful even after you leave the room.

Here's a great tip from: pro presenter  Graeme Thomas of Johnny F Designs:

If (my clients) are sending the deck straight to clients however, I would then put all the information on the slides but will often use more slides so that they aren't too cluttered. In cases where there is a lot of content, like financial statements, I would use  appendix slides.

Including an appendix helps your audience understand data  without  overwhelming them with that data. Follow these tips so that you get the best of both worlds.

26. Alternate Between Solid Color and White Slides

Alternating between solid color and slides with a white background can produce an interesting visual effect and engage your audience. You can use the solid-colored slides to signify a new section in your presentation.

Not to mention, solid-colored slides are the perfect way to re-enforce your brand colors and build your brand recognition.

27. Present Information With Maps

If you’re trying to make a case for a global expansion or need to report on how other branches are performing, consider using a map to help your audience visualize the data.

There's no shortage of quality PowerPoint templates with maps built in so be sure to take advantage of them.

28. Keep the Design Best Practices in Mind

The design of your presentation matters just as much as the content of your presentation. That’s why you need to devote an equal amount of time to making sure the design of your presentation is on point as you do to the actual content.

Familiarize yourself with best design practices and keep them in mind as you go about customizing your template.

29. Set a Time Limit

How many slides is the right number for you? Well, it all depends on the time limit you set for your presentation.

Believe it or not, setting a time limit is helpful to create good PowerPoint slides. If you want to learn how to make a presentable PowerPoint, it's a must to lock in the time limit and ensure that your slides support that timeframe. 

Expert presenter Stephanie Ottavan offers one of our top tips for a good PowerPoint presentation based on time limits:

A presenter is usually limited to a specific time frame and you want to adhere to that as closely as you can. If you have animations and transitions in your deck, these take added time so make sure to rehearse in “show mode” of PowerPoint or Keynote and time yourself.

Believe it or not, setting a time frame is one of the most important part of creating a PPT presentation. It helps you influence how many good PowerPoint slides you should design.

30. Test Your Content Everywhere

PowerPoint in 2024 could take place anywhere. Maybe you present, online, in-person, or beam it to mobile devices. It's important to remember that the content will appear differently on each device.

PowerPoint Online is a different medium than many other apps. Make sure that your presentation design appears the same by testing it with the help of this tutorial. It shows you how your PPT presentation appears even in a browser:

Discover Great Premium PowerPoint Templates With Google Slides (For 2024)

Creating a great presentation starts with a great template. And a great PowerPoint slide design use the best presentation practices, for example:

• Use high-quality photos and graphics to help tell the story.
• Keep text to a minimum.
• Stick to one idea per slide.

Designing a great template doesn’t mean you've got to start from scratch, though. Take a look at some of the best PowerPoint templates we've got on Envato Elements.

1. Neo PowerPoint Template

The Neo PowerPoint template features a modern and bold design and includes five color variations to get you started. Along with this, you'll also get 10 master slides and 30 individual slides for all your presentation needs.

2. Vexana PowerPoint Template

The Vexana template is a great choice for brands that need a touch of elegance. This template works with PowerPoint and Google Slides and comes with a grand total of 150 slides. It also has five color variations and includes infographic elements and photo placeholders.

3. Sprint PowerPoint Template

The Sprint PowerPoint template features a professional and modern design. The template is easy to customize. You'll find 20 masters in the standard 4:3 size, allowing you to choose the best layout for your information.

4. Travelicious PowerPoint Template

For any presentation that deals with the topic of travel, check out the Travelicious template. This template is compatible with both PowerPoint and Google Slides. It includes three premade color variations as well as 30 unique slides.

 As you can see from the examples above, there's no shortage of beautiful and professional PowerPoint slide designs on Envato Elements . What’s more, Envato Elements allows you to download as many PowerPoint templates as you want. Plus, get thousands of other design assets such as fonts, photos, and icons—all for one low monthly price.

Want to see even more great PowerPoint template examples? Be sure to check out our related roundup:

Need Help? Grab Our Making Great Presentations eBook (Free)

We've got the perfect complement to this tutorial. You can find more information in our eBook on making great presentations . Download this PDF eBook now for FREE with your subscription to the Tuts+ Business Newsletter. 

It'll help you master the presentation process from initial creative ideas through to writing, design, and delivering with impact.

PowerPoint Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Now that you’ve read about PowerPoint tips and tricks, if you want to learn more about PowerPoint, here are some FAQs:

1. What Is a Placeholder?

Placeholders in your slide on PowerPoint help you easily add text or images to your slide without changing your design.

In a template, sometimes the placeholders have prompts such as “Click to insert a picture” or “Click to add text.” These prompts let you know what kind of placeholder it is. To learn more about placeholders, read this article: 

2. How Can I Automatically Play a Video?

A PowerPoint tip is to insert an automatically played video in your presentation. When you've got a video that'll play automatically, it saves you the trouble of starting your video manually.

Videos can illustrate topics or specific points. They're also a great way to keep your audience engaged. If you want to learn how to play a video automatically, read this tutorial:

3. How Can I Add a Map to my Slide?

Another PowerPoint trick is to add a map to your slide. If you're discussing a specific location, then a map can help your audience visualize the location you're presenting. To learn how to add a map to your PowerPoint slide, read this tutorial:

4. How Do I Add a GIF to My Presentation?

Adding a GIF to your slide on PowerPoint is one way you can grab your audience's attention. To add a GIF to your slide, you’ll need to download a GIF.

Once you download it, upload it into PowerPoint and use it on your slide. For more information about how to add a GIF to your slide on PowerPoint, read this article:

5. Can I Recover My Unsaved Presentation?

Another PowerPoint trick is to learn how to recover unsaved PowerPoint files so that you can be prepared in case of an emergency. If you want to learn more, read this tutorial:

Learn More About How to Make Presentable PowerPoints

These quick PowerPoint Presentation tips are some of my favorite ways to rapidly improve a presentation. Keeping them in mind while you build a presentation can help you build a deck that you'll be confident about presenting.

Check out these tutorials to keep learning more about PowerPoint. These tutorials will give you more ideas for fixing up your PowerPoint presentation slides efficiently:

Find More Templates

Didn't see a template you like? Here are some more:

Use These PPT Presentation Tips on Your Next Presentation

Now that you've studied some of our best PowerPoint tips, it's time to put them to use. Download one of our top-notch PowerPoint themes from Envato Elements to get started. These PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks give you confidence to make you a skilled presenter.

Editorial Note : This post was first published in February of 2019. Our staff updates this post regularly — adding new, exciting PowerPoint tips and templates (with special help from Brenda Barron , Andrew Childress and Sarah Joy ).

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Minimalism is an art style that frees the canvas and that lets the content stand out for itself. It’s a way of conveying modernism, simplicity and elegance and can be your best ally in your next presentation. With this new design from Slidesgo, your business presentations will be as professional...

Chalkboard Background Theme for Elementary

Download the Chalkboard Background Theme for Elementary presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and easily edit it to fit your own lesson plan! Designed specifically for elementary school education, this eye-catching design features engaging graphics and age-appropriate fonts; elements that capture the students' attention and make the learning experience more...

Notebook Lesson

These are the last days before the Summer break! We know that there are some pending lessons that you need to prepare for your students. As they may be thinking about their friends and their holidays, catch their attention with this cool template!

Steps for Studying a Text

Reading a book is good practice. Books are a source of knowledge! However, the complexity of the text you're reading affects the time you'll spend understanding it and memorizing it. That can be a problem when studying, so here's a template with some tips on how to face difficult texts...

Welcome to Middle School Class

Welcome, everyone! This is our middle school class, take a look! Our students, our teachers, our subjects, our schedules… We have written everything about it in this presentation! The cool waves of color flow amazingly with this design. Everything is super creative and colorful! Prepare for the back to school...

Colorful Theme

Download the Colorful Theme presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using different graphic resources. You...

Infographics

Fresh Lemon Pattern Newsletter Infographics

Download the Fresh Lemon Pattern Newsletter Infographics template for PowerPoint or Google Slides and discover the power of infographics. An infographic resource gives you the ability to showcase your content in a more visual way, which will make it easier for your audience to understand your topic. Slidesgo infographics like...

College Lessons with Cycle Diagrams

Download the College Lessons with Cycle Diagrams presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. As university curricula increasingly incorporate digital tools and platforms, this template has been designed to integrate with presentation software, online learning management systems, or referencing software, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of student work. Edit this...

Enjoying Spring Minitheme Infographics

Download the Enjoying Spring Minitheme Infographics template for PowerPoint or Google Slides and discover the power of infographics. An infographic resource gives you the ability to showcase your content in a more visual way, which will make it easier for your audience to understand your topic. Slidesgo infographics like this...

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Judaism: Culture and Traditions Workshop

Download the Judaism: Culture and Traditions Workshop presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. If you are planning your next workshop and looking for ways to make it memorable for your audience, don’t go anywhere. Because this creative template is just what you need! With its visually stunning design, you can...

Branded Content Minitheme

Download the Branded Content Minitheme presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using different graphic resources....

Learning Situation: "Why Should we Conserve Water?"

Download the Learning Situation: "Why Should we Conserve Water?" presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and prepare to receive useful information. Even though teachers are responsible for disseminating knowledge to their students, they also embarked on a learning journey since the day they decided to dedicate themselves to education. You...

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