Designing Visuals That Support Your Presentation Message

Struggling to catch your audience’s attention when doing a presentation? Or perhaps you find that they do listen during the moment, but immediately forget the content of your slides days after. 

A great solution is to add visuals.

Studies show that 65% of people are visual learners. Visuals also increase engagement by 94%. If you want to make your presentation more impactful and attention-grabbing, visuals are indeed the way to go. 

In this article, we’ll explore best practices for creating and adding visuals that not only enhance your slides visually but also help with your audience’s engagement. 

Let’s dive in.

Why Do Visuals Matter?

Visuals are used as aids for your presentation. They can emphasize points, serve as a metaphor, or turn complex data into a simpler, more digestible one.

So instead of saying your product looks great in sunlight, show photographs of them under the sunlit skies. Instead of listing that the size is 152mm x 164mm, show them an envelope of the same size for scale. You can also use an image of a bull's eye or someone at the top of the mountain to reinforce the feeling of success.  

What Visuals Can You Use for Your Presentation?

Some visuals you can use are:

• Photos: Photos are used to illustrate examples more visually and emotionally, as people tend to resonate more personally with them. These are also great for showing real-life examples of your products or to show them in action. 
• Illustrations: Can’t find exact photos that prove your point? Creating illustrations can help. These are also great for following your brand identity as you can tailor your illustrations to match your style more. 
• Icons or Symbols: These are helpful for instantly providing information or context. Icons are also small, so they can add visual interest to your slides without cluttering them too much. 
• Charts: These help translate your raw data into more understandable visuals. For example, line charts can show changes over time while pie charts can represent percentages. 
• Infographics: This visual also summarizes long information into just one image. It’s also great when you’re providing a step-by-step tutorial or summarizing a long history. 
• Videos: Videos are the most engaging graphic you can add. They are also great for demonstrating your products or explaining a more complex process. Make sure to keep your videos under 30 seconds as longer videos can be too lengthy for your audience’s attention span. 
• Memes / GIFs: Depending on the casualness of your presentation and your audience, you can do this to add fun and joy to your slides. 

Take note that visuals are not just limited to graphics. 

The color of your slides, the font you use, the font color, even your slide transitions – all of these are a part of your visuals. 

All of them should work cohesively with each other to produce a visually appealing and engaging presentation. 

Best Practices For Designing Visuals For Your Presentations

Here are some tips you can follow to create or choose visuals to use in your presentations:

Choose the right colors

Color plays a huge role in capturing the right mood for your presentation. This is due to color psychology, where it is found that people associate each color with a specific emotion or theme.

Let’s take a look at red. People see this as a powerful and bold color. Meanwhile, blue is seen as a calm, serene, and professional color. This is why banks and government offices tend to use blue in their logos. 

Pink is seen as soft and nurturing. In contrast, yellow and orange are associated with fun, excitement, and playful energy. 

As you can see, depending on which color you use, you’ll evoke different reactions from your audience. 

Make the right font choice

Just like with color, different fonts also have different symbolism attached to them.

Sans-serif fonts like Arial and Helvetica are seen as friendly and approachable. This is due to their simpler design, as opposed to their more stylized counterparts.

They are also seen as modern and “trendier,” as popular brands like Google, Netflix, and Spotify use it for their logos. 

Meanwhile, serif fonts like Times New Roman and Georgia evoke that old-school and traditional feel. This is because of the ornamental look of their strokes, which mimics the look of typewritten documents of the past. 

If you’re doing a formal presentation, or want to look more authoritative and professional, serif fonts are the better choice. But for more casual presentations, go for sans-serif. 

Consider your overall typography

Your font style is not the only thing important for your texts. Your overall typography (size, weight, alignment, structure, spacing) can also affect the readability of your presentation.

Use large and legible fonts. Stick to a size no smaller than 24 pt for your body text. This way, even people far from your screen can still easily read your text. 

Avoid overly decorative fonts for your body text as well. Since your body text is smaller and longer, using decorative fonts can make it harder to read. If you really want to use fancy fonts, use them for your headers or title slides only.  

Bolds, italics, and underlines should only be used for key points. 

Text alignment can be used strategically as well. Angling your text to the right or left can symbolize motion, which can help you emphasize your points.

Add your branding

Adding elements of your branding in your presentation can help establish your identity to your audience. This can help people instantly recognize that this presentation came from your brand or organization and not from someone else. 

Think of it this way. You can instantly identify material from Coca-Cola if you see its red and white color scheme or its iconic cursive font. You can also easily recognize apps under the Google umbrella (ex. Maps, Chrome, Gmail, Drive) since they use the same color palette and art style in all their logos. 

You can do the same for your presentations by using your brand’s color scheme, logo font, and graphic style. You can also add your logo design as a watermark on each of your slides as they are your main visual identifier. If you don’t have a logo yet, try using AI logo generators to easily get one for your business.

Use high-quality graphics

Pixelated or low-quality graphics are a huge no-no for any presentation. Just the same as using photos splashed with watermarks or those that are cropped weirdly. These low-quality images will only make you look unprofessional, so don’t add them.

Focus on using well-lit and high-quality graphics instead. If you are using stock photos or stock icons, try to find those that have the same style. This will make it look more cohesive. 

Use relevant visuals

It is found that pairing relevant images to information helps us retain 65% of the information three days later, compared to only 10% we retain without an image. 

Make sure to add relevant images that will help illustrate or reinforce your texts. Don’t just add random visuals just because, as it can just confuse your audience. 

Follow visual hierarchy

It is found that people read in a Z pattern – we start from the top left then move to the top right, move diagonally to the bottom left, then slide our eyes again to the bottom right. 

You can lay out your slides to follow this rule. This helps your audience absorb your presentation easier and faster since you are using a pattern that is geared toward them. These align strongly with UX/UI design frameworks, where visual hierarchy and balance ensure that content guides attention smoothly and effectively.

Follow the rules of graphic design 

There are basic rules or principles of graphic design that you can follow to make visually cohesive and appealing slides. These are:

• Balance - Make sure all your visual elements are distributed properly in your slides. Too many elements on one side can make it look crooked and distracting. 
• Contrast - Contrast helps in the visual clarity of your slides. A healthy contrast between your text and background color or design can make it look more readable. Contrast can also be used to add emphasis, for example using black for all your text and then using red for key information. 
• Whitespace - Ample space between your elements makes it look cleaner and neater. It also aids in the visual clarity of your slides. 
• Simplicity - Simple designs are easier for the eyes and less distracting to understand. 
• Repetition - Using the same elements (color, font, art style) in your slides makes it look more unified and cohesive.
• Proportion - Large elements should be used for more important details while smaller ones for your supporting text. 

Conclusion

Whether you’re pitching your services to a client, doing an onboarding presentation to new hires, or doing a product launch, the power of an engaging and well-designed presentation cannot be underestimated. Make sure to follow the tips above to have more appealing and successful presentations.