Presentations for important meetings
HERE’S THE SCENARIO
- That important meeting is approaching and your reputation is on the line. Your slide deck needs to make a good impression but you’re worried you’ll be subjecting your audience to ‘death by PowerPoint’.
- You’ve tried designing your presentation but it’s harder than you thought and you don’t have time to get the deck to look the way you want it to.
- What’s making things worse is that you haven’t yet got all the content because it’s coming from different stakeholders – nonetheless you have to start building the deck. But you’re concerned that it’s going to looking really incoherent.
- Some of the concepts you’re trying to communicate are quite complex, you’re realising that you need an objective eye to visually interpret them for the audience.
- Imagery is proving difficult – you can’t find appropriate, on-brand images to reinforce your ideas.
Don’t worry, I see this situation all the time.
Instead of stressing over how to make your deck look great, hand what you’ve got over to me and I’ll make a start on the design while you continue to chase up the rest of the content.
Being outside your organisation I see things with a fresh eye and can offer alternative ways of communicating your ideas with images, illustrations, diagrams or use of colour. And because I have extensive experience in working with brand and corporate guidelines, you can trust me to bring your presentation to life within these boundaries.
Even if you just need a hand to ‘tidy up’ a deck you’ve put together to make it look professional and coherent, I’m the person to call. This is especially true if the content has come from a variety of sources, I’ll make sure all the layouts, fonts, colours and images work together to create a super-professional finish that will knock the socks off your audience.
Stand-alone decks
HERE’S THE SCENARIO
- You’ve been concentrating on your content and data and it’s now in PowerPoint – but it’s just page after page of text and looks very dull. What you really want to achieve is a presentation that looks professional enough to convince VCs of your credibility.
- You know that imagery would help bring the document to life, but you’re not sure if the images you’ve chosen are really supporting your message.
- At the same time, a new prospect has asked you to email over your credentials, but you don’t have a properly designed document to send them. You’ll need to get some slides from various stakeholders to complete the deck, and you know that it’s going to be a sprint to the finish line!
Trust me to turn a text-heavy document into a great looking deck that’s good to go.
Making text-heavy documents easy to read is a challenge, especially for non-designers.
And if you’re not going to be presenting the slides in person, it’s even more important to have an eye-pleasing document that draws the reader in.
The good news is that I relish this kind of challenge. I’ll take your words and apply design skills to break up the text in an interesting way. I’ll also incorporate carefully selected images that will hold the reader’s attention while at the same time communicating the brand’s personality. Don’t worry if you don’t have any images, you can rely on my visual literacy and designer’s eye to source suitable ones from stock libraries to create a slide document that is on-brand and engaging.
Presentations for the stage
HERE’S THE SCENARIO
- You’ve spent hours working on your speech but you simply don’t have time to design a supporting presentation. That said, you know that having a good deck will really boost your confidence and enhance your delivery.
- The stakes are high, and the stress is mounting. There will be important people in the audience – clients, colleagues, maybe your boss. But even if you were only presenting to a room full of family and friends, you’d still want to impress them.
- You know that pictures are worth a thousand words, but how do you balance making it look interesting without distracting from what you’re saying?
- Time limitations mean you’re going to be doing the slides at the last minute. You worry that they will look unprofessional, not connect with your audience or fail to keep their attention. Why did you sign up for this, you wonder?
You focus on the delivery, let me focus on the design.
Presenting on stage is nerve-wracking enough, you don’t need the added pressure of trying to design the deck. By outsourcing that job to me, you’ll be free to concentrate on what you want to say.
For on stage presentations, image choice is key. Each one should resonate with the audience, be appropriate to the tone and content of the speech (and your brand) and work coherently from one slide to the next, so the overall effect is harmonious. I select imagery that will reinforce what you’re saying and complement how you’re saying it.
I’ll also work closely with you to ensure you’re comfortable with each slide, together we can tweak the timings of the builds/animations so that all the transitions synchronise with your speech.
Practice makes perfect, so I’ll get the final presentation to you in time for you to get familiar with it before you go public.
Template systems
HERE’S THE SCENARIO
- You’ve got a company PowerPoint template but nevertheless your team’s presentations all look very different – you’re worried that your brand is not represented in a consistent, professional manner.
- In particular you’re concerned that the images your team use in their presentations could be harmful to your brand.
- Your team is complaining that the template is difficult to use and it takes forever to put together a presentation. They say it’s like starting from scratch each time because the template is just too basic and restrictive.
I can help you get everyone on the same page.
Making text-heavy documents easy to read is a challenge, especially for non-designers.
And if you’re not going to be presenting the slides in person, it’s even more important to have an eye-pleasing document that draws the reader in.
The good news is that I relish this kind of challenge. I’ll take your words and apply design skills to break up the text in an interesting way. I’ll also incorporate carefully selected images that will hold the reader’s attention while at the same time communicating the brand’s personality. Don’t worry if you don’t have any images, you can rely on my visual literacy and designer’s eye to source suitable ones from stock libraries to create a slide document that is on-brand and engaging.