You’re sitting in your office, knowing that you still need to make a lengthy slide business presentation of 10, 20, or 30 pages for the following day. So, what are you going to do?
Do you simply stay up all night doing that?
Or do you want to carefully consider the arrangement of each and every slide?
No, this is not something we would advise you to undertake. What you need is some solid design and layout concepts to base your work on. Simply create the deck, and don’t need to worry about how each individual slide should appear.
This is exactly what we will discuss today. We will discuss slide layouts and give you an easy and effective blueprint that will work as a foundation for every business presentation.
Use the ‘Every slide is a table’ Concept
The main point we want to emphasize is that every slide is kind of a table. While creating slides, always consider how to organize the page’s information in a tabular manner.
However, this does not imply that you should just paste a table into PowerPoint. Instead, you should constantly have your page in mind being a collection of rows and columns, and you should always structure your data in this framework.
So, each slide is a table, but what does this mean?
Let’s understand this using three different types of slides – Qualitative slides, quantitative slides, and integrated slides.
Blueprint For Qualitative Slides
When dealing with qualitative slides, you have a variety of facts in the columns that you want to discuss. And remember, if you have various sorts of information, you will put it in distinct columns.
It is one of the most common mistakes that many folks make. They just have one page with a list of bullet points. The first bullet point might thus be about a broad concept. The second bullet point is an illustration. The third bullet point is a recommendation.
The thing you are creating; you are combining multiple forms of logical knowledge and facts.
You should always break this into multiple columns after that. Then, in the rows, you will normally give various forms of facts that you apply to the topics that you discuss in the headers as well.
To prevent these so-called fabric lines, the overall idea is to avoid merely a lengthy list of bullets.
Column headers do not necessarily require to be in this exact column style. Of course, you can use other components for the columns as well. For example, you might use a timeline or a process chart with distinct process bars for the columns.
You could, of course, experiment with it and inject some originality into it. So the slides do not have to look the same, and you can mix and match them as required.
Let’s move on to the quantitative slides.
Blueprint For Quantitative Slides
So presentations that contain some data visualization, charts, and diagrams on them. Of course, this is a fairly frequent business presentation, and it is likely that it will be the majority of all the slides you generate, at least in professional services.
Let’s move on to the quantitative slides.
Again, you have to follow the table format. So, in the first column, you can describe the methods you used to analyze your data. In the second column, retain a chart with the data visualization you wish to emphasize. Then, in the third column, discuss the ramifications of this slide.
In many circumstances, the first column is not necessarily about the methodology. You have more room for the chart, and design of the data visualization, and then concentrate on the right with a handful of bullet points.
What are the implications you need, what is the reader, the receiver of your business presentation, intended to take away from this chart?
Let’s create another extremely simple layout using the same concept. So, on the left, you can see a bubble chart diagram displaying the market size, growth, profitability, and margins of various areas. Then, on the right, you can have a basic column emphasizing a few points and significant ideas that you wish to convey to the reader.
You can sometimes also use a basic waterfall chart as an example. Because the fact is that you don’t always need the extra column on the right.
Perhaps the chart is self-explanatory, or perhaps you only want to emphasize a few of the points within the chart. Then you can accomplish that with this little component. So it’s simply a text box with two line components to show the diversity of this layout that we just talked about.
Let’s move on to the third type of slide.
Blueprint For Integrated Slides
These are likely the most fascinating because this is a style of generating business presentations that is widespread in professional services; it is not often seen outside of consulting.
And this is a style in which you strive to include the diagram and chart into your table with the text even further. So far, we’ve seen a very basic example in which a chart or diagram is on the left, and a list of bullets with implications is on the right.
And, once again, this is just OK. You can accomplish that, but the drawback is that there is now a certain gap between your bullets and the chart. People must now read the bullets, and they may or may not find something fascinating.
They must now examine the chart and try to figure out the connection. This is generally not that simple, particularly if the chart is a little more intricate. And it definitely requires more cognitive resources from the person looking at this to make sense of all that is offered here.
So the concept behind these integrated charts is to really combine the chart with extra bullets and other information into the structure of the table.
A headline can be placed on the left slide, followed by a basic bar chart, a column with information, and an extra column with strategic judgment.
Always consider if it makes sense and whether it is possible to include such a graphic in your table structure. And don’t simply have two completely different columns with a graphic on the left and a list of bullets on the right. Of course, this isn’t always the case.
However, there is frequently an excellent chance to do something like this.
This, thus, allows the reader to assimilate the information in a more straightforward manner.
Wrapping It Up
You can go from anxious to confident about your next business presentation in a couple of hours with these business presentation slide layouts, business presentation PowerPoint templates, and themes.
First, use a template to create a rough draft. Then, focus on nailing your beginning slide sequence and reducing the sentences in your primary business presentation as required. Ensure that each slide has a specific function and delivers critical information. Remove everything that does not relevant to the subject to make your corporate presentation deck more succinct.
Finally, after you’ve completed your business presentation, share it with other team members to obtain comments and reaffirm the final design.
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