Creating a Google Slides presentation requires a lot of creative decisions, such as what will be the typeface and font style? How will the layout be – columns, rows, or bullets? Should you opt for bold, standout colors or pastels? And a lot more!
All this might make the presentation creation process a daunting task for many, especially those with no creative bone.
But fret not! We are here to take that burden off your shoulders. Follow our tips, and you will have an engaging and inspiring Google Slides presentation in your arsenal. Let’s explore!
What are the Benefits of Making Your Google Slides Look Good?
(i). Improved Engagement
There’s no doubt that visually awesome things quickly catch the eye.
Aesthetically appealing slides improve engagement by keeping the audience hooked throughout. The coherent and cohesive slide layout eases the comprehension and retention of the message.
(ii). Professionalism
When you spend time creating a presentation, it’s visible in your delivery. Carefully crafted slides will convey your credibility and professionalism, fostering trust in you. It reflects that you value the audience’s time and aim to add value to their knowledge.
(iii). Enhanced Communication
A well-designed Google Slides presentation is a great way to explain complex ideas and concepts. The use of visualization techniques, such as graphs, charts, and illustrations, makes the information self-explainable and easy to grasp, reducing the audience’s cognitive load.
(iv). Competitive Advantage
Presentations are of great use in the professional and academic world for sharing research, explaining concepts, demonstrating products or services, seeking investments, and more.
Well-crafted presentations offer a competitive advantage, as they help you stand out from the crowd and make a distinct place in the audience’s minds.
(v). Better Persuasion
Research suggests that visually enticing slides are more effective, as people are more likely to be persuaded by information. It improves people’s perception, making them more receptive and open towards your message.
(vi). Brand Representation
Google Slides presentations let you reinforce your brand identity by allowing you to incorporate the company’s logo, color scheme, and typeface. You can also strengthen your brand voice by keeping the presentation’s tone and language in alignment with the brand’s personality.
Tips to Make Your Google Slides Look Good
1. Choose a Relevant Theme and Layout
A well-designed layout is crucial to the overall aesthetic of a presentation. Google Slides offers rich layout options to improve the looks of your slides. You have placeholders for placing texts, images, content, and other elements in the correct format.
Select a layout that best suits your needs and customize it.
Utilize the master slides tool to make edits to the other slides. Customize the background, theme, and placeholders in the master slide, and all changes made here will be reflected in all your other slides. It will save you time as you won’t have to go through the burdensome task of changing each slide separately.
Steps to Edit Master Slide in Google Slides:
- Go to Slide in the top menu and choose Edit Theme from the dropdown menu.
- Open your Google Slides presentation that you want to edit.
It will open the master template editor.
- Ensure you select the master slide at the top. Otherwise, by default, one of the layouts will be chosen.
- Make desired changes to the master slide, and then click X at the top-right to close the master template editor.
The changes you made will appear on all slides.
2. Incorporate Well Structured and Quality Content
There is a famous phrase: “Content is king,” and for good reason. No matter how polished your slides are, without quality content, they will fall flat.
So, work on creating well-researched and structured content with a clear hierarchy. Ensure it has a smooth flow to facilitate easy comprehension for the audience. Your content should have a consistent font size and follow the format of headings followed by texts.
Begin with the basics and then describe and discuss each section in detail. A clear format that flows into a narrative arc will make it easy for people to follow the message and understand what’s being said.
Remember not to include too much text. Use bullet points and make your content inclusive by incorporating other forms of multimedia as well.
3. Be Attentive to the Typeface
The typeface you choose should be legible and clear. You don’t want the audience to squint at the screen to figure out the text. You can also choose to add fonts of your choice to make your presentation stand out.
Experiment with fonts in terms of size and style to create a visual hierarchy and make your message more engaging.
Use typefaces in a way that essential headings and pointers are more noticeable than the supporting material, which may be less emphasized.
Achieve visual consistency by using a maximum of two or three fonts and maintaining the same font size throughout each slide.
4. Pick the Right Color
Colors have a scientific basis behind them, as they can psychologically impact people with different connotations, making them a great option to enhance the communication of your message.
Always opt for a consistent color scheme, preferably one that aligns with your brand guidelines, for a unified brand identity.
Go for combinations that are pleasing and complementary to enhance the receptivity of your message. Use the hues to emphasize and highlight important information, such as headlines, key statistics, and CTAs.
Additionally, the text and backdrop should have sufficient contrast to ensure readability. A light backdrop with dark text and vice versa makes for the most suitable combination.
5. Include Images and GIFs
Too much text on a slide can bore people and make them lose interest. Catchy, high-quality images will help add interest to your slides and enhance learning. Include images that are relevant to your content so that by looking at them, the audience gets to know what the content is about.
Google Slides allows you to upload images from your computer and drive.
You can also insert stock images, GIFs, stickers, and Google images from the available repository.
6. Animations and Transitions
Google Slides offers a feature to add animations and transitions to affect how slides change and how the elements appear on the slides. These attributes help make slides more lively and dynamic.
Transitions are movements and effects that affect the flow of slides like fades, flips, and dissolves. Animations are movements of elements, such as text, pictures, and shapes, on an individual slide.
While presenters can add animations to individual elements – they can also set the time, duration, and effect details for each animation. Some common examples include motion paths, entrance and exit animations, and emphasis animations.
Steps to Add Animations and Transitions in Google Slides:
- Go to the specific slide and select the section to which you want to add animation.
- Then click Insert > Animation.
- Choose the desired slide transition and object animations for a more dynamic look.
A few tips to remember:
- Always choose clear animations and transitions. You wouldn’t want something distracting that can shadow your text.
- Opt for a singular transition to create a visual link between slides and facilitate a seamless flow. Additionally, there must be a uniform and smooth pace of transitions to allow people to follow the progression of your slides smoothly.
- Animations should be used judiciously to emphasize critical information and highlight important text.
7. Charts to Present Data
Charts and graphs enhance the efficiency of a presentation. It enables you to present complex and diverse data easily, such as a comparison of contributions of different categories to the whole, changes over time, etc.
Google Slides has built-in charts and graphs, which you can easily edit according to your data. You can also insert a specific chart or graph from your Google Sheet.
8. Live Q&A Session
The best and most engaging presentations are those which are interactive, where the presenter and the audience interact.
To keep your presentation engaging, add a live Q&A session. It will allow people the space to ask questions and be more present.
Q&A sessions will provide you with the opportunity to interact with the audience and gauge their understanding of your content. You will be able to address their concerns, solidifying your message in their mind.
Steps to Start a Live Q&A Session in Google Slides:
- Open your Google Slides presentation. Click the dropdown arrow next to Slideshow in the top right corner.
- Click Presenter View.
- In the pop-up window, click Audience Tools. Click Star New.
- It will turn ON the toggle for accepting questions.
9. Incorporate Diagrams
Include diagrams in your Google Slides presentation to make it more understandable. There are six types of diagrams available to choose from, including timeline, process, relationship, cycle, and hierarchy. Select the ones that best serve your requirements and make adjustments until you find the perfect fit for your presentation.
10. Insert Hyperlinks
Adding hyperlinks to your presentation is another valuable tip that enhances its effectiveness. You can add hyperlinks to websites, images, and texts in your presentation as needed. You can link to other slides in the same presentation, to different slides, and even to files on Google Drive.
11. Use Google Slides Templates
Google Slides has an in-built repository of pre-designed templates related to marketing, project, product, etc., to enhance your presentation. Instead of starting from scratch each time, choose from these templates and customize them to show your information in the best way.
Pro Tip: If you don’t find the relevant template in the Google Slides repository, you can explore readymade Google Slides templates and themes provided by other platforms
12. Embed Video
Consider embedding YouTube videos on the slides to make them more engaging. Google Slides also provides you an option to incorporate videos saved on your Google Drive. It will also help you catch and maintain the audience’s attention.
12. Embed Audio
Add music or audio clips to your Google Slides presentation to set the mood, boost your content, and make the audience’s experience more compelling.
A Few Tips
Mentioned below are some Google Slides hacks that can help your presentation reach its maximum potential.
- Create an outline first before starting with anything else. No matter how much you beautify your slides, without a clear agenda and coherent content, it will not make any sense to anyone.
A clear outline will ensure you have included all the crucial information in your slides. Consider factors such as the presentation’s objectives, the audience, critical information to be included, and the content’s structure to create an effective outline for your presentation.
- Keep your presentation consistent across all slides in terms of layout, font, color palette, and other elements. It’s essential to maintain visual coherence, brand identity, and professionalism in the presentation. It will also mean less load for the audience, giving them more space to understand and retain the content.
Summing It Up
A thoughtfully designed Google Slides presentation complements and reinforces your information. The foundation pillars of a solid presentation are simplicity, compelling content, and a good understanding of the audience.
The tricks mentioned above will help make your Google Slides presentations more impactful, memorable, and engaging.
