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Emma Bannister is Australia’s leading Presentation Expert. Like you, Emma has seen the shift in the culture of presentations over the years: endless bullet points don’t engage audiences. With over two decades of Visual Design experience, and ten years as founder and CEO at Presentation Studio, Bannister’s view is radically different. Passionate that powerful presentations consist of more than just visual design – she teaches a new way of thinking – Visual Thinking.
How presentations used to be
The focus has been in “Listen to me, I am the expert, I am the hero.” Now the audience is the hero, the speaker is there to inform and drive action from the audience.
Latest trends in presentation design
There are two core trends:
- Content. Storytelling is a major trend and very fashionable, there is a lot of research about it. For instance, Emma often shares her own story how she created Presentation Studio. The best is when you are very authentic and genuine in your story, you’re passionate, and your story links back to the point you’re making.
- Visual. A few years ago design moved from traditional images to flat design. More recently flat design has evolved with shadows and gradient effects, with more details creating more depth. Another trend is the use of geometric shapes, angular design, “polygon” shapes. There is also a risk to get too trendy that the audience has to work to understand you. Yet another trend is moving from perfect stock photos with models towards much more personal Instagram-like photos. Finally, you can integrate video into the presentations in the way we use photos, for example: a picture of a face and suddenly the face will blink.
Great tools to get started
You can learn the basic tools (PowerPoint, Illustrator, Photoshop) at Lynda.com
Canva.com is a simple design tool and has fantastic resources
The new site Presentation Guru has articles, tools and resources
Related: SlideMagic and Business Presentations
Favorite quotation
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” — Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Recommended books
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
For design, all Nancy Duarte‘s books
Routine to Shine
Meditate for 10 minutes every day.
Links
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