Creativity is all you need.

If you're not creative, your audience will be bored.

A creative presentation makes a mark.

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If you're a designer, you've heard these phrases at some point in life. Well, creativity is definitely important, but it's not an end to all problems. It is not the only thing you always need in your presentations. There's a time and place for everything. So, there's a time and place for creativity too. 

Sometimes, a minimal presentation could save the day too. And that is precisely what we're talking about today. In this article, we're helping you design minimalist presentations that make an impact—but subtly! Let's begin!

What is a Minimalist Presentation?

A minimalist presentation is one that speaks for itself. There’s not much visual or graphical imagery in the content, and the content written in the presentation is substantial enough to create an impact. It also involves conveying complex ideas in a simple, memorable, and straightforward manner. 

Let’s see a few examples of minimal presentations:

In the above example, you can see that the designer has included images, shapes and graphs but the only difference is that these are not loud. The visuals that you see are very subtle and pleasing to the eye. Let’s see another example.

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This sample presentation about nature is another great example of a minimal presentation. You can see how the designer has incorporated graphic imagery in a subtle way. The main hero remains the content of the presentation but also does not look like plain chunks of texts that have been pasted into a presentation.

Why create a Minimalist Presentation?

So now you know what a minimalist presentation is, but why do you need to create minimalist presentations when you could always be creative? Here's why:

• Make your content the hero: With a minimalist presentation, you can make your content the hero of the presentation. Oftentimes, when your presentation is too creative or loud, the reader may get lost in the visuals, animations, or videos—leading to attention diversion from the actual content of the presentation. This is perfect for situations when important information needs to be conveyed. 

• Keep viewer's attention on the content: As touched upon earlier, your reader may get lost looking at all the creativity you've included when they're viewing your presentations. What happens then is that important information gets lost. Your reader is not able to grasp what was actually meant to be grasped from the presentation.

• Easy to design: As a designer, your job gets easier when it comes to designing a minimalist presentation. While a creative presentation may require more of your brain and time—a minimalist presentation will not. It is, of course, not in your hands to choose the type of presentation but if you get a chance—it's always easier to design a minimalist presentation.

• Better for formal settings: When you're in formal settings like corporate meetings, minimal presentations are the way to go. You don't want elements popping in and out when there are a bunch of C-suite people sitting in front of you. 

5 Tips to create a Minimalist Presentation

Let’s move to the juicy part now. Here are X tips you can use to create your own minimal presentations. Let’s roll!

1. Use the 5/5/5 rule

The 5/5/5 rule is exactly what it sounds like under this rule:

• No more than five words per line of text
• Five lines of text per slide
• Five text-heavy slides in a row

The basic purpose of this rule is to not overwhelm the viewers with too much information all at once. Using this rule also means that the presenter will have to speak more without looking at the presentation—which is good. Not speaking by looking at the presentation makes the session more interactive.

2. Don’t add too many animations

Yeah, animations are cool—but up to an extent. Being overrun with intricate animations and intriguing slide transitions may grow irritating, as anyone who has endured a presentation where every letter of every paragraph zoomed across the screen will attest. Before adding effects like this to your presentation, consider whether the moment would be just as compelling without it. Does it obtrusively postpone information? Leave out the effect if either question has a yes or a maybe as the response.

3. Use corporate fonts and keep them small

A presentation looks minimalist only when using simple corporate fonts like Arial, Noto Serif, Times New Roman, or Roboto. You must also try to keep the font size smaller. A font size between 12-16 should be accurate. Make sure not to unnecessarily bold, capitalize or italicize your fonts, as that could be distracting for the reader.

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4. Use no more than 3 colors

Don’t use all the colors in the world in the name of a beautiful presentation. In fact, using at most three colors is a good limit for presentations. One color should be your background color, second should be the text color and the third could be used to highlight important stuff in the presentation. Using too many colors only disturbs the viewer's experience and may also come off as kiddush sometimes.

5. Use one image per slide

images certainly assist your presentation become more visually appealing but, don't go overboard with too many images on one slide. It's not a photo book; it's a presentation. Keep your designs basic with only one image and little or no text.

Let us help you design Minimalist Presentation

You’ve understood what a minimalist presentation is and are probably ready to make one! But..

According to a study by Visme, 47% of presenters take more than 8 hours to design a presentation. A minimalist presentation may take you less time but it's still precious time that you will spend on building these presentations. We at INK PPT help you design these presentations and take the burden off your shoulders. Our team designers are ready to start designing the perfect minimalist presentation for you. Start here!

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