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51 Best Presentation Slides for Engaging Presentations (2023)
Written by: Chloe West
When you're creating a presentation, whether you're presenting live in front of an audience or embedding it on a webpage for visitors to access on their own time, you want it to be engaging. And unfortunately, too many presentation slides are boring and forgettable.
But with Visme, we've put together 51 of our top presentation slides to help you find the perfect template for your next presentation.
To make navigation easier, we've broken them down into six categories. Browse through each below to find your next presentation slides.
Here's a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more below:
51 Best Presentation Slides for Engaging Presentations
Business presentation slides, finance presentation slides.
- Sales & Marketing Presentation Slides
Education Presentation Slides
Pitch deck presentation slides, nonprofit presentation slides.
There are so many reasons you might need to give a presentation in your business or career. And we’ve got just the right templates to get you started.
After all, you’re probably spending enough time creating the content and rehearsing your presentation deck. You don’t need to worry about your presentation slide design at the same time.
Here are a few presentation slides ideas based on topic material like the ones you’re regularly using.
1. Meeting Agenda Template
Customize this presentation template to make it your own! Edit and Download
Sick of seeing team members nod off or lose focus during your team meetings?
Put together your meeting agenda ahead of time using these presentation slides to help keep your team engaged and informed throughout.
This template comes with 15 premade presentation slides that cover everything from project management to charts showing performance and overall meeting objectives. Whatever you need to share in your meeting, you can find in this theme.
Plus, you can completely customize it to match your company colors directly in Visme!
2. Company Goals Template
It’s important to ensure everyone on your team knows and understands the company’s goals. After all, everyone’s work should be geared towards achieving those goals.
You can use these nice slides to put together a background of your company and how far it’s come, as well as detail your upcoming goals, launches and more.
3. Company Overview Template
If you’re speaking to a networking group about your company or pitching to investors, you likely need to give an overview of your company, its leadership team and its offerings.
These are the perfect presentation slides to help you put together a minimalistic design that draws focus towards your company and its mission.
Plus, all of the slides are perfectly set up to highlight your company’s most important assets.
And best of all, they’re completely customizable. Add in your own brand fonts and colors to create the perfect presentation for your business.
4. Project Status Report Template
When it comes to project management, you could always just send over a boring email or report update, but a better way would be to put together a presentation updating your team and/or your supervisors on the status of the project and the remaining timeline.
This presentation theme comes with 14 different slides to help you put together a status report that covers all aspects of your project: the various phases and how far along each one is, the timeline for your project, a project health card and more.
You can also gain even more inspiration for your project timeline slides from these timeline infographic ideas .
5. Business Annual Report Template
Want to show your boss how the company is doing? Or share how your team’s efforts have affected the bottom line? Put together a presentation that shows your business’s results over the year.
While this presentation template comes with a fun geometric accent pattern, you’re able to swap out any of these shapes for ones that more accurately represent your business or your message right in Visme’s design dashboard.
6. Business Plan Template
Are you starting a new business? You might be looking for investors, or perhaps you want to pitch the idea to a potential cofounder.
You can use this theme to put together a polished business plan presentation that showcases your business idea, the market summary, the industry opportunities and more.
You can also use Visme’s color themes to find the perfect color scheme for your presentation and your upcoming business. After all, your brand colors can say a lot about your business.
7. Product Introduction Template
Put together a presentation that introduces a new product idea to your boss, your board of directors or your investors. Take advantage of the charts and graphs in Visme’s design dashboard to showcase various studies and statistics that prove why your idea will be profitable.
Or you can utilize this presentation theme to introduce a product to the public. If your company is in the process of developing a new product to release, a presentation introduction can be a great and engaging way to share it with your audience.
8. Product Presentation Template
Whether you’re launching a new product or sharing the features of an already existing one, you can show off your product through a presentation with nice slides.
You can share your presentation on social media, on your website or at a large company event to announce it to your audience. Include bright, high-quality photos of your product and a list of its best features to really highlight your new release.
9. Visual Brand Identity Template
There are many different ways to create a brand style guide for your business. One great way is with a presentation.
These presentation example slides allow you to seamlessly input your fonts, colors and other visual guidelines into a single presentation so that you can easily share your brand with the designers, marketers and other members of your team.
10. Simple Business Presentation Template
These presentation slides can help you easily put together a business introduction template for a conference or networking event.
Just click above to edit in Visme, switch out your background with one of the thousands of options in our photo library, add in your own key facts, vision and values and download!
11. Industry Trends Template
Put together a presentation to showcase upcoming trends in your industry. You can leave the patterns and colors the way they are in these existing presentation slides, or you can add in your own brand colors or product colors.
Understanding developing trends in your industry each year is important so that you know where your business should focus its efforts.
Sharing a presentation with your team is a great way to stay ahead of the curve.
12. Services Template
Use these slide presentation examples to showcase your services and what you can offer your clients/customers. If you have a visual business, a presentation is an excellent way to highlight your work and show it off to prospective leads.
Swap out each photo in the example slides with photos of your work, update the fonts to match your brand voice (or upload your brand fonts) and add in the services you offer.
13. Slideshow Template
A slideshow presentation is a great way for you to showcase photos of your work alongside your service offerings. This template even includes social media icons on the last page so that viewers know how to find the business online.
Again, you’ll want to swap out all of the photos with your own work, but this presentation theme is a great way to get started.
14. How To Presentation Template
Are you presenting a tutorial or step-by-step guide on how to do something? Using example slides to put together your content is a great idea.
It’s a disservice to your company and your customer to assume that everyone automatically knows how to use your product or service. Showing your audience exactly what to do is essential to your customer service strategy.
15. Survey Results Template
Putting together a customer survey is a great idea to understand how your audience feels about your industry or even your company. Grab those results and insert them into these presentation slides to share with your team.
You can also put together a blog post or webpage with survey results and embed this presentation directly into it so your audience can understand the state of the industry as well.
Visme’s design dashboard allows you to add in various charts and graphs that adjust automatically based on the numbers you input. After all, ain’t nobody got time for manually adjusting the sizes of bar graphs and pie charts.
16. Company Overview Presentation Template
Utilize these beautifully designed presentation slides to create a brief overview of your company and its offerings.
Having a readily available presentation overview of your company is a great idea for when you’re pitching investors, journalists for coverage and more. You don’t need to recreate a presentation each time. Instead, put together a visually appealing and informative one-size-fits-all overview.
You can add in your own photos or choose from Visme’s photo library to keep the same beautifully minimalistic appeal.
When sharing financial information, it’s always helpful to put together some kind of visual aid. This can be used to further emphasize your content, whether it’s about going over budget, showing off exciting revenue increases and more.
Check out these finance slide presentation examples to find the perfect template for your goals.
17. Financial Report Template
Use this template to put together a presentation that goes over your company’s expenses, sales, profits and more.
The built-in data visualization options allow you to showcase your point with more than just numbers. Add in a table of contents to keep your report organized and cohesive, letting your team know exactly what information they’ll find inside.
18. Statistical Presentation Template
Need to report some financial statistics and data? These presentation slides are perfect for helping you insert cold, hard facts into your presentation.
Each slide includes a different type of chart or graph for you to choose from to fully represent your data and statistics. You can easily switch your color scheme by inputting your own brand colors or by choosing a preset color theme from Visme’s dashboard.
19. Map Presentation Template
It’s important to know where it makes the most sense to market your product geographically. Showcase sales and overall company growth and profitability by location.
Knowing your revenue based on geographic location is essential for a global company, and this presentation template is perfect for the job.
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Sales and Marketing Presentation Slides
When it comes to sales and marketing for your company, there is a lot of data and information that can be represented visually. Creating sales and marketing presentations helps with keeping your team on the right track, but can also be a great way to make a pitch.
Learn more about creating essential sales and marketing presentations with these templates.
20. Visualization for Sales and Marketing Template
When you’re putting together a sales and marketing plan, you have to present it to your boss for approval, then to your team for implementation.
Use these presentation slides to help visualize your sales and marketing plan , including each of the upcoming tactics and strategies and the steps for putting them in place.
Having a presentation to refer back to allows your team to ensure they’re implementing the strategies properly.
21. Simple Marketing Presentation Template
Whether you’re introducing new marketing ideas to your team, pitching a new marketing strategy to your boss or to a new client, a presentation with nice slides is the perfect format.
Grab this presentation template that helps you to define your new ideas and share specific tactics for how they should be implemented for the business. Then get ready to rock your pitch and share your awesome new ideas.
22. Market Analysis Template
Review market trends with your team so you know where to take your company’s marketing messaging. You can send out a customer survey or take a look at a few studies that have been done surrounding your industry to put together your market analysis report.
Input all of your findings into this presentation template so you can easily present it to your team or grab the link and send it in an email. Even if you’re not standing up to give a presentation, these presentation slides are still an engaging way to share necessary information.
23. Marketing Plan Template
Building a new marketing plan for your business? Put together great presentations for your marketing plan to share with your team.
Presenting your new marketing plan to the company is a great way to get everyone motivated and on board with new strategies and ideas.
You can add in your goals, objectives and even user personas with this ready-made marketing plan template.
24. Sales Report Template
Your sales team should be regularly providing insight on how much revenue the company is generating. And a great way to do that is through a sales report presentation or slideshow.
It’s important to stay informed of sales growth throughout the year. Share graphs of sales quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year to see where the company/sales team needs to improve.
25. Press Release Template
Don’t just write a boring old press release to send out to journalists and media publications. Instead, create an interactive press release showcasing your launch.
A presentation press release will help your business stand out from the dry press releases most publications receive, offering even more incentive for them to highlight your business and its products/services.
Edit this template to add in your own brand touches, voice and launch information before grabbing the link and sending it off.
26. Social Media Report Template
Sharing results of any marketing strategy is always essential. This is how you keep your team updated of any strategies that are working, and any strategies that need some adapting.
This presentation theme is a great way to share your current strategy and results. Input your platforms, your strategies and your metrics before presenting it to your team. Customize the presentation slides so that they cater perfectly to your company’s strategy.
27. Social Media Strategy Template
Pitching a social media strategy to your boss can also be done well with a presentation. Showcase why social media is important to invest in, what your plan is and how it will affect the bottom line.
This presentation template already gets you started in perfectly pitching your own strategy. Simply adjust it to your brand colors and fonts and update the information with your own.
Presentations are huge in educational settings.
Whether you’re a teacher looking for an interactive way to share your lesson plan or a student trying to finish up a school project, we’ve got the presentation templates for you.
Take a look at our education presentation slide options to find one that works for you.
28. Training Plan Template
When working one-on-one with a student or mentee, it can be a good idea to put a training or education plan into place. These presentation slides are the perfect start to your lesson and can help to visualize the content and learn in a different way.
Putting together educational content in a presentation helps offer different formats for learning. Students are often not provided with all of the tools they need to learn the material, and a presentation is a great place to start.
29. Book Report Template
Putting together a book report to present for your class? Get started with a presentation theme that you can fully customize for your specific book.
These presentation slides allow you to seamlessly enter in the information about your main characters, the theme of the book, its timeline and any other pertinent information you need to share with the class.
Don’t worry about presentation design in your next project. We’ve already got it all put together for you! Simply click edit, insert your book content and download your presentation.
30. Trivia Template
Help your class remember fast facts before a text with this trivia template. It’s a great way to host a study session in your classroom, and the content is easily interchangeable.
Or if you’re a student, put together a presentation study guide to help you memorize the most important key facts and information from class. A trivia presentation format can make for a fun study sesh before the test.
31. Lesson Plan Template
Don’t waste time putting together a dry Microsoft Word or PowerPoint lesson plan. Instead, create an interactive lesson plan that helps you stay on message during your class, and helps your students to know exactly what’s going to come next.
32. Group Project Template
Group presentations just got a little more exciting. Blow the rest of your class’s projects away by using these presentation slides to compile your overall project objectives and results.
You can easily adjust colors and fonts, add in your team members and insert copy relevant to your class and your group project.
Don’t forget to thank your classmates and your teacher for listening in the end.
A pitch deck is an essential presentation for all businesses and entrepreneurs to have. There are many times you might need to pitch your business, whether it’s to investors for funding, journalists for media coverage and more.
Using a presentation template to put together your pitch deck is a great idea so that you can focus on pitching your business without having to worry about the design.
Browse through the pitch deck presentation slides below to find one that works for your business and its goals.
33. Airbnb Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Give this Airbnb-inspired pitch deck presentation theme a go when putting together a slideshow for your business. Include the solution that your business provides its customers, product/service information, and excerpts from press acknowledgements.
34. Front Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Showcase your business with this geometric pitch deck template inspired by Front. Add in the planned acquisition channels for your business, your leadership team and more.
Your pitch deck is meant to showcase your business to people who may want to work with you, so it’s important to share the most imperative information.
35. Buffer Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Showcase the state of the industry and your business’s role in it with this pitch presentation slides idea inspired by Buffer. The information these presentation slides include helps you to share the impact your company has had on your industry.
Since industries are ever-changing, you can easily update the information within your pitch deck in Visme and it will automatically sync to the webpage where you embed this presentation.
36. Comms Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Use these presentation slides inspired by Intercom to give your audience an idea of what your product is going to look like and how it will work.
This is the perfect pitch deck template to take advantage of when launching a new SaaS product or app so that you can share what the technology will look like and how it will work.
Showcasing specific features and tutorials is a great way to get people talking about your product.
37. WeWork Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Is your company helping to fuel a movement? Share how your company is changing the industry with this pitch deck template inspired by WeWork.
It’s exciting when your business is doing more for your industry than simply adding another product or service. Focusing on a movement that really switches up the way your industry does things is an incredible feat.
Utilize a pitch deck template like the one above to showcase how your company is involved.
38. Buzzfeed Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Does your business focus on content? Or perhaps you’re creating a new kind of media outlet?
Show off your content and analytics with this Buzzfeed-inspired pitch deck presentation template. Getting advertisers on board and other media outlets to talk about you is important for success.
This is why you need to be putting together a pitch deck that shares that kind of information. No one will want to work with you if you keep your analytics in the dark.
39. Investor Pitch Deck Template
Starting a new venture that you need funding for? Use these presentation slides to put together a pitch for investors in your business.
From showcasing the problem in the industry to your business’s solution, along with your business plan and pricing table is a great way to get potential investors interested in what you’re selling.
40. LinkedIn Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Compare and contrast what processes look like with and without your business with this pitch deck template inspired by LinkedIn.
It’s a great idea to take care of this in your pitch deck so that you make the job of any media outlet or writer covering your business even easier. After all, you’ve done the hard work for them.
They were going to share how your business helps. You’ve already visualized this in your pitch deck. This increases the chances that people will cover your business.
41. Mattermark Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Use this pitch deck presentation theme inspired by Mattermark to put together key questions about the industry that showcase why your business is so essential.
Launching a startup is hard work, and that’s why a pitch deck is an essential marketing tool to have. Creating a pitch deck that already answers the why and how questions of your business is a great way to introduce who you are and what you’re doing to investors and reporters.
42. Foursquare Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Put together an overview of how your product works with this pitch deck presentation template inspired by Foursquare.
With presentation slides already in place to showcase a step-by-step tutorial, all you have to do is input your content and publish your presentation.
43. Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Presentation Template
If your company has been doing some awesome stuff lately, you want your potential investors and those looking to work with your business to know about it.
Show off your company achievements with this pitch deck presentation template inspired by the famous Fyre Festival pitch deck.
44. Biogrify Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Use these presentation slides inspired by Biogrify to excite people about how they can use your product. If you have a unique product or service, you just need to drum up a little excitement and attention!
A pitch deck is the perfect way to do that. Add in your company’s logo, mission and unique selling proposition to get people looking forward to becoming customers/users.
45. Launchrock Pitch Deck Presentation Template
Influencer marketing is a huge marketing strategy that can generate some serious results. What better way to pitch influencers about your business than with this pitch deck inspired by Launchrock?
Don’t email off some boring PDF or Google Doc. Create enticing pitches to influencers with this pitch deck theme, and start watching the replies from influencers pour in.
Working with influencers to promote your product is a great way to increase your audience base and word of mouth about your company.
When you’re running a nonprofit, there is a lot of pitching your organization, talking to donors and working on events to increase donations. This is why you need a presentation.
Putting together a presentation for your nonprofit is a great way to showcase what your organization does and why people should donate to it.
Here are a few nonprofit presentation slides to choose from, where all you have to do is insert your information, change colors and fonts and present.
46. Nonprofit Report Template
Put together a report that covers what your nonprofit is working against as well as your nonprofit’s achievements each year.
47. Nonprofit Art Template
Use this presentation slides idea to provide an overview of your nonprofit and its main projects. To generate even more support and donations, it’s important to provide clear insight into your key products and objectives.
48. Nonprofit Environmental Template
This presentation theme is perfect for showcasing the key issues your nonprofit fights for and its process for doing so.
Being transparent about what your nonprofit works on is important so that your donors know exactly where their money is going. Being secretive can generate some bad press, so it’s better to be open with your supporters.
49. Nonprofit Animals Template
These presentation slides use earthy colors to convey their nonprofit’s connection to animal rights. Use this to showcase your nonprofit. You can use the current colors or update it to match your nonprofit’s brand/industry.
50. Wildlife Conservation Template
Use these presentation slides to cover why your nonprofit matters and why donors should consider contributing.
A nonprofit only exists when people donate, so putting together a compelling pitch deck showcasing why your nonprofit is so important to your main issue is important. These slides are perfect for sharing your goals and mission.
51. Pet Adoption Slideshow Template
This pitch deck presentation template is perfect for SPCAs and other animal societies working on finding forever homes for their animals.
However, it can also be adapted to any other nonprofit or business need. The great thing about these presentation slides is how versatile they are. Each one is completely customizable to fit your specific needs.
Ready to Create Engaging Presentation Slides?
Ready to get started with creating your presentation? Choose from any of these 51 presentation slides, or browse Visme’s complete template library to find the perfect match for creating your own presentation.
Each one of these presentation themes can be adapted to match your business, school, nonprofit and other needs so that you can create something perfect for your goals and objectives. Create your free account to start customizing with our drag-and-drop presentation maker.
And once you’ve finished creating your presentation, check out our video to help you present like a pro and wow your audience.
Create beautiful presentations faster with Visme.
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About the Author
Chloe West is the content marketing manager at Visme. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more. During her spare time, she enjoys exploring her home city of Charleston with her son.
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Google Slides is an online presentation app that lets you create and format presentations and work with other people.
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- Presentation Slides
- Delivering a Presentation
- Overcoming Stage Fright
- Presentation Practice Apps
- Quotations in Presentations
Words of Wisdom
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
— William Zinsser
Slides can add great value to an oral presentation. Like all visual aids, though, slides should enhance your presentation, not carry it. Never give a presentation with slides unless you’re prepared to give the presentation without them. At no time should the visuals overshadow you as the speaker.
Starting Out
Begin by selecting a topic that fits the assignment . Make sure it’s expansive enough to fill the time allotted but not so vast that you can’t cover it sufficiently.
Next, brainstorm. Write down anything and everything that comes to mind about your topic. Think of as many ideas as possible, so you can choose the best ones. Build on what you already know about the topic and don’t dismiss any ideas, even those that seem far-fetched. Ask others for input to broaden your view of the topic.
Finally, consider your audience. Your audience will determine the level of formality of your presentation. If you’re giving a specialized speech, define any terms the audience may not know. Pinpoint areas in your speech where the audience may disagree with you and strengthen your argument in those sections.
The conclusion should, likewise, end on a strong note—don’t simply summarize. Think of an example or idea that will stay with the audience and back it up with a strong or memorable image.
Once you have framed the basic presentation, cut the text on the slides to bar minimum— use only what is necessary to enhance or illustrate your spoken words. Slides are like billboards: people look at them only for a second before they shift their attention elsewhere. Placing an entire paragraph on a slide will misfire, as your audience will either try too hard to read it and miss what you’re saying or read it before you finish speaking, making what you say irrelevant. In PowerPoint, “ctrl B” will blacken the screen, a good trick if you want to turn the audience’s attention away from the visual for a short time.
In addition to ensuring the content on your slides is short and concise, your presentation as a whole should be condensed to keep the audience’s attention. If a lengthy presentation is necessary, make sure it’s dynamic enough to keep your listeners focused. Rehearse your presentation ahead of time so you know how long it will be, leaving time for questions or comments from the audience.
Slides, like anything else written, need proofreading. You don’t want to embarrass yourself on presentation day with a “their” instead of a “there,” in large print for everyone to see on the screen.
Writing Text
Be sure to use a legible font size for your slide text. If you keep the text to a minimum, as you should, making the font large enough to be read shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re using Microsoft PowerPoint, go to slide sorter view and adjust the zoom to 66%. If you can read the slides in that view, your audience should be able to read them as well.
Don’t get carried away with the animation or transitions features. Minimal animation can add a nice touch to your presentation, but too many special effects look cheesy. Use attention-grabbing animation only where you need to add emphasis and stick with classic options such as “fade in” as opposed to “spiral in.” Animations should be fast—you don’t want your audience to get impatient waiting for your title to scroll across the screen. Your animation should make sense and look natural according to the layout of your information. (For example, the title should never appear last.) Above all, animation should not hinder the legibility of your slides.
Eye-catching slides can greatly enhance your oral presentation, such as the slide featured in this section. Most presentation programs, like PowerPoint or Keynote, come with premade design options that work well for basic presentations. To customize your visuals, however, you’ll want to learn how to create presentations slides yourself.
Designing Slides
Simplicity is an essential design principle for slides. Slides will be cleaner, sleeker, more professional, and more legible with a simple color palette and consistent shapes. Don’t include too much text on your slides; instead, save that space for striking visuals. Otherwise, your audience will be too busy reading to listen to you.
Composition of slides—or the layout of information—can also help make your slides more effective. If your audience members are accustomed to reading text from top to bottom and left to right as we do in English, then the elements in your slide should lead the viewers’ eyes in those directions. Avoid “unnatural” placement such as a title in the bottom, right-hand corner.
Margins matter, even on presentation slides. Don’t squish information onto a slide by moving it to the edge of the screen—it looks messy and unprofessional. You should also leave empty space between objects (i.e., a text box and an image). If you use a premade layout provided by your slide program, this shouldn’t be a problem. If you design your own layout, consider using gridlines as you work to keep objects aligned and separated.
Adding to Your Slides
The slide in the exampleon the left uses art and bright colors; it manages to be conservative and professional by remaining simple and clean. Make sure any art you use clearly connects to your content. For example, don’t use a picture of a stage when you’re talking about the stages of a process; the connection between the ideas is simply too tenuous. Good quality photographs will take your presentation to a higher level of professionalism. Stock photo websites, such as Morguefile.com or Texas A&M’s Marketing and Communications stock photography website, photo.tamu.edu, offer many free, high quality photographs. Use photos that are simple and of the highest resolution possible. Clip art drawings should be used with discretion because they often look unprofessional. Use your own graphics and photographs wherever possible to make your presentation unique. To create clean, colorful diagrams, consider using a tool such as Microsoft’s SmartArt.
Unless you’re using your own photos or stock images, provide a citation to indicates the source of the material. Don’t just use a search engine and copy an image you like without citing the source.
If you enlarge a photo (or any picture), view the slide show to make sure the image is not pixelated (fuzzy) due to your expansion. If you decide to use drawings, all of the images should be in the same color scheme and the same style. (Try the Format > Recolor option if they aren’t originally the same color.) Many clip art images can be modified by selecting, right clicking, and “ungrouping.” This allows the user to delete, move, or recolor specific shapes in the image.
Photos can be used as slide backgrounds to capture attention; however, on photo background slides, use minimal text and make sure the font color is readable. Also, make sure the photo you’ve chosen isn’t too busy and that it doesn’t distract from your information. Be careful when using the “select transparent color” tool to remove a background on an image because the tool will remove all of that particular color in the image. Only use the tool if the background is one pure color (white); otherwise, you’ll be left with a pixelated mess. Avoid placing a picture with a white background onto a slide with a dark background.
Strive to be “conservatively liberal” in your designs. In other words, select graphics and colors conservatively, but think of new, inventive ways to use them. Your designs can be interesting and distinctive and still look professional.
Finally, remember that a strong stage presence will take your presentation much further than good slides. When you’re presenting, make sure you have energy and “give a speech.” don’t read from your slides. Stand up straight, move, gesture for emphasis, and maintain eye contact with your audience. If you are actively engaged in your presentation, your audience will be as well.
Duarté, Nancy. Slideology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. Sebastopol: O’Reilly. 2008.
Faigley, Lester. Writing: A Guide for College and Beyond. New York: Pearson-Longman. 2007.
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How to Give a Killer Presentation
- Chris Anderson
For more than 30 years, the TED conference series has presented enlightening talks that people enjoy watching. In this article, Anderson, TED’s curator, shares five keys to great presentations:
- Frame your story (figure out where to start and where to end).
- Plan your delivery (decide whether to memorize your speech word for word or develop bullet points and then rehearse it—over and over).
- Work on stage presence (but remember that your story matters more than how you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous).
- Plan the multimedia (whatever you do, don’t read from PowerPoint slides).
- Put it together (play to your strengths and be authentic).
According to Anderson, presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance—not style. In fact, it’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. So if your thinking is not there yet, he advises, decline that invitation to speak. Instead, keep working until you have an idea that’s worth sharing.
Lessons from TED
A little more than a year ago, on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, some colleagues and I met a 12-year-old Masai boy named Richard Turere, who told us a fascinating story. His family raises livestock on the edge of a vast national park, and one of the biggest challenges is protecting the animals from lions—especially at night. Richard had noticed that placing lamps in a field didn’t deter lion attacks, but when he walked the field with a torch, the lions stayed away. From a young age, he’d been interested in electronics, teaching himself by, for example, taking apart his parents’ radio. He used that experience to devise a system of lights that would turn on and off in sequence—using solar panels, a car battery, and a motorcycle indicator box—and thereby create a sense of movement that he hoped would scare off the lions. He installed the lights, and the lions stopped attacking. Soon villages elsewhere in Kenya began installing Richard’s “lion lights.”
The story was inspiring and worthy of the broader audience that our TED conference could offer, but on the surface, Richard seemed an unlikely candidate to give a TED Talk. He was painfully shy. His English was halting. When he tried to describe his invention, the sentences tumbled out incoherently. And frankly, it was hard to imagine a preteenager standing on a stage in front of 1,400 people accustomed to hearing from polished speakers such as Bill Gates, Sir Ken Robinson, and Jill Bolte Taylor.
But Richard’s story was so compelling that we invited him to speak. In the months before the 2013 conference, we worked with him to frame his story—to find the right place to begin and to develop a succinct and logical arc of events. On the back of his invention Richard had won a scholarship to one of Kenya’s best schools, and there he had the chance to practice the talk several times in front of a live audience. It was critical that he build his confidence to the point where his personality could shine through. When he finally gave his talk at TED , in Long Beach, you could tell he was nervous, but that only made him more engaging— people were hanging on his every word . The confidence was there, and every time Richard smiled, the audience melted. When he finished, the response was instantaneous: a sustained standing ovation.
Since the first TED conference, 30 years ago, speakers have run the gamut from political figures, musicians, and TV personalities who are completely at ease before a crowd to lesser-known academics, scientists, and writers—some of whom feel deeply uncomfortable giving presentations. Over the years, we’ve sought to develop a process for helping inexperienced presenters to frame, practice, and deliver talks that people enjoy watching. It typically begins six to nine months before the event, and involves cycles of devising (and revising) a script, repeated rehearsals, and plenty of fine-tuning. We’re continually tweaking our approach—because the art of public speaking is evolving in real time—but judging by public response, our basic regimen works well: Since we began putting TED Talks online, in 2006, they’ve been viewed more than one billion times.
On the basis of this experience, I’m convinced that giving a good talk is highly coachable. In a matter of hours, a speaker’s content and delivery can be transformed from muddled to mesmerizing. And while my team’s experience has focused on TED’s 18-minutes-or-shorter format, the lessons we’ve learned are surely useful to other presenters—whether it’s a CEO doing an IPO road show, a brand manager unveiling a new product, or a start-up pitching to VCs.
Frame Your Story
There’s no way you can give a good talk unless you have something worth talking about . Conceptualizing and framing what you want to say is the most vital part of preparation.
Find the Perfect Mix of Data and Narrative
by Nancy Duarte
Most presentations lie somewhere on the continuum between a report and a story. A report is data-rich, exhaustive, and informative—but not very engaging. Stories help a speaker connect with an audience, but listeners often want facts and information, too. Great presenters layer story and information like a cake and understand that different types of talks require differing ingredients.
From Report . . .
(literal, informational, factual, exhaustive).
Research findings. If your goal is to communicate information from a written report, send the full document to the audience in advance, and limit the presentation to key takeaways. Don’t do a long slide show that repeats all your findings. Anyone who’s really interested can read the report; everyone else will appreciate brevity.
Financial presentation. Financial audiences love data, and they’ll want the details. Satisfy their analytical appetite with facts, but add a thread of narrative to appeal to their emotional side. Then present the key takeaways visually, to help them find meaning in the numbers.
Product launch. Instead of covering only specs and features, focus on the value your product brings to the world. Tell stories that show how real people will use it and why it will change their lives.
VC pitch. For 30 minutes with a VC, prepare a crisp, well-structured story arc that conveys your idea compellingly in 10 minutes or less; then let Q&A drive the rest of the meeting. Anticipate questions and rehearse clear and concise answers.
Keynote address. Formal talks at big events are high-stakes, high-impact opportunities to take your listeners on a transformative journey. Use a clear story framework and aim to engage them emotionally.
. . . to Story
(dramatic, experiential, evocative, persuasive).
Nancy Duarte is the author of HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations , Slide:ology , and Resonate . She is the CEO of Duarte, Inc., which designs presentations and teaches presentation development.
We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories, and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that work best to engage people. When I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an audience on a journey. A successful talk is a little miracle—people see the world differently afterward.
If you frame the talk as a journey, the biggest decisions are figuring out where to start and where to end. To find the right place to start, consider what people in the audience already know about your subject—and how much they care about it. If you assume they have more knowledge or interest than they do, or if you start using jargon or get too technical, you’ll lose them. The most engaging speakers do a superb job of very quickly introducing the topic, explaining why they care so deeply about it, and convincing the audience members that they should, too.
The biggest problem I see in first drafts of presentations is that they try to cover too much ground. You can’t summarize an entire career in a single talk. If you try to cram in everything you know, you won’t have time to include key details, and your talk will disappear into abstract language that may make sense if your listeners are familiar with the subject matter but will be completely opaque if they’re new to it. You need specific examples to flesh out your ideas. So limit the scope of your talk to that which can be explained, and brought to life with examples, in the available time. Much of the early feedback we give aims to correct the impulse to sweep too broadly. Instead, go deeper. Give more detail. Don’t tell us about your entire field of study—tell us about your unique contribution.
A successful talk is a little miracle—people see the world differently afterward.
Of course, it can be just as damaging to overexplain or painstakingly draw out the implications of a talk. And there the remedy is different: Remember that the people in the audience are intelligent. Let them figure some things out for themselves. Let them draw their own conclusions.
Many of the best talks have a narrative structure that loosely follows a detective story. The speaker starts out by presenting a problem and then describes the search for a solution. There’s an “aha” moment, and the audience’s perspective shifts in a meaningful way.
If a talk fails, it’s almost always because the speaker didn’t frame it correctly, misjudged the audience’s level of interest, or neglected to tell a story. Even if the topic is important, random pontification without narrative is always deeply unsatisfying. There’s no progression, and you don’t feel that you’re learning.
I was at an energy conference recently where two people—a city mayor and a former governor—gave back-to-back talks. The mayor’s talk was essentially a list of impressive projects his city had undertaken. It came off as boasting, like a report card or an advertisement for his reelection. It quickly got boring. When the governor spoke, she didn’t list achievements; instead, she shared an idea. Yes, she recounted anecdotes from her time in office, but the idea was central—and the stories explanatory or illustrative (and also funny). It was so much more interesting. The mayor’s underlying point seemed to be how great he was, while the governor’s message was “Here’s a compelling idea that would benefit us all.”
Further Reading
Storytelling That Moves People
As a general rule, people are not very interested in talks about organizations or institutions (unless they’re members of them). Ideas and stories fascinate us; organizations bore us—they’re much harder to relate to. (Businesspeople especially take note: Don’t boast about your company; rather, tell us about the problem you’re solving.)
Plan Your Delivery
Once you’ve got the framing down, it’s time to focus on your delivery . There are three main ways to deliver a talk. You can read it directly off a script or a teleprompter. You can develop a set of bullet points that map out what you’re going to say in each section rather than scripting the whole thing word for word. Or you can memorize your talk, which entails rehearsing it to the point where you internalize every word—verbatim.
My advice: Don’t read it, and don’t use a teleprompter. It’s usually just too distancing—people will know you’re reading. And as soon as they sense it, the way they receive your talk will shift. Suddenly your intimate connection evaporates, and everything feels a lot more formal. We generally outlaw reading approaches of any kind at TED, though we made an exception a few years ago for a man who insisted on using a monitor. We set up a screen at the back of the auditorium, in the hope that the audience wouldn’t notice it. At first he spoke naturally. But soon he stiffened up, and you could see this horrible sinking feeling pass through the audience as people realized, “Oh, no, he’s reading to us!” The words were great, but the talk got poor ratings.
Many of our best and most popular TED Talks have been memorized word for word. If you’re giving an important talk and you have the time to do this, it’s the best way to go. But don’t underestimate the work involved. One of our most memorable speakers was Jill Bolte Taylor , a brain researcher who had suffered a stroke. She talked about what she learned during the eight years it took her to recover. After crafting her story and undertaking many hours of solo practice, she rehearsed her talk dozens of times in front of an audience to be sure she had it down.
Obviously, not every presentation is worth that kind of investment of time. But if you do decide to memorize your talk, be aware that there’s a predictable arc to the learning curve. Most people go through what I call the “valley of awkwardness,” where they haven’t quite memorized the talk. If they give the talk while stuck in that valley, the audience will sense it. Their words will sound recited, or there will be painful moments where they stare into the middle distance, or cast their eyes upward, as they struggle to remember their lines. This creates distance between the speaker and the audience .
Getting past this point is simple, fortunately. It’s just a matter of rehearsing enough times that the flow of words becomes second nature. Then you can focus on delivering the talk with meaning and authenticity. Don’t worry—you’ll get there.
But if you don’t have time to learn a speech thoroughly and get past that awkward valley, don’t try. Go with bullet points on note cards. As long as you know what you want to say for each one, you’ll be fine. Focus on remembering the transitions from one bullet point to the next.
Also pay attention to your tone. Some speakers may want to come across as authoritative or wise or powerful or passionate, but it’s usually much better to just sound conversational. Don’t force it. Don’t orate. Just be you.
If a successful talk is a journey, make sure you don’t start to annoy your travel companions along the way. Some speakers project too much ego. They sound condescending or full of themselves, and the audience shuts down. Don’t let that happen.
Develop Stage Presence
For inexperienced speakers, the physical act of being onstage can be the most difficult part of giving a presentation—but people tend to overestimate its importance. Getting the words, story, and substance right is a much bigger determinant of success or failure than how you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous. And when it comes to stage presence, a little coaching can go a long way.
The biggest mistake we see in early rehearsals is that people move their bodies too much. They sway from side to side, or shift their weight from one leg to the other. People do this naturally when they’re nervous, but it’s distracting and makes the speaker seem weak. Simply getting a person to keep his or her lower body motionless can dramatically improve stage presence. There are some people who are able to walk around a stage during a presentation, and that’s fine if it comes naturally. But the vast majority are better off standing still and relying on hand gestures for emphasis.
How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea
Perhaps the most important physical act onstage is making eye contact. Find five or six friendly-looking people in different parts of the audience and look them in the eye as you speak. Think of them as friends you haven’t seen in a year, whom you’re bringing up to date on your work. That eye contact is incredibly powerful, and it will do more than anything else to help your talk land. Even if you don’t have time to prepare fully and have to read from a script, looking up and making eye contact will make a huge difference.
Another big hurdle for inexperienced speakers is nervousness—both in advance of the talk and while they’re onstage. People deal with this in different ways. Many speakers stay out in the audience until the moment they go on; this can work well, because keeping your mind engaged in the earlier speakers can distract you and limit nervousness. Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School professor who studies how certain body poses can affect power, utilized one of the more unusual preparation techniques I’ve seen. She recommends that people spend time before a talk striding around, standing tall, and extending their bodies; these poses make you feel more powerful. It’s what she did before going onstage, and she delivered a phenomenal talk. But I think the single best advice is simply to breathe deeply before you go onstage. It works.
Nerves are not a disaster. The audience expects you to be nervous.
In general, people worry too much about nervousness. Nerves are not a disaster. The audience expects you to be nervous. It’s a natural body response that can actually improve your performance: It gives you energy to perform and keeps your mind sharp. Just keep breathing, and you’ll be fine.
Acknowledging nervousness can also create engagement. Showing your vulnerability, whether through nerves or tone of voice, is one of the most powerful ways to win over an audience, provided it is authentic. Susan Cain , who wrote a book about introverts and spoke at our 2012 conference, was terrified about giving her talk. You could feel her fragility onstage, and it created this dynamic where the audience was rooting for her—everybody wanted to hug her afterward. The fact that we knew she was fighting to keep herself up there made it beautiful, and it was the most popular talk that year.
Plan the Multimedia
With so much technology at our disposal, it may feel almost mandatory to use, at a minimum, presentation slides. By now most people have heard the advice about PowerPoint: Keep it simple; don’t use a slide deck as a substitute for notes (by, say, listing the bullet points you’ll discuss—those are best put on note cards); and don’t repeat out loud words that are on the slide. Not only is reciting slides a variation of the teleprompter problem—“Oh, no, she’s reading to us, too!”—but information is interesting only once, and hearing and seeing the same words feels repetitive. That advice may seem universal by now, but go into any company and you’ll see presenters violating it every day.
Many of the best TED speakers don’t use slides at all, and many talks don’t require them. If you have photographs or illustrations that make the topic come alive, then yes, show them. If not, consider doing without, at least for some parts of the presentation. And if you’re going to use slides, it’s worth exploring alternatives to PowerPoint. For instance, TED has invested in the company Prezi, which makes presentation software that offers a camera’s-eye view of a two-dimensional landscape. Instead of a flat sequence of images, you can move around the landscape and zoom in to it if need be. Used properly, such techniques can dramatically boost the visual punch of a talk and enhance its meaning.
Artists, architects, photographers, and designers have the best opportunity to use visuals. Slides can help frame and pace a talk and help speakers avoid getting lost in jargon or overly intellectual language. (Art can be hard to talk about—better to experience it visually.) I’ve seen great presentations in which the artist or designer put slides on an automatic timer so that the image changed every 15 seconds. I’ve also seen presenters give a talk accompanied by video, speaking along to it. That can help sustain momentum. The industrial designer Ross Lovegrove’s highly visual TED Talk , for instance, used this technique to bring the audience along on a remarkable creative journey .
Another approach creative types might consider is to build silence into their talks, and just let the work speak for itself. The kinetic sculptor Reuben Margolin used that approach to powerful effect. The idea is not to think “I’m giving a talk.” Instead, think “I want to give this audience a powerful experience of my work.” The single worst thing artists and architects can do is to retreat into abstract or conceptual language.
Video has obvious uses for many speakers. In a TED Talk about the intelligence of crows, for instance, the scientist showed a clip of a crow bending a hook to fish a piece of food out of a tube—essentially creating a tool. It illustrated his point far better than anything he could have said.
Used well, video can be very effective, but there are common mistakes that should be avoided. A clip needs to be short—if it’s more than 60 seconds, you risk losing people. Don’t use videos—particularly corporate ones—that sound self-promotional or like infomercials; people are conditioned to tune those out. Anything with a soundtrack can be dangerously off-putting. And whatever you do, don’t show a clip of yourself being interviewed on, say, CNN. I’ve seen speakers do this, and it’s a really bad idea—no one wants to go along with you on your ego trip. The people in your audience are already listening to you live; why would they want to simultaneously watch your talking-head clip on a screen?
Putting It Together
We start helping speakers prepare their talks six months (or more) in advance so that they’ll have plenty of time to practice. We want people’s talks to be in final form at least a month before the event. The more practice they can do in the final weeks, the better off they’ll be. Ideally, they’ll practice the talk on their own and in front of an audience.
The tricky part about rehearsing a presentation in front of other people is that they will feel obligated to offer feedback and constructive criticism. Often the feedback from different people will vary or directly conflict. This can be confusing or even paralyzing, which is why it’s important to be choosy about the people you use as a test audience, and whom you invite to offer feedback. In general, the more experience a person has as a presenter, the better the criticism he or she can offer.
I learned many of these lessons myself in 2011. My colleague Bruno Giussani, who curates our TEDGlobal event, pointed out that although I’d worked at TED for nine years, served as the emcee at our conferences, and introduced many of the speakers, I’d never actually given a TED Talk myself. So he invited me to give one, and I accepted.
It was more stressful than I’d expected. Even though I spend time helping others frame their stories, framing my own in a way that felt compelling was difficult. I decided to memorize my presentation, which was about how web video powers global innovation, and that was really hard: Even though I was putting in a lot of hours, and getting sound advice from my colleagues, I definitely hit a point where I didn’t quite have it down and began to doubt I ever would. I really thought I might bomb. I was nervous right up until the moment I took the stage. But it ended up going fine. It’s definitely not one of the all-time great TED Talks, but it got a positive reaction—and I survived the stress of going through it.
10 Ways to Ruin a Presentation
As hard as it may be to give a great talk, it’s really easy to blow it. Here are some common mistakes that TED advises its speakers to avoid.
- Take a really long time to explain what your talk is about.
- Speak slowly and dramatically. Why talk when you can orate?
- Make sure you subtly let everyone know how important you are.
- Refer to your book repeatedly. Even better, quote yourself from it.
- Cram your slides with numerous text bullet points and multiple fonts.
- Use lots of unexplained technical jargon to make yourself sound smart.
- Speak at great length about the history of your organization and its glorious achievements.
- Don’t bother rehearsing to check how long your talk is running.
- Sound as if you’re reciting your talk from memory.
- Never, ever make eye contact with anyone in the audience.
Ultimately I learned firsthand what our speakers have been discovering for three decades: Presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance, not speaking style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. If you have something to say, you can build a great talk. But if the central theme isn’t there, you’re better off not speaking. Decline the invitation. Go back to work, and wait until you have a compelling idea that’s really worth sharing.
The single most important thing to remember is that there is no one good way to do a talk . The most memorable talks offer something fresh, something no one has seen before. The worst ones are those that feel formulaic. So do not on any account try to emulate every piece of advice I’ve offered here. Take the bulk of it on board, sure. But make the talk your own. You know what’s distinctive about you and your idea. Play to your strengths and give a talk that is truly authentic to you.
- CA Chris Anderson is the curator of TED.
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Unit 1 Use a Theme Template and Slide Layouts to Create a Presentation
3 Create a Slide Presentation
Create a slide presentation, topics include:.
- Choose a Theme Template
Create Slide Content
Create a new slide, multi level bulleted lists.
A PowerPoint has two methods for creating a slide presentation:
- Choose a theme template
- Create a blank presentation (this method is covered in Unit 3)
PowerPoint software has built in and free online pre-designed templates that contain various color schemes and pre-arranged elements in a slide, eg. text and graphics. Select a template and PowerPoint will format the entire presentation according to that template.
Steps to choosing a theme template:
- Open PowerPoint.
- At the PowerPoint window, click the File tab, then click New.
- Once you have selected the desired template, it will be displayed in normal view. New slides can be added as needed.
Tips & Tricks
A theme template can be added to a presentation before, during or after you have added the presentation content.
To apply various templates to a presentation, click the Design tab, then click on the desired template in the themes group.
Whether you are using a pre-made theme template or working from your own design, it is very easy to insert a new slide.
- In the slide pane click on the slide where you would like the new slide to appear below.
- The new slide should appear below the selected slide. If you want to add a new slide between two, select the first of the two slides and click New Slide .
Entering text and images into your presentation slide is easy and fun. When using the theme template the first slide to appear in Normal view is called the Title Slide .
The title slide is the slide that is used to introduce the presentation to the audience. It has two text placeholders for text: title text placeholder and sub-title text placeholder. Placeholders are the building blocks for a PowerPoint slide.
To insert text in a placeholder, left click inside of the textbox and begin typing. Once you have entered text, click outside the text box to see how your text looks. The placeholder then becomes an object. An object is any item on a slide that can be manipulated. Objects are the building blocks that make up a slide. A text object can moved around and repositioned on a slide.
A object is selected when there is a gray, bold outline around the object, and when the cursor turns into a cross. Around the selected object are small white circles that are called sizing handles. You can drag the handles to position the object.
To apply formatting to text inside an object, select the text with your cursor, then click on the Home tab and in the Font group add text attributes such as bold, underline, and italics. The Paragraph group, located next to the Font group, contains commands that allow you to change the alignment of text, insert numbers or bullets to lists, and indent text.
You can also edit your text by accessing the Font dialogue box by clicking the Font group dialogue box launcher. (The dialogue box launcher is the small button containing a diagonal arrow that displays in the lower right corner of the group.) The Font dialogue box includes special effects such as: double strikethrough, superscript and subscript.
Another quick and easy way to format slides is by using a slide master. A Slide Master will reduce the steps needed to format all the slides in a presentation. Any changes made in the slide master will affect all slides in the presentation. This allows for consistency in any presentation.
When you choose a theme template PowerPoint automatically adds a Slide master. To format the slide master click the View tab and then choose Slide Master located in the Presentation View group.
A slide master appears in the slide pane and in the Outline/Slide pane. The largest thumbnail in the pane is the slide master and the other thumbnails represent associated layouts.Click on the master slide or a specific layout to apply formatting or themes. Once formatting changes have been made click on Close Master View to return to the normal view.
For more information on Slide Masters take this link to Microsoft Tips for using Slide Masters .
PowerPoint allows information to be displayed as multilevel bulleted lists. Bulleted lists are used in PowerPoint to display levels of importance within the presentation. Various slide layouts in the Slide Layout task pane contain bullets. To add multi levels to a bulleted list you need to choose the appropriate layout.
The first-level bullet will be displayed under the title placeholder. Once you have typed your text next to the first-level bullet press Enter on your keyboard. The new first-level bullet automatically appears. Press Tab on your keyboard and the first-level bullet becomes a second level bullet. Press Shift + Tab this will decrease the indent and bring the bullet back to first level.
Another method to add levels to your presentation is by clicking the decrease list level or increase list level buttons on the Paragraph group in the Home tab.
You can customize the bullets in your presentation by selecting the Bullets and Numbering dialogue box from Paragraph group located in the Home tab. Select the bullet text, click on the drop down arrow next to Bullets or Numbering, click on Bullets and Numbering , then choose the from the pre-designed bullets.
Now that you are able to create a presentation let us move on to view and save presentations.
Presentation Software by bpayne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.
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