Imagine you want to sell a TV. You take the buyers to a house to show your product. With the exquisite TV on the wall, the house adorns multiple other items like a chandelier, paintings, console, etc., all magnificent enough to draw attention.
How absolute do you think your buyer’s attention will be on your product?
Yes, they will look at what you want to show, but those million other things will have their attention, too, potentially distracting them from the core purpose.
Minimalism in presentations is akin to this scenario. It will enable you to build presentation designs that are impactful, memorable, and engaging.
How?
That’s what we shed light on in this article. Learn what minimalism in presentation is, why it’s important, and how you can embrace the power of less to create maximum impact in your slides.
What is Minimalism in Presentations?
Keeping your presentation minimalist means avoiding everything that complicates and overwhelms your presentation, like complex backgrounds, irrelevant visuals, incoherent design, etc.
What are the Benefits of Going Minimalist in Your Presentation?
Let’s look at some of the benefits this simplistic approach has-
1. Increased Focus for People with Fewer Distractions
Since people will have fewer distractions to take their attention away, they can concentrate better on the key message. Consequently, it will translate to improved focus and retention of the presentation.
Excessive text, multiple fonts, overuse of colors, transitions, animations, etc., are all unnecessary elements that can take the focus away from the main points.
2. Clarity of Message and in Design
Your message will have more clarity and less noise due to the simplistic design. It will allow your message to stand out and let people take in your core message effortlessly.
3. Better Engagement
Simple designs are easy on the eyes and thus can improve engagement. Since people won’t have difficulty looking at or understanding the slides, it will keep everyone hooked throughout.
Also, simple designs will enable people to shift their focus on you and away from slides, as they will only need a quick look to decipher everything on screen. Consequently, people will be more engaged with you, relying on you to understand the message.
4. Improved Readability
Too many elements on the slide can clutter it, confuse the eyes, and affect readability. To fit in everything, you will have to adjust the sizes of pictures and texts, shrinking the negative space.
All of this can impact the readability of information, making people lose interest.
5. Easy to Comprehend and Retain
Cognitive load theory proposes that the human mind can process limited information in one go.
Simple messages enable better understanding and retention as they have less cognitive overload.
It’s obvious when you have five things to see and remember, instead of a 50 on screen, it will enable better comprehension and retention.
6. Better Flexibility
How flexibly will you be able to modify and alter presentations loaded with elements? It will require you to change the placements, alignments, and a host of other things to make the slide look understandable.
However, that’s not the case with minimalist designs. You can modify, alter, and adapt to different styles and formats, allowing more flexibility.
7. Aesthetically Polished and Professional Slides
Contrary to belief, complicated or too many elements on your slides don’t make you look smarter or more resourceful. It can only confuse people and actually take your image in the opposite direction.
Keep your design clean and simple with well-spaced texts and relevant, high-quality visuals to get the aesthetics and professional appearance on point.
Key Elements of Minimalist Presentations
The target is to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary can speak. Elements that can help you achieve that are –
(i). Color Palette
What will a slide design with a blue background, red font, and maybe yellow-colored highlighted text look like?
You will have a rainbow in front of you, which is difficult to comprehend.
A limited color palette is one of the defining characteristics of simple and minimalist slide designs. 2 or maybe 3 complimentary colors are enough to create a cohesive design that will enable smooth navigation.
(ii). Negative Space
White or negative space is another ingredient of minimalist presentation design. Leaving enough white space on slides will let you guide people’s eyes toward things that hold the utmost value.
Like the example mentioned above, you would want people to notice just the TV and not the rest of the elements in the room. And for that to happen, simply remove everything from the vision to drive focus and create more impact.
(iii). Typography
Even if you get the white space right, it still won’t translate to an impactful presentation if people can’t read your content.
It’s crucial and critical for the success of your presentation to get the typeface right – legible and professional in design.
Also, don’t incorporate more than two or a maximum of 3 fonts in your slides.
(iv). Visuals
Visuals are essential for an effective presentation. They enable retention and smooth comprehension. Take the help of high-quality, relevant images that embrace the content and engage the audience.
You can try something like a single powerful image on a slide like Apple in its product launch presentations.
(v). Design Principles Like Contrast, Hierarchy
Design principles are imperative to add structure, alignment, emphasis, etc., to your content. You can play with the elements to create coherent, visually appealing designs that best complement your work and highlight your key message.
(vi). Structure
An organized structure is imperative to define a clear flow and order to the presentation. It will also add minimalism to your slides as you already have a logical flow and clear structure, rendering unnecessary information invalid.
Incorporate Minimalism in Your Slides with the Following Tips
The information saturation all around calls for clean, clear, impactful presentations more than ever. Effective presentations are not delivered in complexity but in simplicity. Let’s explore how you can incorporate minimalism at every step in your presentation.
a). Audience
Learning about your audience would be the first step in creating simple, minimalist content. Consider things like –
- Knowledge and expertise
- Expectations and concerns
- Time constraints
- Cultural background
Create your content with people in mind to avoid adding any unnecessary information.
b). Objective
Your presentation should have a clear purpose and maintain that throughout (in content and design). Maintain simplicity with the following considerations –
- Define your primary goal for the presentation.
- Focus on a clear CTA or takeaway message.
- Consider how you want people to feel (desired emotional impact) after the presentation and include content accordingly.
- Filter relevant content and include only that.
- Limit the number of texts in your slides (bullet points). Organize your slides in a way that each specifies a singular concept.
c). Content
Work with less to create more impact with the following guidelines –
- State your core message.
- Include content that directly supports the central goal. Your content should be able to answer – why it’s important and relevant to people – to be included in the presentation.
- Try to simplify complex information with the help of diagrams, infographics, snippets, charts, graphs, etc., to make the ideas understandable for people and deliver more with less on screen.
- Use relevant visual aids to replace blocks of text.
- Give 10% to the opening and conclusion and 80% to the body.
d). Design and Visual Hierarchy
- Design principles (color, typeface, image style) should be consistent. Remove unnecessary elements that serve no purpose.
- Minimize and limit the use of transitions and animations for a clean look. The idea is to enhance the look, where overusing can render the opposite effect and make your slide look cluttered.
- Use presentation rules like 5/5/5 – 5 slides, 5 lines per slide, and 5 words per line.
Summing It Up
You don’t want your audience to lose focus, disengage, distract from your core message, and forget your presentation.
Similarly, you wouldn’t want the slides cluttered and incomprehensible, irrelevant and distracting, overly time-consuming to understand, and take the focus away from your words.
All of this can be avoided by embracing simplicity in designs. Let people take in what you want them to remember and dodge everything that unnecessarily burdens you and the audience.
