4 Things to Consider While Designing Minimalist Presentation Design
Creating a presentation is one of the best ways to convey information to a wide audience in an easy-to-follow manner. Such presentations are often made using attractive and unique designs to help draw-in viewers. One style that has remained popular among presentation designers throughout the years is “minimalist” presentations.
Minimalist presentations rely on the concept of “less is more” and are focused on conveying their content using simple yet tasteful slide designs. Previous generations were led to believe that designing elaborate and complex presentations was the best way to attract attention and engage viewers. However, the proliferation of such designs eventually led to viewers feeling fatigued by these dense and often crowded looking slides.
Minimalist presentations aim to avoid overstimulating viewers with their designs, so that the information contained in their content remains the primary focus. Here are 4 things to consider while designing minimalist presentations.
1. Limit colour schemes
Drawing on the concept of “less is more”, creators of minimalist presentations should opt to use as few colours as possible in their designs. This means using similar colours for each slide across the presentation. Monochromatic colour schemes are often used for this purpose.
- Monochromatic colour schemes
Monochromatic colour schemes are especially effective at conveying tasteful and attractive designs while utilizing only a single hue. This primary hue is accompanied by other colours that are lighter tints or darker shades of the same hue.
When used effectively, these variations can highlight or add intensity to certain sections of a presentation slide without departing from the primary hue. This could be useful if the primary hue is based on the colour of the company’s logo, thereby giving viewers a subtle nod towards the company that made the presentation they are viewing.
- Complementary colour schemes
Complementary colour schemes rely on using colours that are opposite to each other on the colour wheel. Common complementary colour combinations include orange and blue, or red and green. They are often used to create contrast and are great for highlighting certain sections.
Once the two complementary hues have been chosen, designers can add monochromatic shade and tint variations to bring more depth to slide sections. Designers should be careful not to go overboard with tints and shades, as too many variations could feel like a departure from minimalism.
- Analogous colour schemes
Analogous colour schemes are also selected based on the position of colours on the colour wheel. In this scheme, colours are paired with other colours that are adjacent to them on the colour wheel. This creates colour pairings that contrast less with one another compared to complementary colour schemes.
Analogous colours usually resemble each other, or appear to be from the same “family” (e.g: orange and yellow), so they are easier to look at for extended periods of time compared to analogous colour schemes. Such colour schemes offer a nice middle ground between the low contrast of monochromatic colour schemes, and the high contrast of complementary colour schemes.
Whichever colour scheme you end up selecting, it’s important to remember to keep your audience in mind. The colours you select should be easy to look at, and enhance the look of your content, rather than distract from it.
2. Utilizing negative space
One key consideration when designing a good presentation is to use the empty space on slides in the most effective manner possible. Designers should make sure each slide possesses enough “negative” space to give other content on the slides such as images and text with space to breathe.
Slides that are densely packed with information and images often have a cramped appearance and can feel tedious to read. This is why it’s important to ensure each slide has some breathing room.
Designers can also use negative space in more artistic ways that bring out the contrast between slide contents and the empty space between them. This negative space doesn’t have to be limited to just black or white backgrounds either. A background that consists of a single, warm, easy-to-look-at colour can function as negative space to the elements that are overlain onto it.
3. Fewer elements
Using fewer elements is the core concept that drives minimalist designs. In this case, “elements” refer to the text, images, and infographics on your slides. Designers should look to condense all their information contained in the slide down and rework it into a suitable format that can be applied across the presentation.
For example, text-heavy sections that explain a particular concept or process can be reworked into a flow chart that takes up less space, while giving the information a more streamlined appearance that is easier to follow.
This results in a more efficient looking presentation design. London is home to more than one digital design agency that utilizes such design concepts when creating effective presentations for businesses. When in doubt, designers can look at the minimalist designs used by other digital design agencies to learn the best ways for presenting slide content.
4. Learn from other templates
Each of the aforementioned tips is useful for enhancing a particular aspect of slide design. However, the best results come from using the right combination of colours, elements, and negative space.
While many designers are capable of coming up with unique combinations themselves, it’s always helpful to look at other templates to see how others are using minimalist designs in their presentations. This could be especially helpful for designers who are having trouble making the different elements of their presentations work together.
By looking at templates made by other designers, it’s possible to develop a better understanding of the aspects of a certain design that do or don’t work together. This knowledge can then be implemented when designing your own unique minimalist templates.
Competition between presentation designers is at an all time high in the digital era. So presentation designers need to utilize all the resources at their disposal to come up with unique and captivating minimalistic designs that are easy on the eyes while still grabbing the attention of viewers.
