How many business presentations have you sat through where it was painful to follow along with the slides? If you answered way too many you are not alone.
Slides tend to be too busy and complex or the presenter made an unfortunate choice when it comes to font and colour combinations. Some of the other common issues are the use of cheap clipart and blurry images.
In 2024 there’s no excuse to ever show up with poorly designed slides. You want your audience to pay attention to you and not be distracted by your slide deck. Also check out Creative Fabrica for awesome free fonts.
In this article we will discuss the 5 best free tools that will help you take your business presentation to the next level.
1) Unsplash
If you are going to include images in your presentation, and you should, don’t settle for cheap stock photography. Unsplash offers professionally shot images that you can download in high-resolution format.
You can browse popular images or search for an image perfectly suited for your presentation topic.
Once you find one you like simply click download and incorporate into your slides.
2) Icons8
Incorporating icons into your presentation will separate you from your competition. Clever use of icons can help you highlight points across your slides in a professional way.
Icons8 lets you browse and download entire sets of icons. Pick a set that you like and use that exclusively throughout your slides, don’t mix and match different styles of icons.
This will give you a consistent and polished look.
3) DaFont
Another reason why a lot of presentations look bland is that they all use the same, limited set of fonts available in presentation tools like Microsoft PowerPoint.
To make sure your presentation stands out, find and download a professional font on DaFont.
Once you download it to make sure it’s installed on your machine locally so that it’s accessible through your favourite presentation tool.
4) GraphicSprings
Whether you are raising money for your start-up or work for a large corporation you should consistently include a logo and associated brand colours across all of your slides.
If you already have a logo simply use the insert function to add it to your presentation. If you don’t or want to give your logo a facelift for the presentation give Graphic Springs a try.
You simply enter your business name, choose a fitting logo graphic and then customize before downloading.
5) ColorCombos
When it comes to colourless is more. Badly designed presentation slides either incorporate too many colours or pair them wrong.
With ColorCombos you can choose from popular colour combinations or start with a particular colour in mind.
Pro-tip, get the hex code of the primary colour of your business logo and then enter it into the application. It will generate colour combinations that will perfectly match the logo.
In summary, what will make your presentation stand out is the use of professional images, clean font, professional icons, smart use of colour and consistent implementation of branding.
With the knowledge of the five resources highlighted above you are now ready to create beautiful slides for your next big presentation.
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