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Presentation Tips PowerPoint Tips Fresh PowerPoint Presents the Value of Controlled Shipping Costs
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PowerPoint Tips: "How To" PowerPoint Ideas
PowerPoint redesigned for improved delivery in-person or via webinar
Source Consulting's dual presentation objectives: educational & advocacy and sales & marketing
Shipping is big business...and most companies are spending far more than necessary. To help communicate the value of controlling shipping costs, California-based Source Consulting turned to The Presentation Team in February 2010 to create a high-impact PowerPoint presentation for prospective clients. The presentation was contracted based on an estimated 40-hours of design and development, and involved content consulting and graphical design.
The presentation's objectives were twofold: both educational/advocacy, as well as sales/marketing. It was created to be delivered in person, or via webinar. The deliverables included:
- Consultation and collaborative development/editing of core presentation content (key messages, bullet points, diagrams, etc.)
- Development of a custom professional template (title and body masters), to reflect the presentation's content and/or Source Consulting's brand.
- Establishment of a "presentation palette" defining the colors, fonts, and layout...to make the presentation more memorable.
- Clutter-reducing techniques and presentation strategies to create a clean look with maximum effectiveness.
- Clean and professional slide transition effects (fades and wipes).
- Professional fonts/typography to ensure consistent playback on different operating systems.
- High-impact stock graphics based on the presentation's content + deep creative/ graphic artistry.
The presentation overhaul started with a fact-finding conversation to define the presentation's four key objectives:
- Present an overview/statistics of the shipping industry
- Provide a company overview of Source Consulting
- Showcase the firm's products and solutions
- Showcase "bottom line benefits" and return on investment while presenting an action plan to savings
And then the 4-phase work project began:
| Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 | Phase 4 |
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The presentation's design was based on a contemporary, conservative design style integrating imagery featuring technology, diversity, business-themes, and reflecting a professional positive image, representative of Source Consulting’s brand image and work culture. The presentation design philosophy involved:
- Clean and professional imagery/graphics (portfolio, schematics, employees, concept art, etc.).
- Process flow/numeric information and animations (tables, charts, and graphs).
- Professional layout of iconic-themed graphics (rather than photos) integrating soft drop-shadows and clean-white borders.
- Content development and consultation to create core messages, supported by graphics, with an effort to reduce bullet points and text-heavy slides.
- Interactivity (main menu and hyperlinks to jump to key slides and graphics)…providing the presenter with the functionality to quickly jump to key slides, as directed by the viewers/audience.
| Before: The original design featured a whitewashed left column vertical banner on the master page. Title and body text were bulleted text in Arial font...functional but ordinary |
After: The presentation redesign featured a clean 16x9 widescreen template with a blue banner at the top of the page for inverse white title text. The body master integrated a grey gradient blend within an oblong rectangular shape. Iconic imagery was used where appropriate to reinforce key text points. |
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"Connect with the client"Source Consulting wanted their presentation to "connect with their client." So talking holistically about the shipping industry and the challenge that most companies face- was first on the list. The graphic featured a clipped PNG Graphic of a stock icon man carrying a box. In Photoshop, we added the $ sign to convey money. The initial text was juxtaposed left margin, but the key text then appeared on soft fade animation...offset and right margin justified, in larger, heavier Calibri font. |
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Clean and simple design maintains consistenyOur design integrated numerous clean and simple "action figures" to help support key points and create a more memorable look. This slide used a 3-part Smart Art layout with stock photos to help convey the options most people take to control shipping costs. To maintain consistency, we worked with the Gil Sans font for the title and Calibri throughout. To emphasize key words, the font was often enlarged or changed to blue. |
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Icon-based design eliminates photos and maintains modern lookIcon do it! Source Consulting stressed that they wanted the presentation to be graphically clean and "photo-neutral." To help achieve a simple and memorable look, The Presentation Team integrated blue and white icons from a stock photo library. This slide features four icons that easily convey the overall company message of "global, financially stable, technology, and growing" |
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Text list of clients upgraded to feature logosDon't just say it...show it! People remember a company's logo and brand far more readily than they remember their name. An earlier version of this slide involved a basic boring text list of the company's satisfied customers. Our rework focused on making the slide more powerfully and memorable. We searched Google for graphics of each of the customer logos, saved them independently (for future reference or editing), then imported them and applying a rounded edge and shadow effect. |
After 2 weeks of collaborative development, a winning presentation finally emerged. Source Consulting now has a winning presentation...and company executives are helping America to save costs on shipping through a clear message supported by focused presentation visuals.
