Last week, we provided you with some tips for your speeches. Now let’s move on to the visual part of your presentation.
The following tools are not only easy to handle but also produce impressive results.
1. Prezi
Prezi can be described best as “different”. Presentations made with Prezi stand out amidst the drab PowerPoint monotony. With this tool, there’s no such thing as a linear sequence of slides. Instead, you arrange the content on a big canvas before you start to edit the path. That means you set the order in which you want the objects to appear in your presentation. As you present, Prezi automatically zooms into each area along the path.
But just like with PowerPoint, you’re running the risk of distracting your audience from the content when there are too many effects.
Because of the huge differences compared to other tools, you’ll probably need some time to get used to Prezi. Therefore, you should be willing to try something entirely different.
Our tip: Create a blueprint in order to sketch how you want to arrange the information on the canvas.
2. Canva
If you want to take your presentations up some notches, try Canva for it provides you with the perfect means to start your presentation improvements. It even works for non-designers: You’ll find a huge library full of presentation design templates to which you can add your own content. You can also choose from many more items such as images, illustrations, and icons – Canva has a library for those, too. And there’s a beautiful diagram feature which you can use to present your numbers and statistics in a more aesthetic way. Once you’ve put the finishing touches to your presentation, you may either download the result to your computer or switch to the presentation mode. You don’t need to install Canva; to start working on presentations, simply sign up and use it online. Canva is free, only some of the icons or pictures require a fee. However, these are always marked accordingly, while all other elements are available for free.
3. Haiku Deck
Haiku Deck’s great strength is no doubt the visualization of presentations.
If you don’t want to go without images but without hours of searching for suitable photo material, then try out Haiku Deck.
The tool even does the searching for you: Based on the terms you use in the presentation, Haiku Deck suggests pictures. If there’s nothing among the countless free public domain images, you can of course use your own graphics as well.
The tool also helps you during the presentation. The private notes feature turns your iPad into a personal teleprompter and is the easiest way to get rid of your note cards.
4. Slides
With Slides, your final result is just a few clicks away.
Users can choose between a wide range of pre-built styles and elements. Slides could hardly be easier to work with but still, you’ll get a professional-looking outcome in the end.
As a special feature, Slides provides you with a formula editor which makes the tool particularly well-suited for creating scientific presentations.
5. Sway
Last but not least, Microsoft itself provides an alternative to PowerPoint. It’s called Sway and comes in a fancy web layout style.
More intuitive and visually more sophisticated than its MS Office Suite counterpart, Sway is especially great for presentations with lots of graphics.
The tool is designed to create and view presentations on different devices. You can add content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and OneDrive without leaving Sway.
But there’s one thing: All of these tools are basically free to use. However, the free basic version doesn’t include working offline or saving the finished presentation on your own devices. If you don’t want your creations to be publicly viewable, you’ll have to upgrade to premium. That’s why we recommend you catch up on the features and pricing before you start working with one of these tools.