Red Zest Design Blog

So, your suit is immaculate. Your script is flawless, your printed materials are vibrant, your slides are gorgeous, and your hair looks great.

You are prepared to not only engage and entertain your audience, but you’re pretty sure some of them will want to invite you over for dinner. However, even when you’ve done everything possible to pave the path to your success, the unexpected can creep in.

One of the most common ways a presentation’s outcome is challenged is a hardware or software failure. A laptop overheats with no warning, a conference room screen is MIA, or a backup file is unreadable by a loaner computer. Speakers are able to not only embrace these unforeseen events, they can thrive with and be prepared for them! Here are some tips help you adapt to a slide-less presentation:

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Here’s a quick and easy design tip to help your images remain the focus of your presentation slides.

When designing a PowerPoint slide that has an image that doesn’t quite take up the entire slide or you want to place multiple images on the same slide, set your slide background color to black. The reason why is because white backgrounds projected in a dimly lit room tend to blast the audience with bright light, taking away the focus from the images.

Also, for a dramatic effect to get the audience to focus on what your saying, have a slide set to black with nothing on it. This is like turning off the TV and focuses the audience’s attention to your speaking and body language. This cool tip is only effective when used sparingly in your presentations.

Want a PowerPoint alternative to show your cool slides? How about a backup option just in case your PowerPoint doesn’t work properly? Acrobat Reader is to the rescue!

Set your multiple-paged PDFs to play as a slideshow in full screen mode. For those PKN presenters out there, you can also set it to advance after 20 seconds. Check out this tutorial.

CreativeTechs’ article Build an Acrobat PDF Slideshow

Professional development is an area that’s sometimes pushed to the side for business owners, seasoned professionals, and freelancers since it sometimes viewed as an “extra thing”. However, well-planned professional development can be a source of inspiration, a mechanism to avoid burnout and a way to set you apart from your competition.

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Being involved in presentations means that you are not only prepared, you are the virtual Swiss Army Knife in your clients’ pockets. These are some of the essentials in my personal kit:

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