5 Rare & Inspiring Slide Ideas You Should Steal Right Now

Try to conjure up a picture of the typical PowerPoint presentation ??.

What do you see?

I bet it looks a little like this:

How did you feel when you last saw this type of presentation?

Excited? Fascinated? Enraptured? 

Or did you doze right off ?? and let your mind wander to your next evening out, weekend getaway, or tropical vacation???

As the presenter, a disengaged audience is the glaring sign of abject failure.

But fear not. Here are six rare ideas you can steal to turn your PowerPoint slides around and go from boring to beautiful.

Convey Your Slide Ideas With Stunning Images

The easiest way to make your presentation stand out is to focus on just one idea per slide.

1. Describe the idea in a word or short sentence.
2. Take that word/sentence as a starting point and think of a scene or object that visualizes it.
3. Don’t take your first idea. Keep going. Your initial ideas are common. You’ll want the non-obvious.
4. Find a remarkable picture that complements your idea.
5. Have the picture cover the entire slide.
6. Add your headline.
7. Done. ?

Here's an (admittedly somewhat morbid ??) example. In my defense, I was talking about the terminal stage in the customer lifecycle ??.

Have examples of your own? Let’s see them in the comments at the bottom!

Make Your Slides Stick Out With Kick-Ass Custom Images

My reaction to receiving a terrible webinar follow-up email years ago was to call the sales rep out in a blog rant. The post got a lot of attention and I followed up with a slide deck with tips on how to do better.

I wanted a bold title and went for “kick-ass” lead follow-up. The movie had just come out but the poster was copyrighted and I didn’t want to try my luck with fair use.

That could have been the end of it but through Deviant Art, a website artists use to share their work, I found this brilliant custom artwork. It’s from Mattias Fahlberg, a Swedish artist, who let me use it (Yay Mattias :-).

The takeaway: Go beyond the stock photography websites to find unique images. 

There are many communities for artists and the majority allow messages between members. Examples include Dribble, Flickr, & ArtStation.

Engage By Injecting Personality Into PowerPoint

Use photos to set yourself apart. Combine photos, icons, and illustrations to tell short stories or break up the style of your presentation.

At Conversion Summit I used this technique to set up a before/after story of a website relaunch.

1. The first slide shows the goal still out of reach with me reaching for the castle in the sky.
2. A successful design & CMS overhaul later I pick that image back up, with the previously elusive goal now firmly in my grasp.

All you need to pull this off is an idea and a phone.

• Think of the poses you’d need a stock photo for
• Strike those poses in front of a white wall or door
• Have someone take a quick photo
• Paste it into PowerPoint
• Clean it up with PowerPoint’s “Remove background” function
• Add icons, illustrations, & text to tell your story

Want to bring even more personality to your presentations? Check out my list of tips for engaging webinars.

Surprise Your Audience With Animated Slides

As humans, we’re psychologically hardwired to detect motion.

Guess we still fear being caught off guard by that saber tooth tiger ??.

Make use of this trait by incorporating animation into your deck.

Most experts will tell you to limit animated elements in your slide decks and that is usually sound advice. But it’s ok to break a rule every now and then.

In this case, the animated GIF perfectly underscores my point. Creating content consistently feels like being stuck on a hamster wheel.

Giphy is the best source for these images and they will autoplay when inserted into your PowerPoint deck.

Use Illustrations To Set Your Presentation Apart

Dan Benoni from OfficeVibe uses illustrations to set his presentations apart.

As a result, his slide decks rank in the top 100 on SlideShare.

Creating an entire deck out of illustrations comes at a cost in both time and money, but the result is well worth it.

If you have the resources, platforms like minty or HireAnIllustrator can connect you to top illustrators.

Fiverr is an alternative if you’re on more of a shoestring budget.

You can also try your own hand and start with vector images from sources like Freepik.

For beautiful, customizable & free illustrations I’ve recently discovered undraw.

It’s a set of business-themed illustrations created by Katerina Limpitsouni and I’m certain I’ll find a way to use them in one of my own decks soon.

How Do You Make Your Slides Stand Out?

What slide are you most proud of? Any tips to share? Post them in the comments below!

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Over the past few years, I've put on over 500 webinars and had a chance to analyze more than half a million sessions run on the big webinar platforms. That ended up turning me into a webinar expert and has led to speaking engagements at events like INBOUND and on podcasts like MarketingProfs.

Now I’m on a mad mission to end all dull webinars by sharing the best of what I've learned so you can skip the learning curve and turn your webinars into an instant hit. Read my favorite webinar tips on my blog or take a look at the webinar consulting services I offer.

Outside work, I'm a geek at heart who loves LEGO, sci-fi and the occasional video game. If talking B2B for hours is your thing please get in touch with me here on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

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This article first appeared on Daniel's blog at https://danielwaas.com/5-powerpoint-slide-ideas-you-should-steal-right-now/.