We’ve seen it all when it comes to presentations and documents. The  over-designed, over- stimulated, over-filled and just plain overdone. We’ve also seen, the sleek, simple and sexy designs. You know what stands out more? Yip, the sleek, simple and sexy designs.

When you try and cram in too much, nothing stands out, nothing ‘pops’. We hear time and time again “can you make it more interesting?” Or “we need to bring this to life somehow.” Or “it’s gotta be sexy!” You know what the first thing we do with a document or presentation when we need to make it ‘sexy’? We see what we can take out.

Taking out the fluff and leaving just the “POW” is what it’s all about. Your audience no matter where they are; those who are trapped in a conference listening to you, those sitting at their desk flicking through the pages, or the ones on their iPads flipping through your app – will only remember the key points. Of course they will only remember them if they stand out.

If you fill up a slide or page with bullet points, thoughts, ideas and information, it’s going to go in one eye and straight out the back of their head. So you want to pick the key points and make a statement with them. Can you get those key points to three items? (At the very most keep it under five.)

How can you make a statement so that they will remember those key points? Try these:

• An image
• A single large word
• A short video (30″ maybe)
• A colourful quote

Whatever you choose, let it take up an entire slide or page. Embrace the white space around it! Make it simple.

If you then jam in a bunch of gobbledy gook after that, at least you know those key points hit home. Ideally however, your entire presentation/document will be simple, clean and memorable. This will force your audience to take it in and remember it.

So the next time you are about to create something, pretend your audience has no idea what you’re saying (like a foreign language) and make sure the key points stand out.

For example, which one of these would you remember?
A — ¿Los buenos días bienvenidos a mi presentación en la termodinámica, espero que usted disfrute de ello, seremos comenzados? **

or

B — Hola

The only way to remember something is to make it simple and sexy. The way to make it it sexy is to make it simple, because the less there is on the page, the more options there are to make it sexy.

If you need help with a simple and sexy document or presentation, just get in contact we will make it go “KAPOW!”

(**I apologise if the translation isn’t 100% – Google Translate you know. If you want to know what I said it was supposed to be: “Good morning welcome to my presentation on thermodynamics, I hope that you will enjoy it, shall we get started?”)