Designing a Presentation Your Brain Will Love

We love sharing knowledge and ideas with the world. It’s just that sometimes our presentations are…well, a little rough. PowerPoint slides crammed full of text, distorted or blurry images, and ideas that seem to wander without ever coming together. It doesn’t have to be this way! In this session, attendees learn an easy, effective method for designing presentations that incorporates ways people learn with multimedia. Each concept takes advantage of research-based principles of learning (especially when multimedia is involved).

Supplemental Resources

How C.R.A.P. (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity) Makes Design Better

This workshop provides an introduction to basic graphic design principles for novices. The idea is to help people improve their graphic design skills by generating some familiarity with intro level concepts, as well as giving them tangible technology skills.

Recognizing the difference between good and bad design is easy, but when it’s your turn to create a well-designed presentation, document, or online course, things can get tricky. Let’s work on taking what you don’t know you know and making it actionable. This session will introduce you to CRAP design: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. You can quickly learn and use these four graphic design principles to analyze and design documents intentionally. You’ll also examine CRAP principles across multiple mediums, and practice identifying them in actual documents. In this session, you’ll receive a collection of actionable “next steps” for you to continue your journey towards better design.

Supplemental Resources

The following are playlists on Lynda.com, curated by TLT.

Deliver a Presentation Your Audience Will Love

Public speaking is one of the most challenging things we do. Even if you’ve put years of experience into your field and hours of work into your presentation, you’re still (probably) afraid of presenting to a group. In this session we’ll explore ways to refresh your thinking about public speaking by optimizing your preparation and reducing your anxiety. Together we’ll explore the four discrete stages of a presentation: Preparing, Beginning, Engaging, and Ending, with simple and practical strategies you can use at each stage.

Supplemental Resources

  • Presentation Venue Tips
    Whether you are presenting at Elon or elsewhere, it’s important to not make assumptions about the venue’s technology and layout. Learn about some important questions to ask or discover on your own before you are standing in front of your audience.
  • Public Speaking Foundations (LinkedIn Learning)
    In this course, professional speaker Laura Bergells offers presenters tips on how to prepare, open, deliver, and close their speeches.

Presentation Tools Supported at Elon

With so many freemium and subscription-based presentation and video creation tools out there, you may be in search of software with all the bells and whistles at no cost. With your Elon credentials, you have access to complimentary presentation software and video creation tools with Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft 365.

With Adobe Creative Cloud, you can easily create professional-looking videos using Adobe Premiere Rush or use a more sophisticated video editing tool – Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe Spark is an online and mobile design app which allows you to easily create stunning social graphics, short videos, and web pages.

Presentation tools in Microsoft 365 include PowerPoint and Sway. With PowerPoint, you can create presentations from scratch or use a template. Add text, images, art, and videos by downloading the desktop app or the web version. Sway is an easy-to-use storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, resumes and more.

Supplemental Resources