How to Give your Presentation a Rocket-Boost!

5 min readNov 29, 2019

Over the past few years, I’ve been asked by various classmates and colleagues for tips on how to make the perfect powerpoint. So now I’d like to share with you some ideas which could help anyone to make their presentations look completely awesome. I’ve divided everything into 5 parts: Photos, Icons, Colors, Inspiration, and Tips.

Let Pictures Tell the Story

Do you waste a lot of time trying to find the ideal photo but still end up unsatisfied with your results?

I use these websites when I need amazing photos. You’ll find hundreds of high-resolution images here. I find these sites are generally very user friendly, and most importantly, the photos included are not under copyright.

Life of Pix : https://www.lifeofpix.com/

I use this website for the background pictures — here you’ll find some useful city or scenery images . I highly recommend this site, it’s one of my favourites!

Magdeleine : https://magdeleine.co/

Here you can search for images based on dominant colours, which makes it a really useful website for background images.

StockSnap : https://stocksnap.io/

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. StockSnap updates their image banks weekly, so you should be able to easily find a photo to describe any scenario, instead of using words.

Other amazing websites that also recommended:

Unsplash : https://unsplash.com/

Libre Stock : https://librestock.com/

Foodiesfeed : https://www.foodiesfeed.com/

Finding Icon

Finding the ideal representative icon is imperative for all aspiring PowerPoint experts. Here are two icon-finding websites that I particularly like:

Noun project : https://thenounproject.com/

This is the most useful icon-finding page ever! The creators upload new icons every day, so you can always find the perfect image to help you simplify the communication in your presentation.

Flaticon : https://www.flaticon.com/

If multicolor icons are needed, let Flaticon amaze you with its natural download process and myriad databases.

Now you have these two sites, trust me, you won’t need any others!

Color Generator

Color Palate — Adobe color CC & Pictaculous

https://color.adobe.com/zh/ & http://www.pictaculous.com/

When you’re making slides, you might struggle to find the corresponding color to match with the images or logos that you want to put in your presentation. Try these two websites; they generate tailored color schemes from screenshots or photographs.

Color Pair — Hello Color

http://jxnblk.com/hello-color/

If you are looking for a matching color pair, let Hello Color surprise you! With each click, it generates two similar or complementary colors.

Browse Colors — Nippon Colors

http://nipponcolors.com/

Here you can find a color with a unique Japanese flair. Randomly pick the color that appeals to you, and you can get the corresponding CMYK/RGB. The whole website is quite ingenious.

Inspiration

The most popular websites for inspiration are probably Pinterest(http://bit.ly/2RZCWog) & Behance (http://bit.ly/2CCS5C9). Each has thousands of materials, including graphic designs, slide flow designs, fonts etc., all available and waiting for you to explore. When inspiration is needed, just browse these two sites. Here you can find work from top online portfolios by creative professionals across various industries. Don’t forget to use the keyword — PowerPoint — and you might happen upon a great freemium template by chance!

Dribbble : http://bit.ly/2REMlSA

Here you can find inspiration for the slides flow and structure. I normally use this website when I’m looking for a special graph or iconic image.

CSS Winner : http://bit.ly/2AVjQG8

As you can probably guess from its name, CSS winner is the website design award gallery for designers and developers to showcase their best web design works! I always find inspiration from this website when I’m designing slide covers.

Useful Sites You Shouldn’t Miss

Embed Your Concept Anywhere — Smartmockups

https://smartmockups.com/

I always use this website to build my slides. In four steps, you can create a mockup which embeds your photos perfectly.

Choose the mockup you want (cellphone/tablet/laptop…etc.)
Upload your image or grab a screenshot from the URL
Customize the scene and crop the final image to your liking
Export and Enjoy

Or if you’re too lazy to sign up for an account, try this similar website — Dunnnk http://dunnnk.com/

Let the Professionals Make the Slides for You — 24 Slides

https://24slides.com/templates/featured

As useful as all of this has been, I know a lot of you have just been waiting for the templates! Template by 24 slides is a website that I found recently, you can use it to get slides on-brand and improve overall design in a timeframe. From now on, you can leverage your time by using these exquisite templates.

You might also be interested in this website which provides some free templates; mind you I would personally judge the quality here as acceptable rather than extraordinary –Slides Carnival https://www.slidescarnival.com