How To Be Creative When Preparing Presentation

Looking for an answer on how to be more creative and original while creating presentations? Check the following four tips.

No doubt you want to make an outstanding presentation, which will catch all the attention of the audience. The trick is how to be different than the masses. Especially if you’re one of the several presenters. The question is how to step out of the common default look of slides everybody is using? Find a moment before making a presentation, jump into your creative mood. How?

We brainstormed a list of suggestions on how to think outside the box. Works fine also for a busy workplace.

Summary (TL;DR): How to be more creative when preparing a presentation: (1) Get away from computer and PowerPoint. Go for a walk. Start on paper – sketch your main message and structure before opening the software. (2) Keep it simple: overcrowded slides aren’t creative. (3) Use a graphical style that signals creativity: hand-drawn, doodle, or watercolor shapes. (4) Build an inspiration habit: watch one TED talk or design channel a week, not just the night before your talk.

To get creative we’d recommend those four steps:

Get our for a walk

Put the computer away and go for a short brisk walk. It works wonders for me – changing my environment changes my perspective. Plus a movement gets your blood circulating better what improves thinking.

If you can’t go our, at least stand up and stare over the window to horizon. My yoga teacher says focusing eyesight to far objects relaxes our brain.

Work on paper

Start preparing a presentation on a blank paper, not in your PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi or whatever presentation software are you using. Firstly sketch down your presentation’s main message, and draft a structure. Our brains are much more creative with paper than with using the software at the start (here’s our blog article about it: Tricks to Get Creative With Presentations Preparation).

Stay simple, declutter

After having an idea on paper of how to show your idea on a slide, you can go to a computer. But stick close to your paper notes. Avoid adding too many elements inside. Overcrowded slides are not a symbol of creativity. Well, unless you create mosaic graphics out of it ;).

Use graphical style associated with creativity

Consider adding an artistic look to your presentation – hand drawn scribble style, doodle shapes, or watercolor shapes. Some examples:

All three styles are available as editable PowerPoint shape sets — [browse the creative graphics collection].

Look around for inspiration

Stay inspired – look for inspirations of interesting-looking presentations in places such as TED.com talks or YouTube. There are many people, from whom you can get ideas and new fresh view on your work. You can check also our YouTube channel for some inspirations. I personally love this wonderful visualizations on the science Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell YouTube channel videos.

Try to do this on regular basis, not only before your talk, when you usually don’t have much time. Schedule e.g. watching one TED talk a week.

More on practicing creativity

In order to enhance your creativity, here are more ideas you can do to practice:

BECOME AN EXPLAINER: The most creative people in any field are people who have a tremendous amount of knowledge. Creative people like Einstein, Edison, Steve Jobs were also experts in their own field. In this AI-era and Googling everything, there is a tendency to assume that information is available when you need it and so you don’t need to internalize it.
PRACTICE OPENNESS: One of the five core personality dimensions is openness. It reflects how much you are motivated to consider new ideas, concepts, and experiences. If you are someone who resists new ideas and experiences, that does not mean you cannot be creative, you need to develop a new set of habits to try new ideas.
KEEP ASKING NEW QUESTIONS: A third critical aspect of creativity is to remember that any idea you have is something that you pulled out of your memory. That means that when you have a brilliant idea, you retrieved a helpful piece of information from memory and used it.

Further articles on presentation graphics

For more inspiration on using visuals in your presentations, check out these articles as well:

Looking for more ideas? Get a Creative slide design guide with free hand-drawn shapes and sign up for our newsletter with regular inspirations sharing.