We’re proud of our Award Winning Presentation Design!
Marc Richard of Presented took first place at the Presentation Guild Contest #2: “Makeover Makeover”
There aren’t many events to celebrate presention design, so we’re happy to say that Presented has Award Winning Presentation Design!
In 2016, Presented entered a contest run by The Presentation Guild. Presentation Designer Marc Richard took first prize. Here’s how he did it:
“The words ‘Chalkboards, vintage & hand lettering’ can be dangerous territory for a presentation designer in PowerPoint!” said Marc.
“Chalkboard textured backgrounds are much less common now than back in the 90s and 2000s. They were always a kitsch response to being stuck on computers, yearning to work with our hands! Vintage is a massively vague word that can mean 100 ‘shabby-chic’ things & hand lettering translates to custom installed fonts – not a PowerPoint forte…” he continued.
“Aside from this, the Presentation Guild brief was direct. It clearly stated the client needs and gave multiple examples of design for inspiration. These visual and written clues amount to half the job being done for a presentation designer. We acknowledged that the contest also asked for a working template.”
Indeed, the ability to follow a brief is the 101 for any designer, whether in PowerPoint or any other application.
Start with the existing branding.
Marc started with the brand Magnolia and the logo. He separated the text from the marque to add motion to the falling petal on the cover slide. This would meet the current trend for animated logos, giving far stronger impact to an identity than a static printed logo.
Marc explains further: “I used Segoe Script, one of the few handwritten typefaces to come bundled with Windows. Important for anyone viewing your file not to experience PowerPoint substituting your chosen font for something default and losing all formatting. The logo petal had a delicate, etched design and I matched this with gentle plant branch illustrations used on divider slides. I then repeated this on the following section for continuity.”
“Dark chalk background meant lots of use of light colours for contrast & the brief specified gold, grey & I used white also […obviously, chalk!]”
“The client asked for spacious design, so I sourced some PNG stock cosmetic images for interesting profiles & to avoid blocking out the chalk background. I added gentle shadows & translucent shapes to let the foreground hover over the background, adding to airiness. After this, I added in some motion animation to move elements around as you progress from divider slide to content, with simple fly-in & fade effects to finish it all off!”
Fantastic job Marc!
Sadly, there have only been 2 contests (that we know of!) run by the Presentation Guild. We came 2nd in the first contest, beaten by the award winning presentation design of Daniel who is now part of the Presented team too!
Do you have what it takes to produce an award winning presentation design too? Drop us a line with your portfolio!
