Not so long ago, professionals and businesspeople who presented live could rely on a 2- or 3-meter projection screen behind them to show their slides. Since the spring of 2020, the slides in your remote presentation will only fill part of your listeners' screens and the screens have shrunk. Times have changed. The rules of composition must therefore follow the times.
Let us put it another way: If you thought you were creating visual content for the big screen before 2020, you now work in TV!
Here are 5 new composition ideas for your next small screen presentation: pour vos prochaines présentations au petit écran:
Expect your presentation to be viewed on a smaller screen
Tablet or even a smartphone, these screens will require a smaller number of text blocks as well as more spacing between lines of text. There is some good news: slightly smaller fonts can be used than before because users are now closer to their screens.
Lots of free space to lighten the design.
This trend follows modern web design thinking, namely the use of white space, minimalist, and Flat design. Choose white or colors with a marked contrast for backgrounds. Textured backgrounds and gradients are hardly used anymore as they may cause your animations to freeze up. Your audience may have insufficient bandwidth, therefore plan for loss of quality of complex graphics.
Vary your pleasures..
While you want to ensure continuity in the design and colors of the slides, vary the layout on your slides to surprise your listeners and maintain their attention. For example, you could reverse the background colors of consecutive slides to keep them engaged.
Less text but more impactful words.
The multiline descriptions on your slides no longer have their place in modern design. Little attention will be paid to them. These are lost opportunities. Think in terms of a highway billboard. Use capital letters and different font colors for more impact.
Get inspired by the infographics on your favourite news channel.
If we used to give our listeners 5 to 6 seconds to get the message before, two to three seconds are all you have now. As an example, present numbers using graphs instead of data tables.
In conclusion
Most of the sound rules of composition we were using before are still holding up well, screen sizes will require us to be rigorous in applying them.