The harmony of the visuals in your PowerPoint

Harmony is one of the founding principles of information design. This concerns font combinations that go well together, color combinations, or any other graphic characteristic of any interface design.

Among them, the illustrations. It is obvious that using illustrations in slide design is fundamental, but it is not always a given that these illustrations must have a link, a graphic linearity between them to bring their full power.

‍

First, let's quickly define what we mean by illustration. The term can cover 3 main forms when it comes to presentations:

• In the sense of visuals/images
• In the sense of illustrated scenes
• In the sense of pictograms

Once we know the main illustration options available when you create a slide, we must then look for the right resources and the same style in order to illustrate several concepts in your presentation with visuals. harmonious (understand here “who are part of the same universe”).

1 - Harmonization of visuals/images

As for images, stop Google Images and photos with the Shutterstock filter, instead take advantage of free banks like unsplash.com or Pexels.com that offer quality photos in free access.

Even if the selected photos are of good quality, apply a filter to the photos to create a simple form of “unity” between them. You don't have to use Photoshop for that. Simply create a shape in PowerPoint, then go to “Shape Format” to change its fill color and apply transparency to let the photo in question appear. Repeat the operation on all the photos in your presentation.

‍

‍

Bonus: by following this process, writing on a photo has never been easier.

2 - The illustrated scenes

Another possibility to illustrate your ideas and concepts in a presentation: scenes. They feature characters in a wide variety of work situations: business meetings, data calculation, strategy presentation... Thanks to a fresh and modern design, this option makes it possible to avoid the over-use of “corpo” visuals that are sometimes a bit classic.

When choosing this option, be sure to create or use illustrations made by a single illustrator, precisely for the sake of harmony and aesthetics.

The M PREZ agency has developed a free and ready-to-use PowerPoint template, in which you will find numerous illustrations that illuminate your business and corporate slides: download the illustrated template by M PREZ here.

3 - The pictograms

A must for PowerPoint illustration: pictograms. Use them without counting, they were, they are, and will remain excellent visual indicators to structure a slide and easily support a concept. A tip: always include pictograms in SVG format in your presentation, this allows you to change the color as you see fit.

Again, always use pictograms from the same bank in order to maintain harmony between all your children. Icons used on the presentation. We will often distinguish wireframe pictograms (simply with outlines) from full/filled pictograms.

Among the good resources where to find icons, we will think of flaticon.com or even at thenounproject.com .

‍

BONUS: the emojis alternative

Created in the 90s by the Japanese designer Shegetaka Kurita, they have completely entered our daily lives, often relying on text in our conversations. Using them in a presentation can be very coherent, providing a fun and powerful tone. Not to mention that they provide an easy solution to our question about harmony since we can consider them as a bank of pictograms of the same style.

‍

Small clarification: you can find emojis directly from your PowerPoint interface in the “Insert” tab then “Symbol”: they are now available “natively” on the software.

Need more information to clarify the use of visuals in your Powerpoint presentations? Do not hesitate to contact us if you need support or advice on this topic. We will be happy to help you.