Three Shortcuts for Designing Sexy

Presentations

Have you ever seen a beautifully designed presentation and wished it was

yours?

Have you ever seen a sexy presentation that really drove home the speaker’s

message and wished you could create something similar...without too much

effort?

Well-designed presentations have the power to make the speaker’s message

interesting and memorable. However, designing great presentations take time

and effort. It can take endless hours of hard work to develop and design a sexy

presentation. Why does it take so long? Because:

1. You need to come up with a great color scheme and theme to make

your presentation sexy! Just as wearing the right colors can make a person

look sexy, dressing up your presentation in the right colors can make it

visually irresistible.

Now, I’m no designer – I am the last person with an eye for great colors –

but I have discovered a way to ethically steal other people’s great designs

and color schemes, and you’ll learn how to do so too.

2. You need to find stunning images to complement your points. Using

great images not only makes your presentation more pleasing to look at,

but it also increases the memorability of your message. Images are

memorable, and when they’re used correctly they can help your audience

remember your message. In this eBook, you will learn where to quickly

locate stunning (and free) images for your presentations.

3. You need to find the right fonts that convey the right feelings. Why not

use default fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman? Because those fonts

are over-used and frankly, they’re boring. If you want to design a sexy

presentation, stay away from the defaults!

In this short and practical eBook, you will learn how and where to easily

find the best fonts for your presentation. If you’ve seen a presentation

online with a great font that you’d like to use but don’t know where to get

it, you’ll discover a tool that will allow you to find out what font it is and

download it (or something similar) for free. You’ll never have to be stuck

with using boring fonts again!

Oh, and don’t worry…all of this “stealing” is 100% legal, so you won’t be

breaking any laws or doing anything unethical, but you’ll have to read on to

find out what I mean.

My Seven Promises to You

If you’ve read this far, then it’s safe to assume that you’re interested in learning

how to design sexy presentations (without spending too much time or putting in

too much effort). To manage your expectations and help you decide whether or

not you should buy the book, let me give you a quick summary of what you’ll

learn in the book. I promise that by the time you finish this book, you will

discover:

1. Where to find sexy presentation designs

2. How to ethically and legally steal the color scheme and theme from an

online presentation without paying a penny

3. How to find amazing color themes and schemes to dress up your

presentations in the right colors – even if you’re not a designer!

4. How to ethically and legally steal sexy fonts from a presentation you’ve

seen online – even if you don’t know what font it is!

5. Where to locate beautiful fonts for free

6. How to locate stunning images for your presentations without paying a

single cent

7. Ten simple principles for designing sexy presentations (if you learn these

ten principles, you’ll have mastered 80% of what there is to learn about

designing sexy and effective presentations).

Now, if that sounds like something you’re interested in learning, I suggest you

get this eBook.

You’ll get exactly what I promised you…nothing more, nothing less…so if you’re

the kind of reader I’m looking for, let’s get started with the 3 Presentation

Hacks for Designing Sexy Presentations…

How to Ethically “Steal” a Color

Scheme and Theme from some of

the World’s Best Presentations

So…you’ve been asked to give a presentation. You’ve tried to say “No”, made

excuses about why you can’t (“I’m too busy. I don’t have time to prepare for

the presentation!”), tried to shift the responsibility to someone else (“Maybe

Jenny should give the presentation. She’s not as busy and she’s got a better

PowerPoint skills!”), but in the end you’re still the one responsible for giving the

presentation.

The thought of giving the presentation is too painful…you hate public speaking

(You’d rather be the guy in the casket than the guy giving the eulogy!) and on

your list on most interesting things to do, “creating a PowerPoint presentation”

ranks below “watching paint dry”.

The thought of giving the presentation is too painful…so you push it aside until

the last day. The day before the presentation arrives and you begin to panic.

You quickly gather all your content – your stories, examples and statistics – and

begin outlining what you’re going to say. You come up with a suitable structure

and begin to feel better about yourself.

Now, all you have to do is to take your information and dump it into your

PowerPoint slides, correct?

Unfortunately, that’s what most presenters do. They vomit all their information

onto their PowerPoint slides and end up creating a “slideument” – slides that are

actually documents in disguise. These slideuments contain long paragraphs with

hundreds of bullet points. Very little thought goes into the design of the

presentation. The font is boring and too small to read from the back of the

room. The colors are ugly and make it difficult to read the huge chunks of text

that have been copied and pasted onto the slides. And the images are cheesy

clipart pictures that make the slides look unprofessional.

The effect of these slideuments? At best, the speaker loses credibility because

his slides are unprofessional. More likely, the audience tunes out of what the

speaker is saying and falls asleep.

How often have been bored to death by a slideument? I’m guessing it’s a bit too

often for your liking. Experiencing death by PowerPoint once is once too much.

Unfortunately, because of the abuse of PowerPoint, PowerPoint has gotten a bad

rap. But there’s nothing wrong with PowerPoint – there’s something wrong with

how people are using it. PowerPoint is just a tool…and if you learn how to use it

effectively, it’ll serve you well. But if you treat it like a Word document (which it

is not!), you’ll end up with a boring slideument. Don’t blame the tool…blame the

person using the tool.

So, how do you go about creating effective – and sexy – presentation slides?

The first step in designing a sexy presentation is to come up with a sexy color

scheme and theme.

But what if you’re not a professional designer? Don’t worry, neither am I. You

don’t have to be a professional designer to be able to create sexy presentations.

What if you failed art class and have no idea what colors look great together?

It’s okay, I failed art class too!

What if you have very little time to spend on creating a sexy color theme? No

worries.

All you have to do is find a sexy presentation design that you like. The best

place to find sexy presentation designs is on Slideshare. Slideshare is the

YouTube of presentations. Every day, thousands of great (and crappy)

presentations are uploaded onto Slideshare.

Step 1: Locate a Presentation You Like

Your first step in stealing a sexy presentation design is to find a presentation

design that you like. If you browse through the “Top Presentations of the Day”

and “Top Presentations of All Time” on Slideshare, you’ll most likely come

across a presentation with a color scheme you like.

As an example, let’s say that you come across the following presentation

(created by me)

Presentation: Example 1

You think that the color scheme, theme and fonts on this presentation look

sexy. It’s the presentation that you like best. You think that the design is

appropriate for the type of presentation you have to give.

Some presentations on Slideshare are downloadable. You can download the

Powerpoint presentation straight to your desktop and begin editing it

immediately, in which case you’re sorted.

However, unfortunately, most of the great presentations only allow you to

download the PDF version of the presentation (which means you can’t edit it

and use it as a template for creating your own presentations). Some other

presentations don’t even allow you to download the PDF version of the

presentation (I know, it sucks!). Let’s say that that the presentation you like is

not downloadable.

Don’t worry though. There’s a simple hack – a hack most people don’t know

about - that you can use to ethically and legally steal the color scheme from a

presentation…even if the owner doesn’t allow you to download the presentation!

Cool, eh? Here’s what you have to do:

Step 2: Take a Picture/ Screenshot of the Presentation

If you want to copy the theme from a presentation on Slideshare, you need to

know the answers to three questions:

What is the background color?

What fonts are being used?

What are the font colors?

In the presentation from Example 1, you can see that there are two different

background colors being used: a dark greyish background for the slide with the

numbered slides, and a shade of orange for the slide with the explanations on it.

However, knowing that a background is “greyish” is not enough. You need to

know the exact “RGB Code” for the color.

What’s an RGB code? Each color on your computer has a different code – called

an RGB code because all colors are made from a combination of “Red, Green

and Blue”.

To discover the exact RGB code for the background, all you have to do is to take

a screenshot/ picture of the slide.

Here’s how to take a screenshot/picture of the slide:

1. Open up the Slideshare presentation in your internet browser

(Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc)

2. Press the “Prt Scrn/Sys Rq” function key on the top right of your

keyboard. Some computers require you to press the “Ctrl” and the “Prt

Scrn/Sys Rq” function key at the same time in order to take a screenshot

(“Ctrl” + “PrtScrn/Sys Rq”).

Step 3: Paste the Image into Paint

After you’ve taken a screenshot of the presentation slide, you need:

1. Open up the Paint program on your computer. (To open up the “Paint”

program on your computer, click your Windows “Start” button, choose “All

Programs”, click on “Accessories” and click on “Paint” to open it up).

2. Paste the Screenshot of the Slide into Paint. To paste the screenshot

into Paint, you can either:

a. Choose the option “Edit” and then click on “Paste”

b. Press the “Ctrl” and the “V” button at the same time (“Ctrl” + “V”)

Once I copied and pasted the screenshot of my desired presentation slide into

my Paint program, here’s what it looked like:

Step 4: Select the Pick Color Tool

After you’ve pasted the screenshot of the slide into your Paint program, select

the “Pick Color” tool:

Step 5: Click on the Desired Background

After selecting the “Pick Color” tool, click on the slide’s background. The pick

color tool will help you discover the RGB code of a color, so click on the slide’s

background to discover the RGB code for the background.

Step 6: Click on “Edit Colors”

After you’ve clicked on the slide’s background color using the “Pick Color” tool,

go to “Colors” > “Edit Colors” as shown below:

Step 7: Find the RGB Code

If you’ve followed steps 1 to 6 correctly, a pop-up box such as the one shown

below will appear:

The pop-up will tell you the selected color’s RGB code:

In this case, the RGB code for the background color is:

Red = 25

Green = 42

Blue = 49

Pretty cool, eh?

Step 8: Find the RGB Codes for the Font Colors

After you’ve found the RGB codes for the desired background colors, go ahead

and repeat Steps 4 to 7, except this time instead of clicking on the background

color, click on the font color. Following the steps, you will have the exact RGB

code for the font colors.

By now, you should have the RGB codes for the slide’s background colors and

font colors. Jot these down somewhere because we’re going to use them in a

little while.

Step 9: Open Up PowerPoint

Open up your PowerPoint (or Keynote) program. Open up a fresh, clean, white

presentation.

Step 10: Change the Background Color

Your presentation should currently be fresh, clean and white with nothing on it.

We are now going to add a background color to your presentation:

1. Left-Click your mouse and a pop-up box will appear 2. Click on “Format Background”

3. A pop-up box will appear. Click on Fill > Color > More Colors

4. Another pop-up box will appear. Click on the “Custom Tab”

5. Choose “Color model: RGB” and fill out the RGB value for the

background color

6. Your new background color should be exactly the same as the

background of the sexy slide you picked on Slideshare!

7. Since the sexy slides from Example 1 had two background colors (the

greyish one above) and an orange one, let’s go ahead and create a new

slide with the orange background. Add a New Slide > Left Click >

Format Background > More Colors > Custom > Enter RGB codes for

Orange background. If you followed the steps correctly in the previous

section when locating RGB codes, the RGB code for the orange

background should be: Red=235, Green = 149, Blue = 53

Step 11: Congratulate Yourself

Now that you’ve managed to successfully steal the background colors from a

slide on Slideshare, you deserve to be congratulated.

Hack #1 Accomplished You now have the ability to get the exact RGB code for any color on the

Internet! What are the benefits of Hack #1?

How does being able to find the RGB codes for any color on the internet benefit

you?

I’m glad you asked.

A major part of creating a sexy presentation is being able to choose contrasting

colors that make your text readable as well as visually pleasing. However, many

people don’t really know which colors go well together and which one’s don’t.

Choosing the right colors for a presentation is an art – and if there was an

examination on it, most people would fail.

Choosing the right colors for your presentation is also very difficult and time

consuming work. And if you don’t have the time (or the creative spark) required

for choosing the right background and font color combinations, Hack #1 will be

an indispensable tool in your presentation toolkit!

Instead of having to think about which background colors and font colors go

well together, you can simply go to Slideshare, click through a couple of

presentations and find the combination you like best. Import the background

and font colors into your presentation, and you’re presentation will look just as

beautiful!

So go ahead and explore a few more presentations online. There are lots of

amazing and extraordinary colors being used in presentation slides. If you come

across a color you like, you can simply use the “Screenshot > Paste into Paint >

Use Pick Color Tool > Discover RGB code” method use the exact same color in

your presentation. Pretty neat hack, eh?

A Free Tool to Help You Find More

Amazing Color Schemes for Your

Presentations Now that you’ve mastered Hack #1, let me introduce you to a free online tool

that you can use create your own beautiful templates.

If you don’t want to steal other people’s presentation designs, but you lack the

ability to create great color-combinations, this free tool will be a life-saver.

FREE TOOL: www.ColourLovers.com

Head over to Colour Lovers and browse the color palettes. You’ll most certainly

find inspiration in the Most Loved Color Palettes of All Time. Browse through the

different palettes and try out how different color combinations look on your

presentation.

Each color palette comes with RGB codes for the colors, so the only thing you

have to do is choose a palette and apply it to your presentation. However, once

you choose a color scheme you like, make sure you stick to it throughout your

presentation.