Most people don’t even know that presentation design agencies like us exist. It’s so “niche” that our consultants have a hard time explaining what exactly we do.
How do we survive the networking events? We leave it to your imagination.
So we decided to publish this article to educate you about the meaning & importance of presentations in the business world. Also, the role of a presentation design agency in crafting them.
Generally, presentation means a lot of things but to be more specific, we’re referring to PowerPoint/Keynote/Google Slides presentations.
What does a presentation design agency do?
The array of our services is quite wide & we have no intention of boring you with the technical list. So instead, we’ll focus on the areas in which we solve problems & work closely with our clients.
1. Storytelling Support
So, you’re sitting there thinking about the best business storytellers. Who do you think of?
I’d imagine it’s Steve Jobs.
Be honest. How much time did your mind take to throw that answer? I bet it was a fraction of a second.
In fact, this was his quote from when he was the CEO of Pixar in 1994, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come…”
Storytelling works because people are drawn to stories — they’re easy to relate to and connect to on an emotional level. When you tell stories about your brand, people will feel like they have a sense of belonging to something bigger than just themselves: a community, an idea, or even an idea about themselves.
What’s our role in business storytelling?
When founders, executives & anyone with an idea takes the stage, they need a compelling story.
Founders need a storytelling pitch deck (an investor presentation), executives need decks for high-stake events & almost every business needs a sales deck to maintain a consistent narrative.
This is where presentation design agencies come in. We craft the right strategic narrative that “pulls at people’s heartstrings” & visual slide design to attract their attention.
Speaking of design, there’s a common misconception that presentation design agencies do just one thing- SLIDE DESIGN!
That doesn’t define us in the slightest. What we do is much more than just slide design, we also play a major role in crafting the presentation messaging to make sure you have influence without being too cheesy, too aggressive, or too meek.
2. Visual Storytelling with presentation design
Presentation design is important. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. It matters when you have a large audience & you pitch your ideas in front of them, or when you want to show off your work at work.
Why is presentation design considered so important?
To answer this question, we would like you to imagine a scenario. Imagine that you are to print 300 brochures for distribution at an event.
What would be your primary action? You’d think of getting the brochure designed?
Why? Because you fear a bad design will ruin your brand’s reputation.
Because deep down we all know that reputation & looks do matter. No matter what people say, subconsciously everyone makes judgments & opinions. That’s how humans are wired!
Naturally, you’d want the audience to form a good opinion about your brand.
Now, if you think that your brochure should have a good design, why should your presentations be any different? Are the presentations inferior in significance? No, if anything, they’re far superior.
“Presentation design is more than just design”
A countless number of times, we’re referred to as “Graphic Designers for slides”. However, Crafting the most powerful narratives takes more than “just design”. It’s the art & science of visual storytelling.
Presentation designers craft an array of ideas, stories, words, illustrations, and images into a set of slides that are arranged to tell a story and persuade an audience.
Read more about Visual Storytelling in our Article: Visuals + Storytelling = Magical Presentations
3. Strategic Solutions
Time, effort & design effectiveness are the three parameters where the strategic problem-solving of a presentation design agency is required.
Time
A survey of over 1,000 employees across multiple industries found that, on average, people spend 20 hours a month on PowerPoint.
Still think presentation is a small & insignificant part of a business?
Presentation design agencies study the usage & setup solutions like template systems or design guidelines.
By reducing the slide design time of employees, companies want to make sure that they can focus on more important tasks.
For companies where the monthly slide design volume is higher than 100, presentation design is completely outsourced to the agencies.
Effort
You wouldn’t believe what’s the most frustrating part of presentation design. No, it’s not designing slides. It’s finding the right design resources to design the slides & making them look appropriate as per the brand guidelines.
“That sounds like too much effort for someone whose full-time job isn’t presentation designing”.
Presentation design agencies help set up custom creative asset libraries for their clients to get rid of this energy-sucking ordeal.
Design Effectiveness
Even after the burnout, if the designs aren’t good enough, what’s the point?
Some companies just don’t want to compromise on their brand aesthetics & presentations are a big part of their communications. Especially management consulting firms.
So, would you make your employees go through hell just to maintain your brand consistency? No, you would delegate the task to a presentation design agency. It actually costs less than hiring in-house.
Read details about outsourcing in our comparative article: Outsourcing presentation design vs hiring in-house.
All in all!
There’s a whole world that exists within the niche of presentations. Even though people think presentations are an insignificant part of a business, they do spend too much time writing & designing them.
Hence, presentation design agencies are valuable to companies for storytelling, design & strategic solutions.
Ink Narrates is a Presentation Design Agency. We craft storytelling PowerPoint presentations & provide services in presentation outsourcing, pitch decks, sales decks, animated presentations, template systems & design guidelines. Basically, we live & breathe presentations!