When you’re asked to put together a slideshow or visuals for your team or clients, using tools like PowerPoint and Word usually won’t stand out. Although these programs were seen as cutting-edge in the past, they don’t help you appear more creative than your colleagues or competitors. With more online resources available, it’s simpler than ever for those who aren’t tech-savvy to make impressive presentations, infographics, and posters.
Your peers and clients will perceive you and your information as having more value, based on the quality of packaging. Now you can quickly produce professional-quality materials in minutes!
Three Tools for Amazing Visuals
There are innumerable tools and resources online to help you generate stunning graphics. Below are a few of my personal favorites.
Prezi
If you’re tired of making and watching traditional slide-based PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, Prezi is a great option. Instead of creating linear slideshows, you can design a main image and “zoom in” on parts of it to add more images and text. For example, if you were making a presentation on anatomy, instead of a dull slideshow, you could start with a graphic of a human body and the title of your presentation. From there, you can zoom in on different body parts that have labels, extra images, and text. You can even zoom in further on the smaller text and images for more details! Prezi aligns better with how people understand information. Plus, people are really impressed by Prezi presentations!
Canva
With Canva, you can design posters, flyers, infographics, and much more! Canva’s most impressive feature is its highly-polished template gallery paired with the ability for users to quickly customize projects to make them appear 100% unique. The site is extremely user-friendly with a very small learning curve. Even if you have an in-house graphic designer or department for design, this service is great for those smaller projects you wouldn’t normally use them for. Your materials will have your clients and peers swearing your project was professionally constructed!
Piktochart
Piktochart is extremely similar to Canva, allowing you to create flyers, reports, infographics, presentations, etc. using templates. However, this service has a particularly impressive template gallery for infographics specifically. If you want to simplify the information you’re presenting while creating a stunning visual, creating an infographic on Piktochart is a great strategy.
Becoming known for creating amazingly polished visuals while everyone else creates simple charts on Microsoft Word, will definitely help build a strong personal brand. I use all of the above services regularly to create eye-catching visuals. What are your favorites?