It can be very difficult to present all of your hard work and knowledge in a mere five-minute presentation, especially when you might face unfair judgment. With that said, I have some tips for how you can prepare well and be confident while presenting. Here is a simple way to impress your audience by helping them stick with your speech rather than feel lost in the figures and descriptions on the slides.

In short, intelligently hide the content on the slides, make everything uniform and prepare the presentation from day one. Are you not ready yet? Read on for the details to create an almost perfect presentation.

1. Gray Zone

Less confused, calm minds will recognize your work better.

If you look carefully and examine each of your slides, there may be parts that are neither overly important or able to be cut. They are in the grey area. So, why not give them that, literally? You can make the text color to grey. I use Black Accent 4 (HEX: 808080). When you do this, your audience will subconsciously skip that word or sentence. Amazing, isn’t it? Try this in your next presentation, but keep in mind not to over do it. You will know the limit after a couple of presentations.

2. Colors

Uniformity is so satisfying.

How many hours have you spent watching the oddly satisfying videos on YouTube? Your audience should feel the same visual satisfaction during your presentation. It is possible if you give their brains less work by creating the maximum possible uniformity.

The first step is to stick to the basic Red, Green and Blue (RGB) colors as we, humans, comprehend them easily. Then use the same color for the same data when you compare across different slides. Make sure to stress the relation between particular data and the color you used for it. Like everything, this has some exceptions and caution is required. Green may not look attractive with a usual white background or blue on a black canvas. Try a darker or lighter version to create a contrast.

3. Preparation

Well begun is half done.

When you know that a specific work requires a presentation, start the work by creating a title slide. Add data to your slides as you go. This helps in two ways. Firstly, when you run out of ideas, preparing slides for the work up to that point helps you review your work. You will surely get a Eureka! moment. Secondly, you will have more time to work up to the end rather than panic about preparing a good presentation. Your presentation will automatically turn out well if you work on it from day one.

These points are almost universal. Being an audience to speakers across the spectrum, I felt most comfortable when the speakers applied these points. Honestly, there is no one way to do things. You can learn more techniques by simply attending various talks. Gig ‘em, Aggies!