In any type of design— interior, graphic, or fashion— trends are a revolving door. What’s popular one year might not be prominent in designs the next. Staying on top of these trends keeps your designs fresh and relevant, with a better chance of grabbing the attention of your audience. The same applies to presentations.
You can pull inspiration from graphic design trends into your presentation. Things like colors, typography, image styles, and layouts can all vary from year to year. And with the principles of good presentation design in mind, it can be fun to test out new design options in your decks without compromising professionalism.
Here are 5 presentation trends to try in 2023.
Big backgrounds
In the coming year you can expect to see bigger backgrounds with more impact. This can be background images on every slide, bigger images on title slides, or flowing shapes that complement the slide layout. By using big backgrounds (not to be confused with loud or cluttered backgrounds), you’re demanding your audience’s attention to the slide in front of them.
In Beautiful.ai you can upload slide background images to your theme. For optimal design, you can choose whether it is treated as a light or dark background to ensure legibility, and opt to select one as a default background for all of the slides in the deck.
Modern minimalism
There’s something to be said about a clean, minimalistic presentation. Sure, it looks modern and professional (a win in and of itself). But more importantly, it’s easier to absorb the information being presented to you.
To create a minimalist presentation, keep these design tips in mind;
- Stick to one idea per slide
- Avoid lengthy blocks of text
- Use modern colors that complement each other
- Only include the most meaningful metrics and information
- Add modern photos and icons
Unique AI-powered images
Playing around with images— image grids, muted images, branded filters, and image overlays— is nothing new and groundbreaking. We’ve always encouraged people to use images throughout their presentations to lead the story. Why? Most humans are visual learners and will actually retain information better if there is an image associated with what you’re telling them. Plus, going image-heavy on your slides can help break up the dull blocks of texts.
In 2023 we will still see images and videos play a big role in presentation design. However, with evolving technology, the bar for images has gotten higher. With AI on the rise, we’re expecting to see more unique AI-powered images in 2023 and beyond. In anticipation of this trend, we added our new ImageBot (Beta) feature. You can make custom presentation images in seconds with our new AI-powered ImageBot. Simply describe what you're looking for, and let ImageBot create a unique AI image to take your story to the next level.
Bold colors
In up and coming graphic design trends, we’re seeing a lot of retro and bold color combinations. It’s no surprise since the Pantone color of the year is the vibrant Viva Magenta. These color palettes can easily translate into presentations, too. While you don’t want to risk losing your branding to a new trend, it could be fun to incorporate bolder hues in your custom themes. You can select a bolder shade in the same family as your brand color(s) to use as an accent to call-out key metrics. Similarly, you can play around with background colors on your slides to create more attention-grabbing designs.
Sophisticated Serif fonts
Typography is subjective, and can look different for every brand and business. To maintain brand integrity, your branded fonts should take precedence over what’s trending. That said, we’re seeing a lot of sophisticated Serif fonts at the forefront of designs for 2023. Serif fonts are a fan-favorite known for its refined professionalism and dependability. They are a great option for any presentation.
In 2023 we can expect to see designers adding a fun and artistic flare to the otherwise simple and traditional font. With different letter shapes and sizes, intertwining letters, and intentional distortion, there will be a new take on Serif. These iterations could be fun to upload as a custom font option for title slides or headings, while using a more subtle Serif for body text.
