4 FREE Tools to Improve Your Next Presentation!

during my first year as a management consultant i use google images for all my presentations need a chart show increasing revenue google images need a money icon showing how much we overcharge our clients google images need a photo of an overworked yet underpaid first year consultant facebook photos it wasn't until my second year that i found out about these amazingly helpful websites like color hunt pixabay flat icons and since then the production value of my presentations has skyrocketed so in this video i'm going to share concrete examples of how you can use four free tools to upgrade the look and feel of your powerpoint or google slides presentations let's get started hi friends welcome to the first episode of think outside the box where i show you creative ways to stand out at work in my experience the more resourceful or scrappy you are in the workplace the more likely you are to be recognized as capable and proactive first i'm proud to admit that i haven't started a presentation from scratch for the past five years and that's thanks to websites like slide carnival that let you download and use google slides and powerpoint templates completely for free i personally like a more minimal design so i usually use one of the templates under the simple category and in just two clicks one two you have the option to download this template as a powerpoint document or use it as a theme in google slides i'm honestly amazed at the quality at some of these templates i mean just check out how like clean and elegant this viola theme is and i think if you scroll all the way down they even include like extra diagrams infographics and icons that you can customize completely damn i should just use this next week the terms of use are very simple as well as long as you give credit to slide carnival the templates are available for both personal and commercial use alternatively you can also check out the template gallery that comes with google slides or slidesgo. com but they both have a few limitations the template gallery doesn't have that many options and slidesgo. com limits your download to 10 free templates a month any more than that you gotta pay and go premium now that you have a great template you want to customize it and make it your own and this is where websites like colorhunt.

co comes in i use this tool to pick a color palette that i will apply throughout my entire presentation i usually take a few minutes to browse the popular pastel and night categories all the way down over here by the way i'm almost positive like this is the mkbhd branding i'm not sure maybe one of you can let me know and i would favorite the ones i really like then it gets added over here then when i'm ready to apply the color palette i click into it click on the hex go to copy it to my clipboard go back to my presentation select the color i want to replace by clicking the highlight color here adding a custom color pasting the hex code in pressing ok and for elements you can't seem to click on like this one right here all you got to do is go to slide edit theme click it here change the color by again choosing the color you just added clicking x to exit out look at that i just made this template unique to me i'm telling you sometimes my genius is almost like frightening okay but what if there's one color you really like and you want to build around that dominant color let's take the totally not a scam purple iphone the hex code of which i'll throw on screen right now if i input that into a website called color space like so it can generate a bunch of color palettes around that dominant color for me personally i usually go with the natural palette like this one but there's so many options on here there's definitely something for everyone before you go crazy with these colors by the way most companies have brand guidelines in place for external presentations but for internal presentations you can get a bit creative and show your personality by the way please do let me know whether you're enjoying this think outside the box episode i have way more like work hacks like this but i'm just not sure whether they're relevant for you so let me know down in the comments if you want to see more of how i use non-traditional tools for traditional corporate work now you have a template and made it your own it's time to add some images to help convey your message spoil alert we're not using google images instead for high resolution images i use unsplash. com let's say i'm doing a presentation on airline travel i type an airline in the search bar here i go down and find an image that i think would be appropriate let's say this one click download for free and going back to my presentation i drag this image into the slide resize it a little bit to make sure it's covering the entire slide like so i can crop if i want i would right click and actually bring this all the way back and pro tip and for under format options and adjustments i actually like to bring the brightness down a little bit if this is a background image to make the words pop out a little bit more alternatives to unsplash include pixels. com and pixabay.

com they all have free high quality stock photos you can use and pixabay even has vector graphics similar to what you would find on google images just in a much higher resolution and most have a transparent background as well and on to my personal favorite flaticons. com again i'm just amazed how many like beautiful free icons there are on this website um back to my presentation let's say i want an icon on travel and airline i just simply type that in and the ones with the little crown on here are like for premium users you got to pay but there are plenty of free options as well let's pick this one this looks pretty good free download attribute the author if you end up do using this uh going back to my presentation here again i just drag the icon onto the slide resize it a little bit and doesn't look too bad another resource for icons i recently came across and credit goes to kevin stratford for this one is the nounproject. com they have these extremely intricate icon designs as you can see here and these are more suitable for like um formal presentations because most of the icons are in black and white alright bonus tip because i love my viewers if you really want to bring your presentations to the next level you can start by trying out new fonts and typewolf.