When I speak to people about what I do and tell them I can help them with design I often get a little resistance. My guess is they hear the word “design” and think I’m gonna make their slides look frou-frou. In reality, though nothing could be farther from the truth. Unless that’s what they want.

When you hear the word design, what comes to your mind? Making things pretty? Matching colors? Sconces? Toile curtains?

People often confuse design with decoration or unnecessary ornamentation.

Despite popular understanding, design is actually very different from decoration. Design does not necessarily imply beauty. Design involves giving careful consideration to every aspect of something to make sure it does what it’s intended to do. It implies that there is an intention or plan behind the thing you’re designing and that same plan influences every decision you make about how that object should look and function. We commonly think of design when it comes to things like furnishing our homes, but in reality every manmade object you encounter, from plungers to iPods, have been designed by someone.

I’ve always been a thinker and perhaps that’s why design appeals to me so much. I like my iPod because careful consideration has been given to every aspect of it’s creation. It’s designers valued things like beauty and simplicity and these values went into every decision that was made about it. How will it look? How will it feel? How do you get songs onto it? How do you play a song? Switch songs? Adjust the volume? The designers thought about all of that ahead of time.

Graphic design is a specific type of design in which this kind of attention to every detail is applied to the creation of visuals such as magazine ads and web pages. Decisions on things like color, size, alignment, proximity, balance, contrast, and texture are made to ensure that every part of a poster, or book cover, or business card achieves its desired effect. Visuals can be designed to inspire, to excite, to calm, to sell or to disgust. A good designer knows what feelings or ideas are conveyed by different fonts or textures or colors and will make choices accordingly.

While graphic design is certainly a part of presentation design, it is far from being all there is to it. Presentation design gives careful consideration to every part of a presentation. This includes slides, of course, but it also involves careful planning of the message that is being delivered. It involves an understanding of the audience that will be hearing the message. It involves deciding how best to display supporting evidence (charts? pictures? tables?), and in what order. It involves working with the speaker to make sure the visuals match his or her personal style. Ultimately it involves deciding what you want your audience’s experience to be and figuring out how best to make it happen. That may mean doing something very traditionally beautiful for some clients, but it may involve something relatively unattractive for the next. Whatever best communicates the message the client will be trying to convey is what will get done.

Presentation design basically means thinking about everything that goes into your presentations.

It’s easy to tell when a presentation has not been designed well. It usually obvious that the speaker did not think about her audience as much as she should have. When I point out things that could be done better to clients, they often say, “I didn’t even think about that.” That’s the main reason I would encourage you to hire a designer, or better yet read books (or blogs) that will teach you to start thinking like a designer yourself.

Just beginning to think about many of the decisions you’re making will help you greatly improve the quality of your presentations.