design Archives - Mutant Communications

How 2021 Shaped The Design Industry

New year, new me.

This motto gets thrown around every year, and understandably so. After all, the prospect of a new year is exciting – it’s a time for us to reset, start anew, and shed away yesterday for a clean state. While we usher in the new year with renewed vigour, it’s also another chance for us to strive for progress by reflecting on our past to build a new, but better version of ourselves.

The choices we’ve made will set the tone for years to come, and this is especially true in the design scene. As we look to the trends of 2022, let’s take a step back and review some notable design projects of the past year, and the lessons we can carry forward into our next creative projects.

Seek authenticity, not originality

[Image credit: Dezeen]

When Burger King rolled out their first major rebrand in 20 years, they rediscovered their roots by centring the new visual identity on a previous iteration of their logo first launched in 1969. The revamp took us on a trip down memory lane, leaning heavily on nostalgia with its retro 70s aesthetic.

The new identity evokes a sense of fun while referencing Burger King’s heritage. By finding the perfect balance between the new and the old, the fast food company struck gold — the updated identity was still familiar to their current market, but different enough for new and prospective customers to resonate with. More importantly, it signals a new way of creative thinking.

As creatives, we’re always on the lookout for the next groundbreaking, never-seen-before idea, because we place too much value on originality. Hear me out: originality is overrated. Becoming fixated on being special can impede our attempts at building an authentic brand experience – and this can be detrimental to any branding initiatives.

Burger King’s decision to embrace their heritage allowed the business to go back to its roots, resulting in an instantly authentic connection with their audience that is far more moving.

Read the room

[Image credit: Bloomberg]

The CIA’s graphical rebrand kickstarted the year with a contentious design choice that matches either the aesthetic of an electronic music culture, or a streetwear brand (maybe both). In hindsight, the visual identity with its trendy use of fractal lines and a surprisingly solid typeface demonstrated a genuine effort in staying relevant to a younger, modern pool of recruits. Alas, it was a huge missed opportunity – a sentiment shared by many.

Despite its effort, this was a rebranding effort that missed the mark for trying too hard and straying from its design objectives. For an authoritative organisation, the identity showed a disjointed connection with its younger audience – attempts at referencing ‘cool’ design tropes didn’t quite land, and to the public, the CIA was not accurately presented as a government institution.

Perhaps if they had been more in-tune with their history, or channelled their pop culture references into a grounded creative direction without relying heavily on a graphical approach, the rebrand wouldn’t have felt as out of touch.

Design is responsible for inclusivity

Image credit: UnderConsideration]

There is value in design beyond the aesthetic, and it is our responsibility as designers to ensure our work is accessible to everyone regardless of age, race, disability or other factors. Originally founded in the late 1800’s, Aunt Jemima rebranded to Pearl Milling Company in February 2021. Amidst racial protests and calls to address harmful stereotypes, the PepsiCo-owned brand not only retired its name, but also removed the face of a Black woman on the packaging in an attempt to break away from negative connotations. While the rebranding could’ve also paid attention to the packaging and identity design, this is still a step in the right direction to evolve the brand past its problematic history.

A thoughtful and ethical design culture driven by diverse perspectives ensures a positive and immersive experience for everyone. A great way to start is to consider all forms of human diversity early in the creative process. Reframe accessibility as personalisation, and ensure representation, to set your brand up for success.

As we move into 2022 and beyond, let these notable projects serve as a reminder for us to take every brief as an opportunity to make a change, so that this year will be one full of growth, lessons and challenges that will help us thrive.

Need design guidance? You’ve come to the right place: hello@mutant.com.sg

3 Visual Storytelling Formats To Boost Your Content

Storytelling is something so intrinsic to human beings that its evolution has followed that of our own. Oral storytelling traditions and hieroglyphics eventually turned into printed books and moving pictures. Today, storytelling’s largest medium is digital, allowing us to access pictures and words from around the world with a touch of a button. What a time to be alive!

But human beings have evolved, too. When it comes to consuming content, studies show that human attention spans are dropping. At the same time, Netflix binging is on the rise. If I had to hazard a guess, storytelling probably has something to do with that—and not just storytelling, but visual storytelling.

Achieving total recall

According to research, the human brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text. As a result, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, which means we observe, learn, process and decide using visual information. We see this play out every day in digital formats, particularly on social media where compelling images can help your content average 94% more views.

But visuals alone fall short of the full storytelling experience. In fact, a combination of written and visual presentation formats are often the best for active learning and recall. With the variety of digital formats on offer, achieving this combination has never been easier.

To illustrate, check out these real-life examples that use both copy and visuals to elevate the storytelling experience:

Social media photojournalism

Platforms like Instagram are elevating photojournalism to become more engaging than ever before. Take for example People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a media outlet that highlights important social issues by documenting everyday life in rural India. It addresses these sensitive and often overlooked issues by using photos from the field and interspersing them with striking copy. The images help magnify the humanity of its subjects to the reader, while the limited space for text necessitates carefully chosen copy. As a result, the story is distilled to its most impactful form and is more likely to leave a lasting impression.

This format is also ideal to break down complex subjects into bite-sized information, as we’ve experienced working with one of our social media clients, Binance Charity Foundation (BCF). As the charity arm of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, BCF often has to simplify technical cryptocurrency terms to make its content accessible to different audiences. This post on NFTs is one such example of how images and succinct copy can condense a broad topic in a compelling way.

2. Interactive storytelling

The New York Times has been championing interactive visual formats that add an exciting experiential element to what would otherwise have been static stories. Take for example, its exploration of a classical artwork by famed Indian artist Chitaraman. The dynamic format zooms in and out of the painting, taking the reader on a digital art tour that is as illuminating as it is engaging.

Another example was its interactive visual op-ed story that helped readers find their place in the COVID-19 vaccination line. Here the Times went a step further by asking for the reader’s participation before telling an impactful story through a clever infographic. Talk about being memorable!

3. Engaging infographics and visual-led reports

Some forms of content require longer formats, such as whitepapers or business reports. In these cases, visuals play an important role in not only adding a refreshing differentiation between sections of text, but also bringing data and impactful words to life.

LinkedIn, for example, publishes a number of data-led reports that consistently and generously make use of visual elements. Their 2021 Workplace Learning Report featured a combination of graphs, pull out quotes and vibrant visuals to create a report that was heavy on insights but light on the eyes.

Some reports go a step further with an almost entirely infographic format, such as the 2021 Quarterly Job Market Index reports we worked on for our client RGF International Recruitment. The report series was almost entirely visually led, accompanied by a short commentary on each page. Aside from being engaging, formats like this offer quick takeaways that help both layman and media audiences easily navigate the report’s key insights.

These examples show that hybrid visual and copy formats can be as complex or as simple as you need or your capabilities allow. But regardless of visual elements, it is important to remember that to get results, the basics of content strategy will always apply. This means always considering your audience, determining your objectives, and staying authentic to your brand voice. Once you’ve got this covered, let your visuals do the rest.

Need some fresh content or visuals to tell your story? We can help! Write to us at hello@mutant.com.sg

We’re Feeling 2022: A Mutant Take on the Hottest Design Trends for the Year

It’s that time of year again where design trend forecasts flood the Internet.

Although design trends shouldn’t be the primary driver of brand identity and logo designs, they play a huge role when ideating short-term campaigns and staying relevant on social media.

At Mutant, we stay abreast with the latest trends to help our clients achieve their communications goals. Here are the five graphic design trends we’re most excited about in 2022:

Early 2000s Aesthetics: Nostalgia Still Sells

You may have noticed the resurgence of 90s visual cues over the past 2 years. Netflix’s Billion-Dollar Code is almost like a love letter to the 90s, and many brands that made it big in that era have proudly gone back to their roots through limited edition packaging and retro campaigns in the last year. With that said, we believe that the 90s aesthetics have reached a peak in 2021 and we’ll see more early 2000s aesthetics in 2022.

COVID-19 pandemic had an effect on the kind of visuals we’re seeing because it has an effect on the kind of visuals we desire to see. Texture became a big theme in graphic design as an overcorrection to the flat design trend back from 2018/2019.

In a world where glossy screens are dominating our attention, we crave the days of creased magazine pages and grainy photographs and those are exactly the things we saw in 2020 and 2021.

Texture isn’t going anywhere, but how it’s applied will. Gooey blobs (remember gel packaging?) and iridescent colours are already making appearances sporadically; look out for hints of the Nickelodeon green goo, Rugrats, Disney Channel, trading cards and MTV aesthetics!

The Bold and The Weird: Bright & Unorthodox Colour Schemes

This trend ties into the previous one. If you thought the use of colours in the 90s were weird, Y2K took colours even further. The early 2000s were marked by the iconic iPod ads and halftone-heavy textures inspired by magazines and comic books.

The decade was also filled with uncomfortable colour combinations that somehow worked – think combos like purple and yellow, green and orange, and white and light blue. B2C brands will openly embrace this trend within the confines of their existing brand colour schemes, and it will be a pleasant surprise to see B2B brands follow suit.

Into The Metaverse: Giving Virtual Campaigns Another Try

Hashtags for “meta” and “metaverse” have been trending ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced his ambitious vision to make the “metaverse” a thing, so don’t be surprised to see more visuals inspired by this idea. Keep an eye out for advertisements and social media campaigns featuring “build your own avatar” ideas, 3D virtual environments replacing photography, or even potentially interacting with real-life photography.

Because of this, we expect a revival of AR in brand activations. Some of the more daring brands might even toy with launching events within developing metaverses. Perhaps it’s time to give Second Life a second chance after work?

Serving Strange Looks: Type Distortion

Wavy serifs, sunburst ultra-bold san serifs, trailing, disintegrating italics — distorted typography became popular at the end of 2020 during the height of the anti-design trend (looking at you, Spotify).

A word of caution: although type distortion can look great, graphic designers are generally trained to avoid distorting typefaces for the sake of legibility. But no matter how you may feel about it, expect to see more of this trend play out in 2022!

Making Moves: More Kinetic Logos

Image credit: Fisher Price Rebrand by Working Not Working

Motion design isn’t going anywhere. Social media is increasingly video-centred, as proven by Instagram’s shift from a photo-sharing app to an entertainment and video platform as TikTok continues its reign among Gen Zs. This means that the only way for brands to retain attention is to make anything that matters move. We have seen a gradual increase in animated logos since as early as 2018, and this trend is only going to continue in 2022 and beyond.

Perhaps it’s time to consider animating your current logo for splash screens, website navigation bar, and apps in your next rebranding exercise as animated logos can turn your brand identity into an organic system, just like Fisher-Price’s kinetic logo as shown here.

As a closing thought, it’s important to remember that trends are often precursors to changes in consumer behaviour. They serve as a good guide, but don’t feel pressured to follow every trend predicted on this list nor anywhere else!

The key to staying relevant is to evaluate these consumer behaviour changes and create an on-brand strategy for your target audience. Doing this not only addresses your customers’ needs, but increasingly solves their problems in creative ways. Now that’s a defining quality of trendsetters.

Want to be on-brand and in trend? Reach out for your branding and design needs at hello@mutant.com.sg

Good Design Is Invisible

Here’s a story you might be able to relate to:

You’re heading to the supermarket, telling yourself that you’re there to cross things off your shopping list and get out ASAP.

In the first five minutes, you’ve got what you came for. Bread, butter, milk? Check, check, check. Time to go.

And then, it caught your attention. You stopped right in the middle of the aisle and made it hard for other shoppers to get around you, but it didn’t matter to you.

This thing that stopped you dead in your tracks gave you a warm fuzzy feeling, and you loved it.

Before you knew it, you grabbed it and added it to your trolley, happy to spend the money on this thing you had no intention of buying.

What could it be that held so much power over your decision-making process?

The answer is good design. Allow us to explain.

Every step of your journey to the supermarket was designed. The concept of shopping in itself was a relatively new invention that rose to prominence as the middle-class emerged. Today, we shop without giving it any second thought. Shopping is like looking at our phones to unlock it, expensive dinners on Valentine’s Day, and buying a particular brand of milk even when all brands taste the same.

If you had known about this before, you would be able to stop yourself from such temptation, right? Inevitably a magician’s trick becomes its downfall when performed a second time.

Smart brands and their agencies know this. That is why they carefully craft their packaging to work in the shadows, hidden behind walls of short-term campaigns, paid and organic media, and new iterations of their products based on consumer data.

In other words, good design is invisible. It works best when you don’t even know why it works. But the same invisibility is also why businesses only realise its absence when sales are dropping or, “something just doesn’t feel right”.

So, back to your intuitive purchase (not impulsive, we don’t like that word). What can you learn from this experience to apply it to your business? Let’s use the shopping experience as an analogy:

The Presentation Is The Message.

Looks do matter. As long as the product works as expected, most consumers will buy whatever looks best. A well-designed logo and packaging will help you sell far more than a DIY logo set in Comic Sans (yuck!). A competent agency will tell you what should go on your precious paid ads, and what shouldn’t. Many brands make the mistake of bombarding their consumers with facts that they can’t relate to, but smart brands? They say little, and the little they say is what prompts you to pull your wallet out.

Branding Is Selling

“Branding” is a term often used but rarely understood. It’s not about your fancy business cards or a sum of impressions – it’s your reputation and the gut feeling your consumers have at the mention of your brand’s name. Branding includes all of the aesthetic adjustments needed to appeal to them and an evaluation of your value proposition and why your current customers care. It’s not a cheap exercise, but if a $100,000 solution can solve your $10 million problem, wouldn’t you do it?

Positioning, Positioning, Positioning.

Positioning is the invisible force that turns your well-designed brand into a memorable one. That’s why smart companies like Nestle, Google, and Apple spend generously to craft earworm jingles, put their products on eye-level on supermarket shelves, and rent the biggest billboards right in the middle of New York City. The same companies also allocate vast chunks of their budget to tweak their communication materials every year to keep up with consumer trends. You win the game when you occupy mental and physical spaces.

So the next time you get that warm, fuzzy feeling when you look at a product, just remember that the invisible force tugging on your credit card is called “good design”. The entire experience is planned, and you can employ the same strategy with your business as well because, if you can’t win them, join them, right?

Want to make some “good design?” Talk to us at hello@mutant.com.sg

5 Design Tips To Make You Seem Like A Pro

Have you ever wondered if there’s a design cheat sheet somewhere to guide you on conveying your digital marketing materials effectively, and making things look prettier?

While there’s no magic answer to becoming a design whizz, there are quick tips and tricks to help you better design for online consumption (even if you’ve never been to art school). Luckily for you, us Mutants know a thing (or five) about designing great content:

Have a purpose

Before we play dress-up, the ultimate goal is to tailor the form of your design to its purpose. Beyond defining your target audience and content strategy, be laser-focused in determining a clear CTA (call-to-action) for a successful acquisition – after all, a pretty design means nothing if it doesn’t connect to the action intended. It’s akin to completing a jigsaw puzzle when that last piece satisfyingly clicks into place. Remember, good design decisions are the result when your project goals are objectively met.

Maximise your layout

Always start with the relevant dimension to ensure your visual content is pixel-perfect. With the ever-changing social media landscape, knowing the right sizes is imperative to uphold your reputation. Depending on how much space you have, be mindful of information overload to ensure high visual prominence. Remember that the average person is not going to sit and focus on your content all day – it’s only a matter of seconds before they move on.

Command with hierarchy

Never underestimate the power of a well-structured visual hierarchy. By laying out information strategically, we are influencing users’ perceptions with various visual cues to help inform, impress and persuade. The most important elements on the page should be the largest.

Experiment with typography

If tone and manner captures the spirit of your voice, then typography works as the face of your character. But too much of a good thing can be bad – especially if you’re using a variety of display fonts to be ‘creative’. While it isn’t necessary to stick to one font, a trick that tends to be overlooked is mixing font variants (e.g. Helvetica Regular, and Helvetica Bold). Even though these fonts are in different weights, they appear consistent when used together because they’re from the same family.

Contrast with colour schemes

From monochromatic to eclectic colour combinations, determine the visual message of your piece and then stick to a colour palette to evoke your desired emotional response. Colour schemes are handy in defining the tone of your brand voice – be it harmonious or contrasting palettes, treat colours as an accent in your work to give emphasis and enhance aesthetics.

Still with us? Congratulations, you’re now a bona fide designer! Well, maybe not quite. While these considerations serve as a solid foundation for good design principles, sometimes you still need an eye for design to create compelling content using the power of visuals.

Talk to us about your digital marketing plans at hello@mutant.com.sg – we’ll breathe life into it.

Steer Clear Of These Five Things When Working With A Designer

People employ designers for a variety of reasons: their company’s website requires a facelift, they need a hip logo for their book club, or they want to impress a client with cool infographics. Working with us designers can be a fun, seamless, and painless process…but only if you avoid committing these five cardinal sins:

Being vague with instructions and feedback

“Make it pop? Sure. By the way, I’ll be sending you an invoice for my mind reading services, too.”

Be as specific as possible when it comes to giving designers with instructions, direction or feedback on a project. Ambiguity isn’t going to help you achieve what you need, and will only leave the designer feeling stumped. To minimise frustration, be clear, direct and transparent when providing feedback to your designers. We are not psychic, and do not work well with meaningless phrases such as “make it pop” (how?), or “make this more yellow” (what kind of yellow?) or “this artwork is missing an X-factor” (What, exactly, is the X-factor for you?).

Designers are visual creatures, so use that to your advantage! It only takes a few minutes to throw together a mood board, which is a thematic collage that captures the essence of what you want the final artwork to look like. Attach examples of other projects in line with your vision so your designers can better ascertain the aesthetic you’re aiming for.

(Source: Electric Trends)

Getting your designer to work on non-editable files/low resolution images.

To effectively solve your business problems, we need tools that will help us get the job done. This includes assets such as working, editable files (think Adobe Creative Suite, not JPGs or PDFs), font files, text which can be copy-pasted and high-quality images (72 DPI for web and 300 PPI for print, as increasing the size of a low-resolution image would lead to pixelation) for efficiency. Heads up: screenshots and Microsoft Powerpoint or Word files do not count as design assets, as we cannot modify them.

(Source: Yearbook Machine)

Providing inadequate content

Designers are not magicians and cannot conjure artworks out of thin air. If you don’t provide assets or content for us to work with, you are setting everyone involved in the project up for failure. When giving us the design brief, it’s okay not to have all content in place. However, expecting the designers to rely solely on placeholder text and images to work with will only create the possibility of several rounds of re-design. If there is no finalised content, there can be no design.

On the other hand, dumping a mountain of content on us and expecting us to sift through the suitable parts will cause us to miss our deadlines, both internal and external. If you are the kind of person who expects work to be turned around quickly, make both our lives easier by providing us with the relevant, approved content so that there is minimal back-and-forth.

Expecting your designers to make changes instantly

The adage “good things come to those who wait” has never been more applicable. For the duration of the project, changes both major and minor are expected. However, expecting your designers to complete all edits in an hour is rather unreasonable.

Don’t underestimate the time needed to incorporate changes – even if the change seems simple to you, it may not actually be an easy fix. To save time, it is best to collate all edits and hand it over to your designer, and do try your best to keep the rounds of changes to a minimum. For everyone’s sanity.

Setting the deadlines without consulting the designer

The luxury of time is something we designers do not possess, as we are usually juggling multiple projects. If you give us unreasonable timelines, we will not be able to deliver. Procuring assets, loading files onto our digital workstations, conducting research and ideation, designing, editing, and testing digital platforms are time-consuming processes.

Never set a deadline without prior consultation with your designers. By having a chat about what’s an appropriate turn-around time expectations on both sides are adequately managed and no one will be disappointed.

Need a designer to whip up some beautiful artwork for your marketing campaign? Chat with us at hello@mutant.com.sg

7 Typography tips to ace your designs

Everyone’s had an idea for a cool design at some point. But turning your idea into reality is an effort. When it comes to creating graphics, it’s a different game. The application of graphic design is versatile and allows you to play around with shapes, images, positioning and typography. It’s a game you can get lost in.

The art of arranging type, aka typography, is not only a crucial part of any design, but also key to getting people interested in your design (and what you have to offer). A bad typography layout affects the readability, causing people to lose interest after reading just a first few lines. With millennials giving you less than 5 seconds to catch their attention, your typography needs to be spot on.

(Source: Harper’s Bazaar Brazil)

Failing to realise your idea visually, doesn’t always mean your idea was no good. Don’t question your ideas, but work on improving your designs. Here are some of the things to take note of when working on your next design project:

1) Choosing the right font (personality)

Are you aware that fonts have distinct moods and personalities? Don’t disregard Arial and Helvetica straight away. Always look at what you want to achieve before picking the font. Choosing the wrong font can convey different feelings and might even screw up your entire design.

For example, working on the design and layout for a fashion magazine, you most likely want to suggest modern, elegant and sophisticated tones – visually. You want to stay away from using Comic Sans or Papyrus fonts for the magazine, as it makes the entire design look unprofessional. The font you select needs to suit the personality of the brand.

(Source: AdWeek)

Never pick fonts just because you are awe of the particular typeface, in fact, you should choose the typefaces that suit your desired outcome.

“With millennials giving you less than 5 seconds to catch their attention, your typography needs to be spot on.”

2) No more than 3!

Never be generous with the use of fonts. Try to stick with one or two fonts for your design. Too many fonts might over-complicate the entire design – distracting the reader from what’s really important.

Remember websites in the 90s?

If you really want to use two to three different fonts in a design layout, avoid using fonts that look similar to each other (e.g. Bodoni and Didot). Visually similar fonts can be quite problematic, as they make your design look too indistinctive. Make it a family affair and use fonts from the same family, as it will give your design a more cohesive look. You might think that only one font looks boring, but ‘less is more’.

Let’s not forget, you can always play with the weights, styles and the width of the font. So, forget about the 90s and don’t use more than three fonts for one and the same design.

3) Do not stretch or squeeze!

Stretching and squeezing a font is definitely a big no in the world of design. Many people are tempted and love to stretch and squeeze a font just to make it fit a certain space. Stretching and squeezing a font does not only look odd, it also makes your design, brand and you look unprofessional. Instead, try to increase the size of the font to make it fit.

4) Don’t forget to kern it

Kerning refers to adjusting the spacing between letters – and is different from adding gaps by hitting space on your keyboard (don’t even think about it).

(Source: AdWeek)

This is extremely important as it can make your design look a whole lot different. A good and bad design can be easily recognised and differentiated by just looking at the kerning. Hence, always remember to check the kerning before sending your final design to the client or the printer.

Nice smile, but that’s how you shouldn’t kern your design. (Source: Pixie Simms)

Mastering the art of kerning is especially important when it comes to creating your own font from scratch. Check out typemethod and practice your kerning skills until you get the hang of how it works.

5) Wipe out all the widows and orphans

If you don’t know what that means, you definitely need to pay attention now. Not many people will notice and identify the typographical widows and orphans. But if you want to tighten up your graphic designs you better start taking notice.

In the design world, a widow is a word that is left dangling at the end or the bottom of a paragraph, separated from the rest of the paragraph. While an orphan is a short paragraph that appears at the beginning of a column or page. One of the easiest ways to eliminate them is to rewrite or change the line ending. Another alternative is to manually edit the text or bring the text down to the next line.

6) The ‘ideal’ line width

Easily overlooked, a design’s line width is of importance too, playing a crucial role in the readability of the text. Wide columns usually won’t do your design any good, as they break the flow of the reader’s eyes when they jump from one line to the next. On the other hand, a narrow column might annoy your reader. Finding the balance is key to making it easy for the reader’s eyes to get through the article or text. Remember – the reader should be fully taken in by the content and not be distracted by the layout.

Never try to fit in all the words onto one line, as it might screw up the readability of your article. The perfect solution to a balanced line width is to keep it short. About 8 to 10 words or 50 to 60 characters per line is ideal.

7) Create a visual hierarchy

Think of what you want your viewers to look at first – only then you can embark on a design project. Everyone wants to create a design that looks good and captures people’s attention at a glance – so, make sure you don’t distract them with unnecessary stuff. Hierarchy plays an important role in design. It creates a flow, directs your eyes and allows your brain to process it easily. Hierarchy makes it easier for the viewer to distinguish what content comes first.

(Source: Pinterest)

You can learn how to establish a visual hierarchy by reading newspapers and magazines. Alternatively, you can try to play with the size, weight and spacing to achieve a visual hierarchy in your design. The more you practice, the more you will train your eyes.

Want sharp designs? Need to visualise an idea? Drop a message to hello@mutant.com.sg

How to create presentations that don’t suck

We’ve all been subjected to sitting through boring work presentations. You know, the ones we don’t pay attention to because they’re so dull it’s actually painful.

Unfortunately, it happens way too often – from sales pitches, to company roundups, to product launches and more… the boredom is real!

Just because the presentation is internal, or is on a less-than-exciting topic, doesn’t mean you have to create one lacking in stimulation or areas for engagement. Humans are visual creatures with shortening attention spans – snore-inducing content just won’t cut it.

So how can you ensure you don’t lose your audience? It doesn’t require you to be a technical or design whiz, it simply means you need to think outside the very boring PowerPoint box.

Here are a few quick tips to whip your next presentation into shape:

Less is more

It’s all about the economy of words! You might think you’re coming across smarter and more professional with those long-winded sentences and ridiculous jargon, but all you’re doing is giving your viewers a reason to switch off.

You need your audience to understand and process the information you’re presenting – do you think that’s likely to happen when you share an essay? Stick to quick bullet points, catchphrases, keywords and short sentences. Your slides shouldn’t exhibit your entire presentation word-for-word; it should be the highlight reel.

Get creative with it

How dull are templates? Why do they even exist? Avoid subjecting yourself to the standard– even when you have branding guidelines to adhere to. This is YOUR canvas, so try to have a little bit of fun and add some life into your presentation.

Find engaging colours and create layouts that are fun and different to help get your message across. Don’t go overboard with your creative license, but do take a step back before ask yourself, “am I excited by this presentation?”

Infographics for the win

All rejoice for the beloved hybrid of information and graphics – the humble infographic! These designs are a godsend for any presentation, bringing plain text to life and helping to accentuate otherwise complex data and statistics.

An infographic allows your audience to better digest information, meaning they can spend more time actually listening to you, rather than trying to read blocks of text. Beautifully designed icons, graphics and copy can really take your presentation from boring to brilliant.

A picture paints a thousand words

Heck, sometimes you don’t even need text. Create intrigue, elicit laughter, and make a point stick by using clever images, memes, gifs or photos to make a point. As well as being entertaining, imagery can help break up the presentation.

If you must add text as well, then do, but try to use images that help weave your story together on their own.

So, there you have it! Snorefest no more – now your next presentation will be a true masterpiece.

Stuck for content and need a little life injected into your copy? Our Words team can help turn your content from drab to fab. Get in touch at hello@mutant.com.sg.