conference presentation cover page

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What should be included on the title page of a conference presentation

I am preparing slides for a conference.

And I struggled (a bit) for what to put on the title page.

I know the paper title is a must, maybe the conference name, place, date.

How about authors and affiliation?

Should I put all the authors name on the title page?

Or only the presenter?

How about if they are from different institute?

Should I put all the institute names on the first page?

presentation

1 Google slides for the previous editions of the conference, imitate what you like. – user102 Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 16:15
I get very grumpy comments if I forget to include the logos of the institutions that are funding the research (if they find out, that is). – Peter Bloem Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 17:16

3 Answers 3

I usually include:

Title of talk

Name of presenter (me)

Names of coauthors

Name of conference

Title of conference session (if applicable)

City of conference

My institution's name

Maybe my institution's logo

I don't include the coauthors' affiliations.

Why would you need the Conference Date/Name/City/Session Name? Surely everyone at the conference is already aware of all these things? Do your conference slides go online afterwards? – Frames Catherine White Commented Sep 13, 2017 at 6:13
@LyndonWhite: You're right that it's redundant, but it seems to be traditional. Slides don't usually go online by default, but sometimes people do post them or share them privately, in which case this is useful information to have attached. Practically, it helps you check that you have loaded the correct slides, and I think maybe it also lets the audience feel subconsciously that this is a very special talk created just for them (although in fact it fact it probably isn't). – Nate Eldredge Commented Sep 13, 2017 at 13:25
good points, I'ld not thought of them. Prehaps they should be added to the answer. Or maybe I should ask another question that you can answer with that? – Frames Catherine White Commented Sep 13, 2017 at 13:42

Yes, of course, unless there are tens of authors (common in particle physics: I dunno how they handle it... maybe with a group photograph). You can then highlight the speaker's name.

Frequently, one puts institutes' logos instead.

1 In particle physics, they handle it by listing the author as "[presenter-name] on behalf of the [group-name] collaboration" or at least by including the collaboration's logo very prominently. A photograph might be included, but when this is done it usually appears at the very end of the talk. – David Z Commented Oct 23, 2014 at 1:54

To answer from a slightly different perspective: As somebody watching the presentation, I would like to see the following:

A title (if possible, one that reflects what you're actually going to talk about, rather than what you thought you would be talking about a year ago when you submitted the abstract ;-))
The authors' names and affiliations. Make it clear who is speaking, in case I don't know you personally.
An email address for queries (put it at the end as well, but if it's at both ends there's a stronger chance that it'll remain up for long enough to note it down)

Try to resist the urge to turn it into a dense mass of extraneous information and logos. Do not include the following unless you have to:

The name or city of the conference
Funders' logos

If I am at a conference I know where I am. Unless it's been a very long and tiring conference I probably know the date as well. These things may be useful metadata for archival purposes, but it isn't needed by the audience - so put them in small grey text somewhere on the slide, invisible (or at least not attention-grabbing) from a distance.

Similarly, if I'm watching your presentation I probably care about the research, and maybe who did it - not who funded it. Don't include funders logos on the title page unless required to do so; instead, put them on an acknowledgements slide at the end, with anybody else that you owe acknowledgements to.

1 Please include the place and date. The audience does not care about them, but people who find your slides later by Google will appreciate if they can easily find out who presented it, where, and when. – Jukka Suomela Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 15:58
@JukkaSuomela hence what I said - include it, but small and not standing out. It's there as metadata for later, but doesn't distract at the event. – Flyto Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 16:00
2 Why is the title optional? – Dave Clarke Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 16:03
@DaveClarke Is it useful information, to somebody who is sitting in the hall watching the presentation? Hmm, I guess it might determine whether that's the right time to get coffee. And it is more essential from an archival perspective. I'll remove the "optional" label from that. – Flyto Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 16:08

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How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page [+ Examples]

Published: January 06, 2021

When you're focused on creating a meaningful, persuasive presentation, it's easy to overlook the cover page. But giving that first page of your deck a little more love can actually go a long way towards grabbing your audience's attention early on and setting the tone for the rest of your presentation.

A stunning presentation cover page can intrigue your audience into wanting to know more and increase engagement with the information you’re presenting. On the other hand, a lackluster slide, or even the lack of one, can dampen audience enthusiasm for your presentation, and maybe even your own.

You've put so much work into your presentation -- why waste that valuable real estate on the first slide of your deck?

In this post, we'll cover the basics of creating a presentation cover page that's informative and attention-grabbing. Let's dive in.

What's included in a presentation cover page?

A good presentation cover page accomplishes three simple things:

It introduces the topic with a straightforward title.
It introduces you (and your organization, if applicable)
It sets the tone of your presentation.

We probably don't need to tell you this one, but your presentation cover page should be centered around a title. And ideally, a title that's straightforward, descriptive, and simple. If you're finding it hard to keep your title short, add a subtitle (in smaller print) to clarify what you'll be speaking about.

Next, identify the person (or group) who will be giving the presentation. In some cases, this will be as simple as including your own name, and in others, you'll want to include your company name, logo, department, or other identifying information. As a general guideline, you'll need less identifying information if you're giving an internal presentation.

If your audience is mainly folks outside of your company (or there are plans to distribute your deck externally) you'll typically want to include more information to identify your company clearly.

A successful cover page sets the "tone" of your deck -- but what does that really mean? The colors, imagery, fonts, and placements of different elements on your cover page all create a specific visual style that the rest of your deck should follow.

A well-designed page conveys a sense of professionalism and preparedness that a simple monochrome text slide simply cannot. Even if you're not a design expert, you need to pay attention to the aesthetics of your cover page. Fortunately, it's easier than ever to find free, professional-looking presentation templates without needing a degree in graphic design. Whatever you choose, it's important to remain relevant to your presentation (and, if applicable, your company's branding).

We'll explore a few examples of cover pages below so you can see how different elements converge to set the tone for a variety of different presentations.

Presentation Cover Page Examples

Below, we've compiled a number of presentation cover pages that succeed in different areas. Remember: there's no single perfect format for a presentation cover page, but hopefully, you get some inspiration from this list.

Setting An Emotional Tone

The right presentation page can set an emotional tone as well as a visual one. This presentation cover page for a nonprofit conveys a mission-driven approach to protecting nature, with a well-selected, relevant image, and a call-to-action directly in the subtitle. (Photo by Andy Køgl on Unsplash )

Focusing on a Photo

You don't need to overcomplicate the format of your cover page, especially if you have a great photo to use as a full background image. A simple stock photo here provides a clean backdrop for this presentation on remote work. Just make sure your title text is legible over any background photo you decide to use. (Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash )

Leading With Your Brand

Even if you're the central speaker for a presentation, it might make more sense to highlight your team or brand on your cover page, instead of including your own personal information (you can always include your own contact info at the end of your deck for follow-up questions). Context (if you're speaking at a particular event or annual meeting) can be important to highlight as well on your cover page.

There's a big difference between a cover slide you didn't put much thought into and a slide that makes good use of whitespace and leans on strong copy. Sometimes, the best way to lead an audience into your presentation is to create space for a little mystery.

If you're giving a more casual presentation or a pitch that doesn't need to follow a particular format, consider going the minimal route and opening with a simple cover page slide that asks your audience a question (one that you of course plan to answer).

Set a Purpose

Many presentations include an agenda slide directly after your cover slide, but that doesn't mean you can use your cover slide to set a clear purpose upfront. Consider using your subtitle to explain a more robust (but still simple!) description of what you'll cover.

Presentation Cover Page Templates

Instead of creating your presentation cover page from scratch, using a template can take much of the work out of the process. Check out these websites for templates that you can use for your presentation or for inspiration to create your own designs.

A tried-and-true favorite of many marketing teams, Canva offers up a wide selection of modern, drag-and-drop presentation templates with truly unique cover pages. If you're on the hunt for a cover page that looks like you hired a graphic designer to create it just for you, Canva is a good place to start your search. Canva offers both free and paid options.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai has an intuitive, highly-customizable presentation builder that allows you to import your own visual elements directly from your computer or a Dropbox folder. Like Canva, they offer a number of free and paid template options (with great cover pages). Their biggest differentiating feature is their (frankly, very cool) adaptive AI technology, which intuits how you're trying to design a slide and makes changes automatically to suit the direction of your project.

For a completely free option with cover page starter template to suit a wide range of different projects across different formats, check out EDIT. Their online tool is specifically designed to create cover pages in a simple, easy-to-use interface.

Another highly-customizable template source is Visme, which gives users the ability to select a starting template from their (expansive) library and customize elements in a simple web editor.

VectorStock ®

VectorStock® has a massive selection of PowerPoint presentation cover page templates for purchase if you're looking for something that's ready to plug and go without the need for customization (beyond adding your own name and title, of course).

First Impressions Matter

For better or worse, audiences will judge a presentation by its cover page. Because of this, it’s vital that you give your cover page the care and attention that it deserves. Ultimately, a cover page isn't simply a placeholder, it’s a vital component that can drum up interest for your presentation. The best part is that with the tools available online, you don’t have to be an artist to create a stunning presentation cover page.

The featured image on this post was created using a Canva template.

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6 Tips to Create an Eye-Catching Presentation Cover Page

What Is a Presentation Cover Page?

6 Tips to Create a Winning Presentation Cover Page

Key Takeaways
Conclusion

A good presentation cover page is just as important as the content inside it, but a great one will also draw attention and give your presentation an extra lift. By drawing attention to your presentation’s topic upfront, you can compel your audience to want to know more about what you have to say.

The cover page is one of the first things the audience will notice about your presentation. So, you must make a good first impression, and immediately. An effective PowerPoint cover page can set the tone for your entire presentation, and engage the audience from the get-go. And to get better at creating presentation cover page designs , you need to understand what an ideal presentation cover page is.

What Is a Presentation Cover Page?

When it comes to presentations, don’t underestimate the value of a powerful and captivating title slide. It’s one of the easiest and quickest ways to get people’s attention. A sound presentation cover page design helps achieve two crucial goals.

Clarity in terms of the topic
A strong introduction to your brand

In a nutshell, your PowerPoint cover page (or any other presentation cover page for that matter) exposes your viewers to the main points of your presentation. It should also pique their interest and make them want to hear more. Now, let’s move on and understand the steps involved in creating a stunning cover page .

The cover page of the presentation is often the first clue that people get about what you are going to speak about. Therefore, you need to make sure that it’s clear, concise, and compelling. To ensure this, we have put together a few easy tips for you.

1. Come up with a catchy title

It’s ideal to come up with a title that’s plain, descriptive, and easy if you’re delivering a presentation to a bunch of people who don’t know much of what you’re going to say. If you’re having trouble cutting down a long title, you can include a subtitle underneath that explains what you’ll be delivering information on.

You can get away with anything more intriguing or artistic, depending on the topic of your presentation, but make sure your title is not too obscure or incomprehensible. For example, the title in the below-mentioned slide is easy to understand and captivating as well. Notice how the word “Conference” has been highlighted and is followed by supplementary text underneath.

2. Check the overall tone

Why does the tone of your presentation, specifically the cover page, matter so much?

The cover page paves the way for the rest of your presentation, and audiences are quick enough to decide whether they want to continue watching the presentation judging by its tone. But what do we mean by tone? In this context, tone means the overall style of the presentation.

A presentation cover page must dictate the objective in a professional yet quirky manner to attract and retain your audience’s attention. It should represent the worthiness and quality of your overall content.

Apart from that, recently, aesthetics have become the topmost priority for many marketers. We, as humans, find aesthetics in everything, and easily get attracted to it. That’s why having an informative yet aesthetic cover page can set you apart from your competitors.

Here’s an example of how tone and aesthetics should go together in a presentation cover page design.

3. Humanize your cover page

Humans are emotional beings. A good presentation page can do more than just present the work; it can set an emotional tone for the rest of the site.

You want to be able to wow people with your presentation, but that doesn’t mean you need to be flashy, unemotional, or insensitive. On the contrary, if you create a cover page that uses emotions to get people excited about your work, nothing like it. They will not only know what to expect but will also be able to connect with your presentation on a deeper level.

Let’s look at an example of an emotion-driven approach for presentation cover pages.

4. Shed some light on your brand

While it’s great to illustrate your objective on the cover page, it is also equally crucial to throw some light on your brand. In general, the opening page of your deck should convey what your company does. After all, it’s the first impression people will have of your company or project.

While you may be tempted to include your own photo and contact information on the cover page, it may be more appropriate to emphasize your team or brand instead.

Here’s a brilliant example.

5. Keep it simple

As a content creator, you must make presentation cover page designs that educate and inform your audiences. You can do so effectively by going minimalistic.

Having too many pictures and words can distract the audience and confuse them. That is why having a minimal background is extremely important. It also lends professional and clarity to your presentation.

Check out this example to get a sense of what a minimalistic cover page should look like.

6. Use bold fonts

Last but not least, you should use bold fonts to display your ideas perfectly on the cover page. Strong fonts that include letters and numbers will attract eyeballs immediately.

Therefore, whenever you’re preparing a presentation cover page design, make sure you’re using bold and simple fonts, and not complex and thin fonts.

Here’s an example of a presentation cover page that has a bold font.

Key Takeaways

A presentation cover page is a basis on which your audience decides whether to give their attention to the rest of the deck.
To create a stunning cover page for your presentation, you need to ensure it has a catchy and short title.
The cover page should go well with your brand’s tonality.
Ensure you add emotions to attract your readers.
Add a little about your brand/business as well.
Follow a coherent tone for the cover page, which can be carried forward to the rest of the presentation.
Smartly use bold fonts to capture the audience’s attention.

The cover page of your presentation is the first thing your audience will see. So, it’s important to make a great first impression with it. A well-designed presentation cover page can highlight the topics of your presentation and pique the interest of your audience. You’ll want to keep the design simple and clean.

In order to create a stunning cover page for your presentation, there are certain things you need to take care of and implement. For starters, you can keep your title short, and if there’s something more you want to add to the title, you can insert it as a subhead. Next, you should add some emotion to your cover page to gain your viewer’s attention. Apart from this, you should try and experiment with bold fonts, as they catch the viewer’s attention immediately.

You must also add a minimalistic background to your cover pages, as too much information and pictures can confuse the viewers. And lastly, do not forget to add information about your brand or business to get your viewers acquainted with it. Remember, a great cover page can win half of your viewer’s heart, so make sure to make it as stunning as possible.

A presentation cover page is the first thing your viewer gets to see. Basically, it is the first slide that informs your viewers about the presentation and its objectives.

An ideal PowerPoint cover page should have a captivating title, engaging imagery, and details about the company.

For the cover page, you should use bold fonts to attract the viewer’s attention and make a lasting impact.

Yes, infographics help give viewers a clearer picture of your message. They may make them proactive listeners as well as responders.

Numbers attract viewers. So if you have statistics to back your claims, and if they’re relevant or fit the title, you should definitely go ahead and use them.

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How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page That Captivates Your Audience

May 13, 2024
by Steven Austin

Your presentation cover page is the first impression your audience will have of your content – and it sets the tone for your entire talk. A striking, well-designed cover page immediately grabs attention, lends credibility to your message, and gets people excited to hear what you have to say.

In fact, research shows that audiences form an opinion about the quality of a presentation within the first 30-60 seconds – largely based on the cover slide. Presentations with engaging cover pages have 25% higher audience engagement scores and 40% higher information retention than those without, according to a study by Stanford University.

While most presenters spend hours honing their content, the cover page is often an afterthought. On average, people spend under 5 minutes designing their title slide. But top-rated TED Talks, Apple keynotes, and other legendary presentations invest 30-60+ minutes perfecting their openers. When you consider a cover page‘s outsized impact on your presentation‘s success, it‘s well worth putting in the time to get it right.

Whether you‘re presenting a high-stakes business proposal, groundbreaking research, or a creative sales pitch, follow these tips to craft a presentation cover page that immediately hooks your audience and positions your talk for success.

The Anatomy of an Attention-Grabbing Cover Page

At its core, a presentation cover page should include 4 key elements:

A descriptive title
Speaker name and affiliation
Presentation date and event/meeting name (if applicable)
Relevant visual imagery

Let‘s break down each of these elements and how to optimize them for maximum impact.

Write a Clear, Compelling Title

The most crucial component of your cover page is the presentation title. A strong title clearly and concisely communicates your topic and grabs attention. Aim for 5-10 words that capture the unique angle, benefit or outcome of your talk.

For example, "How Data Science Can Help Your Business Scale" is much more compelling than a generic title like "Data Science Presentation." If needed, add a short subtitle to provide additional context, such as "How Data Science Can Help Your Business Scale: 5 Strategies from Fortune 500 Companies."

Vague, wordy, or jargon-filled titles will lose your audience‘s interest from the start. If people don‘t immediately understand what your presentation is about and why it‘s valuable, they‘ll tune out before you even begin speaking.

Highlight Speaker Credentials

Including your name and affiliation on the cover page establishes your authority on the subject matter. List your full name, job title, company or organization, and any other relevant credentials that prove you‘re qualified to speak on this topic.

For academic or research presentations, include your department, lab or institution as well as key titles like Professor, PhD, or Principal Investigator. If you‘re presenting on behalf of a notable brand or organization, make sure to include the company logo.

When presenting to audiences outside your company or field, don‘t assume they know who you are. Highlighting your bio and credentials builds crucial trust and credibility. Even if you‘re presenting internally, reinforcing your expertise makes a strong impression.

Include Key Logistical Details

Depending on the context, you may need to include additional logistical information like:

Presentation date
Name of the meeting, conference or event
Session name or number
Presentation length or time slot
Contact information

If you‘re presenting at a specific event, including those details helps orient attendees and reminds them of the larger conference context. For standalone presentations, you can usually omit these specifics on the cover to minimize clutter. When in doubt, include the date as a helpful reference point.

Adding your contact information, like an email or social media handle, makes it easy for people to connect with you after the presentation. But if you‘d rather not have that visible for the entire talk, you can include it on an ending thank-you slide instead.

Choose Relevant, High-Quality Visuals

Compelling visual elements are the secret sauce that separates average presentation cover pages from exceptional ones. The imagery you choose – whether that‘s photos, graphics, illustrations or artistic text treatments – plays a huge role in attracting audience attention and setting the tone for your talk.

Research shows that people remember visual information 6x better than plain text and that even a single relevant image makes a presentation 43% more persuasive . In a separate study, 91% of people said a well-selected cover graphic was key for capturing their interest in a presentation .

The key is choosing high-resolution, professionally produced visual assets that are clearly connected to your subject matter. Generic stock photos and low-quality clip art can cheapen your cover page and create a poor impression.

If you have original photography or design assets, the cover page is the perfect place to showcase them. If you need to source stock imagery, look for non-cliché options on sites like Unsplash or iStock that evoke the right emotions and align with your brand.

Data visualizations or illustrations are great alternatives to photos, especially for data-heavy or abstract topics. Bold typography can also create visual interest in the absence of other imagery, when done well. The options are endless – it‘s about finding visuals that capture attention and communicate your topic memorably.

Design Best Practices for a Polished, Professional Look

Once you have the key elements of your cover page, the next step is arranging them into a cohesive, well-designed slide. Following these design best practices will ensure your cover page looks modern, professional and polished.

The way you visually arrange the different components on the page plays a big role in its overall impact. Aim for a clean, balanced layout with ample white space. Use a grid system to line up your text, images and graphic elements symmetrically.

A good rule of thumb is to divide the page into thirds horizontally and vertically and place key elements along those lines. Try several arrangements to find the most pleasing composition and visual flow.

Color Scheme

Your color palette is another opportunity to grab attention, communicate tone, and reinforce your brand on the cover page. Choose colors that complement your imagery and reflect the mood you want to convey – whether that‘s vibrant and energetic, sophisticated and professional, or soft and approachable.

If you‘re presenting on behalf of a company, make sure to use the exact brand colors. Tools like Adobe Color and Coolors can help you find pleasing color combos and ensure sufficient contrast for readability.

Limit your palette to 2-3 colors to keep the design clean and uncluttered. Use the 60-30-10 rule as a guideline: roughly 60% of the page in your primary color, 30% in a secondary color, and 10% in an accent shade. This creates a balanced, harmonious look.

Choosing the right fonts is crucial for both aesthetics and readability on your cover page. Look for modern, professional font pairings that are easy to read at a distance. Make sure to choose a font size that‘s large enough to be seen clearly from the back of the room – at least 44pt for titles and 28pt for secondary text.

For body copy, stick with classic sans serifs like Arial, Helvetica or Calibri. Pair them with a more distinctive font for titles and headers, but avoid overly scripted or decorative styles that are hard to read. Two fonts are usually plenty for a cover page – any more starts to look messy.

We‘ve already covered the importance of compelling visual imagery, but it‘s worth calling out a few technical best practices here. Most importantly, any images you use need to be high resolution so they look crisp and clear when projected.

Look for photos that are at least 2000px wide and illustrations that are vector files (EPS or AI) so they can scale up without appearing pixelated. PNG files with transparent backgrounds are ideal for placing logos and graphics over other imagery.

Test your cover design on a projector or large screen if possible to make sure the images look professional at presentation size. There‘s nothing more glaring than fuzzy, low-quality graphics on an oversized slide.

Tailor Your Cover Page to Different Presentation Types

With the core elements and design foundations in place, it‘s time to customize your cover page for different presentation scenarios. The specifics of your page should adapt whether you‘re presenting a boardroom business proposal, a creative sales pitch, or an academic research paper. Here are some key considerations for each format:

Business Presentations For a business presentation, your cover page should channel your company‘s established brand as much as possible. Prominently showcase the logo in the upper corners or center of the page. Use the exact brand fonts and Pantone colors.

Choose imagery that aligns with your company‘s aesthetic and the tone of the presentation – think sleek and aspirational for an upscale consulting firm vs. bright and friendly for an ecommerce retailer.

Stick with a clean, corporate layout that puts more focus on the text. A straightforward title and subtitle formula works well here. Make sure to include your name, job title and contact information so colleagues and clients can easily follow up.

Creative Presentations For a creative presentation – whether that‘s a design portfolio, entertainment pitch, or innovative product demo – you have more room to experiment with unexpected cover page designs. The tone should match the subject matter and your personal brand. An indie filmmaker might go for an avant garde, cinematic look while an app startup may opt for cutting-edge graphics and bold colors.

Don‘t be afraid to try asymmetrical layouts, full-bleed images and playful fonts. Animation can add excitement to creative cover pages, like subtle motion graphics or dynamic text. This is the time to showcase your distinct aesthetic point of view and hint at the fresh ideas to come.

Just be sure to balance innovative design with clarity and professionalism. You still want people to grasp the key details. Legibility is a must, even with artistic text treatments. When in doubt, have a few people outside your field take a look and make sure the topic is clear and the design is polished.

Research and Academic Presentations Cover pages for research and academic presentations tend to be more understated and information-dense. The title should clearly state the specific subject matter and any key details like the study sample size, date range or results. Aim for more of a descriptive headline than an attention-grabbing one.

In addition to your name and academic affiliation, include key credentials like degrees, relevant publications, grants and awards. The institution or department logo can lend additional credibility here. If you‘re presenting at a specific conference, include the full event and session name for context.

Opt for classic fonts and a straightforward layout that puts the focus on the text. Subtle pops of color or clean data visualizations and illustrations are great for adding visual interest. Photos are less common but can work if they‘re relevant to the research, like images from lab experiments or field sites.

Tools and Templates for Easy Cover Page Creation

Now that you have a solid framework for building engaging, memorable presentation cover pages, you may be wondering how to easily put it into practice. Luckily, there are tons of great tools and templates out there to streamline the design process, whether you‘re a total beginner or a seasoned pro.

Canva Canva is a hugely popular online design platform that‘s free to use (with paid upgrades available). They have an extensive library of pre-made presentation templates with eye-catching cover page designs for every theme imaginable. Most of the layouts are easy to customize with your own text, photos and branding using their simple drag-and-drop tools.

Visme Visme is another powerful tool for creating professional presentation decks and cover pages, no design skills needed. Their templates tend to be bold, modern and versatile with features like animated graphics and interactive charts. You can also create cover pages from scratch using their library of images, fonts and design assets.

Slidebean Slidebean takes a data-driven, AI-powered approach to presentation cover page design. Input your key content and branding and their smart templates will automatically generate unique cover page options to choose from and customize. It‘s a great solution if you‘re short on time but still want a modern, compelling opener slide.

PowerPoint Many people overlook the built-in cover page tools right in Microsoft PowerPoint. Their Designer feature will instantly create professional cover layout options anytime you add an image to a blank slide. You can also browse their gallery of free templates for every theme, style and business use case, with simple options for swapping in your own content.

Keynote For Mac users, Keynote has equally robust cover page creation tools built in. Their templates rival professional design apps in terms of modern, on-trend aesthetics. Customizing layouts, fonts and imagery is incredibly intuitive. They also have impressive animation options for adding excitement to your opener slide.

No matter which tool you choose, templates are the secret to quickly creating presentation cover pages that look like they were custom designed just for you. Start with a professional foundation and then customize it with your content and visual tweaks to make it your own.

Putting It All Together: Crafting Your Ideal Cover Page

We‘ve covered a lot of best practices and strategies for designing presentation cover pages that engage audiences and set a professional tone for your talk. As you sit down to craft your own opener, here are a few final tips to keep in mind:

Start with the right specs. Most presentation slides are 16:9 format (10" x 5.625" at 300dpi if you‘re creating it in a design program). Using the correct canvas size from the beginning will save you reformatting headaches later.
Write the title and subtitle first to clarify your main idea. Wordsmith it until you have the clearest, most compelling description before you start designing. Share it with others for feedback.
Find images and color palettes that enhance your theme. Browse your brand assets, stock photo sites and design inspiration collections to pinpoint visuals that fit your topic and tone. Focus on quality and relevance over quantity.
Rework the layout multiple times. Try out several different arrangements of images and text to find the most balanced, impactful composition. Use guidelines or a grid to keep things aligned.
Preview your cover page at presentation scale. Make sure text is large enough to read, colors have enough contrast, and visuals retain their resolution when enlarged. Get feedback from others on the overall impact.
Tie it into the rest of your presentation. Your cover page sets the tone – make sure the rest of your slides follow the same theme and style. Cohesion and consistency are key.

The most important thing to remember is that a presentation cover page isn‘t just a necessary formality – it‘s a valuable opportunity to capture audience attention, establish credibility, and preview the key themes of your talk. It‘s the difference between people leaning in with excitement or tuning out before you even reach the podium.

A well-crafted presentation cover is a powerful tool for influencing how an audience perceives your message. It‘s an investment in making the right impression, building your brand and authority, and creating an immediate positive connection with listeners.

So don‘t treat it as an afterthought. Pour as much intention and strategy into your cover page as you do your core content, and watch your presentation land with more power and resonance. Start your talk off strong and set yourself up for success from the very first slide.

How to Design a Great Presentation Cover Page

A cover page is a quick and easy way to add polish to your presentation. We'll cover a few tips for creating a great cover image, and we've got ten free PowerPoint cover image templates you can download at the bottom of the page.

The cover image sets the tone for your presentation—you don't want to dive right into the content—and is a great opportunity to start your deck off on the right foot.

What to include

Your cover image should include these basic facts:

Title Short and sweet.
Your contact information. Email or phone number
Your company logo. It's all about branding.

Bonus tips:

Cobranding. Presenting to a customer? Add their logo to personalize the presentation.

Conferences. Including your Twitter handle is a great idea—you might gain some followers, and it gives your audience someone to tag when they gush about your awesome presentation.

Know your Audience

Consider how your audience will view your presentation deck (projected, on their laptop, or printed like it's 1995), and make sure that the scale of your design is appropriate.

If you're presenting at a conference, your type needs to be big enough to read from the cheap seats, and make sure you have enough contrast that the text is legible even if there's poor projector quality. You don't want your audience squinting at the screen before your presentation even starts. And remember—the title page will be what's on screen when you're getting ready—walking up to the stage, fixing your microphone, or just swallowing back the sheer terror of public speaking.

If you're emailing the presentation, make sure your cover image works well as a thumbnail. That will be the first thing your reader sees when she receives the file—and, let's face it, a better image is going to drive more opens than a boring one.

Know your brand

If you have an established brand, your cover image needs to reflect it. One of the biggest problems we see with decks out in the wild is when the creator goes off-brand and uses the wrong colors or typeface. Imagine how surprising it would be to see a presentation from Coca-Cola without their trademark red, or Facebook without their blue.

Cover Image Techniques

Now that we have the basics down, here are some techniques you can use make a well-designed cover image.

Stock Photography

The workhorse of cover images is stock photography—an attractive photo with plenty of negative space, then place your text on top of it. The trick is to find the right photo and make it work for you. Pexels is a great place to find free images you can use anywhere. When you're looking for stock photos, keep these tips in mind to help you find the right image.

Sometimes you'll need to do a quick bit of editing to make the image work for you. The important thing is to find an image that works in the background —one that lets your reader focus on your message, not the photo. These images tend to look boring all by themselves—you need to use a bit of imagination to see how it will work once you layer text on it.

Once you have an image, you can desaturate and tint it to give it better contrast for your text, or manipulate the image to give it more negative space, as you see below.

Typographic

Nice typography will take a you a long way, and it's something you can do in PowerPoint without any special tools. We're in a renaissance of great, free fonts. Take a look at this selection of the best Google Fonts from the always awesome TypeWolf for inspiration.

Using custom fonts can be tricky in PowerPoint. If you're having trouble getting your fonts to show up, take a look at this article . If you're sharing the PowerPoint with others, they'll need to have the fonts installed (we recommend always exporting your deck to PDF before sharing with customers to avoid font problems).

We all know PowerPoint isn't the greatest design tool—but it does the basics well enough, and you can use it to make a minimal design that works well.

Even though they're "easy" to do, with the right layout and sense of balance you can make a design that really sings with hardly any design elements.

Strong color combinations, simple shapes, and nice typography can yield a cover page that looks great without searching for stock images or opening Photoshop. Need a little help with color combinations? Check out Kuler from Adobe .

Free PowerPoint Cover Page Templates

We've made examples of the styles above for you to download and use. These are completely free—do whatever you like with them!

Coffee Cup PowerPoint Cover

Requires open sans download powerpoint file, beach powerpoint cover, requires playfair display download powerpoint file, office building powerpoint cover, requires open sans and playfair display download powerpoint file, circles powerpoint cover, bridge powerpoint cover, desk powerpoint cover, design tools powerpoint cover, simple powerpoint cover, tiled background powerpoint cover, topographic background powerpoint cover.

Enjoy! If you need some ideas to get you started, take a look at our portfolio of decks we've designed . Or if you'd like a little help on your next project, we're happy to help .

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Lightboard is a B2B design service. We've helped great companies like Autodesk, Nasdaq, and Tile with design, and we'd love to help you.

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Presentations

How to Make a Great PowerPoint Title Cover Slide Quickly (+ Video)

Want to avoid creating another boring presentation? Well-designed presentations make a great first impression. A PowerPoint title slide sets the stage for your subsequent slides!

Your PowerPoint title slide is critical for a successful slide deck.

Half the battle is building excitement with a PowerPoint title page. Invest extra time to add design polish to your cover slide PowerPoint design. Build a bold PowerPoint title slide that shows your audience that you're excited to share!

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to build a PowerPoint title page. You'll see intro slide examples that spark success. Attention is everything, and presentation title pages help you get and keep it. It's quick, easy, and key to success in 2024!

Learn How to Make Great Presentations Today: Grab our FREE eBook!

Before we take a closer look at PowerPoint cover slides, let's look at another great resource. We've got a helpful complement to this tutorial. Download our FREE eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations . Grab it now before you read on .

How to Quickly Make Great PowerPoint Presentation Title Cover Slides (Video)

If you're making a PowerPoint title slide for your presentation, you need it to look good. Learn how to make a visually appealing PowerPoint title page quickly in the video below:

To learn even more about cover slides for PowerPoint, study the rest of the tutorial. You'll see real world examples of PowerPoint title pages. These presentation title page designs are tried-and-true options for great design.

Jump to instructions for the type of PowerPoint cover slide you're interested in:

The Logo Slide
The Big Question Slide
The Introductory Slide
The Roadmap Slide
The Team Slide
The Quote Slide
The Challenge Slide

The Seven PowerPoint Cover Slides to Build

There's no limit to the directions that you can take your PowerPoint title slide. You can let your creativity run wild as you build title page in PPT designs.

But it's hard to disagree that the first slide is going to set the stage for the rest of your presentation. So, it's essential that your presentation gets off to a strong start. But what direction should you go with your presentation title page so that you grab and keep audience attention?

In this tutorial, you'll learn to build seven types of PowerPoint title slides. Here are the intro slide examples that I tend to think about when designing my PowerPoint title pages:

The Logo Slide. Focus on the branding and brand image of your group with this PowerPoint title page! Start off by putting your logo and tagline front and center.
The Big Question Slide. Most presentations work to inform. But it's also fun to flip the script and ask a question of your audience. It kickstarts the conversation.
The Introductory Slide. This slide focuses on showcasing your credentials and background to establish authority.
The Roadmap Slide. Chart the course for your presentation ahead by giving a sneak preview of the topics you'll cover.
The Team Slide. Does your presentation focus on a group's effort? It's a great idea to start your presentation by showcasing all the minds behind the project.
The Quote Slide. Sharing an inspirational or motivational quote is a fun way to engage your audience.
The Challenge Slide. Many presentations strive to help solve problems. Set the stage by highlighting the big challenge immediately.

In this tutorial, we're going to build an example of each of these PowerPoint cover slides. We'll use pre-built templates to create impactful slide designs with ease. Let's dive in!

How to Make PowerPoint Title Slides

We're going to use an impressive template called the BePro PowerPoint Business template. This is one of the top PowerPoint templates for Envato Elements subscribers.

BePro has a litany of cover slide PowerPoint designs that you can use to create the perfect PowerPoint title page! It also includes several color schemes to make it easy to reuse on multiple presentation title pages.

Explore the BePro Template

Envato Elements includes over 25,000 premium PowerPoint themes! You have countless title page in PPT options. With these, you can build amazing intro slide examples of your own. Start with this collection for more great ideas:

Now, you can learn about each of the seven types of title slides:

1. The Logo Slide

The Logo Slide focuses on your brand image and showcasing the logo of your company. Branding takes center stage with this title page in PPT concept. It's ideal to use a logo slide to show your branding on the PowerPoint title page when you're building brand awareness.

A good starting point for this slide is slide design three that's built into the BePro template. It's perfect for just adding a logo and background image. In the example below, I dropped in the logo on the slide. I also took the same logo and faded it into the background image placeholder.

Make sure too that your version of the logo slide stays with the branding message. Adjust the colors of shapes and text to match the overall color scheme of your business. Presentation title pages should always fit with your overall brand style.

Building a logo slide as your title slide doesn't have to be complicated. A well-made logo slide shows your branding quickly. An alternate option for this slide is slide design 4, a simple slide with a dark color scheme. Just add your logo to that slide to create contrast.

2. The Big Question Slide

Your audience may be expecting you to impart knowledge on them. But you can flip the script by asking a question up front.

The "Big Question Slide" doesn't take much time to design. It helps you free up time that you can spend thinking about the rest of your content.

When you're writing a presentation, there should always be a goal or big idea. In the example below, I used the minimalist slide design 4 to ask a question of the audience. Over the course of the presentation, I'll answer this question for the audience.

If you aren't answering a question or sharing an idea, it might be time to re-think the content.

3. The Introductory Slide

There's nothing wrong with getting a bit personal in your presentation. Set the stage by building your authority and expertise, and the audience will trust and follow you through the presentation.

BePro has many slide designs that work well for this, but I opted for slide 25. It's a clean and straightforward slide design. It's easy to add points that explain your expertise to the audience.

As you can see above, I also added a stock photo as the background image. Envato Elements features a ton of stock images as part of the subscription. They're ideal for sourcing a stock image for your presentation.

In my example slide, I grabbed a great photo and faded it into the background. It's a great reminder that Elements is a total solution for building presentations—not just for the PowerPoint templates.

4. The Roadmap Slide

The roadmap style slide is used to tell the story of where your presentation is headed. I've sat through many presentations that seemed to wander through the agenda and would've benefitted from a roadmap slide.

When you build a roadmap, you show the audience the direction that you'll take them on over the course of the presentation.

Slide design 41 might take a bit of customization, but I do think that it's the perfect choice for showcasing your roadmap for the presentation. Just update each of the four placeholder boxes with a key section of your presentation to architect the roadmap of your big speech.

5. The Team Slide

This type of slide is the perfect intro to showcasing a project that was a total team effort. If you're going to spend your presentation sharing how you built a big app, product, or project, it's only right that you share the credit with your team.

Slide 22 in BePro is the perfect choice to build a team slide of your own. It's tailor-made to drop in images and descriptions of your team members and see it come to life.

In my example below, I put a vital member of the project team in each of the image placeholders. Giving a brief background or description of their contribution to the project is a great way to set the stage.

I think the Team Slide approach is perfect when multiple speakers are involved. Some of my favorite presentations are when several different presenters will each take a part of the presentation. If this is the style of your presentation, use a team slide that introduces everyone's role and contributions.

6. The Quote Slide

Starting off with a quote is a great way to build a PowerPoint cover slide. Share a signature quote and you can inspire and engage with your audience! Quotes provide motivation and inspiration. They can be key to helping you convey your message.

Let’s use slide #9 in the BePro template. Over on the left, you’ll see a text placeholder. Here, you can quickly keyboard in a quote to share with your audience. Optionally, up at the top, you can add a title. Using this layout as your title slide makes for a fun and inspiring opener.

As you can see, it’s easy to add a quote to your cover slide PowerPoint design. This is a good way if you’re motivating your audience to take action. Sharing the inspiring words of others helps you inspire confidence and drive your audiences to act on your message.

7. The Challenge Slide

In PowerPoint, you’re often sharing the solution to a problem. Don’t waste time - address things head-on right away! To do that, consider PPT title slide examples that outline a challenge. After all, if you’re proposing solutions, you first must define the challenge.

Above, I’ve used slide #6 to create a challenge slide. Once again, the process is quick and easy. Simply swap out the placeholder content with your own words and numbers. When you use layouts like this, there will be no confusion on the part of your audience. You can clearly show the challenge that must be accepted.

5 Quick PowerPoint Title Cover Slide Design Tips for 2024

We've looked at how to make a great PowerPoint cover slide. Soon, you can begin building amazing slides on your own.

Still need inspiration? These tips can serve as PPT title slide ideas. Let's check out five quick design tips that are sure to help you out:

Bold style is essential on your PowerPoint cover page. Remember, you've got one goal: capturing audience attention . Sharp, eye-catching design does exactly that on cover slide PowerPoint designs.

Premium templates built by creatives provide unmatched designs. They even help inspire you to do your very best work. I think of templates as a top source for PPT title slide ideas. And they're incredibly easy to customize, making you look like a PPT expert.

2. Create Your Own Layouts

PPT decks are really frameworks for your message. Inside the app, you've got the flexibility to customize every slide layout. That's never more important than on the first page of PPT presentations.

By adjusting layouts, you can show exactly what you want, where you want. It's the best way to create a memorable and unique PowerPoint cover page.

Ready to implement PPT title slide ideas of your own? Tweaking layouts helps you do just that. Learn how to customize PPT layouts with our quick tutorial:

3. Embrace Minimalism

Minimalism. It's a popular design aesthetic, and for good reason. It adds style without being overpowering or distracting. That's perfect for a PowerPoint cover page.

Try to build a cover showing only the essentials. These could be things like an image, the presentation title, a date, and your name. Be careful to avoid adding clutter: it's a quick way to lose your audience.

4. Add Kinetic Typography

You might not think of animated text. But it's actually a great way to grab attention and lock in audience focus on your title page in PPT. Thanks to PowerPoint, you can add these animations (called kinetic typography) easily.

Kinetic typography brings subtle, stylish text animation to any slide. It's ideal for the first page of PPT presentation layouts in need of a bit more energy.

Learn how to use kinetic typography in just 60 seconds here. It's yet another source of inspiration for PPT title slide ideas:

5. Use Industry-Specific PowerPoint Cover Slides

First impressions are key in a title page in PPT, and you'll make one with your PowerPoint cover page. So why use generic layouts if you can find something specifically suited to your needs?

My favorite PPT title slide ideas are situation specific. That means choosing PowerPoint title slides that match your purpose. Check out Pizzarena , for example. The designs are targeted at a pizza restaurant. That's far from the norm, but it will instantly resonate with your audience with eye-catching intro slide examples.

This might mean choosing a premium template built for your industry. Or, you might add your brand's colors, logos, and more. Either way, being specific and tailoring your cover slide to your needs is sure to impress.

5 Top PowerPoint Title Cover Slide Templates (For 2024 Presentations)

Premium templates from Envato Elements include stunning PowerPoint cover page designs. And remember, they're a top source for intro slide examples. Let's check out five of the very best PowerPoint templates with built-in PPT title slide examples:

1. VERA PowerPoint Template

Bold colors abound in this visually stunning PPT deck. With 55 unique slides, you're sure to find the perfect PowerPoint cover page. Also, inside is a custom icon set that's easy to work with. This title page in PowerPoint template is perfect for almost any project.

2. STYLE - Multipurpose PowerPoint Template V50

Style: it's in the name of this template, and for good reason . This is a perfect example of a sleek, minimalist PowerPoint cover page. Customize it in seconds, and with 4,000 slides to choose from, your options are almost unlimited. You're sure to find outstanding options for title page in PowerPoint designs!

3. IPSUM - PowerPoint

IPSUM offers a key part of a successful PowerPoint cover page. That's creative flexibility. Over 50 layouts are built into the pack. You can use those pre-built designs as PPT title slide examples! You'll also see custom infographics, icons, and more. Each slide element is completely editable.

4. Livy PowerPoint

Searching for a timeless, retro inspired PPT cover page? Livy has you covered. With 50 slides and resizable graphics, it's easy to adapt to your project needs. The included gallery slide makes for a perfect mosaic cover layout. It's yet another great example with PowerPoint title slide examples.

5. Conference PowerPoint Presentation Template

Last but not least is Conference, a modern PowerPoint cover page deck. Choose between multiple color themes and quickly add in your content. Plus, slides are pre-animated, saving you precious time as you build a title page in PowerPoint! Each slide is in full HD, helping them look great on large screens.

More Top PowerPoint Templates

PowerPoint templates give you a tremendous advantage when creating a presentation. Many of them even give you pre-built title page in PowerPoint designs. You've already seen options for PowerPoint cover pages in this tutorial, but these just scratch the surface.

Check out more of the top templates below. Many of these templates give you even more options for PowerPoint title slide examples:

Learn More About How to Use PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a fantastic app because it's easy to learn. But it also has many advanced features that you can use to build beautiful slides. The title slide designs and the template we used to build them are a great example of how easy it can be.

Still want to learn more about PowerPoint? One of the best resources for learning the app is our article, Ultimate Guide to the Best PPT . That guide and the tutorials below will help you build competence and present confidently.

The Top Source for the Best PowerPoint Cover Slide Templates (With Unlimited Downloads)

As we've shown, the title page of your PowerPoint presentation sets the tone. But you need to make sure that the rest of your presentation looks good too.

The best way to build a presentation is to use pre-built templates from Envato Elements. Elements has a massive library of PowerPoint presentation designs you can use. Each template has starter slides that you can just drop your own content into! The PowerPoint cover slides we feature are the fastest way to design.

Find PowerPoint Templates

The best part of Elements? It's an all-you-can-download creative buffet. With a single subscription, you've got access to all that Elements offers. It includes thousands of PowerPoint designs plus millions of total creative assets. That includes:

stock photos
so much more!

With Elements, finding the perfect assets is easier than ever. Use the tool to find PowerPoint title slide examples, and so much more with a bit of AI-assisted help. Elements now includes a powerful AI search tool ! With it, you can simply describe your own project needs.

With this prompt, Elements will deliver a curated list of assets from the vast library! It's an amazing way to save time and find the perfect content for your title page in PowerPoint. Join Elements and try it today!

Make Great Presentations ( Free PDF eBook Download )

We also have the perfect complement to this PowerPoint tutorial. It walks you through the complete presentation process. Learn how to write your presentation, design it like a pro, and prepare it to present powerfully.

Download our new eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations . It's available for free with a subscription to the Tuts+ Business Newsletter.

Start Using PowerPoint Cover Pages Today

In this tutorial, you saw some of the best options for PowerPoint cover pages inside of premium templates. These files set the tone with the help of the first page of PPT presentations, presented perfectly. Choose one of these templates and get started now.

When you use these PPT title slide examples, you’re sure to wow your audience. You’ll kick off every presentation with a strong start! You’ll capture attention and keep everyone engaged. Try it today!

Editorial Note: This tutorial was originally published in August of 2019. It's been revised to make it current, accurate, and up to date by our staff—with special help from Andrew Childress .

How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page [+ Examples]

When you’re focused on creating a meaningful, persuasive presentation, it’s easy to overlook the cover page. But giving that first page of your deck a little more love can actually go a long way towards grabbing your audience’s attention early on and setting the tone for the rest of your presentation.

You’ve put so much work into your presentation — why waste that valuable real estate on the first slide of your deck?

In this post, we’ll cover the basics of creating a presentation cover page that’s informative and attention-grabbing. Let’s dive in.

What’s included in a presentation cover page?

A good presentation cover page accomplishes three simple things:

It introduces the topic with a straightforward title.
It introduces you (and your organization, if applicable)
It sets the tone of your presentation.

We probably don’t need to tell you this one, but your presentation cover page should be centered around a title. And ideally, a title that’s straightforward, descriptive, and simple. If you’re finding it hard to keep your title short, add a subtitle (in smaller print) to clarify what you’ll be speaking about.

Next, identify the person (or group) who will be giving the presentation. In some cases, this will be as simple as including your own name, and in others, you’ll want to include your company name, logo, department, or other identifying information. As a general guideline, you’ll need less identifying information if you’re giving an internal presentation.

If your audience is mainly folks outside of your company (or there are plans to distribute your deck externally) you’ll typically want to include more information to identify your company clearly.

A successful cover page sets the “tone” of your deck — but what does that really mean? The colors, imagery, fonts, and placements of different elements on your cover page all create a specific visual style that the rest of your deck should follow.

A well-designed page conveys a sense of professionalism and preparedness that a simple monochrome text slide simply cannot. Even if you’re not a design expert, you need to pay attention to the aesthetics of your cover page. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to find free, professional-looking presentation templates without needing a degree in graphic design. Whatever you choose, it’s important to remain relevant to your presentation (and, if applicable, your company’s branding).

We’ll explore a few examples of cover pages below so you can see how different elements converge to set the tone for a variety of different presentations.

Presentation Cover Page Examples

Below, we’ve compiled a number of presentation cover pages that succeed in different areas. Remember: there’s no single perfect format for a presentation cover page, but hopefully, you get some inspiration from this list.

Setting An Emotional Tone

Focusing on a Photo

You don’t need to overcomplicate the format of your cover page, especially if you have a great photo to use as a full background image. A simple stock photo here provides a clean backdrop for this presentation on remote work. Just make sure your title text is legible over any background photo you decide to use. (Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash )

Leading With Your Brand

Even if you’re the central speaker for a presentation, it might make more sense to highlight your team or brand on your cover page, instead of including your own personal information (you can always include your own contact info at the end of your deck for follow-up questions). Context (if you’re speaking at a particular event or annual meeting) can be important to highlight as well on your cover page.

There’s a big difference between a cover slide you didn’t put much thought into and a slide that makes good use of whitespace and leans on strong copy. Sometimes, the best way to lead an audience into your presentation is to create space for a little mystery.

If you’re giving a more casual presentation or a pitch that doesn’t need to follow a particular format, consider going the minimal route and opening with a simple cover page slide that asks your audience a question (one that you of course plan to answer).

Set a Purpose

Many presentations include an agenda slide directly after your cover slide, but that doesn’t mean you can use your cover slide to set a clear purpose upfront. Consider using your subtitle to explain a more robust (but still simple!) description of what you’ll cover.

Presentation Cover Page Templates

A tried-and-true favorite of many marketing teams, Canva offers up a wide selection of modern, drag-and-drop presentation templates with truly unique cover pages. If you’re on the hunt for a cover page that looks like you hired a graphic designer to create it just for you, Canva is a good place to start your search. Canva offers both free and paid options.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai has an intuitive, highly-customizable presentation builder that allows you to import your own visual elements directly from your computer or a Dropbox folder. Like Canva, they offer a number of free and paid template options (with great cover pages). Their biggest differentiating feature is their (frankly, very cool) adaptive AI technology, which intuits how you’re trying to design a slide and makes changes automatically to suit the direction of your project.

Another highly-customizable template source is Visme, which gives users the ability to select a starting template from their (expansive) library and customize elements in a simple web editor.

VectorStock ®

VectorStock® has a massive selection of PowerPoint presentation cover page templates for purchase if you’re looking for something that’s ready to plug and go without the need for customization (beyond adding your own name and title, of course).

First Impressions Matter

For better or worse, audiences will judge a presentation by its cover page. Because of this, it’s vital that you give your cover page the care and attention that it deserves. Ultimately, a cover page isn’t simply a placeholder, it’s a vital component that can drum up interest for your presentation. The best part is that with the tools available online, you don’t have to be an artist to create a stunning presentation cover page.

The featured image on this post was created using a Canva template.

How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page [+ Examples]

If your focus is on creating a meaningful and compelling presentation, it's easy to miss the cover page. However, giving a little extra love to that first page of your deck can go a long way in getting your audience's attention early on and setting the tone for the rest of your presentation.

A stunning cover sheet for presentations can get your audience to know more and be more engaging with the information you are presenting. On the flip side, a lackluster slide, or even the missing slide, can dampen the audience's enthusiasm for your presentation, and perhaps even your own.

You've put so much work into your presentation - why should you waste this precious real estate on the first slide of your deck?

This post covers the basics of creating a presentation cover sheet that is informative and attention grabbing. Let's dive in.

How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page [+ Examples]

What is in a presentation cover sheet?

A good presentation cover sheet does three simple things:

It introduces the subject with a simple title.
It introduces you (and your organization, if applicable).
It sets the tone of your presentation.

We probably don't need to tell you this, but your presentation cover page should be about a title. And ideally a title that is simple, descriptive, and simple. If you're having trouble keeping your title short, add a subtitle (in smaller print) to make it clear what you're talking about.

Next, identify the person (or group) who will be giving the presentation. In some cases, it's as easy as adding your own name. In other cases, you may want to include your company name, logo, department, or other identifying information. As a general guideline, you will need less identifying information when giving an internal presentation.

If your target audience is mostly people outside of your company (or there are plans to distribute your deck externally), you'll usually want to add more information to uniquely identify your company.

A successful cover sheet sets the "tone" of your deck - but what does that really mean? The colors, images, fonts, and placements of various elements on your cover sheet create a certain visual style that the rest of your deck should follow.

A well-designed page conveys a sense of professionalism and willingness that a simple monochrome text slide simply cannot. Even if you're not a design expert, you need to pay attention to the aesthetics of your cover sheet. Fortunately, it's easier than ever to find free, professional-looking presentation templates without needing a graphic design degree. Regardless of your choice, it is important to stay relevant to your presentation (and your company branding, if applicable).

Below are some examples of cover sheets so you can see how different elements come together to set the tone for a variety of different presentations.

Examples of presentation cover sheets

Below we have compiled a number of presentation cover sheets that are successful in different areas. Remember: there is no perfect format for a presentation cover page, but hopefully this list will inspire you.

Set an emotional tone

The right presentation page can set both an emotional and a visual tone. This presentation cover sheet for a non-profit organization conveys a task-oriented approach to protecting nature with a selected, relevant image and a call to action right in the subtitle. (Photo by Andy Køgl on Unsplash)

A photo in focus

You don't have to overcomplicate the format of your cover page, especially when you can use a great photo as a full background image. A simple stock photo here provides a clean background for this remote work presentation. Just make sure your title text is legible over any background photo you plan to use. (Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash)

Lead with your brand

Even if you are the key speaker for a presentation, it may make more sense to highlight your team or brand on your cover sheet rather than providing your own personal information (you can always include your own contact information at the end of your deck for follow-up questions). Context (if you're speaking at a specific event or annual meeting) can be important to make it stand out on your cover page as well.

There's a big difference between a slide that you haven't thought about much and one that makes good use of spaces and relies on a strong copy. Sometimes the best way to get an audience into your presentation is to make room for a little puzzle.

If you're giving a more casual presentation or pitch that doesn't have to follow a specific format, go the minimal route and open it with a simple cover sheet slide that asks your audience a question (one that you naturally plan to answer).

Establish a purpose

Many presentations include an agenda slide right after your cover slide. However, that doesn't mean you can use your cover slide to set a clear purpose in advance. Use your subtitle to explain a more robust (but still simple!) Description of what you will be covering.

Presentation cover sheet templates

Rather than creating your presentation cover page from scratch, using a template can take a lot of the work out of the process. You can find templates on these websites that you can use for your presentation or as inspiration for creating your own designs.

A time-honored favorite of many marketing teams, Canva offers a wide variety of modern drag and drop presentation templates with truly unique cover sheets. If you're looking for a cover page that looks like you hired a graphic designer to make it just for you, Canva is a good place to start. Canva offers both free and paid options.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai has an intuitive, highly customizable presentation builder that allows you to import your own visuals directly from your computer or a Dropbox folder. Like Canva, they offer a range of free and paid template options (with great cover sheets). The biggest differentiator is the (honestly very cool) adaptive AI technology, which describes exactly how you're trying to design a slide and automatically makes changes based on the direction of your project.

For a completely free option with a starter template for cover sheets for a variety of different projects in different formats, see EDIT. Their online tool is specially designed to create cover pages in a simple, easy to use interface.

Another highly customizable template source is Visme, which allows users to choose a starting template from their (extensive) library and customize elements in a simple web editor.

VectorStock®

VectorStock® has a wide variety of PowerPoint presentation cover sheet templates for purchase if you're looking for something that can be plugged in without any adjustments (without adding your own name and title, of course).

First impressions are important

For better or for worse, audience will Use the cover sheet to judge a presentation. Because of this, it is important that you give your cover sheet the care and attention it deserves. Ultimately, a cover page is not just a placeholder, but an important component that can generate interest in your presentation. Best of all, with the tools available online, you don't have to be an artist to create a stunning presentation cover page.

The image shown in this post was created using a Canva Template.

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Create better conference slides and presentations

Do you want to start a journey in public speaking , but are no designers ? You’re in the right place! Today, I am showing you the ropes and basics to help you craft slides that look professional. Slides that will help catch the audience’s attention, while still keeping them focused on your talk. No magic; mostly planing, typography, content layout, images, audio, video and content tips. And a few extra tips on rhythm, notes, technical checks, rehearsals. You know, all those small details to make sure you are and feel prepared . As bonus, I bundled this all quick checklist to help you not forget anything. So here we go, let’s start your slides journey together 🙂

This article is a transcript of the tips I gave for Women Talk Design’s next cohort of “ Present yourself with confidence ” workshops that starts soon. And this year, I am one of their guest speaker .

Inspiration, Planing, Preparation & Rehearsal

The first tip I can give you about slides, is actually to not start with the slides, but with a plan and a structure.

Start with understanding what type of “ conference style ” you want to go with. Take a look at other talks and slides for inspiration : technical ones, inspirational ones (like keynotes), case studies, etc. What style do you enjoy? What would YOU be comfortable with?

Some people have 125 slides for a 45min talk and go super fast from slide to slide. Some people have 25 slides for 45 minutes and talk a lot on each slide. I’m usually a 90slides for 45min kind of gurl. Up to you to see what you are more comfortable with. It comes with practise and might change over time.

Have a plan

** Xayha and Rakan’s voices “ We have a plan? We always have a plan ” **

I always start with a plan , not the slides. I like to write my talk like articles, it helps with storytelling. Some people write a plan with a few bullet points. Some people use mind mapping tools. Whatever works for you.

For anything topic and plan related, I recommend you read Lara Hogan’s excellent “ Demystifying public speaking ” book. I prepare my plan in Gdocs, with a LOT of bullet points and titles. But, again, that’s me. Whatever tool helps YOU organise your structure. Then, I don’t want to invest too much time in the slide design until I have the structure and timing right.

If this is a “non remote talk” (yes, remote is the new normal haha), I also plan for “ OMG I can’t share the computer’s audio and there’s no internet connection in the room ” worse case scenarios. Because this might happen. Can you still give your talk from a PDF version of those slides? If you planned a live demo, record it in advance. Just in case. And have the recording as a backup in case wifi is dead. Be prepared for a “lower” version of those slides and talk if necessary.

Rehearse the structure with “skeleton slides”.

So I start with basic slide structure (titles + text), kind of like a skeleton of future slides.. I rehearse them once or twice to get the timing, storytelling and content right . Then I do the design (this way I avoid designing slides I won’t use).

I also sometimes rehearse that basic structure in front of an external observer to get feedback about the rhythm, the flow. If also helps me see if the order of the slides make sense. I don’t need super detailed designed slides for this, it’s about structure.

Example of the skeletong slides with just the structure and some speaker notes

This is what my skeleton usually looks like: the main titles, the slides with mostly just some text and some notes

Once I have the slides finished, I still rehearse a lot. Usually, if it’s the first time I give a talk, I am up to 4 or 5 rehearsal sessions. This is important for me to get the timing right. I know that I’m stressed out and tend to speak faster, but still. You don’t want to be the speaker who messed up the whole organization because your 20 min talk took 35 min (I saw that happen). I have friends who can finish their slides 1h before the talk and pull it of. Goof for them. BUT, if this is your first talk, don’t do that. It will be even more stressful for you. Be prepared 🙂

Section titles or no titles?

Having clear sections with titles work well for technical talks and talks where each part digs into a specific topic. Titles also help transition from one idea to the other and let you have a small “breathing” (even water) break. If you have titles, having a summary of what you’ll talk about at the beginning can help the audience project into the talk. Some other talks are following more of a storytelling inspirational path. For those, it might be strange to have titles in the middle of the story. But, it could still work.

Slides Content and Design

A quick note: those are generic advice for people who give their first talk, want to improve their presentation and slide skills and might not be designers. I speak and talk in English and French, so those advice is for LtR (Left to Right) languages. You could reverse the tips for RtL (Right to Left). I honestly have no idea if this would apply for TtB (Top to Bottom) languages (like Chinese).

Here comes my main advice: your conference slides are a visual support to help the audience follow what you are saying. It is NOT here replace you . You want them to listen to you, not read your slides. So, all the tips here will try to focus on that idea. Non visual distraction.

Which means that those tips apply mostly to conference slides . Workshop and teaching slides are a little bit different. Because they are also used as support students and workshop attendees refer back to. So, if you are teaching classes or presenting a workshop, your slides might contain more content that what I advice here.

Slides basics for a good start

Gslide Explore layout offers multiple layouts for an image and text combination

Let’s cover a few basics first:

Slides ratio : 16:9 works on most projectors those days and is ideal for online presentation. 4:3 is still an option since most projectors can switch between one or the other. I prefer 16:9 because it gives more space for nice visuals.
You can always ask the organizer about the format of the projector if they know it.
There’s NO SHAME in using a generic theme when you start. Most themes come with a lot of options and layout.
Use a consistent theme : colors, consistent font-size, etc. The best way to achieve this is to use slide templates/ master. If you don’t use a generic template, you can start from scratch. Most tools have blank starter themes. Or modify an existing theme to adapt to your colors / fonts.
GSlides even has some machine learning suggestions to try to find the best layout based on your content .
Avoid too many ideas on one slide . If you have a lot of ideas and content, it’s better to split “one idea by slide ” so the audience can follow.

Choosing your color scheme wisely

White text on yellow background, not enough contrast on the left. White text on purple background, enough contrast on the right

When it comes to colors, be careful with text/background contrast and follow main accessibility guidelines. Especially if the slides might be displayed on old projectors. I am not going to detail how to pick colors here, I wrote about it in “ Tips to Create an Accessible and Contrasted Color Palette “. Also check “ Color accessibility: tools and resources to help you design inclusive products ” for more details and tools to help you. Also Geoffrey Crofte has an awesome article on “ Pantone 2021: Working on an Accessible Color Palette “.

One question I have often is the “do you recommend light or dark theme”. It is an interesting debate. It depends.

Dark themes work for dark rooms. If you know you will present in a theatre or cinema for example.
If you are not a designer it can be hard to make some good readable dark mode slides that work nicely with pictures .
Dark themes work nicely with code, and “non images just text” kind of slides.
Some colors tend to “bleed” or “move” on a dark background. If you put some levels of blue on dark themes for example I will have a headache after 10 minutes in your talk. So, again, it might be complicated.
So, if this is your first talk and you are not a designer, unless you found a template that works, stick to light themes.
If you go for a dark theme, avoid pure white text on pure black color . The contrast might be too high for some people (like me, yes there’s such things as too high contrast).
Also if you are doing more of a workshop, some people like to print the slides to have a physical handout. In that case, dark mode is going to cost a LOT of ink.

Fonts and typography

Font hierarchy and ratio : usually you need a font-size for some “big section titles”, then a “header in the slides” size and some body and bullet font-size. You can use mathematique ratio to create balance here (or tools like https://type-scale.com/ ). But again, most templates usually are well built, so use the template font hierarchy

Also, you want to keep consistency . Try to use the same font-size for “big slides titles”, “header title on a slide” and “body copy” all the way through your presentation. Again, designers who master font and visual hierarchy will play with this rule. But if you are a beginner with no design background, stick to the rules ^^

Example of a cursive and a decorative font that don't work well on slides

Now, here are a 2 tips on font choice and pairing : fonts convey meaning. Be careful with those (a cursive is nice for weddings, but hard to read on slides for example). When in double, stick to the basics , even if they look boring. Same for font pairing: if you are not a designer, stick to one font and multiple weight . Or use one of those tools:

Some examples of good Google Font pairings
A curated list of (google fonts) pairings that work well together
Another curated list of nice pairings
Okay, one last list of fonts that work well together
Font pairing generated with deep learning
Font Combination by Bold

Last but not least: don’t use vertical writing (again, this applies to LtR languages). And yes, I know some templates offer the option. But it’s annoying for the audience to have to turn their head to read something.

Caps and alignments

Avoid all caps on super long titles / text . It is harder to read for some people. But you could use caps it to emphasize some words.

You can use bold to emphasize some important elements . Remember that if everything is bold, nothing is emphasized anymore. So, use this carefully.

For the alignment:

For LtR audience, avoid right aligning copy text. And the other way around for RtL. This is not true for graphs thought you might need to right align legends.
Also centered text is hard to read. So keep centered text for titles , avoid on body copy, avoid at all costs on bullet points!
Same for justification: it usually creates “ justification rivers ” that make it hard to read. Stick to left aligned text (or right if you are in a RtL language).

Structure your content with bullet point lists

Visual example of the technics applied above

Bullet point lists is a good way to structure some heavy content. Here are a few tips:

Use a bullet list , but not too many bullets.
I mentioned before you want to have one idea by slide . You could have multiple ideas with bullet points but… They need to be all related to the same topic. And after 4/5 bullets it’s hard to follow .
Try to keep each bullet content short . Unless it’s teaching slides that you will give to students after. But for conference talk slides, again, you don’t want people to read it .
So, put the main idea in the bullet in a few words, then develop it in your speech.
Tools like keynote let you play the bullets one by one . It’s a nice trick to help people focus on the current bullet.
Another trick is to gray out any bullets that are not the current topic

Structure your content with layout and composition

The human eye loves structures. And things that are aligned. Slides should also follow basic “aligning design elements” rules:

Use guides to make sure everything is aligned properly.
Sometimes the guides are hidden, you usually find those options under “view” of the main tools/
Also use the alignment tools in your presentation software to align content with each other. They usually “appear” when you select multiple elements. They are under things called “align” or “arrange” It’s amazing how just a few alignment can change some slides.
Same tips for distribution. Use the horizontal / vertical distribution options when you have multiple elements and want them to be equally spaces.
Don’t put important information in the edges in case it might get cropped. Or you might have your webcam on top of it with certain tools (Skype I hate you).

You should also follow some rules of composition to make your slides more balanced when you have multiple elements (like text + image)

Vertical splits work well : content left + image right or the other way around.
You could also use math ratio: 1/3 – 2/3 . Explore different options depending on your content density and image sizes.
Top / bottom composition might work in some cases. But it depends on the image.

Here are some visual examples of different compositions using the same image and text. It depends what you want to put more emphasis on. Note the blue and red lines: those are my guides/rules.

Using images in slides

How to chose the right images for your slides is out of the scope of this article. But most tips I give in “ How to make your blog images stand out & reflect your identity ” also apply to slides. So be sure to check it out.

Now, let’s talk about how to use those images and what you need to be careful about:

Keep the ratio of images when scaling . ALWAYS. This is the number one deadly sin of images in slides. Horrible stretched images make me want to cry. And make YOU look unprofessional and amateurish.
If you have a portrait image, it is easier to use a left / right composition (see tips above). You don’t think you need to center everything 🙂
Be careful about how the image is cropped , what the focus of the image is. For example: avoid chopping someone’s head of with your image cropping
If you scale up images, make sure they are not pixelated (especially for high def projectors).
On that note SVGs are awesome for images that scale without pixelation (but Keynote doesn’t like them).
Accessibility : if you have images that bring information like graphs, tell the audience what’s on the image . Some people might be blind, some people might listen to your talk in audio only. You could put the description in the notes to help you remember to describe it (this doesn’t apply if you have decorative images that are here to fill the space and make the slides look nice).
Looping gifs might look fun, but they are quite annoying if they stay on screen for a long time.
Also, anything moving is distracting to our reptilian brain and draws attention. So, be careful with looping videos, gif or animations (more on that in the video section).
Diversity is important . Try to avoid having only images of white men in your presentations. Especially for a quite diverse audience. Same for different body types, different disabilities, etc. The best talks have inclusive images.
Also, if you quote people, it would be nice to not only quote the same white men everyone is quoting #stevejobs
Drawing illustrations for your slides is an awesome idea if you draw, but, this takes a LOT of time. You are warned. (still I love the illustration slides style).

Example of different layouts with colors

You can also have fun with full screen images. But then how do you deal with the text? Here’s a few ideas:

If you use background images and text on top of those, again, be careful with contrast and accessibility. You can have a dark (or dark colored) overlay on top of them to enhance contrast
Instead of having a whole overlay, you can have a background only on your text (like put the text in a box).
That background can be a rectangle like the example below. But you could have fun with shapes . I use a lot of text on full yellow circules in my talks . Just be careful because text might be more complex to read if it follows a complex shape

Graphs and chart

I’m not a big fan of graphs and charts because they bring a lot of cognitive load to the audience. And again, you want people to listen to you. Not to try to understand the graph on the slides. So, here are a few tips:

It’s hard to keep the audience engaged with complex graphs. Extract the main idea , one number and don’t show graphs at all.
If you really need a graph, try to make it simple. Avoid gradients and visual noise. Remove unnecessary information. Keep in mind that it’s supposed to be a visual help for your talk , not the other way around.
Also if you use graph, be careful about accessibility : don’t use color as the way to convey information.

Last but not least, it’s not always easy to find the “right” visual representation for the data. Should you go with a pie chart? An histogram? Here are a few resources to help:

From Data to Viz
Data Visualization – How to Pick the Right Chart Type?
An intro to designing accessible data visualizations
How to pick more beautiful colors for your data visualizations

Multimedia content (videos, audio, animations)

This is a personal preference, but I am not a big fan of animations and things moving around. Prezi’s zoom in/out makes me nauseous, literally. They are distracting at best. So, I tend to avoid eye candy animations between slides . Or to stick to smooth fadein/out.

It’s even worse if you present remotely. There’s a chance that people will not even see your animation anyway if there’s a latency with your bandwidth. Or frame drops.

As I explain in my talk “ Enhancing User Experience with CSS Animations “, animations are a good candidate for storytelling. They can help explain complex concepts, like graphs or flows. So, I would use animations in those cases: when moving things around on the screen helps people understand the concept.

When it comes to audio and videos with sound, here are a few tips:

If you have sound, test audio before the talk . Make sure it’s not too loud for the audience.
If you are presenting remotely, it’s a whole other mess. By default, most video conference tools only route the audio of your microphone . Some tools like zoom have a checkbox that lets you also share the audio of your computer. But most tools don’t. If you have audio in your slides and want to play it remotely, depending on the tool, you need to reroute the audio of your computer to the microphone. You need some virtual cable software to do so. I use loopback for that on mac.
Based on your bandwidth, your videos might be super poor quality, or have some frames that drop . Be prepared to describe what’s happening on the video if you are speaking remotely.
Usually webcams use a lot of bandwidth. If you want to keep the quality of the audio and your screen sharing, it’s sad, but sometimes it’s better to turn off your webcam .

Most presentation tools now also let you embed videos. A short video can be a nice way to help get your message accross to your audience. It’s also a life saver for demos. I’ve seen so many demos backfire, that now, I don’t do them live anymore, I pre-record them instead and play the video during the talk. It takes a little bit of time to record, prepare and cut, but there’s plenty of tools online, like FlexClip , that can help you with that. Also, if you have some sound in your video, don’t forget to have some caption so that the audience can follow. It will also save you in case the sound doesn’t work.

Announce triggering content

Some multimedia content might be triggered for different reasons. I usually try to announce when some content might be triggering at the beginning of the talk, and then, just before the triggering slide comes. For example: I have a talk on UX design where I use a campaign for safety vests where the person is drowning. This is a horrible (yet effective) image, and drowning might trigger some people. So I announce this at the beginning of the talk, and just before I play that video.

This is also true for animations . I have a whole talk on CSS animations and I know some of those might trigger motion sickness so I announce them before playing them, and only play them once.

It’s also true for sound. I once almost left a conference room because the speaker was playing samples of ASMR and the audio was so loud and it created some cognitive overload for me. I covered my ears, the friend next to me left. Announce that kind of audio content before.

Giving the Talk: rhythm, speaker notes, pausing, breathing and drinking water

My notes on the right with the “breath” written (in French) and Marie’s “don’t forget to drink” slide

Okay, we tackled the part of the slides people can see. I got a few more tips for the part people don’t see.

I put a lot of notes in the slides, even full sentences. This helps me because English is not my native language.
Stress can make you forget what you wanted to say. I don’t want to read those notes (but you can totally read them if this is your style), but I want to have them around if I am lost . It’s one of those “I am prepared I won’t panic” things.
Those notes have words in bold. This way, even if I do not read them, my eye still has words to focus on if I need them.
Notes also help me with timing . I found out that if I don’t have notes or script, I tend to talk way much more on specific slides. It’s usually okay in a meetup when you are the only speaker. But, if you are talking at a conference and you have a specific amount of time, going off topic means you have to go quicker through some other slides later.
I write “BREATH” or “RESPIRE” in purple on my notes . It’s strange, but it helps. I know speakers who have a “breath post it” on the screen. It’s just one of those reminders.
Talking will dry your mouth and it’s actually a big brain activity, your brain needs water. Have a few slides where you know you can drink some water . It can be a title slide. Or you could have a cute slide with your pet on it, that works too. My friend Marie Guillaumet does that and the audience loves it. Here’s her cute cat.

Technical check and room setting

You have nice slides, you are prepared. You rehearsed. Everything is fine. There’s still a few extra things you can check and do to make sure everything runs smoothly for your talk.

If you can visit and take a look at the room you will be presenting into (or ask pictures) to adapt , it’s nice. It also helps me be less nervous.
Be careful about stage and room layout . I presented in a flat room where all the participants were on the same level, super low screen. It meant that any text at the bottom of the slides would not be seen by some people. It’s okay if I read that text, but still it might be frustrating for the audience.
Check the air , is it cold on stage? Warn ? This way you can dress to be at ease.
Try to know where the notes will be displayed . Do you need to be close to your computer? Are there some small screens at the bottom of the stage? Are your notes big enough?
If you speak remotely: ask to see the template. I have seen conferences that cover part of the left of the slides with a speaker webcam. They should not, but you never know. Try to see the remote setting and plan accordingly.
Some conferences have live captions (online and in person). Those captions take space on the screen. So maybe your slides will be smaller than expected because of the caption. Again, ask.
Ask for a technical check before. Check audio , check the wifi if you need it, check the slides format. If you have videos, check if they are smooth (especially if it’s a remote online conference).
If it’s a remote conference, ask to use the tool before to test how it works. Try to know how it will work. Do you have to share your screen and unmute yourself at a specific time or does a technical person do it for you? I once spoke at a conference in Russia and the tool was in Russian. I was glad that we did some technical checks so that I knew where to press to share my screen and webcam.

Most conferences are used to all of that. So they will usually come to you for technical checks and all. But, you can never be too prepared.

A few other final tips

This was a looong list of tips. So, just a few last things before you go

Enjoy yourself . The audience is rooting FOR you. They are usually just a bunch of nice people eager to learn and listen to you.
The audience doesn’t see your notes, your plan. If you miss something, they might not even notice 😉
If it’s possible (and it doesn’t pose any issues with NDAs and such), giving access to the slides to the audience before or during the talk can be useful.
If there’s someone who will introduce you, you could drop the “me presenting myself” slide. This is good advice if you are on a tight schedule and need to remove slides haha, like me.

And if you present online and remotely:

Check with the organizers if you will take the questions during the talk or after . Some speakers are comfortable chatting with the chat audience while going through the slides. While some other speakers don’t like their flow to be broken and prefer the questions at the end. Both are okay, know what makes YOU comfortable and communicate with the organizers.
For remote conferences, what’s important is your voice and slides. I think it’s okay to switch off the camera if this causes bandwidth issues . You want to keep the audio and screen sharing quality as high as possible.
Live caption: Powerpoint has some built in live captioning tools. It’s not perfect but it’s a start to try to make your content more accessible if the conference doesn’t provide any (I wish Keynote had that). For me it’s okay in English. French is a mess though.

We all love a good checklist. Well, at least I do. So, to help you not forget any of those tips, I prepared a small checklist in PDF that you can download a go trough when you’ll design your first slides.

Download the Slides Checklist in .PDF

Resources and more tips from other people

And here comes the usual list of other tips you could check on that topic:

My friend Morgane Peng wrote a nice article to help you start with public speaking . Also thank you Morgane for the proof reading of this article ^^
Again, check Lara Hogan’s book
Accessible Speaking Best Practices

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Academic presentations: Conferences

Presentation Design
Slide design
Conferences
Group presentations

Jump to content on this page:

“... if you cannot stand up and present your findings, in one form or another, you will struggle to achieve the intellectual and professional success which will allow you to move on to even more interesting projects.” Lucinda Becker, Presenting Your Research: Conferences, Symposiums, Poster Presentations and Beyond

Research students are often asked to give presentations at academic conferences. This can be both terrifying and exciting in equal measures. This page gives some top tips on how to make sure your presentation stands out from the crowd and that you get the most from the experience.

Why give a conference presentation?

There are many, here are just a few:

To get feedback on your research that you can act upon to improve your final thesis or a future published paper. This can be absolutely invaluable in stopping you going off-track or forgetting to include important material.

To make other academics want to read your finished thesis or a future published paper. Think of it as the trailer to the upcoming movie – it needs to be full of your most interesting material but leave them wanting to know more.

To make contacts that are relevant to your research area . Never underestimate the importance of networking at any academic conference. You can even ask people working in related research to find you after your presentation.

To get your name known in relevant academic circles . This is a real chance to showcase your work and gain a reputation within your field. With a good presentation you could get a reputation as a real expert in your field.

Basic structure of a conference presentation

In a conference presentation you need to choose an aspect of your research that can comfortably be conveyed to an audience in an interesting way within the timescale you are given. This is usually only about 20 minutes (with 10 minutes for questions) so resist the temptation to cover your entire PhD thesis. A useful simple structure is shown here.

As you can see, this still follows a simple story structure, with a beginning , a middle and an end as covered on our Structuring Presentations page ; it is, however, a little more research focused. Depending on the conference type, you may choose to use one of the structures on the other page. What is most important is that the structure of your presentation is clear to the audience . You will only be one of many presentations and they can all start to blur in the audience's mind if you are not careful and clear.

1 Issue; 2 Approach; 3 Findings 4 Conclusions

Make your presentations visual

It is a temptation in a conference presentation, where you have a lot of information you want to get across, to fill the slides with text. Again, remember your presentation needs to stand out to be remembered so resist this temptation and make sure you use good visual slide design as covered on our Slide Design page . Using full sentences for your titles and visual content is vital for the quick levels of understanding that a conference environment requires.

Image with bullets points giving statistics of endangered mammals alongside image of the same figures shown as a pie chart with an iberian lynx sitting next to it

Finish with a flourish

Presenter with their most important point on the screen behind them, asking "Are there any questions or feedback".

The questions and feedback that you get at the end of a conference presentation is one of the most important reasons for attending. Make the most of this time. End with a slide that contains the most important point that you want the audience to take away and then specifically say "Thank you for your time, are there any questions or feedback?". Do not put another slide up at this point. That way your most important point stays on screen for longer than any other slide. By including a call for feedback at the end, rather than just asking for questions, you are more likely to get useful responses that can move you forward in your work.

Never EVER go over time

This is the cardinal sin of conferences. Some conferences will not let you go over time, and will cut you short (after a few warnings). This is also a problem as you lose your time for questions and feedback which is one of the main reasons for doing the presentation in the first place! Avoid going over time by making sure you practice it often and trim the slides if necessary. If you are using PowerPoint there is a tool called Rehearse Timings in the Slide Show menu which times you as you move through the presentation and tells you your overall duration. Just remember NOT to save the timings within the presentation or it will start automatically advancing your slides as you give the presentation which can have disastrous results.

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Conference Presentation Template

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Conference Paper Format and Style Guidelines

Published on 23 Jun 2022

There are many different ways to write a conference paper. Most journals have their own requirements around specific length, document type, and the font details of pieces being submitted for publishing.

However, there are certain details that are commonly found in conference papers. Most are brief in length, attempting to explain complex concepts using simple, concise language. They typically include the article’s purpose and objectives, research methods, findings/results, conclusions, and references.

The information covered in a conference paper is closely-related to the oral presentation that the author is hoping to make at an academic conference. These papers are often written in a format that will “match” the oral presentation with a goal to communicate a research project and its main findings, and to solicit feedback and generate interest in the work being done.

This article will define a conference research paper and describe its purpose, formats, structure and provide tips on how to write the best conference research paper possible.

What is a conference research paper?

A conference research paper is a piece of writing that an author submits to conference organizers. The papers offer a preview of the work the researcher wants to present to let others in their field know about it and solicit feedback that could generate ideas for improvement.

These papers are submitted for review in advance of the conference. This process begins with a call-for-papers, when a conference organizing committee sends out an invitation to academics in hopes of generating multiple submissions of content to be presented at their event. These invitations can be sent via email or posted to a conference announcement website. Then, the organizing committee conducts a thorough review process to confirm the legitimacy of the work being submitted. Then, the work is either approved or rejected, and those accepted become part of the conference programme and the authors are scheduled to present at the conference .

When the event concludes, these conference papers are combined into a conference proceedings document that is often published and kept as a written record of the event.

What is the best conference paper format?

The most commonly used conference paper formats start with a title page and abstract and go on to describe the research being conducted and the methodology being used. Conference papers should be well-structured and concise, free of grammatical errors with references formatted based on requirements set out in the call-for-papers.

How to structure a conference paper

Conference papers should be structured around the prime objectives of the research being conducted and the summary of its findings. Most conference papers start by introducing the purpose of the research, the methodology, the results of the study, and references of the sources used.

Here are the elements that are typically included in a conference paper:

The title page

The title page is used to identify the main pieces of information needed in order to identify and evaluate a conference paper. It includes the title of the paper, which should clearly identify the focus of the research being presented. The title page should also include the author’s name, credentials, the research institution they’re affiliated with, the submission date, and the name of the conference for which the paper is being submitted.

While the exact format that the conference is looking for should be described in the call-for-papers sent out by event organizers, you can find templates for conference paper title pages online. Here is one example of an APA style title page you can reference.

The abstract

Conference papers begin with an abstract. An abstract is a short summary of the prime objective of your research, your hypothesis, the way you plan to conduct the study, the results, and the conclusions. Most abstracts are one or two paragraphs and kept under 250 words, but it’s not always the case so it’s best to check the guidelines provided by the conference organizers.

The research methodology

In order for conference organizers to review and evaluate a conference paper, they must understand the methods used by the researcher to conduct the study being presented. Include a section in your paper that clearly (but briefly) describes your methodology, including any dominant theories that the methods are based on.

The results

Clearly outline the results of the study, drawing data-driven conclusions. Present the insights uncovered by the research and how they can be used to advance your field of study. This will generate interest from other researchers in your field, potentially leading to partnerships or funding opportunities down the road.

Your research results should take up about one-third of your conference paper, so for a 10-page paper, this section should be no longer than 3.5 pages. Whenever possible, display quantitative results in table format to make it easy for readers to understand.

The references

Most conferences will clearly outline the type of references they expect in their call-for-papers or advertisement soliciting research submissions. Follow these guidelines to reference the work used to inform your research.

Most events will request APA, MLA or Chicago-style formatting, but be prepared to reference any of the common formats. As a general rule, APA is most often used in education, psychology and sciences, MLA is used in the humanities, and Chicago style is used in business, history and fine arts.

Tips to write a conference paper

1. focus on the abstract.

The abstract is the first thing academics look at when evaluating a piece of research. If your paper is accepted, you will be presenting your work to a group of your peers, and this abstract is their preview to the information that will be discussed. You’ll want to make it clear, concise, and interesting to read.

This is also what conference organizers use to categorize different streams of work within the conference, so it’s important that your focus and subject matter is clearly defined and easy to determine. This will ensure you’re placed alongside researchers with a related field of study.

Begin your abstract by defining the problem you hoped to solve when you began your research. Then, describe how you went about studying that problem before presenting your research findings and how they help solve the problem.

2. Create a logical flow

Before you start writing, take some time to create an outline that follows a logical, cohesive flow of information. Review your research and determine the most important things you want to share in your presentation, and create your outline based on this list. An outline will help you stay focused and organized, and will make creating the abstract a breeze.

In your outline, you should also plan to include data points that back up your conclusions to make your paper strong and convincing.

3. Be careful of length

Look into the structure of the conference and find out the length of the presentations. This is usually stated in the conference posting, but if not, you can use the following guidelines. Most conferences allot 10-20 minutes for each oral presentation, and each page of writing takes about 2 minutes to read. Based on these numbers, a conference paper should not exceed 10 pages.

4. Follow the format guidelines

Conference organizing committees will most of the time set specific guidelines for researchers to follow in their submissions. These guidelines will include the preferred file type (.doc, .rtf. .pdf etc), the font type and size, the spacing, where they want the page numbers, the length of the abstract, reference format, and more.

This simplifies the review process by allowing the reviewers to focus solely on the paper content, rather than having to decipher references or look for specific pieces of information.

5. Read it out loud

To keep your conference paper short, it’s important that every word counts. To keep your paper free of fluff and unnecessary words, read it out loud to yourself and remove or revise anything that isn’t optimal.

Reading out loud will also help you confirm that the information you’re presenting is organized into a logical flow that builds up support for your overall argument. Sometimes words look good typed out on a screen, but they don’t sound convincing or appropriate when spoken out loud. Since this paper is an overview of the research you hope to present in an oral presentation at a conference, it should sound convincing when you read it aloud.

6. Write for your audience

Remember that you are writing for academic researchers who are knowledgeable in your field.

Academic writing uses a more formal tone than a blog or news article. It is free of personal opinions or anecdotes, and does not include any jargon, cliches, or slang. Academic writing maintains a clear focus on the main area of research, and every sentence should resonate with your audience of researchers.

Every piece of data used in a piece of academic writing should be backed-up with data. Researchers reviewing your work expect to be presented with data-driven insights that can be quantifiably verified.

Reference everything. Not only does this add weight and legitimacy to your work, but it also shows respect for the researchers who came before you.

Useful resources for conference papers

There are many resources available to help you write and format your conference papers. These are often free, and easily-accessible online. Here are a few to check out:

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that provides known journals and conference paper formats. It is a helpful resource but can be difficult for those that are not very technical.

A friend to all writers, Grammarly provides free editing and grammar checks through a simple AI-powered platform available through the web or on your mobile device. There are free or paid versions available, depending on the level of functionality you’re looking for.

Evernote can simplify and organize your research by making it easy to collect and share notes, and keep them with you wherever you go.

Citationsy is a relatively new application that automates the process of creating and formatting references. This can be a significant time saver and remove one of the less exciting elements of academic writing.

If you’re at the stage in your research where you’re ready to write a conference paper and apply to present at an academic conference, congratulations! This means you have conducted a significant amount of research and are ready to share it with your peers.

We hope you’ve found this article a good resource to help you write this paper. If there are any tips or pieces of information that we’ve missed, please let us know .

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Conference Presentations

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

This resource provides a detailed overview of the common types of conference papers and sessions graduate students can expect, followed by pointers on presenting conference papers for an audience.

Types of conference papers and sessions

Panel presentations are the most common form of presentation you will encounter in your graduate career. You will be one of three to four participants in a panel or session (the terminology varies depending on the organizers) and be given fifteen to twenty minutes to present your paper. This is often followed by a ten-minute question-and-answer session either immediately after your presentation or after all of the speakers are finished. It is up to the panel organizer to decide upon this framework. In the course of the question-and-answer session, you may also address and query the other panelists if you have questions yourself. Note that you can often propose a conference presentation by yourself and be sorted onto a panel by conference organizers, or you can propose a panel with a group of colleagues. Self-proposed panels typically have more closely related topics than conference-organized panels.

Roundtables feature an average of five to six speakers, each of whom gets the floor for approximately five to ten minutes to speak on their respective topics and/or subtopics. At times, papers from the speakers might be circulated in advance among the roundtable members or even prospective attendees.

Workshops feature one or a few organizers, who usually give a brief presentation but spend the majority of the time for the session facilitating an activity that attendees will do. Some common topics for these sessions typically include learning a technology or generating some content, such as teaching materials.

Lightning talks (or Ignite talks, or Pecha Kucha talks) are very short presentations where presenters' slide decks automatically advance after a few seconds; most individual talks are no longer than 5 minutes, and a lightning talk session typically invites 10 or more presenters to participate over the course of an hour or two rather than limiting the presenters like a panel presentation. A lightning talk session will sometimes be held as a sort of competition where attendees can vote for the best talk.

SIGs (Special Interest Groups) are groups of scholars focused on a particular smaller topic within the purview of the larger conference. The structure of these sessions varies by conference and even by group, but in general they tend to be structured either more like a panel presentation, with presenters and leaders, or more like a roundtable, with several speakers and a particular meeting agenda. These styles resemble, respectively, a miniconference focusing on a particular topic and a committee meeting.

Papers with respondents are structured around a speaker who gives an approximately thirty-minute paper and a respondent who contributes their own thoughts, objections, and further questions in the following fifteen minutes. Finally, the speaker gets that same amount of time to formulate their reply to the respondent.

Poster presentations ask participants to visually display their ideas on a research poster, which is typically displayed with other research posters in a specific area at a conference. The poster needs to be understandable on its own (without the author) as viewers sometimes look through the posters outside the bounds of the poster session, which is a scheduled period of time where poster authors stand with their posters and engage viewers in conversation about the work. Research posters have long tended to follow common templates for design, but in recent years some scholars have begun challenging these templates for improved usability (for example, the Better Poster campaign as described here or the APA template based on the original, here.

You can read more about research posters on our resource here .

Presenting the conference paper

Aim to take less time than you are given! If your presentation slot is 15 minutes, aim for 13 or 14 when you practice. A little leeway and a slightly shorter presentation is a courtesy to your audience and to your fellow presenters, and will not at all imply that you are unprepared or unprofessional — in fact, being able to keep well within your allotted time is the mark of a good presenter.

Make sure you speak slowly and clearly, using accessibility aids if available such as a microphone or closed captioning on a slide deck. Many presenters have begun bringing accessibility copies of their talks, which are printed transcripts of the talk using a larger font for audience members who need them. It is also becoming increasingly common for presenters at conferences to share their slides and copies of their talk via a shortened link or QR code found on the bottom of the slides so that audiences may access them later or even while they are in your session.

The conventions for presentation differ based on field. Some fields tend toward reading papers aloud with very little audiovisual accompaniment; others use slide decks; others speak extemporaneously. You can find out more about typical practices in your field by attending conferences yourself and by asking mentors. Generally, you will be able to improve the accessibility of your presentation if you have a visual accompaniment and prepared remarks.

Even in fields where presenters tend to read papers verbatim, it is rarely a good idea to bring a paper from a class or another research paper you have written without editing it for an oral presentation. Seminar papers tend to be too long to read in 15 minutes, and often lead to graduate students surpassing their time limits. Moreover, research papers are meant to be read — they lack the kinds of repetition and simple sentence structure that are more beneficial to listeners. Finally, conference presentations do not serve the same purposes as most class papers — typically in a class, you're expected to show that you have understood the material, but at a conference, listeners are more interested in hearing what contributions you have that might help them in their own research. It's typical to move the bulk of your literature review to an appendix or another document so that you can discuss other scholarship in the area if it comes up in the Q&A, but during your presentation you're left free to focus on your own methods and findings. (Many presenters will even say: "I'm skipping a lot of [X material] for the sake of time, but I'm happy to discuss it later with anyone who's interested.")

Since you will present your paper orally, you may repeat important points and say more about the structure of the essay than a written submission to a journal (or a paper for your undergraduate or graduate courses) would require. This often means signposting orally when you are moving to a new section of the paper or when you are shifting to a new idea. The thesis of your paper should come early in your presentation to give listeners a clear understanding of what is to follow. At this point, you may also overview or forecast your paper and tell listeners how you will move from one argument to the next. It is generally advised to quickly summarize your important points in a bulleted list at the end of your presentation to remind everyone of the two or three most essential arguments or findings.

If you use a slide presentation, you may want to follow the guidelines presented in the OWL resource, Designing an Effective PowerPoint Presentation .

Conference Presentation References

This page contains reference examples for works presented at conferences and meetings, including the following:

Conference presentation
Abstract of a conference presentation

1. Conference presentation

Evans, A. C., Jr., Garbarino, J., Bocanegra, E., Kinscherff, R. T., & Márquez-Greene, N. (2019, August 8–11). Gun violence: An event on the power of community [Conference presentation]. APA 2019 Convention, Chicago, IL, United States. https://convention.apa.org/2019-video

Parenthetical citation : (Evans et al., 2019)
Narrative citation : Evans et al. (2019)
Provide the names of the presenters in the author element of the reference.
Provide the full dates of the conference in the date element of the reference.
Describe the presentation in square brackets after the title. The description is flexible (e.g., “[Conference session],” “[Paper presentation],” “[Poster session],” “[Keynote address]”).
Provide the name of the conference or meeting and its location in the source element of the reference.
If video of the conference presentation is available, include a link at the end of the reference.

2. Abstract of a conference presentation

Cacioppo, S. (2019, April 25–28). Evolutionary theory of social connections: Past, present, and future [Conference presentation abstract]. Ninety-ninth annual convention of the Western Psychological Association, Pasadena, CA, United States. https://westernpsych.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WPA-Program-2019-Final-2.pdf

Parenthetical citation : (Cacioppo, 2019)
Narrative citation : Cacioppo (2019)
To cite only the abstract of a conference presentation, include the word “abstract” as part of the bracketed description (e.g., “[Conference presentation abstract]”).

Conference presentation references are covered in the seventh edition Publication Manual Section 10.5

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Table of Contents

6 Tips to Create a Winning Presentation Cover Page

What Is a Presentation Cover Page?

1. Come up with a catchy title

2. Check the overall tone

3. Humanize your cover page

4. Shed some light on your brand

5. Keep it simple

6. Use bold fonts

Key Takeaways

Latest Blogs

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How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page That Captivates Your Audience

The Anatomy of an Attention-Grabbing Cover Page

Write a Clear, Compelling Title

Highlight Speaker Credentials

Include Key Logistical Details

Choose Relevant, High-Quality Visuals

Design Best Practices for a Polished, Professional Look

Color Scheme

Tailor Your Cover Page to Different Presentation Types

Tools and Templates for Easy Cover Page Creation

Putting It All Together: Crafting Your Ideal Cover Page

How to Design a Great Presentation Cover Page

What to include

Know your Audience

Know your brand

Cover Image Techniques

Stock Photography

Typographic

Free PowerPoint Cover Page Templates

Coffee Cup PowerPoint Cover

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How to Make a Great PowerPoint Title Cover Slide Quickly (+ Video)

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How to Quickly Make Great PowerPoint Presentation Title Cover Slides (Video)

The Seven PowerPoint Cover Slides to Build

How to Make PowerPoint Title Slides

1. The Logo Slide

2. The Big Question Slide

3. The Introductory Slide

4. The Roadmap Slide

5. The Team Slide

6. The Quote Slide

7. The Challenge Slide

5 Quick PowerPoint Title Cover Slide Design Tips for 2024

2. Create Your Own Layouts