Did you know that an average person can identify a million different colors?
Choosing one or two colors for a scientific presentation from the 1 million colors accessible is always going to be a difficult task.
The color scheme you choose in your presentations is almost as significant as the information you present. Colors have an unconscious effect on us. To be an effective presenter and visual communicator, you need to understand the fundamentals of color theory and its effects.
Presentations with poor color choices result in unappealing visuals, unfavorable comments, and negative feedbacks from your audience.
A decent color palette can transform a good presentation into a perfect presentation, stimulates positive comments, and boosts audience acceptance of your content.
A scientific presentation is a formal approach to presenting your research outcomes, offering a hypothesis, exhibiting and interpreting the findings of a study, or summarizing what has been learnt or studied about a specific subject.
The colors you choose for your scientific presentation are therefore genuinely important in terms of professionalism.
This article will assist you in selecting the best colors for a scientific presentation.
The three-step process to choose the right colors for a scientific presentation.
Step 1: Determine your goal.
First and foremost, you need to define a goal for presenting your work.
When it comes to giving a scientific presentation, the theme you choose should be professional and elegant.
If you choose too many colors, you may have to be careful not to overwhelm the audience.
Using only two or three colors can be a wise decision. Using more than three colors may cause your audience to become confused.
Make a decision about the type of presentation you wish to give. Are you attempting to:
To inform?
To educate?
To persuade or convince?
To activate?
To inspire or motivate?
To entertain?
In conclusion :
- First, you need to understand your audience better. Find out what their wants and needs are.
- Second, write down your own goals. What do you want to accomplish?
- Third, find the overlap between you and your audience. And focus your presentation on that.
Then, you will have a much more clear idea about choosing the right colors for a scientific presentation.
Step 2: Learn the basics of color theory.
You must be careful not to use the wrong color blend if you use more than two colors in your scientific presentation.
This is why using the default themes that come with the software you’re using may not be the greatest idea.
What is the color theory?
Color theory is a scientific way of determining which colors go well together.
The color wheel is a visual representation of the relationship between various colors; it is the foundation of the color theory.
Having a basic idea about at least complementary colors is vital to making a visually appealing scientific presentation.
Different colors have different impressions.
Colors speak volumes all on their own. Color has the ability to promote learning by up to 75% and comprehension by up to 73 percent.
Warm colors convey energy, optimism, and enthusiasm, whereas cold colors convey dependability, professionalism, and peace.
Within these categories, each color is associated with an emotion or concept:
- Red: passion, romance, anger
- Orange: optimism, happiness, energy
- Yellow: happiness, hope
- Green: fertility, nature, abundance
- Blue: professionalism, calm, transparency
- Purple: luxury, royalty, creativity
- Black: elegance, mystery, darkness
- White: purity, cleanliness
- Brown: enduring, dependability, nature
- Beige: conservatism, piety, dullness
How to Choose the Ideal Color Scheme?
Aside from using the color wheel to choose your color schemes, as mentioned above, there are a few more helpful facts to note.
High Contrast
As an example, high contrast slides are essential for achieving maximum impact. For example, if you have a dark background, it’s a no-brainer to select a lighter font.
Alternatively, if you’ve chosen a monochromatic color scheme, you can use one complementary color to highlight important details on the opposite side of the color wheel.
It’s necessary to keep in mind that contrast isn’t just about selecting distinct colors; it’s about choosing the ones that will provide the most visual intrigue when paired together.
Because pure colors all have the exact amounts of saturation (color intensity) and value (how light or dark a color is), using only pure colors to create a scheme will be unattractive. A successful presentation requires a variety of tones, shades, and tints.
Keep It Simple
You’ve probably heard this before, but less is usually more when it comes to designing. Try to keep it simple and don’t use too many colors. In general, three to four colors are sufficient for a presentation.
The 60-30-10 Rule
According to the award-winning presentation company Ethos3, an easy way to create a balanced presentation is to stick by the 60-30-10 Rule.
If you’ve chosen three colors, you should use 60% of the space on your slides for the primary color, 30% for the secondary color, and 10% for the accent color.
Spread Content Out
Another basic idea is to break up your content into bite-sized chunks throughout your presentation to make it easier to grasp.
In today’s world, engaging presentations with less than 3 minutes of viewing time have 50 to 60 slides.
Why?
Because you’ve probably added more information to each slide as the number of slides decreases. Having fully packed slides is not a good idea for accessibility. Instead, you might want to minimize the content for a single slide.
The more slides you have, the more pictures you’ve presumably used to describe each topic, and the fewer words you’ll use to explain each concept.
Step 3: Be specific
Even if you got everything right when choosing the right colors for your next scientific presentation, you might need to consider the audience in general and even the audience you’ll be presenting to.
Some people, for example, are colorblind. It doesn’t matter if you create the perfect scientific presentation with all of the correct colors if some of your audience members can’t see them.
Furthermore, failing to understand how to adapt your presentations for color blind people could lose up to 10% of your audience before you even start.
To help you make your design more inclusive, you can increase the contrast between colors to help make things stand out.
Increase the contrast between colors to help make things stand out and make your design more inclusive.
Furthermore, printers, monitors, projectors, and various paper formats rarely display a single color consistently. Because your viewers will not be able to make a comparison, the color will appear accurate to them.
But you might have to be careful if you are planning on using a combination of presenting methods simultaneously.
Your audience will be more attentive to your presentation if your slides are well-organized, appealing, and consistent.
Images courtesy: Entrepreneur vector created by jcomp – www.freepik.com , Photo by Alexandre Pellaes on Unsplash
