The 5 F’s of Presentation Design Functionality

1. The 5 F’s of Presentation Design Functionality
- Al-AminAnan
Great presentations demand functional design. Without it, your design exists without purpose
and without meaning. What exactly is functional design, though? It’s two-fold: It’s a
presentation design approach with a clear purpose to obtain a specific result.
In order to make sure that you are using functional design in your presentation, please refer to
what I like to call the 5 F’s of Design Functionality:

2. FOR – What is the presentation being used FOR?
Before you open up Adobe Creative Suite or take a stab at PowerPoint, you need to have
absolute clarity about the purpose of your presentation. So ask yourself:
1. What is the topic?
2. What are your main takeaways?
3. How do you want your message to be remembered?

3. FORMAT – Which FORMAT?
In our digital age, format is king. For instance, a presentation in Keynote doesn’t quite look the
same in PowerPoint. That deck you loved on your colleague’s iPad may not look the same on
SlideShare. Your boss’ presentation on the HDTV monitor won’t look quite the same on that
client’s projector. Format should never be decided at the last minute since format will dictate
your design.

4. FANS – Who are the FANS?
The big question here is: Who is your audience? Young or Old? Men or Women? Corporate or
Trendy? Your design needs to be dictated and guided by their needs and interests. If you know
your audience, you will know the right design approach.

5. FIT – Do all of the elements FIT?
We’ve spent quite some time on presentation design concepts like typography, white
space and photography. All of them have a distinct purpose and fit. Choose wisely and make sure
they have a function, too — i.e. they serve your message and/or means of conveying your
message.

6. FLUB – Will it FLUB?
All the time you invest building and designing a great presentation is worthless if you don’t take
the extra few minutes to ensure you have no technical errors. Have a back-up plan and be sure to
test everything more than once.
Remember, a great presentation requires functional design. Make sure you can answer all 5 of
these areas with confidence before you even think about opening up that design program.