Top 13 ideas for creative projects at school

Have you ever seen awful PowerPoint presentations with colorful slides and gaudy pictures? If you work through creative projects using those tools, they are unlikely to bring you applause or the highest grades. There are more effective ways to introduce your project and demonstrate its importance or relevance to the audience. In this post, we will share the most effective presentation techniques that will make your project rock.

Deliver the best content

A recipe for quality content – whether it’s a presentation or an e-learning course – is a nice design and a confident storyteller with an interesting story. And if you add a little creativity to this mix, your project will “shoot” even better. To help you rock your audience – offline or online – we’ve compiled a list of creative ideas for presentations and eLearning courses.

1. Structure the data

We are living in amazing times. The world is changing rapidly, and by 2025, the digital universe will grow exponentially. There will be even more diverse content; it will be more and more difficult for our overloaded brain to perceive it. To deal with such an influx of data, you need to learn how to properly structure and present the data.

2. Use minimalism in design

A minimalistic composition is a great way to stand out from other presentations. The trick is to leave only the most important thoughts and visual details on the slides. The minimalist design creates a sense of calm and confidence. The main thing is to be able to feel the line between minimalism and boring content. If you have no idea of what slide designs will work best for you, then you can find trendy and stylish solutions on Canva.

3. Create a video

A full-screen video is a powerful storytelling technique. It immerses the viewer headlong into the topic of the presentation. The key to success is finding the right video or creating a good one with the best free video editing software. In the context of the presentation, the video should either independently tell the story you need or harmoniously complement the content of the slide. If the video gets in the way of catching your message or throws it out of the story, it will be difficult for you to get the viewers’ attention back.

4. Tell a personal story with your creative projects

A great way to make your presentation special is by telling a life story. It can be a touching background, a funny story, or just a couple of facts that happened to you personally. A good example is Colin Stokes’ TED Talk on gender bias in cinema. Colin approaches the topic of his speech through personal experience. First, he tells what films his daughter and son watch and how movie characters affect children. Then, he smoothly moves on to the topic of the presentation itself. Think of a good life story and tell it honestly and openly to people. Viewers will feel your mood and be on your side.

5. Use bright, bold fonts

A large, wide font will draw the focus to the heading. If you want to boost the effect, you can position the labels vertically or push the title slightly off the edges of the slide. However, you should keep in mind that bold text itself is a strong accent, so don’t overload it with a bunch of embellishments and effects.

6. Add motion graphics

Animated objects will help illustrate and emphasize the main point on the slide. Motion graphics don’t have to tell a story; it rather adds movement to the presentation. For example, if you are talking about travel, you can add to presentation slides a flying airplane or suitcases running along a conveyor belt. No technical skills are required to create such effects with HitFilm multimedia software.

7. Insert quotes between slides

A quote can be a breath of fresh air between information-rich slides. You can insert a quote to logically separate presentation blocks from each other. It is important that the quote meets the subject of the presentation and does not confuse the audience.

8. Use bold statements

“People don’t care about your brand” – this is one of the most effective methods of attracting attention. First, you make a bold statement in your creative projects, then you explain your position, and you propose solutions afterward. Provocative and unexpected statements attract the audience.

9. Add audio accompaniment

Thanks to modern technology, you can add voice-overs to your course or presentation. This will help turn a set of slides into a fun adventure. You can customize the audio to sound automatically throughout your presentation or add triggers so that viewers can control the process themselves.

10. Add music

Even the most interesting presentation can get boring if you listen to it without interruption. Music will help to quickly shift the attention and mood of the audience. In his article for The Guardian, Dean Burnett explains why this happens. The fact is that music creates a subtle external noise and a pleasant feeling. It effectively neutralizes distractions that affect us on a subconscious level. Of course, music is entertainment, but when it sounds in the background, music helps us to concentrate on serious tasks.

11. Use metaphors

Visual metaphors help liven up a presentation, reinforce your point of view, and entertain viewers. Metaphor always carries some kind of image and context, so it’s a great way to add depth to your words.

12. Use data visualization

If you have too many numbers on a slide, you risk overwhelming the viewer and losing their attention. How not to scare the viewer with numbers? Turn them into simple and understandable schemes with Visme. Data presented in the form of easy-to-understand graphs allows people to digest it easily. So if you want to present the data in an even more interesting and visual way, you can draw an illustration or infographic.

13. Make the whole presentation on one slide in your creative projects

Another cool idea for presentation design is to fit all information “on one slide” and make a slideshow. How to do that? You just need to create the final slide and place all the information in the form of a puzzle. All that remains is to make sure that everything is in the correct order and to set up animations and transitions.

Final Say!

Of course, it is sometimes difficult to create a presentation that amazes your audience from the very first second. If you feel a lack of inspiration, you can always look for similar projects on TED Talks, take a speaking course on Udemy, Stepik, or Coursera. However, the easiest way for you would be just practicing. Follow the above recommendations, polish your speaking skills, and there will be no risk of failure for you.

We hope that you have found this a helpful set of tips for school / creative projects, if you are looking for other articles on art on KiddyCharts, do check these out:

Creative activities for kids

Here are some more ideas for kids form the site that include an element of creativity and art within them; from more colouring ideas to arts and crafts.