FirstSpark is a nonprofit organization that supports early childhood development by providing training and resources to Greater Peninsula and Northern Neck Virginia’s educators and parents. The staff uses PowerPoint for many in-person and virtual presentations, and wanted to refresh and amend a tried-and-true, but overused, template. They also wanted to be able to easily include data visualizations in their presentations, so they needed new template slides to support this effort.
Expanding upon FirstSpark’s previous template, I incorporated their branding, iconography and photos into new designs that could be used alone or in harmonious combination with older slides. Drawing on UX research and presentation design best practices, I aimed to create slides that are not only engaging, but also accessible, with clean, logical layouts, legible text sizes and readable color contrast. I also had fun repurposing the spark from the FirstSpark logo into bullet points, decorative accents, and photo highlights.
My primary collaborator at FirstSpark was so organized and thoughtful that the project was not only fun and fulfilling, but also smooth and stressless. As a result, she reported that “after just a couple of weeks using [the template], we are already seeing greater audience interest and greater data impact. Our team has been invigorated with how her slides allow us to prevent past presentation problems and be much more creative and effective in our communications.”