PowerPoint Icons: Benefits, Resources, and Examples
Do you ever sit for a conference and get captivated by the simplicity of their presentations and the ease with which they communicate their ideas? Do you know what makes them stand apart? It is their wise use of icons that allows them to convey their messages to the audience in an effective and less time-consuming manner. If you haven’t heard of icons before, we have an entire guide for you right here that will help you learn how to use them strategically.
What are Presentation Icons?
Presentation icons are graphic symbols that illustrate a particular idea, notion, or message. They are simplified means of sending a message to your audience in a straightforward manner. They are one of the most amazing graphics that can create an impact and help you ace your presentation.
Pros of Using Icons
- Keeps Presentations Short
Icons are the best replacements for some words, phrases, and sentences. For instance, if you want your audience to share some content, you can simply include the icon of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram instead of typing two sentences for the same. Similarly, if you want your audience to contact you, you can use the icons of a mobile, GPS, email, or message in place of mentioning the same via text.
2. Makes Your Slides Captivating
The best thing about icons is that they can be easily edited as per your presentation’s theme. You can change their color and size, thereby making your presentations look beyond attractive and creating an impactful first impression.
3. Leads to Effective Presentation
Human beings tend to fall for eye-catching logos, images, and visuals. When you incorporate icons into your slides, you make it automatically more memorable and noticeable than regular text that creates monotony. Icons make your presentations much more effective and help your content stay in their minds for a longer period of time.
Examples of Various Types of Icons
- Business Icons
Representing growth, sales, profit, and losses is an important task for every company. Such business reports can be made much more compelling and easier to understand by including icons that can be comprehended in a matter of seconds and can also hook your audience to the presentation.
- Decision Icons
These icons are the best pick to showcase information related to the decision-making process, key considerations before making a decision, various alternatives, dilemmas, how to find the right solution, etc.
- Onboarding Icons
These sets of icons are an asset for HR executives and managers as they can be used to demonstrate recruitment procedures, client and employee onboarding, etc. It makes the presentations much more appealing and breaks the chain of monotony.
- Vision Icons
The purpose of these icons is to represent a company’s vision, mission, brand value, target, goals, etc. These can be extremely helpful for entrepreneurs, company owners, and business heads to present their missions and objectives in a captivating manner.
- Commitment Icons
If you are a CEO, COO, or a CFO, you can make the most out of these icons as they portray team spirit, alignment, partnerships, agreements, terms and conditions of business deals, etc. They can notch up your presentations and help you stand apart from the crowd.
2. Health Icons
Medical services such as first aid, emergencies, intensive and critical care units, test laboratories, and doctor’s clinics are best represented by icons instead of writing the same in different languages. This saves up space and makes communication much easier.
- Telehealth Icons
These are icons that can be best used by medical professionals and healthcare staff to educate their workforce and the patients about available services, remote monitoring, appointment bookings, etc.
3. Technology Icons
Technology icons make communication a hundred times faster and simpler. These can vary from simple signs representing the Wi-Fi to complex ones explaining cloud computing. These can be highly beneficial to the IT sector for the explanation and representation of important concepts.
- Internet of Things (IoT) Icons
The best way for software developers to educate the masses on crucial topics like program applications of IoT is through icons. Using these visual aids, they can shed light on the importance of IoT, its applications, components, etc.
- Cloud Computing Icons
Embed these icons in your presentation and showcase your knowledge of cloud computing models, setups, methods of management, its pros and cons, and much more with minimal text. Make your presentations lively with these icons.
View Cloud Computing Icons PPT
4. Education Icons
The most uncomplicated way of exhibiting concepts related to e-learning, online education, digital transformation in the education industry, etc., is through education icons. These can be used in their presentations to convey messages with utmost ease.
- Academic Icons
These icons help you depict subjects of paramount importance in an attractive manner. You can use them to exhibit important colleges, best degrees, scope in various fields of education, etc.
- E-Learning Icons
With the entire education system running on the internet, these icons are a blessing in disguise. They assist in passing on the knowledge about online courses, students’ benefits, course durations, and also help in representing the difference between traditional and modern systems of education.
Tips & Suggestions
Here are some tips that you can keep in mind while using icons.
- Stick to One Style and Color Theme
Know your brand theme and stick to it. Instead of creating a rainbow of icons that may seem mismatched and uncoordinated, try to stay on a particular palette — this could be your brand’s logo colors, presentation templates’ hues, or maybe even the shades that you prefer to put in. Make sure that your slides look sophisticated and formal with the colors that you choose.
2. Don’t Overuse, Be Tactful
Imagine a presentation with just a couple of paragraphs of text and the rest being covered with icons? It would look bizarre, more like a kindergarten textbook.
Thus, instead of filling spaces, try to use icons where they truly fit. Strategically analyze the need — this could be one icon per slide or even two where required, but ultimately, it depends on your preference and choice.
3. Customize the Icons
It is always better to customize anything and everything as per your company’s theme. If you have a set of icons that can help people associate your venture with the icons being used simply because they are customized, it is a win-win situation.
It creates a brand identity and raises awareness about your enterprise.
Resources Where You Can Find Useful Icons
- PowerPoint Library
The quickest way to access a plethora of icons is through the PowerPoint Library. You can access them by clicking on Insert ribbon > Illustrations > Icons. A new window with hundreds of icons will appear where you can choose from multiple themes and can edit them as per your needs.
This platform has over three million icons varying from topics like Artificial Intelligence, technology, IT to others like plants, adventure, social media, etc.
It has over seven million global users in 120+ countries due to its huge collection of icons that can be easily edited and downloaded.
With more than four million icons to offer, this website allows you to pick them by sorting through style (whether you want it hand-drawn, 3D, or even isometric), categories (education, social media, business, etc.), and also has a free plan where you can download your icons without any subscription.
This website lays down a platter of thousands of icons that are completely editable. These have various color and design options that you can choose from. The only con is the limited number of options that are available as compared to other websites.
SketchBubble has over 150,000 pre-designed presentation templates that can be fully edited and customized as per the needs of the presenter. They have a wide collection of icons for showcasing concepts related to business models, marketing, academics, finance, technology, etc. You can use them to add value to your presentations and make them highly appealing.
CONCLUSION
In order to enhance the quality of your presentations, you must use icons to enable your audience to absorb and understand your ideas in a better manner. Using high-resolution, intriguing, and simple icons can help you stand apart and build an excellent niche for presentations.
We hope that this article helps you embark on your journey of crafting outstanding slides with the help of icons!
