New Presentation Tools Breaking Boundaries

Oct 18, 2019 | Blog, Roundup

Presentation Tools breaking boundaries October 2019

Updated January 16, 2021. See this twitter thread for details.

What is a “Presentation” in the post-PowerPoint era?

There’s a subtle shift in the Presentation tools landscape that’s been emerging lately. Products like Google Slides, Zoho Show, and Apple Keynote came on the scene to liberate us from the monopolistic shackles of the ubiquitous Microsoft “.PPT”. Now, these tools have also matured into front-runners vulnerable to disruption.

There appears to be a new wave of tools that are moving beyond competing with other “Slide Deck” software, and are instead looking to shift our perspectives on how we craft and present our stories.

The approach varies among these contenders. However, there appear to be some notable themes among them.

  • Collaboration – making it even more seamless to simultaneously work together on content
  • Assistance – clever ways that a tool can help you craft the right content or visuals (yes, we’re talking the #Ai buzzword here)
  • Design Magic – upping the game in offering out of the box modern charts, graphs and infographics ‘templates’ to help non-designers quickly create great data visualizations
  • In Your Browser – many are SaaS web apps delivered via your web browser, so no clunky downloads or files to save

Here’s a roundup of compelling products to try out or keep an eye on.

Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai “Add content and watch your slides adapt. No more tweaking text boxes or lining up arrows at 2am. Our Ai applies the rules of great design in real time, so it’s finally easy to tell your story”

Canva

Canva “Design a presentation that blows your audience away with our stunning collection of high-quality presentation templates. Free to personalize and completely online so you can easily edit and collaborate with your colleagues.”

Deckset

Deckset “Turn your Markdown notes into beautiful presentations. Write down your thoughts in your favourite text editor, and Deckset will turn them into beautiful presentations.”

Infogram

Infogram “Create engaging infographics and reports in minutes. Infogram is an intuitive visualization tool that empowers people and teams to create beautiful content.”

Ludus

Ludus “We believe that static presentations are a thing of the past. Ludus is a powerful web application that lets you integrate all the power of the Internet into your slides. This means you can embed 3D models, videos, VR experiments, Dropbox files, designs from Figma, prototypes from Framer, InVision or Marvel. It’s as easy as copy and paste.”

Piktochart

Piktochart “Easy-to-Use presentation maker. No complex design software. No heavy designer fees. Just a simple, intuitive tool that helps you and your team tell stories with the visual impact they deserve.”

Pitch.com

Pitch.com “All hands on deck. Pitch helps teams build better presentations: collaboratively, effectively, and beautifully.”

PRESENTA

PRESENTA “enables the content-first principle. Instead of starting positioning elements on the canvas, it’s better writing great contents first. This seems obvious but the current status-quo of the presentation tools forces people the other way around.”

Projector

Projector “When you have a story to tell, Projector is the platform that helps you craft it. From live presentations to Instagram stories, Projector gives you the creative power to captivate an audience — no design skills required.”

Slideas

Slideas “Slideas is the easiest way to create a beautiful Markdown Presentation, with all the features you need. Designed for people who want productivity.”

Slidebean

Slidebean “AI-powered presentation design. Design professional presentations in seconds using the world’s first slide design platform powered by Artificial Intelligence.”

Slides

Slides “AI-powered presentation design. Design professional presentations in seconds using the world’s first slide design platform powered by Artificial Intelligence.”

Visme

Visme “The only design tool you’ll need to present stories and translate boring data into stunning presentations for infographics right in your browser.”

Wunderpresentation

Wunderpresentation “enables you to instantly run stunning presentations that bear in mind of your audience. Automatically compiled from your structured text.”

Here’s a copy of this list in an Airtable database that you can bookmark, follow or copy.

P.S. Here’s a bonus list via Larry Kim that’s just about “Infographics” tools

See more on my blog