a powerpoint presentation is made up of a series of

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Step-by-Step)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• January 22, 2024

In this beginner’s guide, you will learn step-by-step how to make a PowerPoint presentation from scratch.

While PowerPoint is designed to be intuitive and accessible, it can be overwhelming if you’ve never gotten any training on it before. As you progress through this guide, you’ll will learn how to move from blank slides to PowerPoint slides that look like these.

Table of Contents

Additionally, as you create your presentation, you’ll also learn tricks for working more efficiently in PowerPoint, including how to:

• Change the slide order
• Reset your layout
• Change the slide dimensions
• Use PowerPoint Designer
• Format text
• Format objects
• Play a presentation (slide show)

With this knowledge under your belt, you’ll be ready to start creating PowerPoint presentations. Moreover, you’ll have taken your skills from beginner to proficient in no time at all. I will also include links to more advanced PowerPoint topics.

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Start with a blank presentation.

Note: Before you open PowerPoint and start creating your presentation, make sure you’ve collected your thoughts. If you’re going to make your slides compelling, you need to spend some time brainstorming.

For help with this, see our article with tips for nailing your business presentation  here .

The first thing you’ll need to do is to open PowerPoint. When you do, you are shown the Start Menu , with the Home tab open.

This is where you can choose either a blank theme (1) or a pre-built theme (2). You can also choose to open an existing presentation (3).

For now, go ahead and click on the  Blank Presentation (1)  thumbnail.

Doing so launches a brand new and blank presentation for you to work with. Before you start adding content to your presentation, let’s first familiarize ourselves with the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint interface

Here is how the program is laid out:

• The Application Header
• The Ribbon (including the Ribbon tabs)
• The Quick Access Toolbar (either above or below the Ribbon)
• The Slides Pane (slide thumbnails)

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

• The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

Each one of these areas has options for viewing certain parts of the PowerPoint environment and formatting your presentation.

Below are the important things to know about certain elements of the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint Ribbon

The Ribbon is contextual. That means that it will adapt to what you’re doing in the program.

For example, the Font, Paragraph and Drawing options are greyed out until you select something that has text in it, as in the example below (A).

Furthermore, if you start manipulating certain objects, the Ribbon will display additional tabs, as seen above (B), with more commands and features to help you work with those objects. The following objects have their own additional tabs in the Ribbon which are hidden until you select them:

• Online Pictures
• Screenshots
• Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

This is where you can preview and rearrange all the slides in your presentation.

Right-clicking on a slide  in the pane gives you additional options on the slide level that you won’t find on the Ribbon, such as  Duplicate Slide ,  Delete Slide , and  Hide Slide .

In addition, you can add sections to your presentation by  right-clicking anywhere in this Pane  and selecting  Add Section . Sections are extremely helpful in large presentations, as they allow you to organize your slides into chunks that you can then rearrange, print or display differently from other slides.

The Slide Area (A) is where you will build out your slides. Anything within the bounds of this area will be visible when you present or print your presentation.

Anything outside of this area (B) will be hidden from view. This means that you can place things here, such as instructions for each slide, without worrying about them being shown to your audience.

The  Notes Pane  is the space beneath the Slide Area where you can type in the speaker notes for each slide. It’s designed as a fast way to add and edit your slides’ talking points.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about adding, printing, and exporting your PowerPoint speaker notes, read our guide here .

Your speaker notes are visible when you print your slides using the Notes Pages option and when you use the Presenter View . To expand your knowledge and learn the ins and outs of using the Presenter View , read our guide here .

You can resize the  Notes Pane  by clicking on its edge and dragging it up or down (A). You can also minimize or reopen it by clicking on the Notes button in the Status Bar (B).

Note:  Not all text formatting displays in the Notes Pane, even though it will show up when printing your speaker notes. To learn more about printing PowerPoint with notes, read our guide here .

Now that you have a basic grasp of the PowerPoint interface at your disposal, it’s time to make your presentation.

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Notice that in the Slide Area , there are two rectangles with dotted outlines. These are called  Placeholders  and they’re set on the template in the Slide Master View .

To expand your knowledge and learn how to create a PowerPoint template of your own (which is no small task), read our guide here .

As the prompt text suggests, you can click into each placeholder and start typing text. These types of placeholder prompts are customizable too. That means that if you are using a company template, it might say something different, but the functionality is the same.

Note:  For the purposes of this example, I will create a presentation based on the content in the Starbucks 2018 Global Social Impact Report, which is available to the public on their website.

If you type in more text than there is room for, PowerPoint will automatically reduce its font size. You can stop this behavior by clicking on the  Autofit Options  icon to the left of the placeholder and selecting  Stop Fitting Text to this Placeholder .

Next, you can make formatting adjustments to your text by selecting the commands in the Font area and the  Paragraph area  of the  Home  tab of the Ribbon.

The Reset Command:  If you make any changes to your title and decide you want to go back to how it was originally, you can use the Reset button up in the Home tab .

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

Now that you have your title slide filled in, it’s time to add more slides. To do that, simply go up to the  Home tab  and click on  New Slide . This inserts a new slide in your presentation right after the one you were on.

You can alternatively hit Ctrl+M on your keyboard to insert a new blank slide in PowerPoint. To learn more about this shortcut, see my guide on using Ctrl+M in PowerPoint .

Instead of clicking the New Slide command, you can also open the New Slide dropdown to see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template. Depending on who created your template, your layouts in this dropdown can be radically different.

If you insert a layout and later want to change it to a different layout, you can use the Layout dropdown instead of the New Slide dropdown.

After inserting a few different slide layouts, your presentation might look like the following picture. Don’t worry that it looks blank, next we will start adding content to your presentation.

If you want to follow along exactly with me, your five slides should be as follows:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Picture with Caption

Adding Content to Your Slides

Now let’s go into each slide and start adding our content. You’ll notice some new types of placeholders.

On slide 2 we have a  Content Placeholder , which allows you to add any kind of content. That includes:

• A SmartArt graphic,
• A 3D object,
• A picture from the web,
• Or an icon.

To insert text, simply type it in or hit  Ctrl+C to Copy  and Ctrl+V to Paste  from elsewhere. To insert any of the other objects, click on the appropriate icon and follow the steps to insert it.

For my example, I’ll simply type in some text as you can see in the picture below.

Slides 3 and 4 only have text placeholders, so I’ll go ahead and add in my text into each one.

On slide 5 we have a Picture Placeholder . That means that the only elements that can go into it are:

• A picture from the web

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

• Click on the  Picture  icon
• Find  a picture on your computer and select it
• Click on  Insert

Alternatively, if you already have a picture open somewhere else, you can select the placeholder and paste in (shortcut: Ctrl+V ) the picture. You can also drag the picture in from a file explorer window.

If you do not like the background of the picture you inserted onto your slide, you can remove the background here in PowerPoint. To see how to do this, read my guide here .

Placeholders aren’t the only way to add content to your slides. At any point, you can use the Insert tab to add elements to your slides.

You can use either the Title Only  or the  Blank  slide layout to create slides for content that’s different. For example, a three-layout content slide, or a single picture divider slide, as shown below.

In the first example above, I’ve inserted 6 text boxes, 3 icons, and 3 circles to create this layout. In the second example, I’ve inserted a full-sized picture and then 2 shapes and 2 text boxes.

The Reset Command:  Because these slides are built with shapes and text boxes (and not placeholders), hitting the  Reset button up in the  Home tab  won’t do anything.

That is a good thing if you don’t want your layouts to adjust. However, it does mean that it falls on you to make sure everything is aligned and positioned correctly.

For more on how to add and manipulate the different objects in PowerPoint, check out our step-by-step articles here:

• Using graphics in PowerPoint
• Inserting icons onto slides
• Adding pictures to your PowerPoint
• How to embed a video in PowerPoint
• How to add music to your presentation

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

If you have Office 365, your version of PowerPoint comes with a new feature called Designer (or Design Ideas). This is a feature that generates slide layout ideas for you. The coolest thing about this feature is that it uses the content you already have.

To use Designer , simply navigate to the  Design tab  in your Ribbon, and click on  Design Ideas .

NOTE: If the PowerPoint Designer is not working for you (it is grey out), see my troubleshooting guide for Designer .

Change the Overall Design (optional)

When you make a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll want to think about the overall design. Now that you have some content in your presentation, you can use the Design tab to change the look and feel of your slides.

For additional help thinking through the design of your presentation,  read my guide here .

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

If you have PowerPoint 2013 or later, when you create a blank document in PowerPoint, you automatically start with a widescreen layout with a 16:9 ratio. These dimensions are suitable for most presentations as they match the screens of most computers and projectors.

However, you do have the option to change the dimensions.

For example, your presentation might not be presented, but instead converted into a PDF or printed and distributed. In that case, you can easily switch to the standard dimensions with a 4:3 ratio by selecting from the dropdown (A).

You can also choose a custom slide size or change the slide orientation from landscape to portrait in the Custom Slide Size dialog box (B).

To learn all about the different PowerPoint slide sizes, and some of the issues you will face when changing the slide size of a non-blank presentation,  read my guide here .

 B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

The next thing you can do is change the theme of your presentation to a pre-built one. For a detailed explanation of what a PowerPoint theme is, and how to best use it,  read my article here .

In the beginning of this tutorial, we started with a blank presentation, which uses the default Office theme as you can see in the picture below.

That gives you the most flexibility because it has a blank background and quite simple layouts that work for most presentations. However, it also means that it’s your responsibility to enhance the design.

If you’re comfortable with this, you can stay with the default theme or create your own custom theme ( read my guide here ). But if you would rather not have to think about design, then you can choose a pre-designed theme.

Microsoft provides 46 other pre-built themes, which include slide layouts, color variants and palettes, and fonts. Each one varies quite significantly, so make sure you look through them carefully.

To select a different theme, go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon, and click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Themes section .

For this tutorial, let’s select the  Frame  theme and then choose the third Variant in the theme. Doing so changes the layout, colors, and fonts of your presentation.

Note: The theme dropdown area is also where you can import or save custom themes. To see my favorite places to find professional PowerPoint templates and themes (and recommendations for why I like them), read my guide here .

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

The next thing to decide is how you want your background to look for the entire presentation. In the  Variants area, you can see four background options.

For this example, we want our presentation to have a dark background, so let’s select Style 3. When you do so, you’ll notice that:

• The background color automatically changes across all slides
• The color of the text on most of the slides automatically changes to white so that it’s visible on the dark background
• The colors of the objects on slides #6 and #7 also adjust, in a way we may not want (we’ll likely have to make some manual adjustments to these slides)

Note: If you want to change the slide background for just that one slide, don’t left-click the style. Instead, right-click it and select Apply to Selected Slides .

After you change the background for your entire presentation, you can easily adjust the background for an individual slide.

Inside the Format Background pane, you can see you have the following options:

• Gradient fill
• Picture or texture fill
• Pattern fill
• Hide background

You can explore these options to find the PowerPoint background that best fits your presentation.

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

Another thing you may want to adjust in your presentation, is the color scheme. In the picture below you can see the Theme Colors we are currently using for this presentation.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own color palette. By default, the Office theme includes the Office color palette. This affects the colors you are presented with when you format any element within your presentation (text, shapes, SmartArt, etc.).

The good news is that the colors here are easy to change. To switch color palettes, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab in the Ribbon
• In the Variants area, click on the  dropdown arrow  and select  Colors
• Select  the color palette (or theme colors) you want

You can choose among the pre-built color palettes from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

As you build your presentation, make sure you use the colors from your theme to format objects. That way, changing the color palette adjusts all the colors in your presentation automatically.

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

Just as we changed the color palette, you can do the same for the fonts.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own font combination. By default, the Office theme includes the Office font pairing. This affects the fonts that are automatically assigned to all text in your presentation.

The good news is that the font pairings are easy to change. To switch your Theme Fonts, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Variants  area
• Select  Fonts
• Select  the font pairing you want

You can choose among the pre-built fonts from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

If you are working with PowerPoint presentations on both Mac and PC computers, make sure you choose a safe PowerPoint font. To see a list of the safest PowerPoint fonts, read our guide here .

If you receive a PowerPoint presentation and the wrong fonts were used, you can use the Replace Fonts dialog box to change the fonts across your entire presentation. For details, read our guide here .

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

The final step to make a PowerPoint presentation compelling, is to consider using animations and transitions. These are by no means necessary to a good presentation, but they may be helpful in your situation.

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust animations engine designed to power your creativity. That being said, it’s also easy to get started with basic animations.

Animations are movements that you can apply to individual objects on your slide.

To add a PowerPoint animation to an element of your slide, simply:

• Select the  element
• Go to the  Animations tab in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  animation  you want

You can add animations to multiple objects at one time by selecting them all first and then applying the animation.

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

• Click on the Preview button in the Animations tab
• Click on the little star  next to the slide
• Play the slide in Slide Show Mode

To learn other ways to run your slide show, see our guide on presenting a PowerPoint slide show with shortcuts .

To adjust the settings of your animations, explore the options in the  Effect Options ,  Advanced Animation  and the  Timing  areas of the  Animation tab .

Note:  To see how to make objects appear and disappear in your slides by clicking a button,  read our guide here .

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

The best way to manage lots of animations on your slide is with the Animation Pane . To open it, simply:

• Navigate to the  Animations tab
• Select the  Animation Pane

Inside the Animation Pane, you’ll see all of the different animations that have been applied to objects on your slide, with their numbers marked as pictured above.

Note: To see examples of PowerPoint animations that can use in PowerPoint, see our list of PowerPoint animation tutorials here .

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust transition engine so that you can dictate how your slides change from one to the other. It is also extremely easy to add transitions to your slides.

In PowerPoint, transitions are the movements (or effects) you see as you move between two slides.

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

• Select the  slide
• Go to the  Transitions tab in the Ribbon
• In the Transitions to This Slide area, click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  transition  you want

To adjust the settings of the transition, explore the options in the  Timing  area of the Transitions tab.

You can also add the same transition to multiple slides. To do that, select them in the  Slides Pane  and apply the transition.

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview your PowerPoint transitions (just like your animations):

• Click on the Preview  button in the Transitions tab
• Click on the little star  beneath the slide number in the thumbnail view

Note:  In 2016, PowerPoint added a cool new transition, called Morph. It operates a bit differently from other transitions. For a detailed tutorial on how to use the cool Morph transition,  see our step-by-step article here .

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

After you’ve built your presentation and made all the adjustments to your slides, you’ll want to save your presentation. YOu can do this several different ways.

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

• Navigate to the  File tab
•  Select  Save As  on the left
• Choose  where you want to save your presentation
• Name  your presentation and/or adjust your file type settings
• Click  Save

You can alternatively use the  Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save your presentation. I recommend using this shortcut frequently as you build your presentation to make sure you don’t lose any of your work.

This is the standard way to save a presentation. However, there may be a situation where you want to save your presentation as a different file type.

To learn how to save your presentation as a PDF, see our guide on converting PowerPoint to a PDF .

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

Once you’ve created a presentation that you like, you may want to turn it into a template. The easiest – but not technically correct – way, is to simply create a copy of your current presentation and then change the content.

But be careful! A PowerPoint template is a special type of document and it has its own parameters and behaviors.

If you’re interested in learning about how to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch, see our guide on how to create a PowerPoint template .

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

After finishing your PowerPoint presentation, you may want to print it out on paper. Printing your slides is relatively easy.

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

• Hit Ctrl+P on your keyboard
• Or go to the Ribbon and click on File and then Print

Inside the Print dialog box, you can choose from the various printing settings:

• Printer: Select a printer to use (or print to PDF or OneNote)
• Slides: Choose which slides you want to print
• Layout: Determine how many slides you want per page (this is where you can print the notes, outline, and handouts)
• Collated or uncollated (learn what collated printing means here )
• Color: Choose to print in color, grayscale or black & white

There are many more options for printing your PowerPoint presentations. Here are links to more in-depth articles:

• How to print multiple slides per page
• How to print your speaker notes in PowerPoint
• How to save PowerPoint as a picture presentation

So that’s how to create a PowerPoint presentation if you are brand new to it. We’ve also included a ton of links to helpful resources to boost your PowerPoint skills further.

When you are creating your presentation, it is critical to first focus on the content (what you are trying to say) before getting lost inserting and playing with elements. The clearer you are on what you want to present, the easier it will be to build it out in PowerPoint.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our PowerPoint training courses and other presentation resources by  visiting us here .

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Anatomy of a PowerPoint Presentation

The basic building block of a PowerPoint presentation is the slide a block of content the size of a computer screen that typically contains a title, some text, and perhaps a picture or chart. A PowerPoint presentation typically contains many slides.

Figure 1 illustrates a PowerPoint presentation made up of 30 slides. The default (Normal) view includes notes attached to the current slide, and a navigation panel on the left side that allows you to switch between a text outline and slide thumbnails.

Figure 1. PowerPoint's Normal view includes most of the information you need to assemble a presentation.

A fully loaded slide (see Figure 2 ) includes at most six parts:

Figure 2. All the components of a PowerPoint slide are shown here, with slide thumbnails in place of a text outline.

The title, which usually sits at the top of the slide.

Body text, the main part of the slide. More often than not, the text on a slide consists of a series of bulleted or numbered items. However, you can enter any kind of text in this part of a slide bullets and numbers are not required.

Some slides contain content in addition to text. You can add charts, tables, pictures, diagrams, and video clips to help illuminate your presentation.

Text and content sit inside resizable and movable containers called placeholders, which you can see if you click the text or graphic in the slide pane. PowerPoint help screens sometimes refer to the placeholder and the text or content it contains as a "text object" or a "graphic object."

If you choose to display the date and time, these items appear at the lower-left corner by default.

The footer, another optional element, appears by default at the bottom of the slide, in the middle.

Finally, you can choose to display a slide number; its default position is in the lower-right corner.

Most presentations begin with a title slide, which typically includes the title of the presentation, the speaker's name, and other introductory details. If you're planning a presentation as a class project, you might include the class name and number Sociology 101, for instance; for a presentation to a business or civic group, you might include your name and the name of the organization you represent. Other slides in a presentation can also be title slides you might use a title slide to introduce different portions of a long presentation, for example but in most cases, you'll have just one title slide in a presentation, and it will serve as the first slide.

Don't be confused by the terminology. A title slide is, in most cases, a slide that introduces a presentation. A slide title, on the other hand, is usually the first line on a slide.

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How to Design a PowerPoint: A Visual Guide to Making Slides with Impact

Home > Speaking > How to Design a PowerPoint

A quick Google Images search for “worst PowerPoint slides” proves two very clear realities: 1) anybody can create a PowerPoint; and 2) many don’t know how to do them well.

That’s understandable, though. Unless you’ve recently taken courses or training in design, data visualization, and public speaking, you likely haven’t had any more education on how to create an effective slide deck than a ten-year-old.

And you’re not alone.

Bad PowerPoints are everywhere: professor lectures, science conferences, human resources trainings, team meetings, sales review gatherings, thesis and dissertation defenses, product pitches, job interviews, you name it. Some of the brightest people in the world have created some of the most awful PowerPoints. For most, it’s just not a natural skill.

That’s unfortunate, too, because a well-designed slide deck can make a tremendous difference in the reception of the message you’re trying to convey.

To start designing excellent slide decks right away, follow my quick guide to designing better PowerPoints right after this paragraph. To get a whole workshop’s worth of information about how to design better slides, scroll below. 🙂

Click image to enlarge.

The question is, does designing a nice PowerPoint actually matter?

Well, if you’ve made it this far, you already know my opinion. But the short answer is, YES! Effective slide decks can make a HUGE difference in the outcome of your presentation. Why? Because slides—which should be used to supplement and enhance your well-prepared script (not be the presentation, as we often see in slides that are nothing more than bulleted lists)—significantly improve engagement during the presentation and recall after the presentation.

Basically, if you want people to both pay attention AND remember what you said, good slides can make all the difference. Plus, research has shown that people trust information more when it’s well-designed. In sum, good slides will cause your audience to:

• Pay attention more and stay more engaged;
• Remember the key messages from your presentation better;
• Trust you and your information more; and
• Believe you are super smart and awesome. (I mean, you already are, but good slides will seal the deal.)

Bad slides, on the other hand, are not only distracting, but they can actually damage a person’s ability to understand and follow your message.

At best, poorly designed slides will make you look less professional. At worst, they’ll encourage people to not listen to anything you have to say. Bad slides (which are caused by a whole range of things, including being too text-heavy, too busy, too inconsistent, or too color crazy, etc. [see my article on 40 Ways to Screw Up a PowerPoint Slide ]), overwhelmingly distract from your presentation.

If a slide has too much text, people try to read it and listen to you at the same time—which damages their ability to do either well. If your slides are too busy, your audience won’t be able to understand the information quick enough. If it’s ugly, well…people just tune out and ignore (and judge you, to boot).

Okay, so enough of the why . Let’s get to making better slides!

The 9 Steps to Designing a Better PowerPoint Slide

Step 1: empathize with your audience.

The term “empathy” in this context comes from a relatively new theory called “design thinking,” in which you can apply the mindset of a designer to a variety of contexts. So, whether you’re creating a toothbrush, a video game, an automobile, or…a PowerPoint, you need to be thinking a like a designer—which starts with empathy.

Empathizing with an audience is like applying the Golden Rule: present unto them as you would like to be presented to. Of course, the content of presentation itself comes first and foremost, but the design of your slides should support and enhance your content, so you’ll be thinking of your script and your slides at the same time. To begin, it’s best to start with a few concrete questions about your audience:

• Why are they there? Are they at your presentation because they want to be, or because they have to be? Is your presentation the only one of the day, or is it one of many (like at a conference)? Are they expecting to learn, be entertained, be inspired, be trained? In essence, you want to know their state of mind before coming so you can plan to accommodate that as best you can.
• Why would they care? Dig deep here. Does your audience actually care about the topic as much as you do? And…if you don’t care, why don’t you? If the topic isn’t meaningful and you can’t make it feel that way, then why even present? But…if they do care, know why they do. What will they hope for and expect out of it? What can you do to meet and exceed their expectations?
• What do they need to know? And what DON’T they? How much about your subject do they already know? Are they novices, experts, or a blend of both? Does it make more sense to break your topic into separate presentations on separate days, rather than giving it all at once? Is it focused and narrow enough to make an impact? Can you leave anything that is irrelevant out?
• What will keep them engaged? Consider your content and your big takeaways. Consider the personalities and knowledge base of the audience? What can you do to keep them engaged? Now…remember that “engaged” doesn’t mean “entertained” (though it can). If you’re a scientist presenting on bacterial infections in the liver, entertainment is obviously not appropriate. But…if you don’t engage them, they may not appreciate your research, no matter how valuable it is. What will they want to see, hear, and know and how can you display that to them in a way that will keep them interested?

Once you have clear idea about your audience’s needs and desires, you can begin to develop slides (along with the content of your script) that will give them exactly what they’re looking for rather than wasting their time (and yours).

Step 2: Define the Story

Think of your presentation as a story and you, the presenter, as an author in real time. As you deliver a presentation, you are creating the tone, setting, and plot for what happens. Your execution of the presentation will, if done right, create a climax/conflict and an important resolution. Consider how your slide development functions like the five components of a story, then write down how you plan to control (define) that story:

• The Setting. You create a mood and presence by the way you enter the room, interact with the audience, and display your title. While you may not have full control over who comes and what the room looks like, you do have relative control over the tone and ambiance and how they will react to your message. Consider the title of your presentation. Does it capture your message while also creating a buzz about your topic? Can you add a photo on the title slide that will intrigue your audience? What colors will you use? How do you plan to interact with the slides and how will you keep the audience involved?
• The Characters. You may not know all the people in the room, but you should know as much about them as possible (start with Step 1). Still, you have a way to shape their interest and engagement in this topic. Characters in this story are stakeholders. Your ultimate goal for giving should be one of three things: help them think about something in a new, meaningful way; learn something valuable they didn’t know before; and/or act as a result of what they learned. If you can’t get them to one of those three points, you’ve never really developed the characters.
• The Plot . A plot in storytelling is a series of events that build towards a conclusion. A plot needs to have direction, with clear and meaningful series of events. As you develop your script, you should be thinking about your rhetorical progression of ideas—your building towards a final outcome or conclusion. The development of slides can help you with this and they can help your audience stay on track. The key is, you need to make sure your audience is following the plot. If the plot starts to feel loose, disconnected, fragmented, or…all over the place, you’ll lose them faster than a 0-star rated movie.
• The Conflict. There must be some reason why everyone is there to see you presentation. It’s possible they don’t fully understand it themselves, but you, as the presenter, must make their purpose evidently clear. You must make them care. The more and more you pull them into your subject matter, the more you have effectively built a climax, which is the key to any successful story.
• The Resolution . The resolution is the takeaway—it’s what resolves the conflict. If you’ve built a strong climax, you now need to make sure your audience leaves with something valuable. If they leave thinking in a new, meaningful way; if they have learned something valuable that they can apply today; or if they are ready and knowledgeable about how to act, then the resolution is there and you, the author, have done your job.

Step 3: Brand Your Message

Jeff Bezos is famous for having said, “Brand is what others say about you when you’re not in the room.” You might think similarly about your presentation. How will your audience feel about your presentation afterwards, when you’re not around?

That can be an intimidating question to ask. And, it may seem a little odd to think about your message as a “brand.” But…applying brand theory to messaging makes a lot of sense. You want people to get on board with what you have to say. To do that, you have to establish what they value, what motivates them, and what you’ll have to do meet or exceed their expectations.

Brand experts use a lot of terms to describe and define brands. Let’s address a few, and apply them to slide design:

• Differentiation. How yours is different from the rest. What can you do to make your message stand out from a world of clutter and information? What makes yours unique? Is it your approach, the stories you tell, your language, your humor, your ideas, something else?
• Authenticity . How much you genuinely care. Audiences can tell if you’re passionate or not. They know if you care about both your topic and them learning it. If you fake it, the message gets diluted. Use your slides to help showcase how much you care.
• History . What people already know about you, your topic, or your experience. Do you need to establish credibility, or do you already have it? Do you have experience you can lean into? Does your audience already like/agree with this topic? Is it totally new and unfamiliar to them? How can you bring the history of your topic and yourself into the presentation? Will you audience need a primer on the history or does it matter?
• Simplicity. Making the most important things stick. Good brands almost always have simple logos, simple taglines, and simple brand positioning statements. Many also focus on limited products—they focus on what they do well. Your message can work the same way. Can you simplify your entire message into 2 – 5 key points? Can you reduce the amount of information that has to be taken in all at once? Can you help organize and chunk information to be clearer and simpler to follow? People generally have a hard time remembering complex information all at once—determine what the real purpose of your presentation is and what your audience can reasonably get out of it, then simplify to make sure that happens.
• Visual Identity . Your message, like a brand, can be enhanced if people resonate with the overall look and feel. Just like with buying a brand of shoes, people will be drawn to the design of your information. If it looks static, cliche, poorly design, or just plain ugly, you’ve created an undesirable visual identity and people will have a harder time buying into it. But if you can take your message and harmonize with strong design and imagery, people will be more likely to be attracted by, latch onto, and “buy in” to what you have to say. What should your visual identity look like, considering your topic?

Step 4: Select Your Fonts

The choice of your font may seem a small thing, but it can make the difference between a sleek, professional presentation and one that is static, boring, or, worse, painfully obnoxious.

If you’re not a professional designer, being font savvy may not come natural. Fortunately, there just a few rules you can follow to help you make your choices:

• Avoid the Defaults . In PowerPoint (as in MS Word), the default font is Calibri. Before 2010, the default was Times New Roman. Other programs use Arial or Myriad Pro as the default. What’s wrong with defaults? The fonts themselves are actually fine fonts—that’s why Microsoft went with them. BUT…because they’re the defaults, they are so widely used that they’ve become dull. If you just leave the defaults, your audience will subconsciously feel that you didn’t design your PowerPoint (because you probably didn’t). Just changing the font can bolster your PowerPoint’s professionalism quickly.
• Stick to Simple, Modern Fonts. Okay, so you don’t want to use the defaults, but what DO you use? Something simple. Don’t go crazy. Find something that is similar to the default, with just a little variation. Find something that is super easy to read and looks clean, simple, and sleek. Nothing distracting. Remember: you want people to focus on your story and message, not the lettering. Look at the graphic above for a list of some good, simple, modern fonts. Avoid, at all costs, the notoriously ugly or cliched fonts: Comic Sans; Chiller; Papyrus; Algerian; Curlz MT; and so forth.
• Make Sure Your Fonts Are on the Computer(s) You’re Presenting On. Remember: fonts are installed on individual computers, not attached to a program. A misunderstanding that many people have is that a font comes with PowerPoint (or any other program you’re working on). That’s NOT accurate. Fonts are installed on your computer. So…if you use a cool font that was on your desktop PC, but you are presenting your slides on a MacBook laptop, you’ll want to check that both computers have the font you’re using. Some fonts are pretty standard and you’ll find them on pretty much all computers: Palatino Linotype, Century Gothic, Segoe UI, Garamond. Others, however, are proprietary and may not be on other computers: Acumin Pro, Raleway, Helvetica. If you know you’ll be presenting on multiple different computers, find a standard font. One I’ve always liked to use is Century Gothic.
• Consider Using Two Fonts . The “two-font rule” suggests that designs will be more attractive if they use two fonts—one for headings and titles, the other for body text. You can get away with just one font if you make your headings stand out in some way—by size, weight, or color—but it’s often a nice aesthetic to use two. Just be sure that the two fonts are obviously different from each other (don’t use both Arial AND Century Gothic—they’re too similar, which will look like an accident) and that they harmonize well together. It’s often good to use a serif font (the type with little “feet” like in Palatino Linotype) paired with a sans serif font (the kind without “feet,” like Century Gothic).

Step 5: Narrow Your Colors

A hallmark of any good design is a simple, consistent color scheme. Keep your slide designs to fewer than four colors. Often, it’s good to use black, white, gray, and then one or two accent colors. Years ago, when I was new to design, I had someone tell me that a brochure I created looked like a clown exploded on the page. You DON’T want your slides to look like a clown exploded! To avoid that, find your color scheme in advance and stick to it.

Color can be tricky. If you work for a company that already has a pre-established style guide and color scheme, definitely use it! Not only is that important for your company’s brand, it makes your life a whole lot easier. If you do have to choose colors yourself, though, consider going to this website first: color.adobe.com . You can type things into the “explore” bar and you’ll be led to color schemes that look nice.

What you want to look for are colors that are a bit muted and won’t overwhelm the eyes of your viewers. Remember that you want to keep a high contrast so it doesn’t strain your audience members’ eyes. So…stick to black or really dark gray for text. Keep a white or very light background. Use the accent color for headings or important pieces of content. And…just make sure the colors match your topic or industry.

Step 6: Divide into Sections

Good presentations are well organized. Your slides should visually reflect your organization by using different slide “types” for different parts of your presentation or content.

All presentations should have at least three slide types: a title slide, a body slide, and a closing slide. Most presentations will have a fourth: a section slide. Section slides are used to transition your presentation from one major topic to the next. Many presentations can also benefit from callout slides, which are used to designate unique types of content that show up periodically—like for direct quotes or polling questions to audience members.

If you’ve ever taken a college course on public speaking, you probably remember your professor telling you to use “signposts.” A signpost is a metaphor for visual or oral cues that let your reader know where they’re at in the journey. Signposts keep your audience oriented. Sectioning your slides provides a visual signifier to your audience that you are shifting gears—plus, it just makes your slides feel cohesive, professional, and organized.

Take the time to design your slide types first. Then, fill in the content from your presentation script.

A quick note about body slides, though. These are going to be the most frequently used slides, the ones that you put the majority of your content on. Note that body slides don’t all have to look identical. They need to be consistent in design—repeating the same fonts, colors, photography style, highlights, etc.—but the layouts can change. Providing some visual variation is good for your audience.

Step 7: Visualize Every Slide

One of the biggest errors inexperienced presenters make is believing that audience members need to be able to read a lot of text to understand the message.

The reality is, when you put a lot of text on the screen—even if it’s in a bulleted list—you end up creating more difficulty for your audience. They’ll try to read while also trying to listen to you, creating a conflict of noise that will eventually cause them to only catch about half of what you wanted them to. Plus, a lot of text is boring and not efficient for the human brain.

Research has actually shown (and there is significant evidence to prove this) that making information visual is good for humans for four reasons: engagement, cognition, trust, and recall.

• Visual information is more engaging . Most all people will tell you that they are “visual learners.” The reality is that pretty much all humans are. We pay attention to visual information because our brains are designed to process visual information faster. When you provide visuals—photographs, charts, diagrams, icons, etc.—people will pay far more attention than if you just have text. In fact, if you just have text on a screen, people will likely zone out.
• Visual information is easier to understand. If designed well and related to the topic, people will understand visual information faster than they will from reading. Even as you read this article (assuming you’re still here!), the information that is really going to help you are the visual examples and explanations I’ve added for each section. That’s the stuff where you’ll say, “aha! now I know what Curtis is telling me to do.” All this text—it’s just ancillary stuff to provide more detail. But the photos/graphics are what you’ll really learn from.
• Visualized information builds trust. For better or for worse, humans are wired to trust information more when it has been visualized, especially when it looks professional. If you take a table of data and turn it into a data visualization that is professionally design, people will tend to trust it more. Something about taking the time to visualize information makes people assume you know what you’re talking about. Now, that said, you have to make sure your data visualizations are accurate. The real pitfall here is that people will tend to trust it more, even if it’s misleading. If they discover any flaws, your entire argument (and credibility) will go out the window.
• Visual information is easier to remember . Research studies have shown that visual information will be retained more than six times better if visuals are attached to it. If you actually want people to remember your presentation you must do two things: tell stories and use pictures. If you simply regurgitate information and make it very text-heavy, your audience will forget almost everything you said within three days. If you add pictures, though, they’ll have mental images to trigger memory, helping them retain your message much longer.

Find ways to visualize every chance you can, making sure that your visuals emphasize, clarify, or enhance the content you are talking about. Look at the examples above. Find ways to reduce text and enlarge graphics; turn bullets into images or icons; and use simple, easy to understand graphics that draw attention to the most important point.

Step 8: Play with Photos and Layouts

This is the one that takes the most practice, but it can be the most fun and rewarding. Recognize that your body slides can take multiple forms and that there are endless ways to organize, crop, and adjust visualizations, photos, headings, and designs. As long as you keep your color scheme, fonts, and highlighting techniques consistent, the slides will still feel uniform and professional, while giving variety to your slides.

Some things to think about as you play with the design of your slides:

• CONTRAST: Make sure you use high contrast in colors, especially for areas where you have text (black text on white backgrounds almost always work best). In addition, make sure that things that are different actually look significantly different. If two fonts are different sizes, make them obviously different sizes. If you’re using two colors, make them completely different colors. When two things look similar, there isn’t much contrast, which looks accidental and/or visually dull.
• REPETITION: Repetition is all about consistency in design. Repeat design elements throughout: fonts, colors, highlights, logos, shapes, styles, etc. Repeat the same visual feel for photos. Use the same types of icons and graphics. The more unified the design, the strong the appeal and the more professional you look.
• ALIGNMENT: Make sure everything on your slide is aligned with something else. Nothing should be “floating,” or placed arbitrarily. Align photos to titles, words to other words, rules/lines to other elements. Keep it all tightly aligned and crisp.
• PROXIMITY: Put things that are related close together and things that aren’t apart from each other. The brain will automatically assume that, if two things are next to each other (like a photo and a caption) that they are connected. Avoid confusing your audience by separating things that are different and connecting things that go together.
• Move Photos to the Bleeds . The term “bleed” is a graphic design principle that describes moving photos to the edge of page (where the ink “bleeds” off) in order to reduce visual noise. An old design principles developed by Josef Albers, 1+1=3, suggests that when you insert two objects, you automatically create a third—the space between. When you insert a photo, you end up creating a margin of white space around the edges. If that white space isn’t necessary, just make the image larger and push clear to the edge of the screen. This will remove the margin and the noise. Plus, it just makes slides look simpler and more professional and it really draws the eyes to the photo.

Step 9: Orient Your Audience

In addition to creating section slides (see Step 6 above), you can help your audience—and yourself—stay organized by giving visual cues and textual information in footers, slide counts, and headers or sidebars.

These orienting features of a slide deck can be especially valuable if you’re giving a long presentation, workshop, or training.

Start by creating a footer. These aren’t required and you don’t need them on every slide, but in most costs, presentations will benefit from some information in the footer. Some of the most common things to include in a footer:

• Company logo
• Company name
• Name of presenter
• Name of event or conference
• Title of presentation
• Copyright information

Beyond the footer, you can also include a slide count (in example above, look at the bottom right of the slide). While some argue that this can be distracting, most would say that a slide count will help audience members know how much more to expect, putting their “I’m being held hostage by this presenter!” fears away.

If your presentation is particularly long (like, say, 45 minutes or more) or you’re giving a workshop, you can really help your audience by giving them a sort of contents or guide, so that they know where they’re at in relation to everything else. You might, for example, create a small sidebar on the left that includes the section they’re in with the subsection. Or, as in the example at the top (see top left of example), you might just include which section you’re on and a summary title of that section.

There is no one or perfect way to orient your audience members. Just make sure it’s on the forefront of your mind as you work to build empathy into your slide design. The presentation is for them, after all, not you. Give them as much as you can to help them appreciate the message you’re delivering.

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PowerPoint 2007  - Presentation Basics

Powerpoint 2007  -, presentation basics, powerpoint 2007 presentation basics.

PowerPoint 2007: Presentation Basics

Lesson 2: presentation basics.

/en/powerpoint2007/setting-up-your-powerpoint-environment/content/

Introduction

Creating new presentations.

New presentations

When you open PowerPoint from the Start menu or from an icon on your desktop, a new presentation with one slide appears by default. You can also create a new presentation while PowerPoint is already open .

• Click the Microsoft Office button , and choose New from the menu.
• The New Presentation dialog box will appear. Blank presentation is selected by default.
• Click Create , and a new presentation will open in the PowerPoint window.

The default slide that appears when you create a new presentation is a Title Slide layout.

Slide basics

About the slides.

Slides contain placeholders , or areas on a slide that are enclosed by dotted borders. Placeholders can contain many different items, including text, pictures, and charts. Some placeholders have placeholder text —or text you can replace—and thumbnail-sized icons that represent specific commands such as Insert Picture, Insert Chart, and Insert Clip Art. Hover over each icon to see the type of information you can insert.

About slide layouts

The placeholders are arranged in different layouts you can select when you insert a new slide or that can be applied to existing slides . In the example above, the layout is called Title and Content and includes title and content placeholders. A slide layout arranges your slide content. Layouts contain different types of placeholders you can use, depending on what information you want to include in your presentation. Each layout has a descriptive name, but the image of the layout shows you how the placeholders are arranged on the slide.

To insert text into a placeholder:

• Click inside the placeholder . The placeholder text will disappear, and the insertion point will appear.
• Type your text once the insertion point is visible.
• Click outside the placeholder when you have entered all of your text into the placeholder.

When you enter text or use the icons to insert items, the placeholder text and/or icons disappear as soon as you start typing.

To insert a new slide:

• Click the New Slide command in the Slides group on the Home tab. A menu will appear with your slide layout options.
• Click the slide you want to insert. A new slide with the chosen layout will appear in the center of the PowerPoint window and in the pane on the left.

To change the layout of an existing slide:

• Select the slide you want to change.
• Click the Layout command in the Slides group on the Home tab. A menu appears with your options.
• Click an option to select it. The slide will change in the presentation.

Working with slides

To copy and paste a slide:.

• Select the slide you want to copy.
• Click the Copy command on the Home tab.
• Click inside the Slides tab on the left task pane. A horizontal insertion point will appear.
• Move the insertion point to the location where you want the copy of the slide to appear.
• Click the Paste command on the Home tab. The copied slide will appear.

You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C to copy the slide and Ctrl + V to paste it.

To delete a slide:

• Select the slide you want to delete .
• Click the Delete command in the Slides group on the Home tab.

You can also delete a slide by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard.

To move a slide:

• Select the slide you want to move on the Slides tab in the left task pane.
• Click and drag the slide to a new location. The insertion point will appear.
• Release the mouse button. The slide will appear in the new location.

Using different views from the PowerPoint window

In the bottom-right corner of the PowerPoint window are three view commands. From here, you can change the view to Normal, Slide Sorter, or Slide Show view by clicking a command.

Normal is the default view and where you will create and edit your slides in the center slide pane, and all of the slides will appear on the Slides tab in the left task pane.

Slide Sorter is a view of your slides in thumbnail form. The slides are presented horizontally, which allows you to see more slides at the same time.

Slide Show view fills the computer screen with your presentation so you can see how the presentation will appear to an audience.

Saving your presentation

If you are saving a document for the first time, you will need to use the Save As command; however, if you have already saved a presentation, you can use the Save command.

To use the Save As command:

• Click the Microsoft Office button .
• Select Save As . A menu will appear.
• PowerPoint Presentation : This saves the presentation as a 2007 PowerPoint file. Only users with PowerPoint 2007 or the compatibility pack can view the file without possibly losing some of the formatting.
• PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation : This saves the presentation so it is compatible with some previous versions of PowerPoint. If you will be sending the presentation to someone who does not have Office 2007, you should use this file type.
• Enter a name for the document.
• Click the Save button.

To use the Save command:

• Select Save from the menu.

Using the Save command saves the document in its current location using the same file name.

Compatibility mode

Sometimes you may need to work with presentations that were created in earlier versions of PowerPoint. When you open these types of presentations, they will appear in Compatibility mode .

Compatibility mode disables certain features, so you'll only be able to access commands found in the program that was used to create the presentation. For example, if you open a presentation created in PowerPoint 2003, you can only use tabs and commands found in PowerPoint 2003.

If you want access to all of the PowerPoint 2007 features, you can save the presentation in the PowerPoint 2007 file format.

To exit Compatibility mode:

• Open PowerPoint.
• Insert text on the default title slide.
• Insert a Title and Content slide.
• Insert a Two Content slide.
• Practice moving slides.
• Copy the title slide.
• Delete one of the slides.
• Save the presentation.

/en/powerpoint2007/text-basics/content/

How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish.

We’ll break down every step of the design process, from choosing colors and images to using whitespace properly. After reading through this you should be all set to design your own beautiful presentation slides that will put your coworkers to shame.

Using a pre-built PowerPoint template can be a good starting point for many people (we collected some of the best PowerPoint templates for you!). But if you’re wanting to design your own from start-to-finish, you’re in the right place!

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A Word About Content

I usually make a big deal about content preceding design, and presentations are no exception. Ideally, you’ll have the topic and much or all of the content outlined before you even think about design. This will in every way shape the appearance of your design, which is why working from pre-built templates isn’t always the best move (though generic templates can and do work great in some circumstances).

The reason that I bring this up is that I don’t really have an actual presentation in mind for this project. I’ll be running with a basic theme, but the textual information will be entirely placeholder copy. Your image, font, color and layout selection shouldn’t necessarily match mine but instead reflect the topic and content you’re working with.

Choosing A Color Scheme

Before I even open Photoshop (yes, I design PowerPoint/Keynote slides in Photoshop and drop them in), I want to find a color scheme on which to base my entire design. When I need to quickly find several colors that go together I usually start with Adobe Color CC . Not only is it a great way to build your own color schemes, it’s an outstanding source to find schemes built by others that you can just grab for your projects.

As luck would have it, I liked the very first color scheme I saw upon opening Color. This scheme was featured on the home page and looked like a great place to start for our presentation design.

Now, if you wanted to get everything exactly right, you could make a list of the RGB or Hex values, but I prefer a quicker, more direct route. What I usually do is snap a screenshot of the color scheme, paste it into my document and stretch it across the canvas on its own layer for easy access. This way I can quickly activate the layer, eyedropper the color I want, then hide the layer and get back to work. It’s a bit like having a palette of colors to dip your paintbrush in.

Designing Your Cover Slide

Now that we have a color scheme, the design work is going to be much simpler. One trick that designers often use in presentations is to leverage the color scheme as heavily as possible. If you’re new to design, you’ll likely think that this is too easy, too plain or even that it’s cheating somehow, but trust me, it’ll be much more attractive and professional than that horrid Microsoft clipart library you love so much.

To start, simply grab one of your colors from the scheme you chose and flood the background of your slide with it (I chose #631c25). Good job, there’s your background. Don’t freak out. It’ll look great. Now let’s throw in some typography.

Choosing a Font

Font choice is a major issue for non-designers. The tendency is to think that most fonts are “boring” and to look around for something exciting and fun. This inevitably leads to the use of Comic Sans or some other equally hideous font.

Unless you’re an elementary school teacher, your presentations should never look like this. Instead, why don’t you try one of those “boring” fonts to see if you can come up with something you like.

Combining fonts can be a tricky task and can take a trained eye to pull off. Fortunately, font designers have already created collections that work well together and if you’re not a designer, they make it easy to pull off great typography. The trick is to just stay in a family. Again, I know this sounds lame, but it works really well if you make sure the two styles you choose are very different.

For instance, I chose a Helvetica Bold Condensed and a Helvetica Light for my cover slide. Notice how different the fonts are from each other in terms of thickness. Choosing two styles that are relatively close causes visual confusion and should be avoided as a general rule of thumb. Instead, what you want is contrast and plenty of it.

Alignment and Layout

Notice a few things about the way I set up this slide. First, I used a strong left alignment for the text. As I say in just about every design article I write, center alignment should be a last resort, not a first. It tends to be the weakest text alignment that you can choose, having a hard edge increases readability considerably (notice that book pages aren’t center-aligned).

Also, notice the generous whitespace that I used. Remember that you don’t have to eat up every inch of space. Giving your text room to breathe helps your layout immensely and gives the design a clean look.

Adding an Image

At this point you might be wondering why you wasted your time reading so I could give you such plain advice. The truth is, most people that create presentations could improve them by 100% from following the advice above. However, I realize minimalism may be too extreme for some folks so let’s throw in an image to make it look nice.

Since our text is on the left, I wanted to find something a little heavy on the right. The general theme that I’ll go for is “City photos” assuming I had some sort of architecture or city-centric presentation to give. Again, you’ll have to choose iamges relevant to your own topic.

I grabbed this Flickr Creative Commons image from photographer Ben Spreng .

Now, if we just made this image our background, the text would become unreadable and we would be ditching our color scheme. What we’re going to do instead is set it on top of the colored slide and set our blending mode to Overlay. Then throw your opacity to around 45%.

As you can see, this helps the slide look much more interesting but keeps the text and colors fairly intact. It’s a simple solution that adds a lot of interest to an otherwise plain design.

Adding Content Slides

The cover may seem like it’s only a tiny part of the battle, but you’ve actually already set the tone for the entire presentation. You’ve got your theme, color scheme and fonts already in place. Now you just need to set up a few different layouts for your content.

The thing to keep in mind is to keep everything extremely simple, and that includes the level of content that you include. Apart from design, these are just good presentation tactics that you’ll learn in every public speaking class. Filling your slides with everything you’re going to say makes you unnecessary. You could just email everyone the slides and shut up.

Instead, the slides are merely meant to be a visual aid. Show a slide with your overall topic or main point, then speak the rest, without reading. Nothing is worse than watching a guy read his note cards word-for-word for thirty minutes, except perhaps watching a guy turn his back to the audience so he can actually read his slides out loud to you the whole time! You may laugh, but I’ve seen it happen folks.

For our first content slide, we’ll grab another Flickr photo and set it to the bottom portion of our slide at full bleed. Then we’ll set the top to another color from our scheme and toss in some text using the same exact formatting that we used on the cover.

See how this closely resembles the theme we’ve already established while still looking significantly different? This is they key to good presentation design: cohesiveness without redundancy.

Now for our third slide, we can simply do the inverse of the second slide with a new color and a new image .

Adding Informational Elements

It would be nice if every slide ever presented could work in a full bleed image, but the truth is that this simply isn’t practical. It will often be the case that you’re presenting graphical information or some other item that isn’t necessarily a photo.

My advice here is to try to stick as close to your theme as possible. For the slide below I flooded the entire background with a solid color from our original scheme and made a quick 3D graph with white columns (I drew a few flat boxes in Illustrator and applied a 3D effect).

As you can see, this slide is very information-focused and yet it doesn’t sacrifice the aesthetics and simplicity we’ve already established.

You’re All Set

From here you might come up with one or two more alternate slide designs and then rotate between them for the duration of your speech. The result is a presentation that is beautiful, very readable and highly professional. The bonus is that the simple, straightforward design will probably result in less work than a clip-art-filled horror show.

Most of the time, great design doesn’t mean being particularly artistic or knowing how to create amazing complex layouts. Instead, it’s about presenting information in an attractive and user-friendly way. With this goal in mind you realize that you’re probably trying way too hard if your end result is ugly. Try cutting out half or more of the elements on one of your slides and giving what’s left a strong left or right alignment with plenty of whitespace.

I hope this article has convinced you to abandon that clip art gallery once and for all. The benefits of clean, minimal design in presentations are clear: the information is easier to take in and the end result is more professional than the mess of information you typically see in presentation slides.

Of course, if you’re looking to get started quickly, flick through our collection of the best PowerPoint templates to find a beautiful set of pre-made designs!

20 Great Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design [+ Templates]

Published: January 17, 2024

When it comes to PowerPoint presentation design, there's no shortage of avenues you can take.

While all that choice — colors, formats, visuals, fonts — can feel liberating, it‘s important that you’re careful in your selection as not all design combinations add up to success.

In this blog post, I’m sharing some of my favorite PowerPoint tips and templates to help you nail your next presentation.

Table of Contents

What makes a good PowerPoint presentation?

Powerpoint design ideas, best powerpoint presentation slides, good examples of powerpoint presentation design.

In my opinion, a great PowerPoint presentation gets the point across succinctly while using a design that doesn't detract from it.

Here are some of the elements I like to keep in mind when I’m building my own.

1. Minimal Animations and Transitions

Believe it or not, animations and transitions can take away from your PowerPoint presentation. Why? Well, they distract from the content you worked so hard on.

A good PowerPoint presentation keeps the focus on your argument by keeping animations and transitions to a minimum. I suggest using them tastefully and sparingly to emphasize a point or bring attention to a certain part of an image.

2. Cohesive Color Palette

I like to refresh my memory on color theory when creating a new PowerPoint presentation.

A cohesive color palette uses complementary and analogous colors to draw the audience’s attention and help emphasize certain aspects at the right time.

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It‘s impossible for me to tell you the specific design ideas you should go after in your next PowerPoint, because, well, I don’t know what the goal of your presentation is.

Luckily, new versions of PowerPoint actually suggest ideas for you based on the content you're presenting. This can help you keep up with the latest trends in presentation design .

PowerPoint is filled with interesting boilerplate designs you can start with. To find these suggestions, open PowerPoint and click the “Design” tab in your top navigation bar. Then, on the far right side, you'll see the following choices:

3. “Accelerating Innovation in Energy,” Accenture

Balancing visual backgrounds with text isn't easy. More often than not, the text is formatted in a way that winds up getting lost in the image. Not for Accenture.

What I like: This presentation combated this issue by combining shapes and graphics to create contrast between the text and the background. Well done.

4. “Visual Design with Data,” Seth Familian

Whenever I’m tasked with presenting a lot of information in a little bit of time, things can get sort of messy. To simplify this type of presentation, I like to use a visual agenda like the one shown above.

What I like: This index clearly signifies the start and finish of each section to make it easier for the viewer to follow along. The presenter takes it further by including an additional agenda for each exercise, so that the audience knows exactly what they're supposed to do.

5. “How to Craft Your Company's Storytelling Voice,” MarketingProfs

Do you love these hand-drawn illustrations or do you love these hand-drawn illustrations? I mean, c'mon, this presentation by MarketingProf is amazing.

What I like: Certainly, it would have been easier to generate these designs online, but this approach highlights their commitment to creating an out-of-the-box piece of content. And as a result, this presentation stands out in the best way possible.

6. “Blitzscaling: Book Trailer,” Reid Hoffman

If you're going to go the minimalistic route, I’d take note of this PowerPoint presentation example from Reid Hoffman.

This clean design adheres to a simple, consistent color scheme with clean graphics peppered throughout to make the slides more visually interesting.

What I like: Overall there are no frills or unnecessary additions, which allows the informative content to take priority.

7. “Healthcare Napkins,” Dan Roam

This presentation dates back to 2009, but the design is still as good as ever. The colorful, quirky doodles help tell the story while also serving as an interesting way to illustrate data (see slides 20 and 21).

What I like: For visual learners, this approach is much more inviting than a series of slides riddled with text-heavy bullet points.

8. “One Can Be Diverse: An Essay on Diversity,” With Company

This presentation employs both powerful images and modern typography to illustrate the point.

What I like: While many of the slides contain long quotes, they are broken up in a way that makes them easily digestible. Not to mention all of the text is crisp, clean, and concise.

9. " 10 Things Your Audience Hates About Your Presentation ," Stinson

This simplistic presentation example employs several different colors and font weights, but instead of coming off as disconnected, the varied colors work with one another to create contrast and call out specific concepts.

What I like: The big, bold numbers help set the reader's expectations, as they clearly signify how far along the viewer is in the list of tips.

10. “Pixar's 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling,” Gavin McMahon

This presentation by Gavin McMahon features color in all the right places. While each of the background images boasts a bright, spotlight-like design, all the characters are intentionally blacked out.

What I like: This helps keep the focus on the tips, while still incorporating visuals. Not to mention, it's still easy for me to identify each character without the details. (I found you on slide eight, Nemo.)

11. “Facebook Engagement and Activity Report,” We Are Social

Here's another great example of data visualization in the wild.

What I like: Rather than displaying numbers and statistics straight up, this presentation calls upon interesting, colorful graphs, and charts to present the information in a way that just makes sense.

12. “The GaryVee Content Model,” Gary Vaynerchuk

This wouldn‘t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk presentation if it wasn’t a little loud, am I right?

What I like: Aside from the fact that I love the eye-catching, bright yellow background, Vaynerchuk does a great job of incorporating screenshots on each slide to create a visual tutorial that coincides with the tips. He also does a great job including a visual table of contents that shows your progress as you go .

13. “20 Tweetable Quotes to Inspire Marketing & Design Creative Genius,” IMPACT Branding & Design

We‘ve all seen our fair share of quote-chronicling presentations but that isn’t to say they were all done well. Often the background images are poor quality, the text is too small, or there isn't enough contrast.

Well, this professional presentation from IMPACT Branding & Design suffers from none of said challenges.

What I like: The colorful filters over each background image create just enough contrast for the quotes to stand out.

14. “The Great State of Design,” Stacy Kvernmo

This presentation offers up a lot of information in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.

What I like: The contrasting colors create visual interest and “pop,” and the comic images (slides 6 through 12) are used to make the information seem less buttoned-up and overwhelming.

15. “Clickbait: A Guide To Writing Un-Ignorable Headlines,” Ethos3

Not going to lie, it was the title that convinced me to click through to this presentation but the awesome design kept me there once I arrived.

What I like: This simple design adheres to a consistent color pattern and leverages bullet points and varied fonts to break up the text nicely.

16. “Digital Transformation in 50 Soundbites,” Julie Dodd

This design highlights a great alternative to the “text-over-image” display we've grown used to seeing.

What I like: By leveraging a split-screen approach to each presentation slide, Julie Dodd was able to serve up a clean, legible quote without sacrificing the power of a strong visual.

17. “Fix Your Really Bad PowerPoint,” Slide Comet

When you‘re creating a PowerPoint about how everyone’s PowerPoints stink, yours had better be terrific. The one above, based on the ebook by Seth Godin, keeps it simple without boring its audience.

What I like: Its clever combinations of fonts, together with consistent color across each slide, ensure you're neither overwhelmed nor unengaged.

18. “How Google Works,” Eric Schmidt

Simple, clever doodles tell the story of Google in a fun and creative way. This presentation reads almost like a storybook, making it easy to move from one slide to the next.

What I like: This uncluttered approach provides viewers with an easy-to-understand explanation of a complicated topic.

19. “What Really Differentiates the Best Content Marketers From The Rest,” Ross Simmonds

Let‘s be honest: These graphics are hard not to love. I especially appreciate the author’s cartoonified self-portrait that closes out the presentation. Well played, Ross Simmonds.

What I like: Rather than employing the same old stock photos, this unique design serves as a refreshing way to present information that's both valuable and fun.

20. “Be A Great Product Leader,” Adam Nash

This presentation by Adam Nash immediately draws attention by putting the company's logo first — a great move if your company is well known.

What I like: He uses popular images, such as ones of Megatron and Pinocchio, to drive his points home. In the same way, you can take advantage of popular images and media to keep your audience engaged.

PowerPoint Presentation Examples for the Best Slide Presentation

Mastering a PowerPoint presentation begins with the design itself.

Get inspired by my ideas above to create a presentation that engages your audience, builds upon your point, and helps you generate leads for your brand.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

Don't forget to share this post!

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How-To Geek

8 tips to make the best powerpoint presentations.

Want to make your PowerPoint presentations really shine? Here's how to impress and engage your audience.

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Table of contents, start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.

Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they're dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.

It all starts with identifying what we're trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?

It's here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that's easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).

I've found that it's helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway---that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time---and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it's always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren't reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.

A slideshow isn't supposed to include everything. It's an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.

This goes for text as well as images. There's nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they'll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.

Related: How to Burn Your PowerPoint to DVD

Right off the bat, we're just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it's worth considering the typeface you're using and what it's saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.

Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.

Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it's our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn't mean that we need to highlight every talking point.

Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can't, remember that there's no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It's always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.

Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.

Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.

That's not to say that you can't use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they'll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.

Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you're trying to share.

The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation---but only if you're using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you're driving a specific point home.

When considering text, don't think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.

Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you're about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren't the best choice when you're presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they'll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.

Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click "View" on the ribbon and select "Slide Sorter."

Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?

It's here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don't advance the presentation.

The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully---not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it---are the ones who will succeed.

This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn't going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.

Home Blog Presentation Ideas 23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

PowerPoint presentations are not usually known for being engaging or interactive. That’s often because most people treat their slides as if they are notes to read off  and not a tool to help empower their message.

Your presentation slides are there to help bring to life the story you are telling. They are there to provide visuals and empower your speech.

So how do you go about avoiding a presentation “snoozefest” and instead ensure you have an engaging and interactive presentation?  By making sure that you use your slides to help YOU tell your story, instead of using them as note cards to read off of.

The key thing to remember is that your presentation is there to compliment your speech, not be its focus.

In this article, we will review several presentation tips and tricks on how to become a storytelling powerhouse by building a powerful and engaging PowerPoint presentation.

Start with writing your speech outline, not with putting together slides

Use more images and less text, use high-quality images, keep the focus on you and your presentation, not the powerpoint, your presentation should be legible from anywhere in the room, use a consistent presentation design, one topic per slide, avoid information overwhelm by using the “rule of three”.

• Display one bullet at a time

Avoid unnecessary animations

• Only add content that supports your main points

Do not use PowerPoint as a teleprompter

• Never Give Out Copies of the Presentation

Re-focus the attention on you by fading into blackness

Change the tone of your voice when presenting, host an expert discussion panel, ask questions, embed videos, use live polling to get instant feedback and engage the audience.

• He kept his slides uncluttered and always strived for simplicity
• He was known to use large font size, the bigger, the better.
• He found made the complex sound simple.

He was known to practice, practice, and keep on practicing.

Summary – how to make your presentation engaging & interactive, fundamental rules to build powerful & engaging presentation slides.

Before we go into tips and tricks on how to add flair to your presentations and create effective presentations, it’s essential to get the fundamentals of your presentation right.

Your PowerPoint presentation is there to compliment your message, and the story you are telling. Before you can even put together slides, you need to identify the goal of your speech, and the key takeaways you want your audience to remember.

YOU and your speech are the focus of this presentation, not the slides – use your PowerPoint to complement your story.

Keep in mind that your slides are there to add to your speech, not distract from it.  Using too much text in your slides can be distracting and confusing to your audience. Instead, use a relevant picture with minimal text, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

This slide is not unusual, but is not a visual aid, it is more like an “eye chart”.

Aim for something simpler, easy to remember and concise, like the slides below.

Keep in mind your audience when designing your presentation, their background and aesthetics sense. You will want to avoid the default clip art and cheesy graphics on your slides.

While presenting make sure to control the presentation and the room by walking around, drawing attention to you and what you are saying.  You should occasionally stand still when referencing a slide, but never turn your back to your audience to read your slide.

You and your speech are the presentations; the slides are just there to aid you.

Most season presenters don’t use anything less than twenty-eight point font size, and even Steve Jobs was known to use nothing smaller than forty-point text fonts.

If you can’t comfortably fit all the text on your slide using 28 font size than you’re trying to say and cram too much into the slide, remember tip #1.4 – Use relevant images instead and accompany it with bullets.

Best Practice PowerPoint Presentation Tips

The job of your presentation is to help convey information as efficiently and clearly as possible. By keeping the theme and design consistent, you’re allowing the information and pictures to stand out.

However, by varying the design from slide to slide, you will be causing confusion and distraction from the focus, which is you and the information to be conveyed on the slide.

Technology can also help us in creating a consistent presentation design just by picking a topic and selecting a sample template style. This is possible thanks to the SlideModel’s AI slideshow maker .

Each slide should try to represent one topic or talking point. The goal is to keep the attention focused on your speech, and by using one slide per talking point, you make it easy for you to prepare, as well as easy for your audience to follow along with your speech.

Sometimes when creating our presentation, we can often get in our heads and try to over-explain. A simple way to avoid this is to follow the “ Rule of Three ,” a concept coined by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

The idea is to stick to only 3 main ideas that will help deliver your point.  Each of the ideas can be further broken into 3 parts to explain further. The best modern example of this “Rule of Three” can be derived from the great Apple presentations given by Steve Jobs – they were always structured around the “Rule of Three.”

Display one sentence at a time

If you are planning to include text in your slides, try to avoid bullet lists, and use one slide per sentence. Be short and concise. This best practice focuses on the idea that simple messages are easy to retain in memory. Also, each slide can follow your storytelling path, introducing the audience to each concept while you speak, instead of listing everything beforehand.

Presentation Blunders To Avoid

In reality, there is no need for animations or transitions in your slides.

It’s great to know how to turn your text into fires or how to create a transition with sparkle effects, but the reality is the focus should be on the message. Using basic or no transitions lets the content of your presentation stand out, rather than the graphics.

If you plan to use animations, make sure to use modern and professional animations that helps the audience follow the story you are telling, for example when explaining time series or changing events over time.

Only add engaging content that supports your main points

You might have a great chart, picture or even phrase you want to add, but when creating every slide, it’s crucial to ask yourself the following question.

“Does this slide help support my main point?”

If the answer is no, then remove it.  Remember, less is more.

A common crutch for rookie presenters is to use slides as their teleprompter.

First of all, you shouldn’t have that much text on your slides. If you have to read off something, prepare some index cards that fit in your hand but at all costs do not turn your back on your audience and read off of your PowerPoint.  The moment you do that, you make the presentation the focus, and lose the audience as the presenter.

Avoid Giving Out Copies of the Presentation

At least not before you deliver a killer presentation; providing copies of your presentation gives your audience a possible distraction where they can flip through the copy and ignore what you are saying.

It’s also easy for them to take your slides out of context without understanding the meaning behind each slide.  It’s OK to give a copy of the presentation, but generally it is better to give the copies AFTER you have delivered your speech. If you decide to share a copy of your presentation, the best way to do it is by  generating a QR code  for it and placing it at the end of your presentation. Those who want a copy can simply scan and download it onto their phones.

Tips To Making Your Presentation More Engaging

The point of your presentation is to help deliver a message.

When expanding on a particularly important topic that requires a lengthy explanation it’s best to fade the slide into black.  This removes any distraction from the screen and re-focuses it on you, the present speaker. Some presentation devices have a built-in black screen button, but if they don’t, you can always prepare for this by adding a black side to your presentation at the right moment.

“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

Part of making your presentation engaging is to use all the tools at your disposal to get your point across. Changing the inflection and tone of your voice as you present helps make the content and the points more memorable and engaging.

One easy and powerful way to make your presentation interactive is experts to discuss a particular topic during your presentation. This helps create a more engaging presentation and gives you the ability to facilitate and lead a discussion around your topic.

It’s best to prepare some questions for your panel but to also field questions from the audience in a question and answer format.

How To Make Your Presentation More Interactive

What happens if I ask you to think about a pink elephant?  You probably briefly think about a pink elephant, right?

Asking questions when presenting helps engage the audience, and arouse interest and curiosity.  It also has the added benefit of making people pay closer attention, in case they get called on.

So don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if rhetorical; asking a question engages a different part of our brain. It causes us to reflect rather than merely take in the information one way. So ask many of them.

Asking questions can also be an excellent way to build suspense for the next slide.

(Steve Jobs was known to ask questions during his presentations, in this slide he built suspense by asking the audience “Is there space for a device between a cell phone and a laptop?” before revealing the iPad) Source: MacWorld SF 2018

Remember the point of your presentation is to get a message across and although you are the presenter, it is completely fine to use video in your PowerPoint to enhance your presentation.  A relevant video can give you some breathing time to prepare the next slides while equally informing the audience on a particular point.

CAUTION: Be sure to test the video beforehand, and that your audience can hear it in the room.

A trending engagement tool among presenters is to use a live polling tool to allow the audience to participate and collect immediate feedback.

Using a live polling tool is a fun and interactive way to engage your audience in real-time and allow them to participate in part of your presentation.

Google Slides has a built-in Q&A feature that allows presenters to make the slide deck more interactive by providing answers to the audience’s questions. By using the Q&A feature in Google Slides, presenters can start a live Q&A session and people can ask questions directly from their devices including mobile and smartphones.

Key Takeaways from one of the best presenters, Steve Jobs

He kept his slides uncluttered and always strove for simplicity.

In this slide, you can easily see he is talking about the battery life, and it uses a simple image and a few words. Learning from Jobs, you can also make a great presentation too. Focus on the core benefit of your product and incorporate great visuals.

Source: Macworld 2008

SlideModel.com can help to reproduce high-impact slides like these, keeping your audience engagement.

He was known to use large font sizes, the bigger, the better

A big font makes it hard to miss the message on the slide, and allows the audience to focus on the presenter while clearing the understanding what the point of the slide is.

He found made the complex sound simple

When explaining a list of features, he used a simple image and lines or simple tables to provide visual cues to his talking points.

(This particular slide is referencing the iMac features)

What made Steve Jobs the master of presentation, was the ritual of practicing with his team, and this is simple yet often overlooked by many presenters.  It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking you don’t need to practice because you know the material so well.

While all these tips will help you create a truly powerful presentation , it can only achieve if applied correctly.

It’s important to remember when trying to deliver an amazing experience, you should be thoroughly prepared. This way, you can elevate your content presentation, convey your message effectively and captivate your audience.

This includes having your research cited, your presentation rehearsed.  Don’t just rehearse your slides, also take time to practice your delivery, and your tone.  The more you rehearse, the more relaxed you will be when delivering. The more confident you will feel.

While we can’t help you with the practice of your next presentation, we can help you by making sure you look good, and that you have a great design and cohesiveness.

You focus on the message and content; we’ll focus on making you look good.

Have a tip you would like to include?  Be sure to mention it in the comments!

Like this article? Please share

Audience, Engaging, Feedback, Interactive, Poll, Rule of Three, Steve Jobs Filed under Presentation Ideas

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2 Responses to “23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations”

Very great advices!

Greetings ! A compact composed communication for the host to have an impact -VOICE

Thank You ?

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How to make a slide show

Learn how to make a slide show with photos, videos, music, and custom settings using a slide show maker.

Learn how to make a slide show with PowerPoint

Discover how to make a slide show with photos, videos, music, and custom settings using a slide show app like PowerPoint.

What is a slide show maker?

To create a slide show, you’ll want to use a slide show maker—or slide show app—which is a software program or online service that enables you create digital slide shows with text, photos, videos, music, and other special effects. The full range of slide show features and functionality varies from program to program.

Once you’ve created a slide show, it can be published on the internet or shared with others as a video file. Additionally, you can use slide shows to create dynamic, interactive content on websites.

Slide show software can be used for a variety of purposes, such as creating presentations for work, school, and even your personal life. For instance, slide shows are often used to:

Display photos during an event

Slide shows are a great way to share photos and videos with guests at a wedding, birthday, or other special event.

Create a digital photo album

Some slide shows are created for personal reasons, such as sharing important memories with family or friends.

Highlight products or services

Businesses can use slide shows to showcase their products, promote special offers and sales, or pitch their services to potential clients.

Enhance teaching, training, and public speaking

Slide shows can also provide helpful visuals in educational settings, classroom presentations, and public speaking forums.

What you need to make a slide show

When it comes to creating a slide show, there are a few things you'll need to get started. First and foremost, you'll need a device equipped with presentation software or access to an online slide show app. Secondly, you’ll need a way to display your slide show, which usually means connecting your device to a projector or big screen TV. Beyond that, you’ll need some visual aids and other media to bring your slide show to life.

Explore each of these slide show requirements in more detail:

Devices and equipment —To create a slide show, you’ll use a computer or other device—such as a tablet or mobile phone—with PowerPoint or a similar program installed. You will also need a way to project the slides onto a screen or wall. This can be done with a projector, but if you don't have one available, you can use your TV or computer monitor. Simply connect your device to the TV or monitor using an HDMI cable and select the correct input. Your slides will now be projected onto the screen.

Media —Of course, creating a slide show requires media that adds visual and even audio elements to your presentation. This can be anything from photos and videos to music and text. You can use search engines to find copyright-free media to use in your slide show.

Another option is to purchase royalty-free stock footage, images, and audio files from online media libraries. This could be a bit more expensive, but it guarantees that you have the legal right to use the media in your presentation.

Finally, you can also use your own videos, images, and even music. While this can be a time-consuming process, it does allow you to create custom content specifically for your slide show.

Slide show creator —To bring your slide show together, you’ll need a slide show creator. The slide show software you choose will depend on your presentation requirements and preferences. There are many slide show makers on the market, with Microsoft PowerPoint being one of the most popular and widely used programs globally.

How to choose a slide show maker

When choosing slide show software, it's important to consider the features and specifications that are most important to you. Some of the questions you might ask when choosing a slide show maker include:

• How easy is the software to use?
• Is the software Mac or PC compatible?
• Can I access and edit my slide show on the cloud?
• What kind of slide shows can be created with the software?
• How many photos and/or videos can be included in a slide show?
• Can text and other elements be added to slide shows?
• Are transitions and effects available for slide shows?
• Is music accompaniment an option?
• What are the options for saving and sharing your slide show?

Building a slide show doesn't have to be difficult. With the right software, you can create an engaging presentation in no time.

Six steps for creating a slide show

1. Plan your slide show

Before getting too deep into your slide show project, it’s a good idea to select and save the photos and videos you want to use. This helps you create a slide show more efficiently and purposefully, ensuring a better outcome.

4. Import media

Start adding photos, videos, and other desired media to your slides. You can upload these from your device or online media libraries. If you planned your slide show in advance, you should have all your media saved in one place.

2. Launch your slide show app

Once you’ve decided on a slide show maker, you’ll want to launch the app from whatever device you’ll be using to create your presentation.

5. Add text, music, and transitions

After you’ve arranged the visuals in your slide show, you can provide additional information and communicate sentiment using custom text, music, and timed slide transitions.

3. Choose your theme

Most slide show software offers a variety of pre-set themes, colors, and designs. You can choose one that best suits your slide show or create a custom theme using the program’s various tools and features.

6. Record, save, and share your slide show

Now you’re ready to record your slide show, which can include a voiceover or Cameo . Once your slide show is complete, you can save it as a video to your device or to the cloud, such as OneDrive . You can access your saved slide show at any time to display at events, use in meetings, share online, or send directly to other people.

How to make a slide show with photos

Adding photos to your slide show is a great way to enliven your presentation and make it more visually interesting. Here are a few different ways you can add photos to your slide show in PowerPoint.

Add photos from your device

Whether you’re using a computer, tablet, phone, or other device, you can use photos that are saved to your device to create your slide show. In PowerPoint, simply select “Insert” then “Pictures” from the program menu, then choose “This Device.” This will open your photo library and allow you to find the photos you want to use. Once you’ve selected the photos that you want to import, just click on the "Insert" button and they will be added to your slide show. If you’re using a pre-made theme, you can also right-click the image in the slide show and select “Change Picture.” Again, you will choose “This Device” to access your photo library. After inserting your photo, you can reposition it on your slide or resize it however you like.

Use stock photos

Another way to add photos in PowerPoint is to follow the same process you would when adding photos from your device, but when prompted to choose your photo source, select “From Stock Images” instead of “This Device.” This will display a library of photos that you can use in your slide show without worrying about copyright infringement. There are thousands of stock images available in most slide show maker programs. Once the library is open, you can explore existing photo categories or use keywords to search for photos that fit your needs.

Explore online photo sources

Online photos are images you can insert into a PowerPoint slide show directly from the internet, as opposed to using those you have saved on your device. This is a convenient option if you don't have photos already prepared for your slide show, or if you can’t find the right kind of photo in the stock image library. However, there are some potential risks associated with using online photos, namely that you must be careful to use royalty-free images so not to infringe on any copyrights. In PowerPoint, there is a filtering option to ensure your search results only show royalty-free photos. Inserting photos from online sources follows the same process as the previous two methods, but this time, you’ll select “From Online Sources.”

How to add videos, music, and text

How to add videos to PowerPoint slide shows

Adding videos to your slide show involves accessing videos from your device, a stock video library, or online video sources—just as you would when adding photos. In this case, however, you’ll navigate to the menu in PowerPoint and select “Insert,” followed by “Media,” then “Video.” Once your video appears on your slide, you can resize or reposition it to fit your presentation needs. You can also set your video to play automatically in the slide show by selecting “Playback” on the menu and choosing “Start Automatically.”

How to add music to PowerPoint slide shows

Much like adding videos, you can add music to individual slides in PowerPoint by navigating to “Insert” on the menu, then “Media,” and finally “Audio.” You can then import music from your device, or you can record your own audio directly in PowerPoint. However, if you want your audio to play across multiple slides in your presentation—for example, as background music for a slide show—you’ll have to take a couple of extra steps. Once you’ve imported your audio file, select “Playback” from the menu and choose the “Play in Background” option. Your music will now play across all slides. You can set one song to loop for the duration of the slide show, or you can add more songs to play continuously throughout the slide show.

How to add text to PowerPoint slide shows

Premade themes in PowerPoint make adding text slide shows easy. On slides that already have templated content, you can simply click on the text and begin editing. In addition to changing what the text says, you can resize, recolor, reposition, and add special effects to the text. Of course, you can also change the font—or style—of the text. Most of this can be done from the “Home” tab on the menu while certain effects, such as shadows, can be found on the “Shape Format” tab. If you’re designing your presentation slides from scratch, or want to create additional text, find “Insert” on the menu, then choose “Text Box” or “Word Art,” depending on your desired text effect.

Discover custom slide show settings

Add even more effects to your PowerPoint slide show with custom settings like timing, transitions, and looping.

Set slide show timing

Adding timing to your slide show is a great way to control the pacing and flow of your presentation. To add timing in PowerPoint, go to the "Transitions" tab on the menu and find the "Advance Slide" area. Make sure the box next to “After:” is checked, then input the amount of time you’d like each slide to appear on-screen. The slides will automatically advance, creating a movie-like effect that’s great for events and special occasions.

Create slide show transitions

Now that you’ve added automatic timing to your slide show, you can make it more visually appealing by creating slide transitions. Transitions are special effects that allow you to animate the way your slides change from one to the next, and there are a variety of different transitions in PowerPoint that you can choose from. You can add these transitions to your slide show from the "Transitions” tab. From there, you’ll select the transition you want to add. To preview the transition, simply click on it. You can click “Apply To All” to automatically add the same transition to every slide in your slide show, or you can manually add different transitions to different slides.

Loop your slide show

If you want your slide show to play continuously until you choose to turn it off, you can set your PowerPoint presentation to loop. This will ensure your slide show automatically starts over from the beginning once it reaches the end. To get started, navigate to the “Slide Show” tab on the menu and select “Set Up Slide Show.” When the settings window opens, check the box next to “Loop continuously until ‘ESC’” and then click “OK.” When you’re ready to turn your slide show off, simply press the Esc key on your keyboard.

Slide show template and theme tips

Search themes and templates online.

With numerous slide show themes and templates available, it’s easy to find one that fits your needs.

Customize your design

If you can’t find the perfect theme or template, you can change things like colors and fonts.

Build a custom template

If you want a blueprint to use with future slide shows, you can create your own template.

Add new slides

If you need more slides, you can choose a specific layout and your theme will be carried over.

Edit your slide layouts

Even when using a theme or template, you can rearrange slide content to highlight key information.

Add photos, videos, and text

Themes and templates make adding media easy since most slides have designated content areas.

Change or resize your fonts

If your theme’s font is too small, you can resize it or choose a new font to make it easy to read.

Reorder your slide show

Some themes and templates have a predefined sequence, but you can reorder slides to meet your needs.

Create your own slide show

Slide shows are a great way to engage your audience and present important information. Whether you're creating a slide show for personal or professional reasons, slide shows are an essential tool for anyone who wants to share information in a visually appealing manner.

Discover more ways to improve your slide show

What options are available to create a slide show?

Slide show makers come in many forms. Some slide show software can only be used on specific devices, while other slide show creators can be accessed via the cloud from any device at any time.

It’s a good idea to evaluate a variety of slide show makers to ensure that you find one with all the features you need. For instance, some slide show software skews toward business use cases and others toward personal.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular slide show app that allows you to save presentations to your device or the cloud, and is widely used for personal, professional, and educational purposes.

Frequently asked questions

What are slide show apps and software.

Slide show apps and software are used to create and share slide shows. Slide show programs are typically used to communicate information, diagrams, plans, or processes. They can also be used to display photos and videos at events or retail stores. Usually, slide show makers have a range of built-in features and layouts, making them easy to use, regardless of technical skill levels.

What should a slide show include?

An effective slide show should be engaging, visually appealing, and informative. To achieve this, you'll want to make sure to include the following elements:

• A catchy headline or title. This will help grab your audience's attention and set the tone for the rest of your presentation.
• A variety of images. Don't just rely on text—incorporate photos, illustrations, or even video to maximize viewership.
• Bullet points or short blocks of text. Keep your slide content concise and easy to digest; too much information will only overwhelm your viewers.

How do I make a picture slide show?

There are a few different ways to make picture slide shows. You can use online programs, or you can create a slide show directly on your computer, phone, tablet, or other device using slide show software. Some programs, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, can be accessed on your personal device and on the cloud.

How long should a slide show be?

The length of your slide show will depend on several factors, such as the topic of your presentation, the audience you're presenting to, and the amount of time you have. That said, slide shows are generally between five and ten minutes long.

How can I make a slide show better?

Here are a few tips to make your slide show more engaging:

• Add images, videos, and music to bring your slide show to life.
• Use a font that is easy to read from a distance.
• Try not to use too many words on each slide.
• Use custom transitions and timing to make your slide show flow.
• Ensure a cohesive slide show by using a theme or template.
• For live presentations, practice with the Speaker Coach feature .

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Animate Specific Parts of a PowerPoint Chart

Bring graphs to life in a slideshow

• Brock University

When your PowerPoint presentation is full of data and charts, liven up your slideshow by animating the chart elements. Make different parts of the chart stand out while you talk about them.

Instructions in this article apply to PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, PowerPoint 2019, PowerPoint 2016, PowerPoint 2013, and PowerPoint 2010.

Animate Chart Elements

The default setting for the animation of a PowerPoint chart is to apply the animation to the whole chart. In this scenario, the chart moves all at once, with no specific focus on anything in particular. However, different aspects of the chart can be shown separately by applying animations to individual chart elements.

Open a PowerPoint slide containing a chart (or insert a chart onto a slide ).

This article uses a column chart in the example, but other types of charts work similarly. If you don't have a column chart, select Insert > Chart > Column .

Select a blank area of the chart to select the entire chart.

Select the Animations tab.

In the Advanced Animation group, select Add Animation .

Choose one of the entry animation options in the first group at the top of the screen, such as Appear or Dissolve In .

Select Effect Options and choose one of the five options listed.

Experiment with the different Effect Options to decide which method works best with your chart. These are the five choices:

• Choose As One Object to apply a single animation to the entire chart. This is the default setting.
• Choose By Series to animate the chart using the legend at the bottom of the chart.  
• Choose By Category to use the information shown along the X-axis. This information has headings along the bottom of the chart.
• Choose By Element in Series to animate one element in a series at a time. In the example of a column chart, the corresponding column in the chart for each topic heading listed in the legend animates one after the other. The next topic heading column in the legend animates one after another.
• Choose By Element in Category to animate one element in a category at a time. The corresponding chart column for each topic heading listed as a category shown along the bottom of the chart displays before going on to the next category heading column.

Customize Chart Animations

After you select an animation, adjust the timing of the individual steps of the animation.

Select Animations > Animation Pane to open the Animation Pane.

Select the drop-down arrow below the chart listing to view the individual steps of the animation option you chose.

Select the drop-down arrow for an animation and choose Timing .

Select a Delay time for each step and select OK when you're finished.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each chart element.

Select Animations > Preview to see your animation.

Adjust the time of each animation step in the Timing tab to adjust the animation speed, making it faster or slowing it down.

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