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Choose a design concept
2
Create a template
3
Apply a theme
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Here’s what else to consider
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- Tim Lobanov Employee Reward and People Programmes expert. 3
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1 Choose a design concept
Before you start creating your template, you need to have a clear idea of what you want your slides to communicate and how you want them to look. A design concept is a visual theme or style that reflects your message, audience, and purpose. You can use different sources of inspiration to find a design concept, such as your brand identity, your content topic, your industry trends, or your personal preferences. For example, if you are presenting about sustainability, you might choose a design concept that uses green colors, natural images, and organic shapes.
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- Tim Lobanov Employee Reward and People Programmes expert.
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And at the end of the day, there are tons of free resources online, feel free to ask your uncle Google once in a while! From the top of my head, you can start with Slido and Canva.
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2 Create a template
When you have a design concept in mind, you can create a template for your slides. A template is a file that contains slide layouts that you can customize for your presentation. To create a template, you need to use a slide design software, such as PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote. If you want to start from scratch, open a new file and select the blank slide layout. Then add placeholders for the elements you want to include on your slides, such as title, text, image, chart, or video. You can resize and position the placeholders as well as format them to your preference. Finally, save the file as a template format, such as .potx for PowerPoint, .gslides for Google Slides, or .kth for Keynote. If you’d rather modify an existing template, open the template file and select the slide layout you want to change. Edit the placeholders and background as desired before saving the file as a template format with a different name. Repeat these steps for each slide layout you want to create or edit.
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- Tim Lobanov Employee Reward and People Programmes expert.
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This step might sound like too much work in our busy lives, but I implore you to consider it an investment. You're spending a bit more time now to save an enormous amount of time every time you create a presentation in the future.
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When you create a template, be very conscious about the sizes of text if you use any (as written above - if your deck is made for an oral presentation, you should get rid of text). The bigger the text size, the more attention it gets. Your most important takeaway should ideally get the most attention – and thus the biggest text size. If you use titles, your title should summarize the key message (as opposed to generic titles like "Product", "Solution", etc.).
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3 Apply a theme
After you have created your template, you can apply a theme to your slides. A theme is a set of colors, fonts, and effects that you can use to change the appearance of your template. You can either use a built-in theme or create a custom one. To use a built-in theme, open your template file and select the Design tab. Then choose a theme from the gallery and adjust the options like variant, color scheme, font set, or effect set. To create a custom theme, open the Design tab and click on the Customize button. Select Colors, Fonts, or Effects and modify the settings according to your preference. Save the custom theme with a name and apply it to your slides. This way, you can make your presentations more consistent, professional, and memorable while saving time and effort by reusing and adapting your templates and themes for different purposes and audiences.
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4 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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- Tim Lobanov Employee Reward and People Programmes expert.
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Of course, most of us work in organisations that will have all this done for all employees already. So here are a few extra tips that will make your standard internal company presentation pop (and others won't even realise why your presentations are so good):- Align all text boxes and images perfectly, leaving nothing out of place. - Combine icons (INSERT > ICONS) and shapes (INSERT > SHAPES) to give sort of custom-made "logos" for each of your sections.- Use SmartArt (INSERT > SMARTART) to illustrate your points; it's very straightforward to use but adds a very valuable visual since that is what most people pick up most.
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