Things to consider before creating a PowerPoint template

A PowerPoint template is like the foundation of a building. It sits in the background of your PowerPoint presentations and ensures your formatting, colours, fonts and themes are consistent as you create your slides. The template provides a solid base and all the important ingredients you’ll need to start preparing your presentation without having to reinvent the wheel each time you start a new presentation.

Nearly all companies that have a brand and marketing strategy work from a corporate PowerPoint template because it comes with numerous benefits.

At Slidesho, we have many clients who require new templates to be created or old templates to be redesigned.

Before you embark on creating a new template for your business, certain factors need to be considered. Once you have defined these factors, it will help you (or your presentation design specialist) to create a template with the perfect masters and functionality.

Here are 4 recommendations that will assist in the process.

1. What type of presentation are you after?

It’s important to be clear on what you will be using your presentations for. Will it be for -

• Sales

• Education and Training

• Pitch

• Webinars

• Board Meetings

• Documents for printing, etc.

2. What type of master slides do you require?

Knowing which master slides you require, and how many, will help you greatly when creating your template. Examples of master slides are -

• Front cover

• Divider slide

• Agenda slide

• Back cover

• Content slide

• Or any other specific slide types that are specific to your needs

3. Do you have brand guidelines?

Each PowerPoint template will have a built-in theme which is primarily dictated by your brand guidelines. This is what gives your presentation a designer look and feel. The theme will tell PowerPoint what to use for your colour palette, fonts, matching backgrounds and effects.

4. Is there a consistent pattern to your presentation?

Consider all your previous and current company presentations. Do they run to a similar model? Do they contain –

• Graphs and tables

• Timelines

• Organisational charts

• Any proprietary graphics that are specific to your industry, etc.

If so, it would be advantageous (from a time-saving perspective) to incorporate these into your template.

In Conclusion

To get the full potential out of a template, it needs to be set up correctly. This is where a Presentation Designer is worth their weight in gold.

Some common mistakes we see that people make when creating templates are –

• The template is incomplete and may only contain a cover page and one text page. If your presentation is comprehensive and requires variation, you’ll want to ensure that the masters include an agenda slide, divider or chapter slides, a closing slide with contact details, and various layout options for content. An incomplete template will cause you frustration and can lead to inconsistent looking slides, not to mention a lot of wasted time.

• The slide masters haven’t been correctly set up, placeholders for text, graphs, and tables are not correctly defined, and the brand assets are not in the master but rather on the actual slides.

• Brand colours and fonts have not been programmed into the template.

We see many presentations at Slidesho and unfortunately, one of the biggest mistakes relating to PowerPoint templates is that often there isn’t one! We can’t emphasise enough on their level of effectiveness.

Do you need stylish and effective PowerPoint templates created? Contact the PowerPoint presentation design experts at Slidesh today!