However, I realize minimalism may be too extreme for some folks so let’s throw in an image to make it look nice. The truth is, most people that create presentations could improve them by 100% from following the advice above. Adding an ImageĪt this point you might be wondering why you wasted your time reading so I could give you such plain advice. Giving your text room to breathe helps your layout immensely and gives the design a clean look. Remember that you don’t have to eat up every inch of space. 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).Īlso, notice the generous whitespace that I used. As I say in just about every design article I write, center alignment should be a last resort, not a first. First, I used a strong left alignment for the text. Notice a few things about the way I set up this slide. This inevitably leads to the use of Comic Sans or some other equally hideous font. The tendency is to think that most fonts are “boring” and to look around for something exciting and fun. Choosing a Fontįont choice is a major issue for non-designers. 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).
HOW TO PUT A BACKGROUND IMAGE IN A POWERPOINT 2004 TEMPLATE PROFESSIONAL
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. One trick that designers often use in presentations is to leverage the color scheme as heavily as possible. Now that we have a color scheme, the design work is going to be much simpler. It’s a bit like having a palette of colors to dip your paintbrush in. This way I can quickly activate the layer, eyedropper the color I want, then hide the layer and get back to work. 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. 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. This scheme was featured on the home page and looked like a great place to start for our presentation design.
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.Īs luck would have it, I liked the very first color scheme I saw upon opening Color.
When I need to quickly find several colors that go together I usually start with Adobe Color CC. Choosing A Color Schemeīefore 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. Your image, font, color and layout selection shouldn’t necessarily match mine but instead reflect the topic and content you’re working with. I’ll be running with a basic theme, but the textual information will be entirely placeholder copy. The reason that I bring this up is that I don’t really have an actual presentation in mind for this project. 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). Ideally, you’ll have the topic and much or all of the content outlined before you even think about design.
I usually make a big deal about content preceding design, and presentations are no exception. Animated PPT Templates Fully Animated BeMind Minimal Template PowerPoint Maximus Template PowerPoint The X Note PowerPoint Modern PPT Templates New & Innovative Ciri Template PowerPointĮxplore PowerPoint Templates A Word About Content