A successful PowerPoint presentation is a skill that any professional can learn. So, what’s the issue?
It’s really simple to make a mistake. A poor PowerPoint presentation may detract from the wonderful material you’re presenting to stakeholders on your team, from poor color choices to unclear slides.
That is why it is critical to understand how to build a PowerPoint presentation from the ground up, starting with your slides. Even if you’ve used PowerPoint before, a refresher can help you create a more appealing, professional presentation. Let’s get this started.
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Here are some creative PowerPoint presentation tips that can help you to get started!
Table of Contents
1. Create your slides with custom size
While the default slide size is typically sufficient for most presentations, it may need to be adjusted for bigger presentations on oddly shaped monitors. If you need to, here’s how to do it.
- Select File in the upper-left corner.
- Choose Page Setup.
- Enter the desired background height and width, then click OK.
- A dialogue window will open. If you wish to resize your content, click Scale; otherwise, click Don’t Scale. We recommend selecting Don’t Scale and then correcting minor layout concerns manually.
You can save yourself a hassle by resizing your slides before adding any items to them. Otherwise, your objects’ dimensions will become distorted.
2. Play with your slide template design
Sometimes it is far simpler to alter your PowerPoint template before you begin, so you don’t have to develop each presentation by hand. This is how you do it.
- In the top menu, click View.
- Select Master.
- Choose Slide Master from the drop-down menu.
- Make any necessary adjustments, then click Close Master on the top ribbon. That template will be used for all current and future slides in that presentation.
3. Take care of the typography in your slides
Many people underestimate the power of typography, yet selecting the appropriate font is critical. Your audience’s view can be influenced by the perception of your font type and size. Choosing the proper font allows you to show consistent brand identity and professionalism.
Some typefaces are considered clean and professional, however, this does not imply that they are uninteresting. A typical error is believing that your font isn’t ‘exciting’ enough, which may lead you to choose a typeface that detracts from your overall message. We suggest using basic serif and sans-serif fonts. Script typefaces should be avoided due to possible reading concerns.
4. Adjust the alignment of the objects
The key to having your presentation seem clean and professional is to have correctly aligned things on it. You can manually align your graphics, but we all know how that usually goes.
You’re attempting to keep all of your things in the center of your slide, but dragging them there still doesn’t seem quite right. Put an end to your guessing game and let PowerPoint do its thing with this technique.
To align numerous items, follow these steps:
- Hold down Shift and click on all of the objects to select them all.
- In the top options bar, select Arrange, then Align or Distribute.
- Select the type of alignment you want.
5. Leverage the powers of PowerPoint Shapes
Many users are unaware of how versatile PowerPoint’s shape tools have grown. When combined with Microsoft’s enhanced format possibilities, the potential for an excellent design using shapes is easily accessible. PowerPoint offers a plethora of amazing design alternatives in addition to the usual rectangle, oval, and rounded rectangle shapes.
Today’s shapes have a highly useful Smart Shapes capability that allows you to quickly construct diagrams and flow charts. These capabilities are particularly useful given that PowerPoint is a visual medium. Though graphs and bullet lists are tedious, consider using shapes to assist explain your information more effectively.
6. Experiment by creating custom shapes
When you’ve finished drawing a form, right-click and choose Edit Points. You can construct custom shapes that match your individual needs by altering points. For example, you may alter arrows to meet your desired proportions.
Another possibility is to merge two forms. Select the two forms you want to work with, then click Shape Format on the top ribbon. Select Merge Shapes.
You’ll see a number of alternatives.
- Combine: It generates a custom design by cutting off overlapping areas of the two prior designs.
- Union: It results in a totally integrated form.
- Intersect: It constructs a form using just the overlapping regions of the preceding two shapes.
- Subtract: It separates the overlapping portions of two shapes.
- Fragment: It will divide your shape into sections based on where they intersect.
You can generate precisely measured customized forms by utilizing these tools rather than attempting to adjust points exactly.
7. Make your presentations more engaging by using GIFs
GIFs are animated graphics that loop and can be used to express an emotion, concept, or information, among other things. GIFs are used in PowerPoint presentations to make them more interesting or to illustrate a topic quickly. GIFs are easy to use in your presentations. Simply follow these steps to do so:
- Download and save the desired GIF.
- Navigate to the slide where you wish the GIF to appear.
- Click on the Home tab and select Insert or Picture.
- Select Picture from the Picture drop-down menu.
- Navigate to the location where you stored your GIF and select it. Then click Insert.
- It will start playing immediately as soon as you insert it.
8. Embed Multimedia in your Presentations
PowerPoint allows you to embed video and audio resources in your presentation or link to them from elsewhere. If possible, embed these files; however, if you use a Mac, you cannot embed the video.
When using PowerPoint for Mac, keep the video and audio files in the same subfolder as the PowerPoint presentation. Upload video or audio files only after the presentation and its accompanying folder have been saved to a portable drive’s permanent folder.
Wrapping It Up
After you’ve perfected the style, design, and presenting methods, you can do a lot more with PowerPoint than just presentations for your audience. PowerPoint as well as other presentation software are extremely flexible and should not be underestimated. You can make presentations that will impress your audience by using a great template.
