PowerPoint Templates: 4 Tips for Creating Your Own Design

Great content can easily be buried under mediocre PowerPoint designs. It’s likely that majority of your audience are visual learners, and the standard bullet point presentation will easily pass over their heads. Using PowerPoint templates that are tailored to support your content is a much better option.

You can choose to download PowerPoint templates online. You’ll find plenty of unique designs if you know where to look. However, if you want to make sure that your design perfectly complements your presentation, try these tips for customizing PowerPoint templates.

You don’t have to start from scratch.

Unless you’ve conceptualized how you want your presentation to look, starting out with a blank slide can be quite daunting. As is messing around with PowerPoint’s Slide Master function is time-consuming. Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch with your PowerPoint templates. You can always start with any of the default PowerPoint themes or download from Microsoft.com and simply customize its color scheme and background.

Here are just some of the things you can do:

Instead of using solid colors for backgrounds, you can give your slides an interesting gradient effect. (Right Click on the slide and choose Format Background. In the dialog box, choose the Gradient Fill option.)
Use high-quality images as background for a few select slides. Choose images that are simple, with colors that match the rest of your slides. It should also go without saying that they have to be related to the theme of your presentation.
Use design programs like Pixie and Adobe Kuler to be able to choose colors schemes that are coherent with the rest of your PowerPoint template.

Give images a unified look with photo-editing tools.

The Internet has a wealth of images you can use for your PowerPoint templates. But choosing images from several sources can give your PowerPoint design a disjointed look. Some images might seem too saturated, while others might look too dark.

Give your pictures a unified look by making necessary adjustments and corrections with photo-editing tools. You can use Photoshop or web-based applications like PicMonkey. However, the best option, if you’re pressed for time is to just use PowerPoint. Simply click on the image you want to edit and go to the Picture Tools Format tab.

Be mindful of white space.

Whenever you want to design your PowerPoint templates, just keep in mind the importance of white space. Leave enough blank spaces to allow your content to stand out. Too much clutter isn’t only difficult on the eyes, it’s also distracting the audience from your message.

Find inspiration from other sources.

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, you can source for inspiration from PowerPoint design experts.

View samples of our work here, and you’re sure to find something that will help your presentation.

There’s inspiration to be found everywhere. The best thing to remember when creating your own design—regardless if it’s for PowerPoint templates or something else—is to keep an open mind.