17 PowerPoint Presentation Ideas From Professional Presenters [+ Templates]

PowerPoint displays will be skilled, engaging, and actually assist your viewers bear in mind your message.

In case you don’t have a lot expertise, that’s okay — I’m going to arm you with PowerPoint design ideas from professional presenters, the steps it is advisable to construct a fascinating deck, and templates that will help you nail nice slide design.

Obtain Now

Buckle up for quite a lot of step-by-step explanations in addition to ideas and methods that will help you begin mastering this program. There are extra assets woven in, and also you’ll discover skilled views from different HubSpotters alongside the way in which.

Desk of Contents

Microsoft PowerPoint is sort of a check of fundamental skilled abilities, and every PowerPoint is mainly a presentation made from a number of slides.

Profitable PowerPoints rely on three major components: your command of PowerPoint’s design instruments, your consideration to presentation processes, and being constant together with your model.

Preserve these in thoughts as we leap into PowerPoint’s capabilities.

Getting Began

1. Open PowerPoint and click on ‘New.’

A web page with templates will often open mechanically, but when not, go to the highest left pane of your display screen and click on New. In case you’ve already created a presentation, choose Open and then double-click the icon to open the prevailing file.

Picture Supply

2. Select a theme or create your personal.

Microsoft presents built-in themes and coloration variations that will help you design your slides with a cohesive look. To select from these pre-built themes, select the File tab once more, choose New, select one of many choices, and click on Create.

Picture Supply

There may be additionally an possibility to pick out a clean presentation should you desire to begin from scratch. With this feature you should utilize PowerPoint parts, your design sense, and your model’s coloration palette to make your personal theme.

Creating PowerPoint Slides

3. Insert a slide.

Insert a brand new slide by clicking on the House tab after which the New Slide button. Think about what content material you wish to placed on the slide, together with heading, textual content, and imagery.

Picture Supply

4. Create quite a lot of slides for various functions.

You don’t wish to current the identical actual slide every time, simply with totally different content material on it. This could bore your viewers, so just remember to create a number of variations.

Think about what sort of multimedia you’ll be utilizing, and select or create totally different layouts accordingly. At minimal, you’ll want:

• A title slide
• An agenda or desk of contents slide
• A slide that introduces the speaker
• Numerous content material slides

5. Use the Duplicate characteristic to avoid wasting you time.

There’s no have to create these designs again and again. Now that you’ve just a few to attract from, merely duplicate them earlier than inputting your content material:

• On the left pane, right-click the thumbnail of the slide you wish to duplicate.
• Select Duplicate Slide from the pop-up menu.

It will mechanically add a duplicate of this slide to the presentation. From there, you’ll be able to customise it in your wants.

6. Add images to your slide.

Picture Supply

Add photos by clicking Insert and clicking the Photos icon. You’ll be able to add different parts through the use of options within the House and Insert tabs on the highest ribbon. Discover your format by dragging parts round.

7. Add transitions to your slides (elective).

When executed effectively, transitions can add a bit of little bit of motion and showmanship to your presentation. PowerPoint has a number of transitions inbuilt so that you can select from.

Picture Supply

Choose the Transitions tab from the highest ribbon. Choose a transition for it to preview in your display screen. To customise it additional, click on Impact Choices and play with the options to search out one thing that fits your liking. To take away a transition, choose Transitions and click on None.

8. Add animations to your slides (elective).

Like transitions, animations can add motion, reveal info, and assist you underscore the factors you wish to hit throughout your speech. To animate a component, comply with these steps:

• Choose the component you need animated by clicking on it.
• Select Animations from the highest ribbon.
• You may have the choice to select from a number of results displayed within the ribbon.
• Clicking on one will provide you with a preview.
• To customise the animation, choose Impact Choices.
• To take away an animation, click on None within the ribbon.

You may even have the choice to maneuver animations round as you edit your slides by clicking on the Animation Pane button, then reordering the animations within the pop-up record.

Ending Up Your Presentation

9. Save your presentation.

Click on File and Save, ensuring to specify the place you need your PowerPoint to be saved. In case you’re utilizing your slides for training or instructing, it could possibly be helpful to convert your presentation to a web based course.

10. Run your presentation.

At all times do a trial run to make sure that your slides are arrange correctly and your animations fireplace the way in which you anticipate them to.

To current your PowerPoint, go to the Slide Present tab and click on Play from Begin. The slide will cowl your entire display screen in order that your viewers (on this case, you) is solely centered on the visible parts of your presentation.

11. Advance the slides.

Everytime you’re in presentation mode and also you’re executed with one slide, click on your mouse to advance to the subsequent slide.

Picture Supply

To maintain it skilled, listed below are some key issues to look out for:

• Ensure that any preset themes complement your wants earlier than you undertake them.
• Keep away from Microsoft Workplace’s default fonts, Calibri and Cambria — they’ll make the presentation really feel underwhelming.
• Professionals ought to by no means use PowerPoint’s motion sounds.
• PowerPoint makes bulleting automated. Bullets are sometimes applicable, however not all the time.
• All shapes begin blue with a small shadow. Take away this shadow if it isn’t wanted, and don’t depart shapes default blue — it reads as a mistake to different PowerPoint customers.

The best option to know you’re getting it proper is to obtain some templates. We provide 10 free templates that you just’re welcome to check out. Even should you don’t find yourself utilizing them, you’ll get a way for finest design practices.

2. Create customized slide sizes.

Default slide sizes work for many displays, however you could want to regulate it for bigger displays and/or weirdly-sized shows. Here is how:

• Within the top-left nook, select File.
• Choose Web page Setup.
• Sort the peak and width of the background you need, and click on OK.
• A dialogue field will seem. Click on Scale if you wish to additionally resize your content material, or Don’t Scale if not. We suggest clicking Don’t Scale, then manually adjusting minor format points.

Professional Tip: You’ll be able to keep away from a headache should you resize your slides earlier than you add any objects to them. In any other case, the size of your objects will change into skewed.

3. Edit your slide template design.

It‘s a lot simpler to edit your underlying PowerPoint template earlier than you begin — this manner, you don’t should design every slide by hand. Here is how:

• Choose View within the prime navigation.
• Click on Grasp.
• Within the drop-down, click on Slide Grasp.
• Make any adjustments you want, then click on Shut Grasp within the prime ribbon. All present and future slides in that presentation will use that template.

4. Write textual content together with your viewers in thoughts.

Keep in mind that no matter else your PowerPoint presentation does, it must help the unbelievable content material you’re sharing with stakeholders.

A big a part of a PowerPoint’s content material is textual content, and nice copy could make or break your presentation.

Consider your written work from just a few totally different angles so you realize your total viewers can see and perceive it.

Preserve the quantity of textual content beneath 6-8 traces (or 30 phrases max). Use a minimal of dimension 24 pt. How your textual content is obtained differentiates good presenters from the very best.

Typography

Selecting the best font is essential — the notion of your font kind might affect your viewers’s impression of you. The suitable typeface is a chance to convey constant model character and professionalism.

Some fonts are seen as clear {and professional}, however this doesn‘t imply they’re boring. A standard mistake is considering your font is not thrilling sufficient, which may lead you to decide on a font that distracts out of your message.

I like to recommend sticking to easy serif and sans-serif fonts. Keep away from script fonts due to potential readability points.

That stated, you’ll be able to nonetheless use enjoyable and eccentric fonts sparsely. Offsetting a enjoyable font or massive letters with one thing extra skilled can create a fascinating presentation.

Above all, make certain you are constant so your presentation appears cohesive all through every slide. Take a look at this instance from HubSpot’s firm profile templates:

on this presentation template? Obtain it without spending a dime right here.

5. Be certain that your whole objects are correctly aligned.

Having correctly aligned objects in your slide is the important thing to creating it look polished {and professional}. You’ll be able to manually attempt to line up your photos, however everyone knows how that usually works out.

Eliminate the guessing recreation and let PowerPoint work its magic to align a number of objects:

• Choose all objects by holding down Shift and clicking on all of them.
• Choose Prepare within the prime choices bar, then select Align or Distribute.
• Select the kind of alignment you need.

Right here’s learn how to align objects to the slide:

• Choose all objects by holding down Shift and clicking on all of them.
• Choose Prepare within the prime choices bar, then select Align or Distribute.
• Choose Align to Slide.
• Choose Prepare within the prime choices bar once more, then select Align or Distribute.
• Select the kind of alignment you need.

PowerPoint Design Instruments

6. Use “Format Object” to raised management your objects’ designs.

Format menus permit you to do high-quality changes that in any other case appear not possible.

To do that, right-click on an object and choose the Format Object possibility. Right here, you’ll be able to fine-tune shadows, regulate form measurements, create reflections, and rather more. The menu appears like this:

Though the principle choices will be discovered on PowerPoint’s format toolbars, search for full management within the format window menu. Different choices embody:

• Adjusting textual content inside a form.
• Making a pure perspective shadow behind an object.
• Recoloring images manually and with automated choices.

7. Benefit from PowerPoint’s shapes.

PowerPoint’s form instruments have come a good distance. At the moment’s shapes embody a extremely purposeful Sensible Shapes perform, which lets you create diagrams and circulation charts very quickly.

These instruments are particularly helpful as a result of paragraphing and bullet lists are boring to have a look at — you should utilize shapes to assist categorical your message extra clearly.

8. Create customized shapes.

If you create a form, proper click on and press Edit Factors to create customized shapes that suit your particular want. For example, you’ll be able to reshape arrows to suit the size you want:

An alternative choice is to mix two shapes collectively. Choose the 2 shapes you’d prefer to work with, then click on Form Format within the prime ribbon. Faucet Merge Shapes. There are a number of choices to create customized shapes:

• Mix creates a customized form that has overlapping parts of the 2 earlier shapes minimize out.
• Union makes one utterly merged form.
• Intersect builds a form of solely the overlapping sections of the 2 earlier shapes.
• Subtract cuts out the overlapping portion of 1 form from the opposite.
• Fragment will cut up your form into totally different components relying on the place they overlap.

9. Crop photos into customized shapes.

You may as well use PowerPoint to crop present photos into new shapes:

• Click on on the picture and choose Image Format within the choices bar.
• Select Crop, then Crop to Form, after which select your required form.

10. Current web sites inside PowerPoint.

Imagine it or not, presenting web sites inside PowerPoint is one thing we’re nonetheless having to search out work-arounds for.

From my expertise, these are some techniques which have labored up to now which may be useful relying on which model of PowerPoint you’ve got:

• Historically, to point out a web site in a PowerPoint slide you’d simply create a hyperlink to the web page and immediate a separate browser to open.
• Strive including the third-party program LiveWeb that you just set up in your PowerPoint program. Head to the LiveWeb web site and comply with the directions. Sadly, Mac customers don’t have an analogous possibility.
• Take screenshots of a web site, insert the picture in your slide, and hyperlink in by a browser. You’ll be able to embed media (equivalent to a YouTube video) by downloading it on to your laptop.
• Some variations allowed a Internet Viewer Add-on till Microsoft determined that was a safety threat. Insert>Get Add-ons, seek for Internet Viewer, then click on on the Add button.

• Set up ClassPoint, which primarily places an web window on prime of your slide to be used till you’re executed with it, then you’ll be able to simply transfer to the subsequent slide. You’ll be able to even bookmark the webpage you need forward of time to leap straight to it. Utilizing this does introduce a brand new navigation bar alongside the underside of your presentation. Right here’s a video Introduction to ClassPoint:

• Lastly, PowerPoint Reside is a brand new instrument that lets you do extra seamless displays throughout video calls and could also be a greater general match for doing displays remotely. Take a look at this video:

11. Strive Utilizing GIFs.

Picture Supply

GIFs are looped animated photos used to speak a temper, concept, info, and rather more.

Customers add GIFs to PowerPoints to be humorous or shortly demo a course of. They’re highly regarded with and simply acknowledged by Millenials and Gen Z, and it’s straightforward so as to add GIFs to your slides:

• Obtain and save the GIF you need.
• Go to the slide you need the GIF on.
• Go to the House tab, and click on both Insert or Image.
• From the Image drop-down menu, select Image from File.
• Navigate to the place you saved your GIF and choose it. Then, select Insert.
• It would play mechanically the second you insert it.

PowerPoint Course of

12. Preserve it easy.

Picture Supply

PowerPoint is a superb instrument to help your presentation with visible info, graphics, and supplemental factors.

Your PowerPoint shouldn’t be your total presentation, and the weather you do introduce have to perform correctly.

If the presentation merely repeats your phrases, has damaged hyperlinks, or reveals unreadable textual content, the hiccups can change into the take-away of your speak regardless of how well-spoken the presentation.

Slam-dunking the fundamentals by conserving it easy is the way in which to go. In case your slides have dense and cluttered info, it should distract your viewers and you would lose their consideration.

Briefly? Preserve your presentation persuasive by conserving it clear:

• Restrict bullet factors and textual content.
• Keep away from paragraphs and lengthy quotes.
• Keep “white area” or “unfavourable area.”
• Preserve percentages, graphs, and information tremendous fundamental.

13. Embed your font information.

Picture Supply

One fixed downside presenters have with PowerPoint is that fonts appear to alter when presenters transfer from one laptop to a different.

The fonts aren’t really altering — the presentation laptop simply doesn’t have the similar font information put in.

To embed your fonts on a PC:

• Click on File then Choices.
• Open up the Save tab.
• Choose the Embed fonts within the file examine field beneath Protect constancy when sharing this presentation.

Now, your presentation will maintain the font file and your fonts is not going to change once you transfer computer systems.

To embed your fonts on a Mac:

• On the highest bar, click on PowerPoint, then click on Preferences.
• Below Output and Sharing, click on Save.
• Below Font Embedding, click on Embed fonts within the file.

14. Save your slides as a PDF file for backup functions.

In case you’re nonetheless afraid of your presentation displaying up otherwise when it’s time to current, you’ll be able to create a PDF model simply in case.

It is a good possibility should you’ll be presenting on a distinct laptop as a result of if it doesn’t have Powerpoint put in, you’ll be able to nonetheless use the system viewer to open a PDF.

The one caveat is that your GIFs, animations, and transitions received’t switch over.

To avoid wasting your presentation as a PDF file:

• Go to File, then click on Save as…
• Within the pop-up window, click on File Format.
• A drop-down menu will seem. Choose PDF.
• Click on Export.

You may as well go to File, then Export, then choose PDF from the file format menu.

15. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint permits you to both hyperlink to video/audio information externally or to embed the media immediately in your presentation. For PCs, two nice causes for embedding are:

• Embedding permits you to play media immediately in your presentation. It would look rather more skilled than switching between home windows.
• Embedding additionally signifies that the file stays inside the PowerPoint presentation, so it ought to play usually with out further work (besides on a Mac).

In case you use PowerPoint for Mac it will get a bit sophisticated, however it may be executed:

• At all times convey the video and/or audio file with you in the identical folder because the PowerPoint presentation.
• Solely insert video or audio information as soon as the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a transportable drive of their everlasting folder.
• If the presentation will likely be performed on a Home windows laptop, then Mac customers want to ensure their multimedia information are in WMV format.
• Think about using the identical working system for designing and presenting, it doesn’t matter what.

16. Convey your personal {hardware}.

Between working techniques, PowerPoint continues to be a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT variations, issues can change. The best repair? Simply convey alongside your personal laptop computer once you’re presenting.

The following best repair is to add your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides as a backup possibility — simply ensure there’s a good web connection and a browser accessible the place you propose to current.

Google Slides is a cloud-based presentation software program that may present up the identical method on all working techniques.

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides:

• Navigate to slides.google.com. Ensure you’re signed in to a Google account (ideally your personal).
• Below Begin a brand new presentation, click on the empty field with a plus signal. It will open up a clean presentation.
• Go to File, then Import slides.
• A dialog field will come up. Faucet Add.
• Click on Choose a file out of your gadget.
• Choose your presentation and click on Open.
• Choose the slides you’d prefer to import. If you wish to import all of them, click on All within the higher right-hand nook of the dialog field.
• Click on Import slides.

Once I examined this out, Google Slides imported all the things completely, together with a form whose factors I had manipulated. It is a good backup choice to have should you’ll be presenting throughout totally different working techniques.

17. Use Presenter View.

In most presentation conditions, there will likely be each a presenter’s display screen and the principle projected show in your presentation.

PowerPoint has an awesome instrument referred to as Presenter View, which will be discovered within the Slide Present tab of PowerPoint. Included within the Presenter View is an space for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation show.

For a lot of presenters, this instrument will help unify their spoken presentation and their visible assist. You by no means wish to make the PowerPoint look like a stack of notes that you just’re studying off of.

Use the Presenter View possibility to assist create a extra pure presentation.

Professional Tip: Firstly of the presentation, you also needs to hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the “A” key will convey it again should you want it.

Your Subsequent Nice PowerPoint Presentation Begins Right here

Now that you’ve these model, design, and presentation ideas beneath your belt, it’s best to really feel assured to create your PowerPoint presentation.

However should you can discover different assets to ensure your content material hits the mark. In spite of everything, you want a robust presentation to land your level and make an impression.

With a number of templates to select from — each in PowerPoint and accessible for free obtain — you’ll be able to swiftly be in your option to creating displays that wow your audiences.

Editor’s be aware: This publish was initially revealed in September 2013 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.