presentation templates

presentation templates

The Importance of Presentation Templates

1. Introduction

Custom presentation means making our own templates and it’s personal. With this method, it will make our presentation more interesting and not boring because we use different templates that are available everywhere. But on the other hand, people are lazy to make custom templates because it can make them spend more time. And the solution is to buy the templates from the internet or from a person who is professional in templates. Usually, buying the template will make it easy and the price is not too expensive.

Nowadays presentations have become an inseparable element of business. Not only in business, but presentations also become a part of meetings, studies, or to carry the final project. The first thing which can attract the attention of people is the slides itself. Good slides will make them more comfortable since they understand what we mean and what we want to deliver. But if we use the standard template provided by Microsoft, it would make them bored because those templates are the same with each other. At the same time, if we use too many effects it will make people dizzy. Therefore, we can use a custom template to make it more interesting.

2. Benefits of Using Presentation Templates

An effective template will also help the presenter with their spoken presentation. With the content and structure of the presentation already in place, the presenter can focus on the best way to present this information. This contrasts to if the slides are produced at the same time as the spoken presentation, as the presenter will spend time focusing on design rather than the most effective way to talk about the content. A well-structured presentation will be easier to absorb and will be remembered for a longer period of time. Finally, a template can help to make a memorable presentation. If the design of slides and the use of diagrams is specific to a certain presenter, it becomes part of their presentation ‘image’. If these slides are reused regularly, the time saved by not creating new slides will be substantial.

Consistency in presentations is important, as the design in a presentation can be distracting. The person viewing your presentation may not understand the impact of the distracting design and colorful text. Therefore, it could make the viewing of the presentation less effective. Using a template can also make the design consistent, but it also makes it easier to change. If you find that using black text on a white background is the best design for the presentation, a simple template change can make every slide use this design. This is much more efficient than manually making changes to the color and style for each slide.

There are many benefits to be gained from the use of presentation templates. Firstly, they are a big time saver. When producing your own slides, the amount of time and effort spent tweaking the formatting of each slide can be very time consuming. Using a template ensures that the look and feel of the presentation is consistent. If you have a range of slides (such as at a training session), using a template for each one will mean that the title placement and text boxes are in the same place on each slide. This makes the slide and the spoken presentation easier to produce, and will be easier for the audience to digest.

3. Tips for Creating Effective Presentation Templates

Work in stages. It’s often a good idea to spend some time working on your templates without actually creating content. That way, you can focus on design without being distracted. Your first task could be to develop a style for titles and bullet lists. Then try creating some sample slides and see how they look. If you’re not happy with the results, don’t be afraid to revisit your slide masters and make changes. But remember that the larger the changes, the more work you’ll have to do to fix up existing slides. So it’s best to get it right the first time.

Preview your design in slide sorter view. Slide sorter view is a very useful tool for previewing your design, as it gives you a good overview of your presentation. You can get a rough feel for how the design is working by squinting your eyes and looking at the overall shape and tone of the slides. If something looks out of place, it’s much easier to spot in slide sorter view than it is by flicking through the slides. If you’re thorough enough to follow all the above tips, you probably won’t have to change much in slide sorter view. But if you do need to make changes, it’s much easier to do it at this stage, before content has been added to the slides.

Create custom graphics. It’s often a good idea to create custom graphics for your presentations. The act of simplifying an image so that it can be drawn with a few simple shapes can often help you to understand it more clearly. And line drawings can look much more stylish than clip-art. If you have the artistic skills, feel free to unleash your creativity. Otherwise, consider outsourcing the work to a graphic designer. Creating custom graphics is a complex topic, so again I’ll save it for a future article.

Choose colours and fonts carefully. It’s a good idea to set up some rules about colours and fonts. For example, you might decide that all titles will be 30pt blue Verdana. This might sound a little restrictive, but having constraints does help to enforce a consistent design. It’s very easy to make design decisions that seem harmless in isolation, yet add up to a disjointed presentation. And don’t forget to tweak the default colour schemes in PowerPoint. Making good colour choices can make a huge difference to your design, however, this can be quite a complex topic, so I’ll save it for a future article.

Keep it simple. Good template design is simple design. It’s important to remember that while you can do many things with a slide layout, the most important thing is clarity. You want your design to assist in the storytelling process, not to detract from it. So start by cutting down the number of elements on the slide. If there’s a lot of content to add (e.g. a diagram), it’s often better to split it up over a number of slides. This will make it easier for your audience to digest. And remember to use white space – if a slide looks cluttered, it probably is.

Avoid making changes to individual slides, as this will make it more difficult to change the overall look of your presentation. If you do need to make changes to specific slides, it’s best to use the Format Painter tool.

Set up slide masters. Start by changing your slide masters. Slide masters are a collection of slide templates, and they control the default appearance of all slides in your presentation. Go to the View menu and choose Master > Slide Master. Try to make as many changes as possible at this level. That way, when you go to add a new slide, you can use a layout that makes your content look great. For example, you might want a specific layout for slides that pose a question. Or you may want to create a special frame for all your images.

4. Best Practices for Customizing Presentation Templates

Invariably, there will be times when you need to customize a presentation template to better suit your needs. View this activity as an opportunity to sharpen your story. Using a template means less time spent on formatting. Decide what the template’s layout is communicating. Ensure that it is consistent with the logic of your story. Is the logic sequence represented by the slide layout? Are the fonts representing the correct emotional tone? Are the color schemes sensationalizing the right pieces of information? You should do all of this without losing the essence of the template. Customizing a template does not mean manipulating the entire look of your presentation. It should be an exercise on the precise articulation of information shared by a template and your story, coming to the audience as a modified truth that is more easily understood.

5. Conclusion

Finally, it was mentioned in our discussions that design and content are equally important, some argue that they are interdependent. It is agreed that the clearer the understanding of the message being delivered, the easier it is to decide through a selection of appropriate design. However, there are cases where presenters attempt to revolve an entire presentation on a design concept i.e. using the PowerPoint feature to tell a story using photo slides. These presenters often have little time in making this presentation in comparison to the time it took to conceptualize it, and as a result, both content quality and time constraints are sacrificed. By using a suitable template, such presenters can still achieve the desired design and maintain the high level of content quality.

Templates can also address the issue of presenters giving insufficient attention to design and layout, many often fall into the trap of accepting the standard pre-formatted themes on PowerPoint. These themes usually do not offer the relevance or professionalism suitable for an academic presentation, yet presenters find themselves either out of ideas or time to make improvements. Pre-designed templates have a stronger influence in captivating audience attention, this is because many design elements aim to highlight key points and captivate audience emotion. (Beyea, 2010)

After the work we have done in investigating the application of presentation templates, we can conclude that templates hold a crucial value in enhancing the quality of your PowerPoint presentations. Our discussions have outlined the pitfalls that presenters often find themselves in the hurry to complete presentations, including procrastination until shortly before the presentation is due and an over focus on the content quality and not its successful delivery. PowerPoint templates aim to address and solve the presentation obstacles that have been outlined in our discussions. By understanding that presenters often find themselves pressed for time, templates offer a pre-design that allows a greater efficiency in preparing a professional presentation. More importantly, the degrees of freedom in customizing a template ensure that your final presentation product is unique and this can be achieved with minimal time spent in comparison to custom designing your slides. (Ambrose et al., 2003)

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