How to Format Presentation Slides

Why is Presentation Design and Formatting Important?

A well-designed presentation can help you connect with your audience and gets your message across in an easily digestible manner. Great presentation design can impart a positive first impression and is more likely to draw in and engage an audience.

Pretend you’re attending a presentation and instead of formatted PowerPoint slides, each one is plain white with a lot of dark text that’s hard to read. And even though the background and text colors are the same, none of the text is lined up and multiple fonts are used. There are no transitions or title pages that help to differentiate between topics being discussed and you’re presented with slide after slide of confusing, jumbled text.

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Formatting slides in your presentation is what enhances the look of the slides and transforms them into something that complements the content and resonates with the audience.

What Else Should a Good Presentation Include?

While formatted slides can help to connect with the audience, a good presentation should also include:

• Well-written, concise content that clearly explains the problem that you’re trying to solve and the unique solution you’ve come up with.
• A great hook or emotionally compelling introduction.
• Visuals that support your message and aren’t too busy.

Most importantly, a good presentation should be efficient and engage with the audience. And that engagement can be found in the content as well as how the slides are formatted.

Tips for Creating & Formatting Presentation Slides

Before you start creating your PowerPoint presentation, make sure that your content is solid. Making an outline can help you keep information organized, clear, and concise before you put it into a presentation. The outline can also help you break down what information is shared on each slide to keep things from being overcrowded or wordy. Take a minute to consider your audience and the best ways to connect with them and present what you’re trying to share.

Once your content is finalized, you can get to work on creating and formatting your presentation slides.

How to Make a Slide

A PowerPoint presentation is sometimes known as a deck and is composed of different slides. When you’re putting your own deck together, you’ll certainly need to add slides and format them in different ways.

In order to make a new slide appear in your presentation, first select the slide that you’d like your new slide to follow. Then click Home and choose New Slide. From there, you can choose your desired layout, and start inputting content. The layout options in PowerPoint are great for keeping your text lined up and consistent through the deck. You can also rearrange, duplicate, and delete slides as necessary.

Formatting Your Presentation Slides

Once you’ve created your content or slides, it’s time to consider design and formatting. This is where you make choices about themes, templates, color schemes, and fonts.

If you don’t feel confident about your design abilities, you might want to try applying a template. This customizable option offers a variety of artistic skins that can give your deck a professional polish. There is even a range of downloadable templates available from Microsoft to suit any kind of presentation.

Don’t feel like you must use a template, though. Many users may prefer to use or create a theme to visually tie together their presentations. PowerPoint provides a variety of themes which include color schemes, backgrounds, fonts, and placeholder slides. In the Design tab, you can choose a theme that appeals to you or matches with your content. You can even try different color variations within the theme by selecting Variants. Each variant has built in options for colors, fonts, and background colors and styles that can help you format your slides and create a cohesive look throughout the deck.

There are a few things to keep in mind if you decide to eschew the suggestions made by PowerPoint:

• Consider the colors you’re using. There are definitely a few color combinations you should avoid.
• Choose fonts that are easy to read and make sure that your text isn’t too small to be read across a large room. You’ll also want to remember to keep the text on your slides relatively sparse, with no more than three bullet points per slide.

Using Visual Aids in Your Presentation

One way to break up the monotony of an all-text presentation is to use visual aids like charts, graphs, static images, gifs, and movies.

As with all other aspects of your deck, ensure that your visuals are easy to see and understand, and aren’t too wordy. Imagine trying to read a line graph with lots of muddy colors and small text from across a conference room. The goal of a visual aid is to make the presentation you’re giving more compelling and the information you’re sharing easier to understand.

Here are a few tips for adding visuals to your presentation:

• Make sure the images you use are of high quality and that they fit in your deck. They shouldn’t be distorted or pixelated, as this will distract from the content.
• All charts should be very easy to read and understand. If someone can’t immediately glean what information is presented, you may be trying to fit too much into a single chart.
• Don’t use more than one chart per slide unless it’s necessary. Keep it simple.
• If you’re including a brand or logo in your deck, make sure you’re adhering to that brand’s style guide.

A great way to get design ideas for slides in your presentation us to use the Designer feature in PowerPoint. It automatically generates design ideas for you to choose from based on the content of your slide. Designer detects when you’re using pictures, charts, and tables and gives you suggestions for arranging them on your slides in a cohesive layout that’s easy on the eyes. Designer can also help to format your lists and timelines into easy-to-read graphics and suggests relevant graphics to pair with keywords that it finds within your content.

Create a PowerPoint deck that stands out and resonates with your audience by formatting it in a professional manner. And don’t forget to prep for your presentation!