Is your template giving you a headache?

The layouts in our company template are just not useful
It's hard to stay consistent from one slide to the next
My documents are messy and look low-quality
It's frustrating and highly manual creating good slides
The logos and graphics eat up the available slide space
My PPTX files are huge for no obvious reason

It's hard to design a useful, robust PowerPoint template. Often the agency that built your website might give you a template that looks on-brand. But too often it is not actually a functional template. Which means it doesn't help you and your team to create documents that will impress your clients. Or your stakeholders.

We can fix this. We will give you a template that looks great, and works brilliantly.

what makes a great template?

Functional Layouts

Plenty of choice so you can pick the best pre-set for each situation. And still stay true to the branding.

Custom layouts

Specific layouts for certain content, such as credentials, team bios, CVs or quotes. Or anything you need.

Uniform alignment

Consistent placement of content so that all slides feel like part of a coherent document

Text styles

Uniform font sizes, defined header styles and preset bullets, to increase the impression of quality

Reusable tables and charts

Clean and simple chart and table styles that don't look like PowerPoint defaults

Built-in tips

Text prompts and reminders to help users stay within the design guidelines

How we work

1.
Your needs
We look at the type of documents you create, your requirements and your pain points. And we read your brand guidelines.
2.
Prototype
We set margins, explore layout options, design use of brand colour and logo, define text styles. Then iterate until you are happy.
3.
Finalise
There are a few technical steps to create a robust master and layouts, set defaults, optimise, and add user instructions.
4.
Launch
Once it is ready, you can test it on your machines. Once it's deployed, we can also provide some intial user training.

The process is an ongoing conversation. Every template is different, so we'll give you lots of choices and you remain fully in charge. We will advise on striking the balance between design and usability – working within the constraints of what is both possible and practical in PowerPoint. And we can help you roll it out, with advice on how you IT team can deploy it and how to get your people to use it.

Examples of what's included

Here are some examples of the types of content you might want to consider. The actual layouts and assets that we will build for you will depend on your needs. And they won't look like these; they will be in your brand style.

Apart from some specific PowerPoint behaviours, there is no limit on the type of layouts you can ask for.

Title slides

Various options for front page slides, perhaps with and with photos or for different types of document

Section headers

Different styles, plus alternatives for with and without document contents

End slides

A fixed end-of-document slide, with company contact information, branding and copyright statement

General content

Multiple layout options with varying numbers and sizes of columns and rows

Sidebars

Slides that need to land a key point and provide evidence, or perhaps highlighted related information

Photo layouts

Different ways of using photographs as part of the slide - from full-screen to partial 'wallpaper'

Team introductions

When you want to outline the key players in the team

CV-on-a-page

When you need to provide a breakdown of the experience of each team member

Plan-on-a-page

Whether you are proposing a way forward or reporting progress, a set of pre-built timelines to draw onto

Big statements

For a single, high-impact quote or making a simple bold point, with or without photos

Tables

Pre-built tables in consistent styles that can be copied and resized to suit

Charts

Pre-formatted charts that can be loaded with your data

Credentials

Explain the impact of your past achievements

Operational reporting

Set out your metrics and status reporting in a consistent layout

Custom layouts

Anything else you can imagine, that you need on a regular basis

Notes pages

Branded and formatted Notes pages for creating pre-read documents or takeaway

Don't just take our word for it

Steve's guidance in improving our company's presentation style has been invaluable. His clear recommendations provide us with constructive options to adopt as best practice.
He has become a key asset in shaping our team's messaging and presentation style. We appreciate his contributions and look forward to continuing our collaboration.
CS LIM | Executive director APAC
Lanciaconsult

We'd love to help you become happy with your template. Everyone's needs are slightly different, so why not book a call to chat it through with us, no obligations. Or drop us an email.

FAQ

All

Where are text styles set in PowerPoint?

If you are used to being able to define and adjust paragraph styles in Word, then you will be sorely disappointed by PowerPoint. You will not find that functionality there.

But you can use the list levels to define up to nine different text styles for text placeholders, which is usually more than enough for most needs. And we can go a bit further for you: we can make these styles work in tables and text box shapes as well.

How big should the font be?

That depends on what you are going to use the slides for. If you  are creating documents, the a good starting point for body text is 14pt. If you are creating training slides, or other text-light presentations then you’ll probably want something bigger - maybe around 24pt. The font you have selected will also play a part; some fonts are simply bigger than others.

Ideally, you will have around four set sizes: very large for title slides, large for slide titles, standard for text, and smaller for diagrams, charts and tables. When working on a template, we always ask for examples of your existing content which we then mock up in the new style. That way you can try a few different sizes on for size.

Whichever size you settle on, the most important thing is to design the template to produce font sizes are self-consistent throughout the deck.

Can we use a custom font?

If you want to use the custom font that you have chosen for your website, that is possible. But – and it is a huge but – that is usually not a good idea. It throws up all sorts of compatibility issues. And the PowerPoint approach to fonts is evolving. We can talk you through the pros and cons and help you pick the best way through the font minefield.

The default table style is not good. What can I do about it?

The short answer is not very much. You can choose a different default by right-clicking on one of the table styles and choosing Set as default. We’d recommend the first column, second row called No Style, Table Grid. This has no formatting apart from a basic grid, so you can create your content and then put your own formatting in place. But unfortunately you’ll have to set this default in every new file.

When we build a template, we include custom table styles for you, and set one of these as your default. So anyone who creates a new table gets a brand-compliant, elegant style. (Not that stripey, over-formatted one.)

Can I get different shades of our brand colours? The ones in PowerPoint aren’t very good.

Yes, it’s possible to add custom colours that appear under the automatically-generated ones. (PowerPoint’s algorithm does a poor job of generating these, particularly for heavily-saturated colours.)

It’s not something that can be done through the desktop application, but we can add them in for you. You can have up to 10 columns by 5 rows of additional colours.

Where should we put the logo?

Our advice is to limit how often the logo looms large in your slides. If you are presenting to a customer or supplier, you don’t need to be reminding them of your brand on every slide. Give them enough credit for remembering who they are listening to. And if your deck is for an internal audience, they already know who they work for.

So what should you do? We advise three things: firstly, limit the logo to title slides, section headers and other key ‘moments’ in your decks. Secondly, design a small, subtle icon or marker on each slide so that the brand is there, but not interfering with – or distracting from – the content. Thirdly, use brand hints in the design of elements of your slides: photo placeholder shapes, table styles, or even bullets.

We can help you find the best compromise between brand experience and slide practicality.

How does PowerPoint keep content lined up for me?

It’s good practice to define a content area, which defines clear margins on every slide – and makes every slide feel like part of a coherent deck. There are two approaches to this in a good template: creating guides to define the content area, and then designing all slide layouts to adhere to those.

Unfortunately, although PowerPoint can define these guidelines, it cannot implement guardrails: it won’t warn users if they stray outside these areas or don’t align to them. That’s why educating users on the benefits of guides and layouts is important. And we recommend building reminders and hints into the template.

How do we put lots of photos in the template, so everyone can access them?

Actually, it’s not a great idea to load your template with lots of photos, because they will bloat your file size and eat up memory.

Our approach is to never hard-code the photos in the layouts. Instead we will include one or two photos in the starter slides that are created with every new deck, so that there is something if people are happy to use the default. If not, they can simply swap the photo with something else.

To provide simple access to the rest of your images, we recommend creating a separate deck with slides already pre-populated with your approved photo bank. That way, your team can just open that photo deck, choose the layout they want with the photo they need, and paste that slide into their deck.

Can you create a matching Word template at the same time?

Absolutely. We can build you a Word template that has a very similar look and feel to your PowerPoint deck. With matching colours, fonts and text styles. And with coherent branding. You may find that you need more that one template: one for letters, one for proposals, one for more formal or legal documents. And so on; all using the same baseline style.

Although, because Word has different functionality – and because you'll probably want to work in a portrait orientation – there are some limitations on exactly how similar they can be. We'll advise you on the options. And if you need them, we can also create matching Excel templates.

Word & Excel templates can be deployed in the same way as PowerPoint templates. See the FAQ about rollout below.

How do I roll out a new template to the whole organisation?

This depends on your IT set-up. In simple terms, you have a choice between using over-the-air systems like InTune, or leveraging SharePoint. We can advise you and your IT teams on the pros and cons of both.

Plus we can help you educate your teams, to drive the adoption of the new template