A presentation not only contributes to a company's visual identity, it’s also the key to effective communication. PowerPoint presentations are still one of the most important tools for conveying information, explaining concepts, and persuading audiences.
But while content is undoubtedly king, design is often neglected - which is where PowerPoint templates come in. Using PowerPoint templates is about more than just “looking pretty”. It's about creating a consistent visual experience that grabs attention, reinforces the message, and facilitates the transfer of information. All in the most effective way.
PowerPoint templates offer many advantages:
There are PowerPoint templates for a wide variety of situations. Templates can be assigned to different categories. Categorization helps with organizing storage and provides an overview and orientation.
Map templates are used to display geographic information, locations, or data on a map. These templates can include different types of maps, such as world maps, country maps, regional maps, or thematic maps that visualize specific data (such as population density).
Chart templates are predefined designs or layouts specifically for visualizing data in the form of charts. These templates provide a structure and design for presenting information in a clear and attractive manner.
The most common types of charts in PowerPoint are Gantt charts, bar charts, pie charts, line charts, area charts, waterfall charts, and Mekko charts.
This includes timeline and cycle templates that visually represent process flows, time sequences, or recurring cycles.
Especially when it comes to charts, the corporate design of the company is often disregarded. This mistake cannot happen with chart templates.
These are special layouts or designs used to help organize and structure a presentation. These templates provide slide layouts to help you present your content in a logical and clear manner. They include title slides, overview slides, text slides, picture slides, subheading, and section slides, and closing slides.
Structuring templates in particular help keep your presentation consistent and cohesive.
These templates offer a variety of charts and layouts that show an organization’s structure, hierarchy, teams, departments, and their relationships. Organization charts are usually the most time-consuming to create, so templates can be very helpful. Formatting work can be reduced this way.
These templates present arguments, beliefs, or points of view in a clear and compelling manner. They can leave plenty of room for statistics, graphics, or quotes. They can also include lists of pros and cons, argumentation diagrams, or cause-and-effect visualizations.
Infographics are growing in popularity. Especially in the context of visual storytelling, infographics captivate audiences. The problem is that creating infographics can be time consuming. If you can shorten this step by creating a template that allows employees to create and customize infographics much faster, you will have a big advantage.
You can create them using shapes and icons, for example.
Storyboards are graphical representations or sequences of images used to sketch out the visual flow of a story, movie, presentation, or project. They also play a special role in visual storytelling.
A storyboard can be displayed on a single slide (as shown in the image below) or spread across multiple slides.
In marketing, for example, storyboards help plan and outline the flow of a presentation, advertising campaign, or project.
Before you start creating, you should think about what kind of template you want to create, what elements it should contain, and what it should look like.
The creation is done from the slide master. Select this via View > Master > Slide Master. Now you can create your template. Use Insert to select images, icons, shapes or SmartArt. You can also use a template suggested by PowerPoint or search for a template when you open PowerPoint and then customize it in the Slide Master.
When you are satisfied with the result, save your template. Important: When saving, select the .potx format - this is the only way to save your master slide as a template.
Did you know that you can create templates in Word as well as PowerPoint?
Note: templates can only be created in the desktop versions, not on the web.
This year's general PowerPoint trends will also affect the way we create templates. Let’s take a closer look at the current trends.
Less is more - minimalist presentations focus on the content of the presentation rather than the design. This means that layouts are kept simple. They tend to be clean and intuitive. The use of white space enhances this effect. All slide elements have a reason to exist and aren’t just superfluous “slide fillers”.
The typography also matches the minimalist design. It not only conveys the text, but also forms a unity with the design to convey a harmonious narrative.
Use natural colors if the corporate design allows. Colors in presentations should relate to the themes of nature and sustainability in 2024.
Visual storytelling combines visual elements with a narrative structure to effectively present information and engage audiences. This type of presentation is especially useful for data visualization. It includes dynamic charts, infographics, interactive elements, and more.
The days of static templates are long gone, and dynamic templates are the order of the day. Integrating multimedia into presentations leads to greater audience attention, emotional connection, and improved retention.
Some of the multimedia elements that you can include in your presentations are videos, Ted Talks, animated GIFs, sound effects, or QR codes. Photos also belong in this section. Stock photography is less of a trend because it’s usually recognizable as such. Have you ever tried AI-based image generation? With the right prompt input, it can produce unique results.
With empower® template management for Microsoft 365, all templates are at your fingertips. All you have to do is choose the one that suits your presentation. Everyone has the latest design assets and templates at their fingertips. The result is professional, brand-compliant documents and presentations in no time.
Access them directly from Microsoft 365 applications. Templates are made available company-wide via the central empower® slide library. This makes life much easier, especially for the IT department. IT no longer has to worry about distributing templates; departments can do it themselves.
Still have questions? Please do not hesitate to contact us.