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How to Design a Customized PowerPoint Template?

Steve Arthur

December 16, 2015

Nowadays, audience or prospective clients are looking for uniqueness in your presentations. Professional web designers can easily create eye catching PowerPoint slides by using Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. Here is a step by step method of creating a PowerPoint template by using the Illustrator:

Start with Basic Template: You can create a new document and set the size as 720* 540 px or 10*7.5 inches. If you have 4 slides in total, you can divide like this – 1 for your title, 2 slides for your content and 1 end slide. You should ensure that the color mode has been set to RGB. You may select colors according to the branding of your clients. Whatever you design in Illustrator or Photoshop, they cannot be edited in PowerPoint. The graphics will remain same for every slide and cannot be customized. You can use textboxes but leave them blank in illustrator. You can add the texts with the help of PowerPoint later.

Export Design as PNG Files: Just go to the file and select PNG for exporting your file. When you are working with several art boards simultaneously through illustrator, you must make certain that you have checked ‘Use Artboards’ for specifying the particular art board for exporting each PNG file. Always use a transparent background of 300 PPI resolutions for your PNG to be exported.

Create New PowerPoint Presentation: Go to the file and click ‘New Presentation’ for creating your PowerPoint design. You can change this mode to a viewing mode by selecting the Slide Masters. From the master slides menu, you will be offered with various templates.

Build Title Slide Master: You can now create your title slide by just clicking on the Title Slide Layout option from the menu in the left. The title slide of the PowerPoint template can easily be created by importing the artwork present in the Illustrator. The text boxes can remain on the top and the artwork can be placed in the layer at bottom with the ‘Send to back’ option.

Make Content Slide Masters: Just open your slide master menu and from there choose the template of Title and Content Layout. You can slot in your PNG file and can send it to the back. The styling and the positioning of your text boxes must match the design and the background of your template. For customizing the color, you can select the ‘more colors’ option from the ‘fill color’ menu. You can use custom color palette by specifying the RGB number according to your requirements.

Construct Final Slide: You can select the new layout by returning to the window of slide master. This operation will provide you with a single master slide with a default text box and a few footers. You can remove the footer boxes if you do not require them. You can also rename the slide if you do not prefer the default text in the final slide.

Mix and Match Master Slides: When you select New Slide from your drop down menu, you will observe your created master slides there. You can select the required master slide from them.

Save Template: Finally, you can save your designed template which is ready. You can save the template in .potx format. Your clients will just click on New Slide and select the master slide you have created.

When you are creating the designs through Illustrator and Photoshop, make sure that you are using the fonts which are available in PowerPoint too. Your clients must not get shocked to see the extraordinary fonts you have used that cannot be edited in PowerPoint! Try to keep the client’s brand in mind while designing, so that the designed template looks very appropriate with the brand.

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