How to format presentation slides: Tips to make excellent PowerPoint slides

What is presentation formatting, and why is it important?

Presentation formatting is the process of arranging PowerPoint slides and layouts in a way that’s visually appealing and easy for an audience to follow. A well-designed and thoughtfully formatted presentation connects you with your audience and gets your message across in a digestible manner. You’re likelier to give a positive first impression and engage your audience by properly formatting your presentation slides.

Pretend you’re watching someone else give a presentation. Instead of formatted PowerPoint slides, each one is plain white with a lot of dark text that’s hard to read. The text isn’t lined up, and multiple fonts are used. No transitions or title pages help differentiate between topics being discussed, and you’re presented with slide after slide of confusing, jumbled text. This is why presentation formatting is crucial.

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Formatting slides in your presentation enhances their appearance, transforms them into something that complements the content, and resonates with the audience.

What should a PowerPoint 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 engaging visually and content-wise.

Tips for creating and formatting PowerPoint slides

Before creating your PowerPoint presentation, make sure your content is solid by creating an outline. This will keep your information organized, clear, and concise. The outline should include information for each slide to prevent overcrowding or excessive wording. 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 work on creating and formatting your presentation slides.

Making PowerPoint slides

A PowerPoint presentation is sometimes known as a deck and contains different slides. Here’s how to make one:

1. Select the slide that you’d like your new slide to follow.
2. Choose Home > New Slide.
3. Pick your desired layout, and start inputting content.

The layout options in PowerPoint are great for keeping your text lined up and consistent throughout the deck. Rearrange, duplicate, and delete slides as necessary.

Formatting presentation slides

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

If you don’t feel confident about your design abilities, use a template. This customizable option offers a variety of artistic skins to give your deck a professional polish. Microsoft even offers a range of downloadable templates to suit any kind of presentation.

Don’t feel like you need to rely on a template, though. Many users prefer to play with a ready-made theme or create their own to design slides. PowerPoint provides various themes, including color schemes, backgrounds, fonts, and placeholder text. Under the Design tab, choose or create a theme that appeals to you or matches your content. 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 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. There are definitely a few color combinations you should avoid.
• Choose fonts that are easy to read, and ensure that your text isn’t too small to 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 reading a line graph with lots of muddy colors and small text from across a conference room. The goal of visual aids is to complement the presentation you’re giving and make it more compelling.

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

• Make sure the images you use are high-quality and fit in your deck. They shouldn’t be distorted or pixelated, as this will distract from the content.
• All charts should be legible. 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, or try breaking charts up over multiple slides.
• If you’re including a brand or logo in your deck, adhere to that brand’s style guide.

A great way to get design ideas for slides in your presentation is 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. Use it to format your lists and timelines into easy-to-read graphics and get relevant graphics that pair with keywords in your content.

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