Strategies and Tips for Professional Formatting in PowerPoint
By Troy Chollar, TLC Creative Services
As PowerPoint has become the industry standard for creating presentations, and almost everyone now is creating their own slides, I often see many visual and technical “issues” - issues that can be easily eliminated. This article isn’t a list of how things should be done, but rather a compilation of many of the best practices we have incorporated into our workflow at TLC Creative Services. Some may be applicable to your work and some may not, so here are 13 ideas that will hopefully be of help:
1. The first thing I do is turn off SNAP OBJECTS TO GRID and SNAP OBJECTS TO OTHER OBJECTS (unless specifically needed) by clicking CTRL+G and unchecking those options. This permits a higher level of control when fine tuning the position of elements on each slide.
2. When opening an existing presentation, I go to FORMAT >> REPLACE FONTS. From this menu I verify that only the specified fonts are being used (eg. no random fonts are being used) and that I have the fonts installed on my computer. Because I want to make sure others see the same layout and design I’m seeing, I want to be certain I’m working with the real fonts and not a ‘default’ font (if a font is not installed, when the presentation is opened PowerPoint automatically replaces the missing font with a ‘default’ font).
3. When inserting slides from another presentation, or optimizing an existing presentation, one of the most powerful tools is the SLIDE LAYOUT task pane (combined with formatted Master Slides). With a click, you can move text boxes to their position as set by the Master Slide. Use the REAPPLY LAYOUT to apply the Master Slide formatting to the text boxes (font style, size, color, line spacing, etc.).
To access this task pane (in PowerPoint 2002-2003) go to FORMAT >> SLIDE LAYOUT.
4. Of course, using the Slide Layout tools will not work if the text box is not tagged as a Master Slide text box. In this example the title text box provided is not on the master slide. When the APPLY TO SELECTED SLIDES function is clicked a blank title text box is placed on the slide. Copy and Paste the text out of original text box, delete that original text box, and paste the text into the Master Slide text box. Then go to the SLIDE LAYOUT and REAPPLY FORMAT and the title will be positioned and formatted according to the Master Slide. In addition, if the Master Slide is modified, the title on the slide will automatically be updated.
5. Be careful positioning things too close to the edge of the slide, especially if you want it to be seen when it is projected. Here the text is too close to the edge and will inevitably be cut off when projected. The solution is to adjust the position and size of the text or to split into 2 lines of text if needed.
6. Continuous text that appears as one large block of words is difficult to read and comprehend. One option is to adjust the spacing to increase the space between the lines (LINE SPACING). Another, and often better option, is to increase the space after each paragraph or hard return (BEFORE/AFTER PARAGRAPH) to cluster the paragraphs into visual blocks of information.
Warning: decreasing the Line Spacing too much will cut off the tops of the letters – note the second line in the example where the “D11” has been cut off.
7. When objects do not line up perfectly or have awkward spacing between them, even by a few pixels, the human eye will note this and then suddenly the slide is perceived as less professional. PowerPoint has a powerful set of tools to eliminate these problems. Select multiple objects and use the ALIGN AND DISTRIBUTE tools.
In the example above, use the ALIGN LEFT to assure all of the arrows are in a perfect straight line with one another. Then use the DISTRIBUTE VERTICALLY (see next tip).
8. When spacing out items, either vertically or horizontally, use the DISTRIBUTE tools to equally distance objects from one another. In the ‘arrows’ example, use the DISTRIBUTE VERTICALLY tool to give the arrows equal spacing between each other. A further step would be to adjust the text boxes to the right of the arrows using the ALIGN MIDDLE tool so that the numbers are aligned with each triangle.
9. Here is an add-in that is invaluable here at TLC Creative Services. It copies the exact position of an object to the clipboard, which can then be applied to any other object, on any slide (shown is the PPTXtreme tool set available from www.pptxtreme.com. Another option is the PPTools StarterSet, available from www.rdpslides.com/pptools ). I use this tool constantly to assure non-master slide text boxes and objects are positioned identically from slide-to-slide.
10. Also, in keeping things consistent within a slide or from slide-to-slide, we heavily use the Pickup Position and Format tool (shown is from the PPTXtreme tool set as mentioned above. Another option is PPTools ShapeStyle add-in, also from www.rdpslides.com/pptools). This not only allows us to consistently position text and objects, but also format text boxes AND autoshapes from slide to slide.
As example: If a presentation contains reference footnotes, I establish a text box with the font size, color, attributes and position setup as I would like the footnote to appear. Then I use the Pickup Position and Format tool on this first reference footnote and go through the entire presentation applying the same formatting to ALL of the reference footnotes. If it is a series of presentations or a slide library, consistent formatting can quickly and accurately be carried out across all presentations.
11. Consistent layout among objects on the same slide is visually important. But if things do not align from slide-to-slide in presentation mode and they ‘jump’ from one position to another the illusion of a seamless display is lost. Take note of slides where content is built over a series of slides and the slide transition becomes the animation. It is critical that all elements line up during show mode for a presentation to be professionally received by the audience.
12. For that professional touch, replace standard text used as icons (left example) with theme appropriate icons developed in stylized PowerPoint WordArt or PhotoShop (right example).
13. Unless specified, I almost never insert a rectangular photo. To give the photo a professional touch, I add a drop shadow, rounded corners and possibly a bevel in PhotoShop (or a drop shadow in PPT with the PPTXtreme SoftShadow add-in).
Note: To save an image out of PPT to be optimized in PhotoShop right-click on the object and choose .PNG as the format. This guarantees a 24bit color object - a .jpg or other format may default to 16 bit color. You can also save out autoshapes and text as graphics (to optimize in PhotoShop and then re-import).
Conclusion
While this is in no way comprehensive, it does cover many areas that are addressed in virtually every presentation we work on here at TLC Creative Services, Inc. I encourage you to send any feedback to us, or some of your best practices. I think the final recommendation is to use the PowerPoint Users newsgroup (see weblinks on TLC Creative Services website) and the PPTFAQ website as primary resources for getting your presentation development questions answered and getting new ideas.
Learn more about Troy Chollar, a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP, in our Contributor's section.
