Creating your own template can take a little bit of time, but once you’ve made it, it can be used over and over again. This tutorial will lead you through the basics of making a sample template. You will learn some of the tools and tricks to get a “specialized” look for your own template. Just remember, that simplest is usually best. An overly complicated template can be very distracting to the audience. To get the most out of this tutorial, especially if you are a new user, you should first consult the tutorial, "Developing Microsoft® PowerPoint® Slides for Use in Videoconferencing."
This is the Slide Master. The text size for the body has been changed to 32 point size for all levels, to keep subpoints from being too small to see. Make the title at least 40 point size. Don’t forget to change the font to a sans-serif font, such as Helvetica or Arial. Sans-serif fonts are much easier to read on a monitor used for videoconferencing or a computer.
Now a company logo has been inserted in the upper left hand corner of the Master slide. A company's logo should be large enough to be read, but not be overpowering.
The logo was inserted by going to Insert on the menu bar, then choosing Picture and From File.
Now the Title and Body boxes have been moved downward to keep the slide titles from conflicting with the logo.
The background has been formatted with a color that matches one of the colors in the logo.
This was done by clicking on the “Custom” tab in the color selection and picking the color that made the closest match to the color in the logo. If you happen to know the RGB or HSL values of the color in a logo you want to match, you can actually type them in to get an exact match.
Now the font color on the slide has been changed to match one of the other colors in the logo.
A little time with the Auto Shapes feature is all that’s left for the customization of this template. You can use the Auto Shapes to draw bars and other shapes on your slides. The Auto Shapes tab is normally located in the lower left hand area of the PowerPoint screen.
The rectangle in the Basic Shapes area of Auto Shapes was used to draw this bar.
Double-clicking on an Auto Shape will open the Format AutoShape window, where you can change the color and other features of the AutoShape. In this case, the color was changed to match one of the other colors in the company logo.
The oval AutoShape was used to round off the bar that was drawn earlier. Both of these AutoShapes had the outline removed by choosing No Line for the color in the Line area of the Format AutoShape box. Then, the logo was double-clicked and a line was added to make it stand out a bit more on the slide.
To save this template for future use, choose File from the menu bar and choose Save As.
Give the template a name in the File name area and choose Design Template in the Save as type area. The next time you open PowerPoint®, you should find this template in the Design Templates area.
Screen shots reprinted by permission from Microsoft Corporation.
Click to get the printer-friendly pdf version of this tutorial (Requires Adobe Reader)
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Last updated May, 2006