PowerPoint template tips for design agencies

A new brand is a thing of beauty: it’s a work of art, and yet it’s also a living thing. Brand users breathe life into logos and letterheads, they test its strength on billboards, on social media, and across their website. It’s like a beautiful violin in the hands of expert violinists – it gets played and used by those who appreciate its beauty for the enjoyment and adulation of others. Until. That’s right, until the masses decide they want to have a go too. But they only have access to one tool, and they play out their excruciating new-brand song in… PowerPoint.

In fact, PowerPoint is a curious problem for branding agencies. Building a PowerPoint template may seem – at face value – just a case of reworking the in-built Office defaults, but you don’t have to spend much time in Slide Master view to realise there’s a rabbit hole of deep programming going on. And there’s another side to it as well, this is the only brand element you put in the hands of the whole organisation – regardless of computer literacy, or design skill: it has to be robust enough so that it can’t be broken, but strong enough to carry your brand voice into every meeting, or leave-behind, or proposal it gets used for.

This is why we’ve put together a list of the essential elements a PowerPoint template needs to have. Think of this as the component parts for your minimum viable product. Use this article like a checklist to build template content that will be optimised for users and your brand integrity.

Before we dive in, let’s get one thing out of the way. There is a way to save yourself the hassle of doing all of this yourself in PowerPoint. We partner with agencies like yours to take the designs you create and build them into a robust, fully-programmed PowerPoint template that organisations can use effectively.

If you’re interested in what that looks like for you and your team, check out our template services, and reach out to the templates team to start the conversation.

Layouts and structure

Design with non-designers in mind: Like we said earlier, most templates are used by people without design experience. It’s important to create layouts that guide the user to create good content. Using placeholders is a great way to signpost what kind of content should go where on your slide, and you can use the in-built placeholder text to write instructional prompts to tell your user the kind of content they should be adding in.

Always include the 9 Microsoft defaults: Title Slide, Title and Content, Section Header, Two Content, Comparison, Title Only, Blank, Content with Caption, Picture with Caption. These form the backbone of any usable template.

Include the essentials on every layout: Title, text, date, page number and footer placeholders. These elements can be hardwired your template and reduce the need for manual formatting and gives users a framework to follow to keep their content brand compliant and neat and tidy.

Mix up layouts for variety and impact: It may seem like a good option to have a streamlined template, but when your whole organisation is using a small number of slides, presentations end up feeling very repetitive and can disengage audiences. This is why it’s important to offer a few options for your core layouts. An added benefit is that you’ll be future-proofing your template for tools like Copilot that use your template as the starting point to generate slide content.

Design elements

Keep fonts simple and compatible: Stick to 2 key fonts for headings and body text. Custom fonts don’t travel with your template unless you embed them (and that actually makes your deck less user-friendly), so make sure you use a Windows-standard alternative that can be applied universally throughout your organisation.

Choose and programme six accent colours: Your client should have a number of colours within their brand and these will likely form the core palette in PowerPoint. The position of the colours matters; the first colours on the palette will likely be used the most, so these should be the key brand colours. In order to determine the best order for the remainder of the palette, test the colours by inserting a chart. The chart will pull from the accent colours and switching the order may improve overall readability and usability of chart elements.

Be mindful of accessibility: Just like you would in other brand material, design for accessibility. Good colour contrast, readable font sizes, and clear hierarchy help make presentations accessible to everyone. Remember that PowerPoint has built-in tools to help you test the accessibility of a presentation. BrightCarbon’s free PowerPoint productivity add-in BrightSlide also has a free colour contrast checker that you can use to test the colours in your template against the WCAG guidelines.

• For more information check out this blog article on preserving vibrant brand colours without compromising on accessibility.

Presentation context

Think about real-world use early: Consider how the content will be presented: online, in-person, at events, or printed. This helps guide smart decisions around layout, contrast, legibility, and even light and dark backgrounds. The best way to do this is ask a cross-section of users, or audit a batch of existing client decks. Even if the content you find is ugly or off-brand, chances are it’s there because users need it. Meet them halfway with branded template slides that allow them to create their content without compromising the brand.

Design with real content examples: Using realistic content to inform your designs helps ensure layouts work in the real world. Plug in some of the content from your user audit or other user examples to see how robust your template is, this should help you pinpoint the areas that might need more attention.

• This how-to guide for templates will be useful if you’re looking to fix any basic programming.

Think about light and dark options: If the content might be presented in different environments, it’s helpful to know whether a dark or alternative background version is needed. In fact, by adding light and dark modes to your template, you can make it really easy for your users to change colours on a slide, or even across a whole presentation.

• Check out this tip to see how it works.

Agree on slide size from the start: Design to the right aspect ratio and size early to save time later. 33.867 x 19.05cm (16:9) is the standard and most common format, but some organisations or venues prefer 4:3 or a custom ratio for events and conferences. Check with your client to avoid problems down the line.

Keep graphics lightweight: PowerPoints are often shared, emailed, and presented live, so compressed graphics help keep file sizes manageable and easy to work with for real-world users – we recommend keeping templates under 5MB where possible. File bloat – specifically when it comes to images – can add valuable seconds and minutes to every time a new presentation is created, opened, or emailed.

A note on outsourcing

This checklist will help you build a robust foundation for your PowerPoint template, but there’s a lot that goes into intelligent template design, and we know it’s a labour of love to meet the specific programming needs of a client and their organisation. Resources, like this PowerPoint templates bible from PowerPoint MVPs Julie Terberg and Echo Swinford, are invaluable, but it’s potentially a new area of specialism for already-busy teams.

At BrightCarbon we offer specialist technical expertise, but we also deeply understand good design and the importance of brand integrity. Partnering with us takes pressure off your production team, and gives you the peace of mind that you’re delivering an end-product that won’t compromise the brand of usability of the asset in question.

If you’re interested in learning what a partnership like this would look like, take a look at our template creation services, and book your free consultation with the team today.