How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish.

We’ll break down every step of the design process, from choosing colors and images to using whitespace properly. After reading through this you should be all set to design your own beautiful presentation slides that will put your coworkers to shame.

Using a pre-built PowerPoint template can be a good starting point for many people (we collected some of the best PowerPoint templates for you!). But if you’re wanting to design your own from start-to-finish, you’re in the right place!

How Does Unlimited PowerPoint Templates Sound?

Download thousands of PowerPoint templates, and many other design elements, with a monthly Envato Elements membership. It starts at $16 per month, and gives you unlimited access to a growing library of over 2,000,000 presentation templates, fonts, photos, graphics, and more.

Modern PPT Templates

Modern PPT Templates

New & innovative.

Maximus Template

Maximus Template

Pitch Deck Templates

Pitch Deck Templates

Startup pitch deck.

Explore PowerPoint Templates

A Word About Content

I usually make a big deal about content preceding design, and presentations are no exception. Ideally, you’ll have the topic and much or all of the content outlined before you even think about design. This will in every way shape the appearance of your design, which is why working from pre-built templates isn’t always the best move (though generic templates can and do work great in some circumstances).

The reason that I bring this up is that I don’t really have an actual presentation in mind for this project. I’ll be running with a basic theme, but the textual information will be entirely placeholder copy. Your image, font, color and layout selection shouldn’t necessarily match mine but instead reflect the topic and content you’re working with.

Choosing A Color Scheme

Before I even open Photoshop (yes, I design PowerPoint/Keynote slides in Photoshop and drop them in), I want to find a color scheme on which to base my entire design. When I need to quickly find several colors that go together I usually start with Adobe Color CC . Not only is it a great way to build your own color schemes, it’s an outstanding source to find schemes built by others that you can just grab for your projects.

As luck would have it, I liked the very first color scheme I saw upon opening Color. This scheme was featured on the home page and looked like a great place to start for our presentation design.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Now, if you wanted to get everything exactly right, you could make a list of the RGB or Hex values, but I prefer a quicker, more direct route. What I usually do is snap a screenshot of the color scheme, paste it into my document and stretch it across the canvas on its own layer for easy access. This way I can quickly activate the layer, eyedropper the color I want, then hide the layer and get back to work. It’s a bit like having a palette of colors to dip your paintbrush in.

Designing Your Cover Slide

Now that we have a color scheme, the design work is going to be much simpler. One trick that designers often use in presentations is to leverage the color scheme as heavily as possible. If you’re new to design, you’ll likely think that this is too easy, too plain or even that it’s cheating somehow, but trust me, it’ll be much more attractive and professional than that horrid Microsoft clipart library you love so much.

To start, simply grab one of your colors from the scheme you chose and flood the background of your slide with it (I chose #631c25). Good job, there’s your background. Don’t freak out. It’ll look great. Now let’s throw in some typography.

Choosing a Font

Font choice is a major issue for non-designers. The tendency is to think that most fonts are “boring” and to look around for something exciting and fun. This inevitably leads to the use of Comic Sans or some other equally hideous font.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Unless you’re an elementary school teacher, your presentations should never look like this. Instead, why don’t you try one of those “boring” fonts to see if you can come up with something you like.

Combining fonts can be a tricky task and can take a trained eye to pull off. Fortunately, font designers have already created collections that work well together and if you’re not a designer, they make it easy to pull off great typography. The trick is to just stay in a family. Again, I know this sounds lame, but it works really well if you make sure the two styles you choose are very different.

For instance, I chose a Helvetica Bold Condensed and a Helvetica Light for my cover slide. Notice how different the fonts are from each other in terms of thickness. Choosing two styles that are relatively close causes visual confusion and should be avoided as a general rule of thumb. Instead, what you want is contrast and plenty of it.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Alignment and Layout

Notice a few things about the way I set up this slide. First, I used a strong left alignment for the text. As I say in just about every design article I write, center alignment should be a last resort, not a first. It tends to be the weakest text alignment that you can choose, having a hard edge increases readability considerably (notice that book pages aren’t center-aligned).

Also, notice the generous whitespace that I used. Remember that you don’t have to eat up every inch of space. Giving your text room to breathe helps your layout immensely and gives the design a clean look.

Adding an Image

At this point you might be wondering why you wasted your time reading so I could give you such plain advice. The truth is, most people that create presentations could improve them by 100% from following the advice above. However, I realize minimalism may be too extreme for some folks so let’s throw in an image to make it look nice.

Since our text is on the left, I wanted to find something a little heavy on the right. The general theme that I’ll go for is “City photos” assuming I had some sort of architecture or city-centric presentation to give. Again, you’ll have to choose iamges relevant to your own topic.

I grabbed this Flickr Creative Commons image from photographer Ben Spreng .

create professional powerpoint presentations

Now, if we just made this image our background, the text would become unreadable and we would be ditching our color scheme. What we’re going to do instead is set it on top of the colored slide and set our blending mode to Overlay. Then throw your opacity to around 45%.

create professional powerpoint presentations

As you can see, this helps the slide look much more interesting but keeps the text and colors fairly intact. It’s a simple solution that adds a lot of interest to an otherwise plain design.

Adding Content Slides

The cover may seem like it’s only a tiny part of the battle, but you’ve actually already set the tone for the entire presentation. You’ve got your theme, color scheme and fonts already in place. Now you just need to set up a few different layouts for your content.

The thing to keep in mind is to keep everything extremely simple, and that includes the level of content that you include. Apart from design, these are just good presentation tactics that you’ll learn in every public speaking class. Filling your slides with everything you’re going to say makes you unnecessary. You could just email everyone the slides and shut up.

Instead, the slides are merely meant to be a visual aid. Show a slide with your overall topic or main point, then speak the rest, without reading. Nothing is worse than watching a guy read his note cards word-for-word for thirty minutes, except perhaps watching a guy turn his back to the audience so he can actually read his slides out loud to you the whole time! You may laugh, but I’ve seen it happen folks.

For our first content slide, we’ll grab another Flickr photo and set it to the bottom portion of our slide at full bleed. Then we’ll set the top to another color from our scheme and toss in some text using the same exact formatting that we used on the cover.

screenshot

See how this closely resembles the theme we’ve already established while still looking significantly different? This is they key to good presentation design: cohesiveness without redundancy.

Now for our third slide, we can simply do the inverse of the second slide with a new color and a new image .

screenshot

Adding Informational Elements

It would be nice if every slide ever presented could work in a full bleed image, but the truth is that this simply isn’t practical. It will often be the case that you’re presenting graphical information or some other item that isn’t necessarily a photo.

My advice here is to try to stick as close to your theme as possible. For the slide below I flooded the entire background with a solid color from our original scheme and made a quick 3D graph with white columns (I drew a few flat boxes in Illustrator and applied a 3D effect).

screenshot

As you can see, this slide is very information-focused and yet it doesn’t sacrifice the aesthetics and simplicity we’ve already established.

You’re All Set

From here you might come up with one or two more alternate slide designs and then rotate between them for the duration of your speech. The result is a presentation that is beautiful, very readable and highly professional. The bonus is that the simple, straightforward design will probably result in less work than a clip-art-filled horror show.

Most of the time, great design doesn’t mean being particularly artistic or knowing how to create amazing complex layouts. Instead, it’s about presenting information in an attractive and user-friendly way. With this goal in mind you realize that you’re probably trying way too hard if your end result is ugly. Try cutting out half or more of the elements on one of your slides and giving what’s left a strong left or right alignment with plenty of whitespace.

I hope this article has convinced you to abandon that clip art gallery once and for all. The benefits of clean, minimal design in presentations are clear: the information is easier to take in and the end result is more professional than the mess of information you typically see in presentation slides.

Of course, if you’re looking to get started quickly, flick through our collection of the best PowerPoint templates to find a beautiful set of pre-made designs!

10 PowerPoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation

Use these Microsoft PowerPoint tips to avoid common mistakes, keep your audience engaged, and create a professional presentation.

Professional presentations are all about making an impact. Your slides should look the part. Once you know what makes a presentation look professional, you can customize any half-decent PowerPoint template or create your own custom slides.

Our PowerPoint tips will help you avoid common mistakes, keep your audience engaged, and create a professional presentation, in form and content.

PowerPoint Slide Design

The design can leave a first and lasting impression. Give it a professional touch to win your audience's trust and attention.

1. Carefully Compose Your Slides

Don't copy and paste slides from different sources. You don't want your presentation to look like a rag rug. What you're aiming for is a consistent look. This will help your audience focus on the essential; your speech and the key facts you're highlighting on your slides.

To that end, use a basic template or make your own . PowerPoint comes with a wide selection of professional PowerPoint presentation templates , but you can also find free ones online.

PowerPoint Tip: When you open PowerPoint, note the search field at the top. One of the suggested searches is "presentations". Click it to see all of PowerPoint's default presentation templates. Choose a category on the right to narrow down your search.

Pick an easy to read font face . It's hard to get this right, but these professional-looking Google fonts are a safe bet. Unless you're a designer, stick to a single font face and limit yourself to playing with safe colors and font sizes.

If you're unsure about fonts, refer to "The 10 Commandments of Typography" shown below for orientation.

Carefully select font sizes for headers and text. While you don't want to create a wall of text and lose your audience's attention, you do want them to be able to read what you've highlighted. So make your fonts large enough.

PowerPoint Tip: PowerPoint offers several different slide layouts. When you add a new slide, choose the right layout under Home > New Slide . To switch the layout of an existing slide, use Home > Layout . By using the default layouts, you can make coherent design changes across your presentation anytime you want.

Leave room for highlights, such as images or take home messages. Some elements should stand out. So try not to bury them in background noise but give them the space they need. This could be a single quote or a single image per page with nothing but a simple header and a plain background.

Decorate scarcely but well. If you have good content, you won't need decoration. Your template will be decoratively enough.

Note: Restrict the room your design takes up, and don't ever let the design restrict your message.

2. Use Consistency

Consistently use font face and sizes on all slides. This one goes back to using a template. If you chose a professional presentation template, the designer would have taken care of this aspect. Stick to it!

Match colors. This is where so many presentations fail. You might have chosen a funky template and stuck to the designer's color profile, then you ruin it all with ugly Excel charts .

Take the time to match your visuals to your presentation design.

Text and Background Colors

A poor choice of colors can ruin your presentation.

3. Use Contrast

Black text on a white background will always be the best, but also the most boring choice . You're allowed to use colors! But use them responsibly.

Keep it easy on the eyes and always keep good contrast in mind. If you're color-challenged, use one of the many online tools to select a good looking color palette. Or just use a template and stick to its default colors.

PowerPoint Tip: Use PowerPoint's Design menu to quickly change the font and color palette of your entire presentation using preset design layouts.

4. Apply Brilliance

Carefully use color to highlight your message! Colors are your friends. They can make numbers stand out or your Take Home Message pop.

Don't weaken the color effect by using too many colors in too many instances . The special effect only works if used scarcely. Try to limit pop colors to one per slide.

Make a brilliant choice: match colors for design and good contrast to highlight your message . Use a professional color palette, to find which color will work best with your theme. Use The 10 Commandments of Color Theory shown below to learn more about colors:

Text on PowerPoint Slides

K eep I t S traight and S imple. That means...

  • Keywords only on your slides.
  • Absolutely no full sentences!
  • And never read your slides , talk freely.

Remember that your slides are only there to support, not to replace your talk! You want to tell a story, visualize your data, and demonstrate key points. If you read your slides, you risk losing your audience's respect and attention.

PowerPoint Tip: Afraid you'll lose your train of thoughts? Add notes to your slides. Go to View and under Show click Notes to make them show up under your slides while editing. When starting your presentation, use PowerPoint's presentation mode (go to Slide Show and under Monitors , check Use Presenter View ), so you can glance at your notes when needed.

6. Take Home Message

Always summarize your key point in a Take Home Message. Ask yourself, if your audience learned or remembered one single thing from your presentation, what would you like it to be? That's your Take Home Message.

The Take Home Message is your key message, a summary of your data or story. If you're giving an hour-long presentation, you might have several Take Home Messages. That's OK. Just make sure that what you think is key, really matters to your audience.

Make your Take Home Message memorable. It's your responsibility that your audience takes home something valuable. Help them "get it" by making your Take Home Message stand out, either visually or through how you frame it verbally.

Presentation Visuals

Images are key elements of every presentation. Your audience has ears and eyes, they want to see what you're talking about, and a good visual cue will help them understand your message much better.

7. Add Images

Have more images in your slides than text. Visuals are your friends. They can illustrate your points and support your message.

But do not use images to decorate! That's a poor use of visuals because it's just a distraction.

Images can reinforce or complement your message. So use images to visualize or explain your story.

Use a sufficient image resolution. Your visuals might look good on your desktop, but once blown up by a projector, low-resolution images will make your presentation look anything but professional. So choose a resolution that matches the projector's resolution. If in doubt, don't go below a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (XGA) and aim for 1920 x 1080 pixels (FullHD).

Always maintain your image's aspect ratio. Nothing looks more awkward than a distorted image. Whatever you do, don't stretch images. If you have to resize them, do so with the aspect ratio intact, even if that means dropping slightly above or below your target resolution.

PowerPoint Tip: Need a visual, but don't have one at hand? PowerPoint is connected to Bing's library of online images you can use for your presentations. Go to Insert and under Images select Online Images . You can browse by category or search the library. Be sure to set a checkmark for Creative Commons only , so you don't accidentally violate copyrights.

Note: Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In other words, if you don't have time for a thousand words, use a picture!

PowerPoint Animations and Media

In animations, there is a fine line between a comic and a professional impression. But animations can be powerful tools to visualize and explain complicated matters. A good animation can not only improve understanding, it can also make the message stick with your audience.

8. Don't Be Silly

Sparingly use animations and media. You should only use them in one of two cases:

  • To draw attention, for example, to your Take Home Message.
  • To clarify a model or emphasize an effect.

Embed the media in your presentation and make sure it works in presentation mode. Testing your presentation at home will save you time and avoid embarrassment.

Target Your Presentation Content

Your target, i.e. your audience, defines the content of your presentation. For example, you cannot teach school kids about the complicated matters of the economy, but you may be able to explain to them what the economy is in the first place and why it is important.

9. Keep Your Audience in Mind

When you compile your PowerPoint presentation, ask yourself these questions:

  • What does my audience know?
  • What do I need to tell them?
  • What do they expect?
  • What will be interesting to them?
  • What can I teach them?
  • What will keep them focused?

Answer these questions and boil your slides down to the very essentials. In your talk, describe the essentials colorfully and use your weapons, i.e. text, images, and animations wisely (see above).

Note: If you fail to hit the target, it won't matter how ingenious your design is or how brilliantly you picked colors and keywords. Nothing matters more than your audience's attention.

10. Practice Your Presentation Like a Professional

A well-practiced and enthusiastic talk will help you convince your audience and keep their attention. Here are some key points that define a good talk:

  • Know your slides inside out.
  • Speak freely.
  • Speak with confidence, loud and clear.
  • Speak at a steady pace, better too slow than too fast.
  • Keep eye contact with your audience.

Bonus: Implement the 10/20/30 Rule

The 10/20/30 rule is a concept brought forward by Guy Kawasaki:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

A similar concept is PechaKucha , a storytelling format limited to 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide, i.e. less than seven minutes to conclude the presentation.

Now there's a challenge! Telling your story succinctly, might help you get through to some of the busiest and most distracted people on the planet.

One Final PowerPoint Presentation Tip

I've shown you how to think through your entire presentation, from choosing a design to speaking to your audience. Here's a mind trick: never try to interpret the looks on your listeners' faces. Chances are, you're wrong. Just assume they're focused and taking notes.

You've done your best to create a professional PowerPoint presentation that will help your audience focus on the content and learn new things. The looks on their faces aren't doubt or confusion. It's focus! Well, d'oh! Obviously, you're the expert, and they're the learners. If you can get into this mindset, you can relax and perform at your best.

20 Great Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design [+ Templates]

Carly Williams

Published: January 17, 2024

When it comes to PowerPoint presentation design, there's no shortage of avenues you can take.

PowerPoint presentation examples graphic with computer monitor, person holding a megaphone, and a plant to signify growth.

While all that choice — colors, formats, visuals, fonts — can feel liberating, it‘s important that you’re careful in your selection as not all design combinations add up to success.

→ Free Download: 10 PowerPoint Presentation Templates [Access Now]

In this blog post, I’m sharing some of my favorite PowerPoint tips and templates to help you nail your next presentation.

Table of Contents

What makes a good PowerPoint presentation?

Powerpoint design ideas, best powerpoint presentation slides, good examples of powerpoint presentation design.

In my opinion, a great PowerPoint presentation gets the point across succinctly while using a design that doesn't detract from it.

Here are some of the elements I like to keep in mind when I’m building my own.

1. Minimal Animations and Transitions

Believe it or not, animations and transitions can take away from your PowerPoint presentation. Why? Well, they distract from the content you worked so hard on.

A good PowerPoint presentation keeps the focus on your argument by keeping animations and transitions to a minimum. I suggest using them tastefully and sparingly to emphasize a point or bring attention to a certain part of an image.

2. Cohesive Color Palette

I like to refresh my memory on color theory when creating a new PowerPoint presentation.

A cohesive color palette uses complementary and analogous colors to draw the audience’s attention and help emphasize certain aspects at the right time.

create professional powerpoint presentations

10 Free PowerPoint Templates

Download ten free PowerPoint templates for a better presentation.

  • Creative templates.
  • Data-driven templates.
  • Professional templates.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Tell us a little about yourself below to gain access today:

It‘s impossible for me to tell you the specific design ideas you should go after in your next PowerPoint, because, well, I don’t know what the goal of your presentation is.

Luckily, new versions of PowerPoint actually suggest ideas for you based on the content you're presenting. This can help you keep up with the latest trends in presentation design .

PowerPoint is filled with interesting boilerplate designs you can start with. To find these suggestions, open PowerPoint and click the “Design” tab in your top navigation bar. Then, on the far right side, you'll see the following choices:

create professional powerpoint presentations

This simplistic presentation example employs several different colors and font weights, but instead of coming off as disconnected, the varied colors work with one another to create contrast and call out specific concepts.

What I like: The big, bold numbers help set the reader's expectations, as they clearly signify how far along the viewer is in the list of tips.

10. “Pixar's 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling,” Gavin McMahon

This presentation by Gavin McMahon features color in all the right places. While each of the background images boasts a bright, spotlight-like design, all the characters are intentionally blacked out.

What I like: This helps keep the focus on the tips, while still incorporating visuals. Not to mention, it's still easy for me to identify each character without the details. (I found you on slide eight, Nemo.)

11. “Facebook Engagement and Activity Report,” We Are Social

Here's another great example of data visualization in the wild.

What I like: Rather than displaying numbers and statistics straight up, this presentation calls upon interesting, colorful graphs, and charts to present the information in a way that just makes sense.

12. “The GaryVee Content Model,” Gary Vaynerchuk

This wouldn‘t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk presentation if it wasn’t a little loud, am I right?

What I like: Aside from the fact that I love the eye-catching, bright yellow background, Vaynerchuk does a great job of incorporating screenshots on each slide to create a visual tutorial that coincides with the tips. He also does a great job including a visual table of contents that shows your progress as you go .

13. “20 Tweetable Quotes to Inspire Marketing & Design Creative Genius,” IMPACT Branding & Design

We‘ve all seen our fair share of quote-chronicling presentations but that isn’t to say they were all done well. Often the background images are poor quality, the text is too small, or there isn't enough contrast.

Well, this professional presentation from IMPACT Branding & Design suffers from none of said challenges.

What I like: The colorful filters over each background image create just enough contrast for the quotes to stand out.

14. “The Great State of Design,” Stacy Kvernmo

This presentation offers up a lot of information in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.

What I like: The contrasting colors create visual interest and “pop,” and the comic images (slides 6 through 12) are used to make the information seem less buttoned-up and overwhelming.

15. “Clickbait: A Guide To Writing Un-Ignorable Headlines,” Ethos3

Not going to lie, it was the title that convinced me to click through to this presentation but the awesome design kept me there once I arrived.

What I like: This simple design adheres to a consistent color pattern and leverages bullet points and varied fonts to break up the text nicely.

16. “Digital Transformation in 50 Soundbites,” Julie Dodd

This design highlights a great alternative to the “text-over-image” display we've grown used to seeing.

What I like: By leveraging a split-screen approach to each presentation slide, Julie Dodd was able to serve up a clean, legible quote without sacrificing the power of a strong visual.

17. “Fix Your Really Bad PowerPoint,” Slide Comet

When you‘re creating a PowerPoint about how everyone’s PowerPoints stink, yours had better be terrific. The one above, based on the ebook by Seth Godin, keeps it simple without boring its audience.

What I like: Its clever combinations of fonts, together with consistent color across each slide, ensure you're neither overwhelmed nor unengaged.

18. “How Google Works,” Eric Schmidt

Simple, clever doodles tell the story of Google in a fun and creative way. This presentation reads almost like a storybook, making it easy to move from one slide to the next.

What I like: This uncluttered approach provides viewers with an easy-to-understand explanation of a complicated topic.

19. “What Really Differentiates the Best Content Marketers From The Rest,” Ross Simmonds

Let‘s be honest: These graphics are hard not to love. I especially appreciate the author’s cartoonified self-portrait that closes out the presentation. Well played, Ross Simmonds.

What I like: Rather than employing the same old stock photos, this unique design serves as a refreshing way to present information that's both valuable and fun.

20. “Be A Great Product Leader,” Adam Nash

This presentation by Adam Nash immediately draws attention by putting the company's logo first — a great move if your company is well known.

What I like: He uses popular images, such as ones of Megatron and Pinocchio, to drive his points home. In the same way, you can take advantage of popular images and media to keep your audience engaged.

PowerPoint Presentation Examples for the Best Slide Presentation

Mastering a PowerPoint presentation begins with the design itself.

Get inspired by my ideas above to create a presentation that engages your audience, builds upon your point, and helps you generate leads for your brand.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

Blog - Beautiful PowerPoint Presentation Template [List-Based]

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

17 PowerPoint Presentation Tips From Pro Presenters [+ Templates]

17 PowerPoint Presentation Tips From Pro Presenters [+ Templates]

How to Write an Ecommerce Business Plan [Examples & Template]

How to Write an Ecommerce Business Plan [Examples & Template]

How to Create an Infographic in Under an Hour — the 2024 Guide [+ Free Templates]

How to Create an Infographic in Under an Hour — the 2024 Guide [+ Free Templates]

Get Buyers to Do What You Want: The Power of Temptation Bundling in Sales

Get Buyers to Do What You Want: The Power of Temptation Bundling in Sales

How to Create an Engaging 5-Minute Presentation

How to Create an Engaging 5-Minute Presentation

How to Start a Presentation [+ Examples]

How to Start a Presentation [+ Examples]

120 Presentation Topic Ideas Help You Hook Your Audience

120 Presentation Topic Ideas Help You Hook Your Audience

How to Create the Best PowerPoint Presentations [Examples & Templates]

How to Create the Best PowerPoint Presentations [Examples & Templates]

The Presenter's Guide to Nailing Your Next PowerPoint

The Presenter's Guide to Nailing Your Next PowerPoint

How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page [+ Examples]

How to Create a Stunning Presentation Cover Page [+ Examples]

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

  • General Presentation Skills
  • Executive Presentation Skills
  • Technical Presentation Skills
  • Presenting to Executives Skills
  • New Manager Communication Skills
  • Leadership Communication Skills
  • Customer Service Excellence
  • Emotional Intelligence in Customer Service
  • Public Sector Customer Service
  • Front Desk Service Training
  • Health Care Customer Service
  • Automotive Customer Service
  • Law Firm Customer Service Workshop
  • Library Customer Service
  • Effective Communication in a Matrixed Environment
  • Dealing with Difficult People
  • How to Write Effective Emails
  • Inclusion & Workplace Diversity
  • IT Communication
  • Meeting Facilitation
  • Personal Brand Communication
  • Persuasive Communication
  • Resiliency and Change Management
  • Time Management Training
  • Virtual Communication
  • Training from the Back of the Room
  • Training from the Back of the Room Virtual Edition
  • Results Coach
  • Public Speaking Coach
  • Virtual Presentation Coach
  • Member Login

How to Create a Powerful PowerPoint Presentation

A simple design, few words, and straightforward visuals are keyto how to create a powerful PowerPoint presentation. It's a powerful tool for making presentations when used correctly. Common mistakes include too many words on a slide, multiple colors and fonts, and complicated visuals. All of this becomes distracting to the audience that won't help make your point or persuade people.

Keep Your PowerPoint Presentations Super Simple

How to Create Powerful PowerPoint Presentations Built on Brain Science Principles

PowerPoint presentations can be a powerful tool for communicating your ideas, but they can also be boring and forgettable. You need to understand how the brain works to create presentations that engage your audience and make a lasting impression.

This blog post will explore some brain science principles you can use to create more effective PowerPoint presentations.

1. Keep it visual.

The human brain is wired to process visual information much faster than text. Studies have shown we can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds. You need to use visuals in your presentations to get your message across quickly and effectively.

Here are some tips for using visuals effectively in your presentations:

  • Use high-quality images and graphics.
  • Make sure your visuals are relevant to your topic.
  • Use visuals to break up text and make your presentation more visually appealing.

2. Use storytelling.

Stories are a powerful way to engage the brain and make information memorable. When you tell a story, you activate the same parts of the brain that are used when we experience something ourselves. This makes stories a great way to connect with your audience emotionally and help them remember your message.

Here are some tips for using storytelling in your presentations:

  • Start with a strong focus statement to grab your audience's attention.
  • Use personal anecdotes and examples to illustrate your points.
  • Think of your PowerPoint as the "Bones" of your story.
  • End with a memorable call to action.

3. Keep it concise.

The human brain has a limited capacity for attention. This means that you need to keep your presentations concise and to the point. Avoid overloading your slides with text and visuals.

Here are some tips for keeping your presentations concise:

  • Focus on the most essential points.
  • Use no more than six bullet points and no more than six words per bullet
  •  Create headlines (or assertion statements) to make your points clear and easily understood.
  • Avoid using jargon and technical terms.

4. Use repetition.

Repetition is a powerful way to help your audience remember your message. However, you don't want to repeat the same thing repeatedly. Instead, try rephrasing your key points differently throughout your presentation.

Here are some tips for using repetition effectively in your presentations:

  • Use a consistent message throughout your presentation.
  • Use different visuals and examples to illustrate your key points.
  • Summarize your key points at the end of your presentation.

5. End with a bang.

The last thing your audience will remember is the ending of your presentation. So make sure to end on a strong note. Summarize your key points, reiterate your call to action, and leave your audience with something to think about.

By following these brain science principles, you can create PowerPoint presentations that are more engaging, memorable, and effective.

Download Laurie's top ten PowerPoint Tips

With Laurie's help, the best PowerPoint presentations will come together easily whether you have just one important speech to make or need to create a new one every week. Anyone from the executive level to team members will benefit from her training.

"Laurie is an outstanding presenter. She is relaxed, poised, friendly and extremely knowledgeable about the art of presenting in a business setting – all important qualities for a coach. Moreover, her sense of humor, dedication, and flexibility make her a pleasure to work with. I highly recommend Laurie to anyone in need of consulting in the area of instruction, facilitation, or presentation." — Karyn Patterson, Triad

Work with Laurie Brown for the Best PowerPoint Presentations

When you need to improve your presentation skills , particularly with PowerPoint, count on Laurie Brown. She'll show you the way to create clear, compelling programs that keep the audience engaged and spark them into action. Her programs work great as breakout sessions or for results-driven in-house training.

Contact Laurie Now at (248) 761-7510 for Your Next Conference or Training.

Popular guides.

  • Virtual Presentation Skills
  • Overcoming Communication Barriers
  • Sharpen Communication Skills
  • Effective Communication
  • Running Effective Meetings
  • Customer Service Skills
  • Customer Service Tips

Sign Up for a Free Presentation Skills Newsletter…

Free Technical Presentation Skills | Laurie Brown Communications

… and get this Free Technical Presentation Skills White Paper!

  • First Name* *
  • Last Name *

create professional powerpoint presentations

  • SUGGESTED TOPICS
  • The Magazine
  • Newsletters
  • Managing Yourself
  • Managing Teams
  • Work-life Balance
  • The Big Idea
  • Data & Visuals
  • Reading Lists
  • Case Selections
  • HBR Learning
  • Topic Feeds
  • Account Settings
  • Email Preferences

How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

  • Guy Kawasaki

create professional powerpoint presentations

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

  • Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
  • Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
  • Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
  • Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

create professional powerpoint presentations

  • Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

Partner Center

  • Create a presentation Article
  • Save Article
  • Design Article
  • Share and collaborate Article
  • Give a presentation Article
  • Set up your mobile apps Article
  • Learn more Article

create professional powerpoint presentations

Create a presentation

Create a presentation in PowerPoint

Your browser does not support video. Install Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash Player, or Internet Explorer 9.

Create presentations from scratch or start with a professionally designed, fully customizable template from Microsoft Create .

Open PowerPoint.

In the left pane, select New .

Select an option:

To create a presentation from scratch, select Blank Presentation .

To use a prepared design, select one of the templates.

To see tips for using PowerPoint, select Take a Tour , and then select Create , .

Create new PowerPoint

Add a slide

In the thumbnails on the left pane, select the slide you want your new slide to follow.

In the  Home tab, in the  Slides  section, select  New Slide .

In the Slides section, select Layout , and then select the layout you want from the menu.

PowerPoint slide layouts

Add and format text

Place the cursor inside a text box, and then type something.

Select the text, and then select one or more options from the Font section of the Home tab, such as  Font , Increase Font Size , Decrease Font Size ,  Bold , Italic , Underline , etc.

To create bulleted or numbered lists, select the text, and then select Bullets or Numbering .

PowerPoint format text

Add a picture, shape, and more

Go to the  Insert  tab.

To add a picture:

In the Images section, select Pictures .

In the Insert Picture From menu, select the source you want.

Browse for the picture you want, select it, and then select Insert .

To add illustrations:

In the Illustrations section, select Shapes , Icons , 3D Models ,  SmartArt , or Chart .

In the dialog box that opens when you click one of the illustration types, select the item you want and follow the prompts to insert it.

Insert Images in PowerPoint

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

create professional powerpoint presentations

Microsoft 365 training

create professional powerpoint presentations

Microsoft security

create professional powerpoint presentations

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Ask the Microsoft Community

create professional powerpoint presentations

Microsoft Tech Community

create professional powerpoint presentations

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Find solutions to common problems or get help from a support agent.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Online support

Was this information helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

  • PowerPoint Themes
  • Latest PowerPoint Templates
  • Best PowerPoint Templates
  • Free PowerPoint Templates
  • Simple PowerPoint Templates
  • PowerPoint Backgrounds
  • Project Charter
  • Project Timeline
  • Project Team
  • Project Status
  • Market Analysis
  • Marketing Funnel
  • Market Segmentation
  • Target Customer
  • Marketing Mix
  • Digital Marketing Strategy
  • Resource Planning
  • Recruitment
  • Employee Onboarding
  • Company Profile
  • Mission Vision
  • Meet The Team
  • Problem & Solution
  • Business Model
  • Business Case
  • Business Strategy
  • Business Review
  • Leadership Team
  • Balance Sheet
  • Income Statement
  • Cash Flow Statement

Executive Summary

  • 30 60 90 Day Plan
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Flow Charts
  • Gantt Charts
  • Text Tables
  • Infographics
  • Google Slides Templates
  • Presentation Services
  • Ask Us To Make Slides
  • Data Visualization Services
  • Business Presentation Tips
  • PowerPoint Tutorials
  • Google Slides Tutorials
  • Presentation Resources

SlideUpLift

17 Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint & Google Slides Presentation

Creating impactful presentations is no easy task. It comes with rigorous practice over the years. Get expert guidance and professional presentation tips on how to make a professional PowerPoint and Google Slides presentation.

17 Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint & Google Slides Presentation

A PowerPoint presentation is a fantastic tool for communicating vital information. Even though people think it’s simple to put all your content together and make a presentation, arranging and preparing the template and design takes time to ensure it is impactful and professional. But do you know how to make a professional PowerPoint & Google Slides presentation?

An engaging presentation goes beyond simply exchanging information; it connects with the audience . It must transport the listener on a journey, induce emotions, and leave an unforgettable impression. Let’s dig deeper and understand how to make a PowerPoint look professional.

What Is A Professional Presentation?

Shows What is a Professional PowerPoint

A professional presentation is a well-structured and effectively delivered communication that conveys information, ideas, or proposals in a business or formal context. 

It typically adheres to specific standards and practices to effectively engage and inform the audience. As a result, such presentations can be diverse, and they may be necessary to complete job interviews , provide sales pitches to potential clients, or present project proposals to top management. 

Let’s discuss the best tips on how to make a PowerPoint look professional.

How To Make A Professional PowerPoint Presentation? 

Making a professional PowerPoint and Google Slides presentation might be a hectic task. It needs your time to create amazing professional presentations and at the same time ensure you include all the key things. We have compiled a list of the best tips for you, which you can also use as a checklist. We have bisected the tips into three categories to make it easier for you to grasp. 

The three categories for tips for professional looking PowerPoint are as follows:

  • Content and Slide Tips
  • Presentation Design Tips
  • Delivery Tips

Content And Slide Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint

Content And Slide Tips

Follow the steps below on how to make a PowerPoint look professional:

  • Start with a title slide
  • Add an agenda slide
  • Logically arrange the middle slides
  • Include a call-to-action slide at the end of your presentation
  • Conclude with key takeaways

1. Start With A Title Slide

An eye-catching first slide serves as an introduction to your subject. To make it clear to read across the room, place the title of your presentation in huge letters in the middle of the slide. You can also include your name and title on the slide, depending on the type of presentation. 

One of the most underrated and important presentation tips – On the title slide, keep the background simple to avoid drawing attention away from you while you speak. 

2. Add An Agenda Slide

List what the audience can anticipate. Label your slide with “Presentation Agenda,” or as “ Meeting Agenda ,” or a phrase to that effect. List the key lessons you want your audience to take away from the presentation. It not only makes it easier for your audience to follow along, but it also clarifies your main objective. Let’s discuss another tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint.

3. Logically Arrange The Middle Slides

Identify the presentation’s beginning, middle, and end for more clarity. Make a list of the facts you want to provide and essential points you want your audience to take away from your presentation. Take what you’ve written and arrange the ideas in an outline so that each idea leads naturally into the next. 

For instance, if you’re making a persuasive presentation, you might begin by providing background information on the subject and then discuss potential solutions before concluding by outlining actions an audience member can take to contribute.

4. Include A Call-To-Action Slide At The End Of Your Presentation

The next tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint is to include a CTA. After you finish your presentation, inform your audience of the next steps. After reviewing the key points of your presentation, provide a list of actions your audience may take to advance the project. So that your audience has several options for what to do next, try to come up with some concrete ideas.

5. Conclude With Key Takeaways

Summarize your important points so your audience will remember them. Start the last slide with a header at the top that reads “Takeaways” or “Key Points.” Make a final list of bullet points containing the most crucial information you have covered. 

Emphasize your previous presentations’ key ideas and speak them aloud to your audience. In this manner, your presentation will leave a lasting effect on the audience, making them more likely to recall what you say.

Content forms the foundation of any presentation. But, if not designed correctly, it can lead to a boring presentation. That’s where an impactful design for a presentation comes into the picture. Now, let’s discuss design tips for professional looking powerpoints.

Design Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint

Design Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint

Now that you know some content and slide-related tips, let’s read about the top design-related tips on how to make a PowerPoint look professional:

  • Write content for your audience
  • Select readable fonts
  • List the important points in brief bullets
  • Aim to have about 10 slides
  • Make your presentation background & Theme consistent
  • Use “Format Object”
  • Use PowerPoint Shapes and SmartArt
  • Include relevant graphics and multimedia
  • Reuse your slides

1. Write Content Considering Your Audience

Your content is the king. What you write and present in your presentation can make or break it. You have to consider your audience and write content that relates to them. What’s the point of writing in a way that’s hard for your audience to comprehend?

Let’s say your target audience is freshers you hired recently, and your presentation includes multiple industry jargon that is difficult for them to understand. Senior professionals in the company can clearly understand this jargon, but your freshers might find it difficult. Hence, your content tone and style need to align with your targeted audience.

This way, you will also boost your audience’s participation and engagement. Now, let’s consider other tips on how to make a professional PowerPoint. 

2. Select Readable Fonts

Keep your fonts large and sans-serif so your audience can read them clearly. Keep your content between 28 and 40 points because small fonts might be difficult to see from a distance. Choose Proxima Nova or Arial rather than Times New Roman or another serifed font to show your content because sans-serif is more straightforward to read on a screen. 

Bold, italicize, or highlight the words you want to stand out as particularly important. Throughout the slide, change the font size. For instance, the slide’s headline should be larger than the body content.

READ MORE: Best Presentation Fonts

3. List The Important Points In Brief Bullets

Another tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint is to use bullet points. Your slides will be easier to follow if they have pointers. Paragraphs on a slide can be very intimidating, and your audience could choose to read them rather than pay attention to you. Keep your slide to a bulleted list of essential phrases or terms rather than writing out every word you plan to speak. Keep your slides to a maximum of six bullet points, each with a maximum of six words.

4. Aim To Have About Ten Slides

More than 10 concepts at once will be difficult for your audience to recall. Count your slides once you’ve organized your data to check if you have 10 or fewer slides. If you have more than 10, review the content once more to see if you can squeeze anything onto one slide. 

Decide which ideas need to be covered the most, and eliminate anything that doesn’t seem appropriate or doesn’t fit the style of your presentation. Now, Let’s discuss another tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint.

5. Make Your Presentation Background & Theme Consistent

Keeping the same straightforward theme and style for each slide can help you create professional PowerPoint presentations. You can make a background in PowerPoint or explore PowerPoint backgrounds from SlideUpLift. Use easy-to-read layouts that don’t draw attention away from the text or graphics you want to use.

Consistency in your background images and themes shows professionalism. This subconsciously attracts your audience and leaves a good impression.

6. Use “Format Object”

You must have used multiple objects in your slides, but there are chances that not all the objects are as per your requirements. You may need to alter a few things in your objects to align them properly with your overall presentation and good formatting. 

You can simply change your objects using the “Format Object: feature. Just right-click on the object you want to edit and choose the “Format Object” feature. Now, you can change the object’s size, add reflections, and even alter the text or content.

7. Use Powerpoint Shapes And SmartArt

The next tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint is using Shapes and SmartArt. Do you know PowerPoint provides multiple Shapes and SmartArts to help you create better presentations? In your slides, you can easily insert different shapes, like rectangles, circles, ovals, etc.. You can use these shapes to create various diagrams to showcase your content effectively.

Similarly, SmartArts also enhances your presentation’s visual appeal by providing you with multiple graphics options. These are pre-built in MS PowerPoint , and you can modify them as per your requirements. 

Using Shapes and SmartArts gives you more control over making professional presentations, as you can make changes to meet your requirements.

8. Include Relevant Graphics

Select charts and photos of the highest quality to highlight your content. You should use visuals only if they are essential to the argument you are attempting to make. You can use illustrations, PwerPoint images , infographics , graphs, or chart diagrams to display facts or make your point more obvious. You can also add GIFs and embed videos to your presentations.

This is a very crucial tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint. To avoid making your presentations appear cluttered, ensure all the images are the same size and resolution, and arrange them in the same spot on each slide. Charts and graphics that are challenging to interpret should have captions. Make one image on a slide stand out by giving it a different hue from the rest of the presentation.

Once you have the content, your PowerPoint presentation is all set, and it’s designed to create impact. How you create impact and engage the audience depends entirely on how you deliver presentations.

9. Reuse Your Slides

Another tip on how to make your Google Slides look professional is Reusing slides. It is a very potent way to breeze through your presentation and, in the process, make sure that the overall visual consistency of your design is improved. This will save you time when creating new slides again. It is greatly important as it offers ways through which a very polished and professional look can be maintained across your presentations.

If you are designing the slides, maybe save them as templates. This will permit you to replicate the slide framework and yet customize the content as necessary for different presentations. However, you can use your presentation software to create Master Slides that will enable you to build your own themes and ensure not just design consistency but also content consistency is adhered to across all presentations within your organization.

Delivery Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint

Delivery Tips for presentations

The way you deliver your PowerPoint slides can either make or break your overall presentation. Let’s see some tips on how to make a PowerPoint look professional:

  • Keep your transitions simple
  • Practice your presentations out loud
  • Practice in front of the crowd

1. Keep Your Transitions Simple

Adding Animations and transitions draws attention away from the material. While adding animations to your slideshow may seem creative to make it stand out, doing so might add a lot of extra time and distract the audience. Have the slides change as soon as the mouse clicks, rather than having the text fly in or the slides animate. Provide the information quickly and simply to make your presentation look stronger and more formal.

2. Practice Your Presentation Out Loud

The best tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint is to practice your presentation. Run the complete presentation to increase your confidence. After practicing your presentation a few times, you’ll feel much more at ease giving it. Practice as if you were presenting to a group of people; raise your voice to the appropriate pitch and volume.

Ensure the slides flow together by practicing clicking through them as you speak. Go back and change your slides to make any necessary corrections if you encounter issues. Consider recording your speech to see or listen to it later. You will be able to identify what needs to change as a result.

3. Practice In Front Of A Crowd

Request some early feedback to determine the success of your presentation. Take a group of friends or coworkers and walk them through the full presentation. When you’re done, ask them what they thought of the presentation and whether any points you tried to express confused them. Asking them questions you anticipate your audience will have will allow you to practice providing succinct responses.

Now that you have more than ten tips on how to make your Google Slides look professional, knowing how to present your ideas professionally is also vital.

How To Professionally Present Your Ideas?

How To Professionally Present Your Ideas

Check out the below tips on how to make a professional PowerPoint and deliver it in an effective way:

  • Choose the right time
  • Incorporate Brevity
  • Encourage Engagement from the audience
  • Incorporate An emotional connection
  • Use Visual tools
  • Use Images and graphics

1. Choose The Right Time

One of the most important professional PowerPoint presentation tips is timing. Choosing the right time slot is very important when giving a presentation. If you have the option to determine your presentation timetable, it would be preferable to select a mid-morning time slot. People’s attention is better captured in the morning.

2. Incorporate Brevity

The best tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint is to incorporate brevity. Typically, audiences have a limited attention span. When given lengthy materials to read, people rapidly become bored. Be direct if you want people to pay attention and continue to listen. Avoid including unrelated material because this will just make the presentation longer.

3. Encourage Engagement From The Audience

Keeping the audience interested in what you say is a difficult task. You can engage them and get them involved in the topic by making a good first impression in the first 30 seconds. You can also keep them engaged by injecting humor as you change the slides.

4. Incorporate An Emotional Connection

A good tip on how to make a professional PowerPoint is using an emotional connection. Any professional presentation must emotionally engage the audience, much like in advertising. When communicating your message, use feelings. By doing this, you give the visual aids a human face and make your point more understandable to the audience. Encourage them to act by awakening their emotions.

5. Use Visual Tools

Most people learn best visually. Presenters must know that their audience needs visual aids to grasp their words. Make sure that you use visuals to support your claims. The audience will understand your message more clearly if they can visualize it.

6. Use Images And Graphics

Using Graphics and images is a great practice on how to make a professional PowerPoint. They support you admirably as you give your speech. Charts and other complex data points can make visualizations difficult to design. To ensure precise and easy-to-understand details, you can create simple templates. However, if you find it difficult to create to-the-point, detail-oriented graphics, and templates that create an impact, you can outsource your presentations. 

Why Should Organizations Outsource Their Presentations To Specialists?

Why to outsource presentations

We discussed the best tips for professional looking PowerPoints. Now, let’s consider why to outsource presentation creations. Here are some reasons on how to make your slides look professional by outsourcing presentations:

  • Improving presentations for external clients
  • Assisting graphics team
  • Saves Manual efforts and time
  • Cost saving
  • Elevating design excellence
  • To support your marketing team with presentations

ALSO READ: Why Consultants Choose to Outsource Presentations ?

1. Improving Presentations For External Clients

Your PowerPoint presentation acts as a virtual handshake with your clients, making it an important factor in determining how they will perceive you or your company. For this reason alone, many professionals choose to outsource their external presentations.

2. Assisting Graphic Team

Your devoted graphic team is constantly creating different types of visual content. Your in-house designers probably already have their hands complete with daily design work. When this happens, outsourcing presentation design seems appealing because it relieves your graphic team’s workload and frees them up to succeed in their primary duties. 

3. Saves Manual Efforts And Time

Save your team from stressing about how to make a professional PowerPoint. The possibility of saving time motivates professionals to choose presentation outsourcing. As anybody who has struggled with slides knows, creating an engaging PowerPoint presentation takes time. By delegating the creation of presentations to external professionals, professionals can free up their time to work on more essential duties or, better yet, to thoroughly rehearse and perfect their message.

4. Cost Saving

Consulting firms might cut costs by outsourcing presentations to specialists. Outsourcing presentations to an agency costs less than hiring an internal presentation designer . This saved money can be utilized toward other essential business objectives while reducing labor expenditures.

5. Elevating Design Excellence

True masters of their trade are presentation designers who work professionally. Their knowledge spans more than just visuals; it also includes the complex art of slide layout and the crucial components that turn a presentation from good to spectacular. 

For instance, our team at SlideUpLift is proud of its design and presentation services after working with businesses from a variety of industries throughout the world. When creating excellent PowerPoint presentations, this abundance of knowledge is priceless.

Beyond improving aesthetics, the goal is to use this knowledge to make visually striking presentations that instantly connect with your audience. Hence, save your team’s efforts learning how to make a professional PowerPoint.

6. To Support Your Marketing Team With Presentations

Presentations are in high demand, particularly among marketing consultants. They have to unite their staff, discuss their marketing strategy with the rest of the organization, and win new clients for their enterprises. PowerPoint presentations are a fantastic tool for all of this! 

An intelligent marketing presentation can improve communication inside and outside your firm; outsourcing is the best option. In today’s competitive landscape, outsourcing presentations to professionals gives firms a strategic advantage. 

Outsourcing is appealing due to its time efficiency, access to cutting-edge equipment, brand consistency, new ideas, scalability, and cost savings. By consulting with you, outsourcing presentation companies can make compelling presentations that create a lasting impression on the audience.

How To Make A Professional PowerPoint With Templates From SlideUpLift?

The ability to generate professional-looking slides is a skill that may take your message to new heights in the dynamic world of presentations. SlideUpLift.com has materials and tools to assist you in every aspect of creating presentations:

  • Suppose you want to create presentations but need a starting point. In that case, you can download any template from our 40,000+ PowerPoint and Google Slides themes collection. Just download the template you like and change the content as you need.
  • If you don’t want to make changes to the templates, you can ask us to customize them through our custom slides service. You can expect fast delivery within 1 Business Day.

If you need multiple presentations every week, you can try our Presentation Services .

Check out our best professional templates below and learn how to make your PowerPoint look professional:

Detailed 30-60-90 Day Plan

How to make a professional powerpoint 30 60 90 Day Work Plan

Learn how to make a professional PowerPoint with this template. It covers the first 90 days of work and is strategically divided into 30-day intervals. For each 30 days, managers and professionals can lay out their tasks and set realistic goals.

It serves as a compass, guiding managers to set the course for their team or department. By presenting strategic plans and objectives for the first 90 days, managers can ensure alignment with the broader organizational goals.

executive summary

Pre-designed slides in the template provide an organized framework for showcasing executive summary including corporate objectives, financial summaries, and project updates. This adaptable template can be utilized in various business settings, such as showcasing milestones, initiatives, trends, reports, or proposals.

Customer Journey

Customer Journey

Learn how to make a professional PowerPoint with this template. It helps businesses in understanding the different stages and touchpoints customers encounter when interacting with their brand. Moreover, It also enables businesses to identify more areas for improvement and gain a detailed understanding of the customer journey.

You can use this for marketing, sales, customer support, and product development teams. This tool is valuable for companies across various sizes and industries who want to enhance the customer experience.

Business Review Dashboard

Business Review Dashboard

Learn how to make PowerPoint look professional with this template. It is highly effective for professionals who need to present and analyze corporate data. You can create professional presentations that effectively communicate complex business information, like revenue models, gross profit, customer satisfaction, and sales on a quarterly basis.

This dashboard is suitable for business professionals, managers, executives, product developers, sales professionals, and analysts. Moreover, It facilitates informed decision-making and supports tasks such as data analysis, financial reporting, and performance evaluations .

Company Timeline

Company Timeline

This template helps track the annual progress of a company. It features a clear and visually appealing timeline that allows users to compile and visualize the evolution of a project or the business itself.

Learn how to make a presentation look professional with this template. It has a customizable annual schedule, enabling users to track their business’s development effectively. It is ideal for HR, sales, and marketing professionals.

Presentations are crucial for professionals to host meetings and influence their team members and stakeholders. This blog taught you how to make a professional PowerPoint and Google Slides presentation that attracts your audience. We discussed the best tips to consider while creating presentations and shared the best professional templates from SlideupLift .

How do you get ready for your first professional presentation?

With thorough preparation, you can confidently deliver a polished and impactful presentation. Begin by thoroughly researching your topic and understanding your audience’s needs and expectations. Organize your content logically, creating a clear structure with a compelling introduction, main points, and a strong conclusion. 

How to make a professional PowerPoint?

Some tips for professional PowerPoint presentations include:

  • Focus on clear content organization
  • Use a consistent and appealing design template
  • Incorporate high-quality visuals
  • Practice your delivery to ensure a smooth and engaging presentation
  • Keep slides concise and avoid clutter to maintain audience interest and understanding.

What are the key elements of a professional-looking presentation?

A professional-looking presentation typically includes well-structured content, visually appealing slides, clear typography, cohesive design elements, and effective use of visuals.

What are some effective strategies for effectively rehearsing and delivering a professional presentation?

Effective rehearsal involves practicing your presentation multiple times, focusing on your tone and pacing, and anticipating questions from the audience.

What Are The Best Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint?

These are the top 10 PowerPoint tips for preparing a professional presentation:

  • Add key takeaways and include CTA at the end
  • Do not have more than 10 slides
  • Add a consistent presentation background
  • List important points in bullets
  • Include relevant graphics
  • Keep simple transitions
  • Practice your presentations loudly and in front of the crowd.

Table Of Content

Related presentations.

Customer Journey Executive Summary PowerPoint Template

Customer Journey Executive Summary PowerPoint Template

Project Planning Presentation PowerPoint Template

Project Planning Presentation PowerPoint Template

Business Case PowerPoint Template

Business Case PowerPoint Template

Related blogs.

10 Bad PowerPoint Slides Examples to Avoid

10 Bad PowerPoint Slides Examples to Avoid

10 Best Animated PowerPoint Templates

10 Best Animated PowerPoint Templates

10 Best Business PowerPoint Templates for Presentations

10 Best Business PowerPoint Templates for Presentations

10 Best Business Presentation Topics to Captivate Your Audience

10 Best Business Presentation Topics to Captivate Your Audience

Tags and categories, privacy overview.

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.

Home Blog Presentation Ideas 23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

PowerPoint presentations are not usually known for being engaging or interactive. That’s often because most people treat their slides as if they are notes to read off  and not a tool to help empower their message.

Your presentation slides are there to help bring to life the story you are telling. They are there to provide visuals and empower your speech.

So how do you go about avoiding a presentation “snoozefest” and instead ensure you have an engaging and interactive presentation?  By making sure that you use your slides to help YOU tell your story, instead of using them as note cards to read off of.

The key thing to remember is that your presentation is there to compliment your speech, not be its focus.

In this article, we will review several presentation tips and tricks on how to become a storytelling powerhouse by building a powerful and engaging PowerPoint presentation.

Start with writing your speech outline, not with putting together slides

Use more images and less text, use high-quality images, keep the focus on you and your presentation, not the powerpoint, your presentation should be legible from anywhere in the room, use a consistent presentation design, one topic per slide, avoid information overwhelm by using the “rule of three”.

  • Display one bullet at a time

Avoid unnecessary animations

  • Only add content that supports your main points

Do not use PowerPoint as a teleprompter

  • Never Give Out Copies of the Presentation

Re-focus the attention on you by fading into blackness

Change the tone of your voice when presenting, host an expert discussion panel, ask questions, embed videos, use live polling to get instant feedback and engage the audience.

  • He kept his slides uncluttered and always strived for simplicity
  • He was known to use large font size, the bigger, the better.
  • He found made the complex sound simple.

He was known to practice, practice, and keep on practicing.

Summary – how to make your presentation engaging & interactive, fundamental rules to build powerful & engaging presentation slides.

Before we go into tips and tricks on how to add flair to your presentations and create effective presentations, it’s essential to get the fundamentals of your presentation right.

Your PowerPoint presentation is there to compliment your message, and the story you are telling. Before you can even put together slides, you need to identify the goal of your speech, and the key takeaways you want your audience to remember.

YOU and your speech are the focus of this presentation, not the slides – use your PowerPoint to complement your story.

Keep in mind that your slides are there to add to your speech, not distract from it.  Using too much text in your slides can be distracting and confusing to your audience. Instead, use a relevant picture with minimal text, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Use more images and less text

This slide is not unusual, but is not a visual aid, it is more like an “eye chart”.

Aim for something simpler, easy to remember and concise, like the slides below.

Keep in mind your audience when designing your presentation, their background and aesthetics sense. You will want to avoid the default clip art and cheesy graphics on your slides.

Use high-quality images for engaging presentations before and after

While presenting make sure to control the presentation and the room by walking around, drawing attention to you and what you are saying.  You should occasionally stand still when referencing a slide, but never turn your back to your audience to read your slide.

You and your speech are the presentations; the slides are just there to aid you.

Most season presenters don’t use anything less than twenty-eight point font size, and even Steve Jobs was known to use nothing smaller than forty-point text fonts.

If you can’t comfortably fit all the text on your slide using 28 font size than you’re trying to say and cram too much into the slide, remember tip #1.4 – Use relevant images instead and accompany it with bullets.

Best Practice PowerPoint Presentation Tips

The job of your presentation is to help convey information as efficiently and clearly as possible. By keeping the theme and design consistent, you’re allowing the information and pictures to stand out.

However, by varying the design from slide to slide, you will be causing confusion and distraction from the focus, which is you and the information to be conveyed on the slide.

Looking for beautiful PowerPoint Templates that provide you with a consistent design

Technology can also help us in creating a consistent presentation design just by picking a topic and selecting a sample template style. This is possible thanks to the SlideModel’s AI slideshow maker .

Each slide should try to represent one topic or talking point. The goal is to keep the attention focused on your speech, and by using one slide per talking point, you make it easy for you to prepare, as well as easy for your audience to follow along with your speech.

Sometimes when creating our presentation, we can often get in our heads and try to over-explain. A simple way to avoid this is to follow the “ Rule of Three ,” a concept coined by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

The idea is to stick to only 3 main ideas that will help deliver your point.  Each of the ideas can be further broken into 3 parts to explain further. The best modern example of this “Rule of Three” can be derived from the great Apple presentations given by Steve Jobs – they were always structured around the “Rule of Three.”

Rule of Three PowerPoint Presentation

Display one sentence at a time

If you are planning to include text in your slides, try to avoid bullet lists, and use one slide per sentence. Be short and concise. This best practice focuses on the idea that simple messages are easy to retain in memory. Also, each slide can follow your storytelling path, introducing the audience to each concept while you speak, instead of listing everything beforehand.

Presentation Blunders To Avoid

In reality, there is no need for animations or transitions in your slides.

It’s great to know how to turn your text into fires or how to create a transition with sparkle effects, but the reality is the focus should be on the message. Using basic or no transitions lets the content of your presentation stand out, rather than the graphics.

If you plan to use animations, make sure to use modern and professional animations that helps the audience follow the story you are telling, for example when explaining time series or changing events over time.

Only add engaging content that supports your main points

You might have a great chart, picture or even phrase you want to add, but when creating every slide, it’s crucial to ask yourself the following question.

“Does this slide help support my main point?”

If the answer is no, then remove it.  Remember, less is more.

A common crutch for rookie presenters is to use slides as their teleprompter.

First of all, you shouldn’t have that much text on your slides. If you have to read off something, prepare some index cards that fit in your hand but at all costs do not turn your back on your audience and read off of your PowerPoint.  The moment you do that, you make the presentation the focus, and lose the audience as the presenter.

Avoid Giving Out Copies of the Presentation

At least not before you deliver a killer presentation; providing copies of your presentation gives your audience a possible distraction where they can flip through the copy and ignore what you are saying.

It’s also easy for them to take your slides out of context without understanding the meaning behind each slide.  It’s OK to give a copy of the presentation, but generally it is better to give the copies AFTER you have delivered your speech. If you decide to share a copy of your presentation, the best way to do it is by  generating a QR code  for it and placing it at the end of your presentation. Those who want a copy can simply scan and download it onto their phones.

Avoid To Give Out Copies of the Presentation

Tips To Making Your Presentation More Engaging

The point of your presentation is to help deliver a message.

When expanding on a particularly important topic that requires a lengthy explanation it’s best to fade the slide into black.  This removes any distraction from the screen and re-focuses it on you, the present speaker. Some presentation devices have a built-in black screen button, but if they don’t, you can always prepare for this by adding a black side to your presentation at the right moment.

“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

Part of making your presentation engaging is to use all the tools at your disposal to get your point across. Changing the inflection and tone of your voice as you present helps make the content and the points more memorable and engaging.

One easy and powerful way to make your presentation interactive is experts to discuss a particular topic during your presentation. This helps create a more engaging presentation and gives you the ability to facilitate and lead a discussion around your topic.

It’s best to prepare some questions for your panel but to also field questions from the audience in a question and answer format.

How To Make Your Presentation More Interactive

What happens if I ask you to think about a pink elephant?  You probably briefly think about a pink elephant, right?

Asking questions when presenting helps engage the audience, and arouse interest and curiosity.  It also has the added benefit of making people pay closer attention, in case they get called on.

So don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if rhetorical; asking a question engages a different part of our brain. It causes us to reflect rather than merely take in the information one way. So ask many of them.

Asking questions can also be an excellent way to build suspense for the next slide.

Steve Jobs iPad launch presentation in Macworld 2008

(Steve Jobs was known to ask questions during his presentations, in this slide he built suspense by asking the audience “Is there space for a device between a cell phone and a laptop?” before revealing the iPad) Source: MacWorld SF 2018

Remember the point of your presentation is to get a message across and although you are the presenter, it is completely fine to use video in your PowerPoint to enhance your presentation.  A relevant video can give you some breathing time to prepare the next slides while equally informing the audience on a particular point.

CAUTION: Be sure to test the video beforehand, and that your audience can hear it in the room.

A trending engagement tool among presenters is to use a live polling tool to allow the audience to participate and collect immediate feedback.

Using a live polling tool is a fun and interactive way to engage your audience in real-time and allow them to participate in part of your presentation.

Google Slides Poll with Audience Questions

Google Slides has a built-in Q&A feature that allows presenters to make the slide deck more interactive by providing answers to the audience’s questions. By using the Q&A feature in Google Slides, presenters can start a live Q&A session and people can ask questions directly from their devices including mobile and smartphones.

Key Takeaways from one of the best presenters, Steve Jobs

He kept his slides uncluttered and always strove for simplicity.

In this slide, you can easily see he is talking about the battery life, and it uses a simple image and a few words. Learning from Jobs, you can also make a great presentation too. Focus on the core benefit of your product and incorporate great visuals.

Battery Steve Jobs Slides

Source: Macworld 2008

SlideModel.com can help to reproduce high-impact slides like these, keeping your audience engagement.

Engaging PowerPoint template with battery and minimalistic style

He was known to use large font sizes, the bigger, the better

A big font makes it hard to miss the message on the slide, and allows the audience to focus on the presenter while clearing the understanding what the point of the slide is.

He found made the complex sound simple

When explaining a list of features, he used a simple image and lines or simple tables to provide visual cues to his talking points.

Steve Jobs Presentation Styles

(This particular slide is referencing the iMac features)

What made Steve Jobs the master of presentation, was the ritual of practicing with his team, and this is simple yet often overlooked by many presenters.  It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking you don’t need to practice because you know the material so well.

While all these tips will help you create a truly powerful presentation , it can only achieve if applied correctly.

It’s important to remember when trying to deliver an amazing experience, you should be thoroughly prepared. This way, you can elevate your content presentation, convey your message effectively and captivate your audience.

This includes having your research cited, your presentation rehearsed.  Don’t just rehearse your slides, also take time to practice your delivery, and your tone.  The more you rehearse, the more relaxed you will be when delivering. The more confident you will feel.

While we can’t help you with the practice of your next presentation, we can help you by making sure you look good, and that you have a great design and cohesiveness.

How to deliver your next presentation

You focus on the message and content; we’ll focus on making you look good.

Have a tip you would like to include?  Be sure to mention it in the comments!

create professional powerpoint presentations

Like this article? Please share

Audience, Engaging, Feedback, Interactive, Poll, Rule of Three, Steve Jobs Filed under Presentation Ideas

Related Articles

The Power of Audience Engagement: Strategies and Examples

Filed under Presentation Ideas • November 29th, 2023

The Power of Audience Engagement: Strategies and Examples

As presenters, captivating the interest of our viewers is the most important thing. Join us to learn all that’s required to boost audience engagement.

A Manager’s Guide to Interpersonal Communication

Filed under Business • April 30th, 2020

A Manager’s Guide to Interpersonal Communication

People are promoted to management positions for a variety of reasons. For many, they rise to the top because of their knowledge, technical skills, and decision-making capabilities. As a manager, your effectiveness also strongly depends on your ability to communicate well with your team members and other stakeholders. Here is a quick guide on Interpersonal Communication for Managers.

Using 360 Degree Feedback in Your Organization

Filed under Business • June 27th, 2019

Using 360 Degree Feedback in Your Organization

Many organizations use 360 degree feedback to provide assessment for employees via multiple sources to analyze the knowledge, skill and behavior of employees. It is also known as multi-rater feedback, multi-source feedback, 360 Degree Review and multi-source assessment, since it is used frequently for assessing the performance of an employee and to determine his/her future […]

2 Responses to “23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations”

Very great advices!

Greetings ! A compact composed communication for the host to have an impact -VOICE

Thank You ?

Leave a Reply

create professional powerpoint presentations

Find the perfect PowerPoint presentation template

Bring your next presentation to life with customizable powerpoint design templates. whether you're wowing with stats via charts and graphs or putting your latest and greatest ideas on display, you'll find a powerpoint presentation template to make your ideas pop., presentations.

Help your data, insights, and recommendations make a statement with beautiful and easily customizable presentation templates.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Certificates

Celebrate accomplishments big and small with customizable certificate templates. From gift certificates to awards for finishing a course or training, find a template that highlights their accolades.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Boost visibility for your show, project, or business with easily customizable poster templates. Find templates for all your promotion needs and make them uniquely yours in a flash.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Keep track of whatever you need to in style. From personal planning to promotional calendars, find templates for every kind of project and aesthetic.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Infographics

Say more with less using helpful and easily customizable infographic templates. Add clarity to business presentations, school projects, and more with these helpful templates.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Start with the best PowerPoint templates

Photography portfolio (boho organic) gray modern simple

Elevate your storytelling

Tips, tricks, and insider advice from our business and design experts

A quick way to create beautiful, powerful PowerPoint presentations

Create captivating, informative content for PowerPoint in just a few minutes—no graphic design experience needed. Here's how:

create professional powerpoint presentations

1. Find the perfect PowerPoint template

create professional powerpoint presentations

2. Customize your creation

create professional powerpoint presentations

3. Show it off

Let's create a powerpoint design, frequently asked questions, where can i find slide templates and themes that i can customize.

To find customizable slide templates and themes, you can explore the business presentations templates or search by PowerPoint templates . Once you find a template that resonates with you, customize it by changing its color scheme, add in your own photos, and swap out the font.

How do I use pre-made PowerPoint templates?

After you've chosen a PowerPoint template to use, customize it. Explore [design tips] on how to customize a deck that resonates with your brand while putting emphasis on the topic at hand. Play with other design elements, like photo shapes, to make each slide unique.

How can I make or edit my own custom PowerPoint templates?

Start from scratch by creating your own PowerPoint template . Follow tips for designs and business presentations so that your unique template is cohesive and relevant to your brand. Incorporate your brand's color scheme and graphics so that all your slides aren't text only.

What kinds templates can I get online for PowerPoint?

You can get PowerPoint templates that have modern designs, animated ones, or even hand-drawn art in each slide. The color schemes range from bold to subtle. Each template's slides are also organized based on what you may want to include in your presentation . You can use the template as a starting point and customize its specific details from theme.

Popular categories

Modern resume

How-To Geek

6 ways to create more interactive powerpoint presentations.

Engage your audience with cool, actionable features.

Quick Links

  • Add a QR code
  • Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)
  • Embed a Live Web Page
  • Add Links and Menus
  • Add Clickable Images to Give More Info
  • Add a Countdown Timer

We've all been to a presentation where the speaker bores you to death with a mundane PowerPoint presentation. Actually, the speaker could have kept you much more engaged by adding some interactive features to their slideshow. Let's look into some of these options.

1. Add a QR code

Adding a QR code can be particularly useful if you want to direct your audience to an online form, website, or video.

Some websites have in-built ways to create a QR code. For example, on Microsoft Forms , when you click "Collect Responses," you'll see the QR code option via the icon highlighted in the screenshot below. You can either right-click the QR code to copy and paste it into your presentation, or click "Download" to add it to your device gallery to insert the QR code as a picture.

In fact, you can easily add a QR code to take your viewer to any website. On Microsoft Edge, right-click anywhere on a web page where there isn't already a link, and left-click "Create QR Code For This Page."

You can also create QR codes in other browsers, such as Chrome.

You can then copy or download the QR code to use wherever you like in your presentation.

2. Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only)

If you plan to send your PPT presentation to others—for example, if you're a trainer sending step-by-step instruction presentation, a teacher sending an independent learning task to your students, or a campaigner for your local councilor sending a persuasive PPT to constituents—you might want to embed a quiz, questionnaire, pole, or feedback survey in your presentation.

In PowerPoint, open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, and in the Forms group, click "Forms". If you cannot see this option, you can add new buttons to the ribbon .

As at April 2024, this feature is only available for those using their work or school account. We're using a Microsoft 365 Personal account in the screenshot below, which is why the Forms icon is grayed out.

Then, a sidebar will appear on the right-hand side of your screen, where you can either choose a form you have already created or opt to craft a new form.

Now, you can share your PPT presentation with others , who can click the fields and submit their responses when they view the presentation.

3. Embed a Live Web Page

You could always screenshot a web page and paste that into your PPT, but that's not a very interactive addition to your presentation. Instead, you can embed a live web page into your PPT so that people with access to your presentation can interact actively with its contents.

To do this, we will need to add an add-in to our PPT account .

Add-ins are not always reliable or secure. Before installing an add-in to your Microsoft account, check that the author is a reputable company, and type the add-in's name into a search engine to read reviews and other users' experiences.

To embed a web page, add the Web Viewer add-in ( this is an add-in created by Microsoft ).

Go to the relevant slide and open the Web Viewer add-in. Then, copy and paste the secure URL into the field box, and remove https:// from the start of the address. In our example, we will add a selector wheel to our slide. Click "Preview" to see a sample of the web page's appearance in your presentation.

This is how ours will look.

When you or someone with access to your presentation views the slideshow, this web page will be live and interactive.

4. Add Links and Menus

As well as moving from one slide to the next through a keyboard action or mouse click, you can create links within your presentation to direct the audience to specific locations.

To create a link, right-click the outline of the clickable object, and click "Link."

In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, click "Place In This Document," choose the landing destination, and click "OK."

What's more, to make it clear that an object is clickable, you can use action buttons. Open the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, click "Shape," and then choose an appropriate action button. Usefully, PPT will automatically prompt you to add a link to these shapes.

You might also want a menu that displays on every slide. Once you have created the menu, add the links using the method outlined above. Then, select all the items, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then use Ctrl+V to paste them in your other slides.

5. Add Clickable Images to Give More Info

Through PowerPoint's animations, you can give your viewer the power to choose what they see and when they see it. This works nicely whether you're planning to send your presentation to others to run through independently or whether you're presenting in front of a group and want your audience to decide which action they want to take.

Start by creating the objects that will be clickable (trigger) and the items that will appear (pop-up).

Then, select all the pop-ups together. When you click "Animations" on the ribbon and choose an appropriate animation for the effect you want to achieve, this will be applied to all objects you have selected.

The next step is to rename the triggers in your presentation. To do this, open the "Home" tab, and in the Editing group, click "Select", and then "Selection Pane."

With the Selection Pane open, select each trigger on your slide individually, and rename them in the Selection Pane, so that they can be easily linked to in the next step.

Finally, go back to the first pop-up. Open the "Animations" tab, and in the Advanced Animation group, click the "Trigger" drop-down arrow. Then, you can set the item to appear when a trigger is clicked in your presentation.

If you want your item to disappear when the trigger is clicked again, select the pop-up, click "Add Animation" in the Advanced Animation group, choose an Exit animation, and follow the same step to link that animation to the trigger button.

6. Add a Countdown Timer

A great way to get your audience to engage with your PPT presentation is to keep them on edge by adding a countdown timer. Whether you're leading a presentation and want to let your audience stop to discuss a topic, or running an online quiz with time-limit questions, having a countdown timer means your audience will keep their eye on your slide throughout.

To do this, you need to animate text boxes or shapes containing your countdown numbers. Choose and format a shape and type the highest number that your countdown clock will need. In our case, we're creating a 10-second timer.

Now, with your shape selected, open the "Animations" tab on the ribbon and click the animation drop-down arrow. Then, in the Exit menu, click "Disappear."

Open the Animation Pane, and click the drop-down arrow next to the animation you've just added. From there, choose "Timing."

Make sure "On Click" is selected in the Start menu, and change the Delay option to "1 second," before clicking "OK."

Then, with this shape still selected, press Ctrl+C (copy), and then Ctrl+V (paste). In the second box, type 9 . With the Animation Pane still open and this second shape selected, click the drop-down arrow and choose "Timing" again. Change the Start option to "After Previous," and make sure the Delay option is 1 second. Then, click "OK."

We can now use this second shape as our template, as when we copy and paste it again, the animations will also duplicate. With this second shape selected, press Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, type 8 into the box, and continue to do the same until you get to 0 .

Next, remove the animations from the "0" box, as you don't want this to disappear. To do this, click the shape, and in the Animation Pane drop-down, click "Remove."

You now need to layer them in order. Right-click the box containing number 1, and click "Bring To Front." You will now see that box on the top. Do the same with the other numbers in ascending order.

Finally, you need to align the objects together. Click anywhere on your slide and press Ctrl+A. Then, in the Home tab on the ribbon, click "Arrange." First click "Align Center," and then bring the menu up again, so that you can click "Align Middle."

Press Ctrl+A again to select your timer, and you can then move your timer or copy and paste it elsewhere.

Press F5 to see the presentation in action, and when you get to the slide containing the timer, click anywhere on the slide to see your countdown timer in action!

Now that your PPT presentation is more interactive, make sure you've avoided these eight common presentational mistakes before you present your slides.

Top searches

Trending searches

create professional powerpoint presentations

68 templates

create professional powerpoint presentations

cybersecurity

6 templates

create professional powerpoint presentations

19 templates

create professional powerpoint presentations

58 templates

create professional powerpoint presentations

18 templates

create professional powerpoint presentations

physiotherapy

14 templates

Create your presentation

Writing tone, number of slides.

create professional powerpoint presentations

AI presentation maker

When lack of inspiration or time constraints are something you’re worried about, it’s a good idea to seek help. Slidesgo comes to the rescue with its latest functionality—the AI presentation maker! With a few clicks, you’ll have wonderful slideshows that suit your own needs . And it’s totally free!

create professional powerpoint presentations

Generate presentations in minutes

We humans make the world move, but we need to sleep, rest and so on. What if there were someone available 24/7 for you? It’s time to get out of your comfort zone and ask the AI presentation maker to give you a hand. The possibilities are endless : you choose the topic, the tone and the style, and the AI will do the rest. Now we’re talking!

Customize your AI-generated presentation online

Alright, your robotic pal has generated a presentation for you. But, for the time being, AIs can’t read minds, so it’s likely that you’ll want to modify the slides. Please do! We didn’t forget about those time constraints you’re facing, so thanks to the editing tools provided by one of our sister projects —shoutouts to Wepik — you can make changes on the fly without resorting to other programs or software. Add text, choose your own colors, rearrange elements, it’s up to you! Oh, and since we are a big family, you’ll be able to access many resources from big names, that is, Freepik and Flaticon . That means having a lot of images and icons at your disposal!

create professional powerpoint presentations

How does it work?

Think of your topic.

First things first, you’ll be talking about something in particular, right? A business meeting, a new medical breakthrough, the weather, your favorite songs, a basketball game, a pink elephant you saw last Sunday—you name it. Just type it out and let the AI know what the topic is.

Choose your preferred style and tone

They say that variety is the spice of life. That’s why we let you choose between different design styles, including doodle, simple, abstract, geometric, and elegant . What about the tone? Several of them: fun, creative, casual, professional, and formal. Each one will give you something unique, so which way of impressing your audience will it be this time? Mix and match!

Make any desired changes

You’ve got freshly generated slides. Oh, you wish they were in a different color? That text box would look better if it were placed on the right side? Run the online editor and use the tools to have the slides exactly your way.

Download the final result for free

Yes, just as envisioned those slides deserve to be on your storage device at once! You can export the presentation in .pdf format and download it for free . Can’t wait to show it to your best friend because you think they will love it? Generate a shareable link!

What is an AI-generated presentation?

It’s exactly “what it says on the cover”. AIs, or artificial intelligences, are in constant evolution, and they are now able to generate presentations in a short time, based on inputs from the user. This technology allows you to get a satisfactory presentation much faster by doing a big chunk of the work.

Can I customize the presentation generated by the AI?

Of course! That’s the point! Slidesgo is all for customization since day one, so you’ll be able to make any changes to presentations generated by the AI. We humans are irreplaceable, after all! Thanks to the online editor, you can do whatever modifications you may need, without having to install any software. Colors, text, images, icons, placement, the final decision concerning all of the elements is up to you.

Can I add my own images?

Absolutely. That’s a basic function, and we made sure to have it available. Would it make sense to have a portfolio template generated by an AI without a single picture of your own work? In any case, we also offer the possibility of asking the AI to generate images for you via prompts. Additionally, you can also check out the integrated gallery of images from Freepik and use them. If making an impression is your goal, you’ll have an easy time!

Is this new functionality free? As in “free of charge”? Do you mean it?

Yes, it is, and we mean it. We even asked our buddies at Wepik, who are the ones hosting this AI presentation maker, and they told us “yup, it’s on the house”.

Are there more presentation designs available?

From time to time, we’ll be adding more designs. The cool thing is that you’ll have at your disposal a lot of content from Freepik and Flaticon when using the AI presentation maker. Oh, and just as a reminder, if you feel like you want to do things yourself and don’t want to rely on an AI, you’re on Slidesgo, the leading website when it comes to presentation templates. We have thousands of them, and counting!.

How can I download my presentation?

The easiest way is to click on “Download” to get your presentation in .pdf format. But there are other options! You can click on “Present” to enter the presenter view and start presenting right away! There’s also the “Share” option, which gives you a shareable link. This way, any friend, relative, colleague—anyone, really—will be able to access your presentation in a moment.

Discover more content

This is just the beginning! Slidesgo has thousands of customizable templates for Google Slides and PowerPoint. Our designers have created them with much care and love, and the variety of topics, themes and styles is, how to put it, immense! We also have a blog, in which we post articles for those who want to find inspiration or need to learn a bit more about Google Slides or PowerPoint. Do you have kids? We’ve got a section dedicated to printable coloring pages! Have a look around and make the most of our site!

create professional powerpoint presentations

How To Get Free Access To Microsoft PowerPoint

E very time you need to present an overview of a plan or a report to a whole room of people, chances are you turn to Microsoft PowerPoint. And who doesn't? It's popular for its wide array of features that make creating effective presentations a walk in the park. PowerPoint comes with a host of keyboard shortcuts for easy navigation, subtitles and video recordings for your audience's benefit, and a variety of transitions, animations, and designs for better engagement.

But with these nifty features comes a hefty price tag. At the moment, the personal plan — which includes other Office apps — is at $69.99 a year. This might be the most budget-friendly option, especially if you plan to use the other Microsoft Office apps, too. Unfortunately, you can't buy PowerPoint alone, but there are a few workarounds you can use to get access to PowerPoint at no cost to you at all.

Read more: The 20 Best Mac Apps That Will Improve Your Apple Experience

Method #1: Sign Up For A Free Microsoft Account On The Office Website

Microsoft offers a web-based version of PowerPoint completely free of charge to all users. Here's how you can access it:

  • Visit the Microsoft 365 page .
  • If you already have a free account with Microsoft, click Sign in. Otherwise, press "Sign up for the free version of Microsoft 365" to create a new account at no cost.
  • On the Office home page, select PowerPoint from the side panel on the left.
  • Click on "Blank presentation" to create your presentation from scratch, or pick your preferred free PowerPoint template from the options at the top (there's also a host of editable templates you can find on the Microsoft 365 Create site ).
  • Create your presentation as normal. Your edits will be saved automatically to your Microsoft OneDrive as long as you're connected to the internet.

It's important to keep in mind, though, that while you're free to use this web version of PowerPoint to create your slides and edit templates, there are certain features it doesn't have that you can find on the paid version. For instance, you can access only a handful of font styles and stock elements like images, videos, icons, and stickers. Designer is also available for use on up to three presentations per month only (it's unlimited for premium subscribers). When presenting, you won't find the Present Live and Always Use Subtitles options present in the paid plans. The biggest caveat of the free version is that it won't get any newly released features, unlike its premium counterparts.

Method #2: Install Microsoft 365 (Office) To Your Windows

Don't fancy working on your presentation in a browser? If you have a Windows computer with the Office 365 apps pre-installed or downloaded from a previous Office 365 trial, you can use the Microsoft 365 (Office) app instead. Unlike the individual Microsoft apps that you need to buy from the Microsoft Store, this one is free to download and use. Here's how to get free PowerPoint on the Microsoft 365 (Office) app:

  • Search for Microsoft 365 (Office) on the Microsoft Store app.
  • Install and open it.
  • Sign in with your Microsoft account. Alternatively, press "Create free account" if you don't have one yet.
  • Click on Create on the left side panel.
  • Select Presentation.
  • In the PowerPoint window that opens, log in using your account.
  • Press Accept on the "Free 5-day pass" section. This lets you use PowerPoint (and Word and Excel) for five days — free of charge and without having to input any payment information.
  • Create your presentation as usual. As you're using the desktop version, you can access the full features of PowerPoint, including the ability to present in Teams, export the presentation as a video file, translate the slides' content to a different language, and even work offline.

The only downside of this method is the time limit. Once the five days are up, you can no longer open the PowerPoint desktop app. However, all your files will still be accessible to you. If you saved them to OneDrive, you can continue editing them on the web app. If you saved them to your computer, you can upload them to OneDrive and edit them from there.

Method #3: Download The Microsoft PowerPoint App On Your Android Or iOS Device

If you're always on the move and need the flexibility of creating and editing presentations on your Android or iOS device, you'll be glad to know that PowerPoint is free and available for offline use on your mobile phones. But — of course, there's a but — you can only access the free version if your device is under 10.1 inches. Anything bigger than that requires a premium subscription. If your phone fits the bill, then follow these steps to get free PowerPoint on your device:

  • Install Microsoft PowerPoint from the App Store or Google Play Store .
  • Log in using your existing Microsoft email or enter a new email address to create one if you don't already have an account.
  • On the "Get Microsoft 365 Personal Plan" screen, press Skip For Now.
  • If you're offered a free trial, select Try later (or enjoy the free 30-day trial if you're interested).
  • To make a new presentation, tap the plus sign in the upper right corner.
  • Change the "Create in" option from OneDrive - Personal to a folder on your device. This allows you to save the presentation to your local storage and make offline edits.
  • Press "Set as default" to set your local folder as the default file storage location.
  • Choose your template from the selection or use a blank presentation.
  • Edit your presentation as needed.

Do note that PowerPoint mobile comes with some restrictions. There's no option to insert stock elements, change the slide size to a custom size, use the Designer feature, or display the presentation in Immersive Reader mode. However, you can use font styles considered premium on the web app.

Method #4: Use Your School Email Address

Office 365 Education is free for students and teachers, provided they have an email address from an eligible school. To check for your eligibility, here's what you need to do:

  • Go to the Office 365 Education page .
  • Type in your school email address in the empty text field.
  • Press "Get Started."
  • On the next screen, verify your eligibility. If you're eligible, you'll be asked to select whether you're a student or a teacher. If your school isn't recognized, however, you'll get a message telling you so.
  • For those who are eligible, proceed with creating your Office 365 Education account. Make sure your school email can receive external mail, as Microsoft will send you a verification code for your account.
  • Once you're done filling out the form, press "Start." This will open your Office 365 account page.

You can then start making your PowerPoint presentation using the web app. If your school's plan supports it, you can also install the Office 365 apps to your computer by clicking the "Install Office" button on your Office 365 account page and running the downloaded installation file. What sets the Office 365 Education account apart from the regular free account is that you have unlimited personal cloud storage and access to other Office apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Read the original article on SlashGear .

presentation slides on laptop

Creating AI Presentations With AI Tools - Easier Than Ever!

Make your presentations professional and engaging with AI Studio's AI tools! Upload your PowerPoint and the AI avatar will read it for you - fast and easy! Get a high-quality AI presentation today with AI Studios.

CES Innovation Awards Winner

create professional powerpoint presentations

How do I set up ChatGPT to read the contents of my PowerPoint presentation?

Just select the PowerPoint file, and then set up your settings for the presentation, including what time interval you would like it to read each slide. Once you're done, you can start the presentation and ChatGPT will do the rest.

Create Professional PowerPoint Presentations Easily with ChatGPT

With ChatGPT, setting up your PowerPoint presentation to be read in the text of your choice is incredibly easy. Just upload your PPT to our AI Studios and the AI avatar will read it in the text you want. No more downloading or installing complicated software, and no need to spend hours editing and reformatting — ChatGPT does all the hard work for you with just a few simple clicks. With ChatGPT, you can create a professional-looking presentation in a fraction of the time.

create professional powerpoint presentations

AI Studio's AI avatars can read PowerPoint presentations with the text of the user's choice.

create professional powerpoint presentations

AI Studios eliminates the need to worry about intonation and pacing of a presentation.

AI Studios makes creating AI presentations easy and fast.

create professional powerpoint presentations

You can create professional PowerPoint presentations with ChatGPT, the AI-based presentation building tool. It enables you to quickly and effortlessly create beautiful, dynamic presentations with ease. With its intuitive and user-friendly interface, you can turn your ideas into an impressive presentation in no time. You can even upload existing PowerPoint files and have them automatically converted into the correct text format for an AI presentation. With ChatGPT, you can use natural language to command the AI avatar to carry out your commands. It then reads your presentation in natural, conversational language. In addition, you can customize the avatar’s voice and facial expressions to match your message. With all of these features, ChatGPT makes creating professional PowerPoint presentations easier than ever!

How to create AI video online

create professional powerpoint presentations

1. Open the AI Studios

First, sign up for AI studios and openthe editor. You can choose from various templates.

2. Edit and export

Enter the prepared script. You can add oredit everything from titles, images to videos.

3. Generate video automatically

When you press the Export button, AIvideo generator creates a video. It’s fast and easy.

Create videos online with AI Studios! AI Studios is an innovative platform that makes it easy to create engaging videos from PowerPoint presentations. Just upload your PowerPoint presentation, and AI Studios will generate a stunning video with an AI avatar that reads your text in the voice of your choice. The process is quick and simple - no special technical skills are required. With AI Studios, you can create professional-looking videos in minutes and bring your message to life. Unleash the power of AI and transform your content into engaging visuals in no time.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Vamos ficar conectados

Nossa equipe está pronta para apoiá-lo em sua jornada humana virtual. Clique abaixo para entrar em contato e alguém entrará em contato em breve.

create professional powerpoint presentations

Nosso gerador de vídeo de IA e tecnologia de IA conversacional visam preencher a lacuna entre as vantagens da interação humana e a conveniência digital. Saiba como nossos avatares de IA podem ajudar seus projetos e negócios a crescerem com mais eficiência e reduzir custos e tempo, tudo sem comprometer a qualidade.

DeepBrain AI Ltd., 540 University Avenue STE 200 Palo Alto, CA 94301

IMAGES

  1. Simple PowerPoint Template With Clean and Elegant Easy To Edit Slides

    create professional powerpoint presentations

  2. 32+ Professional PowerPoint Templates: Better Business PPTs

    create professional powerpoint presentations

  3. 17 PowerPoint Presentation Examples That Show Style & Professionalism

    create professional powerpoint presentations

  4. 18 Professional PowerPoint Templates: For Better Business Presentations

    create professional powerpoint presentations

  5. 2 in 1 Corporate Professional PowerPoint Template

    create professional powerpoint presentations

  6. 30+ Modern Professional PowerPoint Templates 2021

    create professional powerpoint presentations

VIDEO

  1. How To Design An Awesome Powerpoint Presentation || PowerPoint Tutorial

  2. How to create Professional PowerPoint Slide

  3. PowerPoint Presentation Trick

  4. How To Make An Effective PowerPoint Presentation? || Basic PowerPoint Tutorial #1

  5. How to create Professional PowerPoint Slide

  6. How To Create Professional PowerPoint Presentation? #wxp #powerpoint

COMMENTS

  1. How to Make Professional PowerPoint Presentations (w/Templates

    To customize the text in this template, you can work with the built-in text placeholders. To start, click into any text box. Then, press Ctrl + A ( Cmd + A on Mac) to select all the text inside. Type over the text placeholders in a premium professional presentation so that the slides tell your story.

  2. How to create Professional Presentation Design

    But it's also a great way to make sure that your audience's attention is 100% exactly where you want it to be! Use a strong cover to even out simple slides. 6. Use a unifying background. A simple, easy way to make your presentation look more professional is to pay extra attention to your slides' backgrounds.

  3. How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

    Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish. We'll break down every step of the design process, from choosing ...

  4. 10 PowerPoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation

    PowerPoint Slide Design. The design can leave a first and lasting impression. Give it a professional touch to win your audience's trust and attention. 1. Carefully Compose Your Slides. Don't copy and paste slides from different sources. You don't want your presentation to look like a rag rug.

  5. 20 Great Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design [+ Templates]

    A good PowerPoint presentation keeps the focus on your argument by keeping animations and transitions to a minimum. I suggest using them tastefully and sparingly to emphasize a point or bring attention to a certain part of an image. 2. Cohesive Color Palette. I like to refresh my memory on color theory when creating a new PowerPoint presentation.

  6. Create professional slide layouts with Designer

    Over time PowerPoint learns from your experience using design ideas and shows you design ideas at the appropriate time. Scroll through the suggestions in the Designer pane on the right side of the window. Click to select the design you want, or else close the window. If you select one of the ideas, your slide is changed accordingly.

  7. How to Make Professional PowerPoint Presentations (With PPT Templates

    Learn how to make professional PowerPoint presentations with templates. A professional PPT template helps you make a great impression every time you present....

  8. How to Create a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

    Use high-quality images and graphics. Make sure your visuals are relevant to your topic. Use visuals to break up text and make your presentation more visually appealing. 2. Use storytelling. Stories are a powerful way to engage the brain and make information memorable. When you tell a story, you activate the same parts of the brain that are ...

  9. 13 PowerPoint Presentation Tips to Create Engaging Presentations

    1. Start by writing out your talking points. The first thing you need to do, before even considering your presentation design, is to write out your talking points and outline your speech. Pay attention to popular and engaging presentation structures so you know the framework you want to follow throughout your talk.

  10. 8 Tips to Make the Best PowerPoint Presentations

    A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

  11. 25 PowerPoint Presentation Tips For Good PPT Slides in 2022

    Get your main point into the presentation as early as possible (this avoids any risk of audience fatigue or attention span waning), then substantiate your point with facts, figures etc and then reiterate your point at the end in a 'Summary'. 2. Practice Makes Perfect. Also, don't forget to practice your presentation.

  12. Tips for creating and delivering an effective presentation

    Tips for creating an effective presentation. Tip. Details. Choose a font style that your audience can read from a distance. Choosing a simple font style, such as Arial or Calibri, helps to get your message across. Avoid very thin or decorative fonts that might impair readability, especially at small sizes. Choose a font size that your audience ...

  13. How to Make a "Good" Presentation "Great"

    As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you'll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you're pitching an idea, reporting market research ...

  14. 60 Effective PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks (Giant List)

    Here's another one of our top PPT tips: tap into Envato Elements' unlimited stock photo library. People are more likely to take you seriously if your presentation is visually appealing. Users view attractive design as more usable. Similarly, they'll view a more attractive PowerPoint as more effective. 11.

  15. Create a presentation in PowerPoint

    Create a presentation. Open PowerPoint. In the left pane, select New. Select an option: To create a presentation from scratch, select Blank Presentation. To use a prepared design, select one of the templates. To see tips for using PowerPoint, select Take a Tour, and then select Create, . Add a slide.

  16. How To Make A Professional PowerPoint? 17 Tips

    Content And Slide Tips On How To Make A Professional PowerPoint. Follow the steps below on how to make a PowerPoint look professional: Start with a title slide. Add an agenda slide. Logically arrange the middle slides. Include a call-to-action slide at the end of your presentation.

  17. Professional PowerPoint Templates & Slides

    Create attractive presentations with professional PowerPoint templates and slide designs. Use PPT templates to give unique appearance to your presentation. ... This allowed me to continue to be productive, meet my deadline, and create an awesome slide presentation. Glenda, MI. I found the slide I needed within the first 10 minutes and was able ...

  18. Free Online Presentation Maker

    With Visme's Presenter Studio, you can record your presentation and share it with your audience. Record your screen, audio, and video, or switch off your camera for an audio-only presentation. Present asynchronously on your own time, at your own pace. Let your colleagues watch it at their convenience. Create Your Presentation.

  19. 23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging Presentations

    Best Practice PowerPoint Presentation Tips. Use A Consistent Presentation Design. One Topic Per Slide. Avoid information overwhelm by using the "Rule of Three". Display one bullet at a time. Presentation Blunders To Avoid. Avoid unnecessary animations. Only add content that supports your main points.

  20. Free presentation templates

    To make presenting even easier, you can download your template in a variety of formats, like PowerPoint and PDF, or share it digitally with your colleagues. Craft engaging presentations for school, business, extracurriculars, and more. Start with eye-catching PowerPoint slide designs and customize easily with AI tools.

  21. PowerPoint design templates

    Create captivating, informative content for PowerPoint in just a few minutes—no graphic design experience needed. Here's how: 1. Find the perfect PowerPoint template. Search for anything—type of template, image, color, —or take a look around by browsing the catalog. Select the template that fits you best, from pitch decks to data ...

  22. Presentations and slides for any occasion

    Choose a design from our presentation templates or create your own from scratch. Customize your presentation with colors, fonts, and key information. Add animations, videos, images, illustrations. Use assets and other media content from your Brand Kit (Pro) to stay consistent with your business or school brand.

  23. Online PPT Maker

    Create your own stunning presentation design for free with Canva's impressively easy to use online presentation maker. ... Designing is an absolute breeze thanks to its drag-and-drop features and ready-made professional quality templates. Everything you need to become a visual communicator is at your fingertips—an epic image library ...

  24. How to create awesome PowerPoint presentations

    A clutter-free, professional design is vital for maintaining your audience's focus on your message. While custom themes and creative layouts can make your slides visually appealing, they shouldn ...

  25. 6 Ways to Create More Interactive PowerPoint Presentations

    Engage your audience with cool, actionable features. 2. Embed Microsoft Forms (Education or Business Only) If you plan to send your PPT presentation to others—for example, if you're a trainer sending step-by-step instruction presentation, a teacher sending an independent learning task to your students, or a campaigner for your local councilor sending a persuasive PPT to constituents—you ...

  26. Business Powerpoint Templates and Google Slides Themes

    Create captivating presentations with these business slideshow templates that will leave a lasting impression. No Download Limits Free for Any Use No Signups. ... Simple Professional Brainstorm Presentation ... Download your presentation as a PowerPoint template or use it online as a Google Slides theme. 100% free, no registration or download ...

  27. Free AI presentation maker

    Slidesgo comes to the rescue with its latest functionality—the AI presentation maker! With a few clicks, you'll have wonderful slideshows that suit your own needs. And it's totally free! How does it work? Try for free our new AI Presentation Generator and create a customizable template in seconds. Explore beyond PowerPoint.

  28. How To Get Free Access To Microsoft PowerPoint

    Click on "Blank presentation" to create your presentation from scratch, or pick your preferred free PowerPoint template from the options at the top (there's also a host of editable templates you ...

  29. Creating AI Presentations With AI Tools

    Creating AI presentations has never been easier than with the newest AI tools on the market. With AI Studios, you can easily upload your PowerPoint presentation, and the AI avatar will read it in the text of your choice - making your presentation sound professional and engaging. Gone are the days of worrying about the right intonation and pace of a presentation; AI Studio's AI avatar can do ...