Building PowerPoint Templates: Step by Step With the Experts

Building PowerPointTemplates

Supercharge your PowerPoint® presentations

with custom templates and themes!

Want to create presentations that are more consistent and cost-effective? Presentations that fully reflect your branding? Then don’t settle for Microsoft’s “out-of-the-box” templates and themes: create your own! In this easy, hands-on guide, two PowerPoint MVPs teach you every skill and technique you’ll need to build the perfect template–from planning and design, through theme building, custom layouts, colors, and deployment.

Echo Swinford and Julie Terberg have distilled their immense PowerPoint knowledge into simple, step-by-step techniques you can use right now, whether you’re using PowerPoint 2010 or 2007 for Windows, or PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. Well-built templates are the backbone of great presentations—whether building them for your own use or designing for thousands of users, this book will guide you through the process of creating the most effective templates.

Important Note: Upgrading from older versions of PowerPoint, such as PowerPoint 2003? Your old templates may no longer work. This book will help you make the transition painlessly!

• Plan new templates and themes to maximize their business value for years to come

• Understand the differences between templates and themes, and how they work together

• Make better choices about color, fonts, and slide layouts

• Create efficient templates for individual users, teams, and large organizations

• Incorporate Notes and Handout Masters into your presentation templates

• Provide example slides and default settings that lead to better presentations

• Use Microsoft’s little-known Theme Builder to create effects and background styles

• Work around hidden quirks in PowerPoint’s advanced template and theme features

Echo Swinford, a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP since 2000, has been a featured speaker at the Presentatio Summit (formerly PowerPoint Live) since its inception. She is the expert voice and instructor behindPowerPoint 2010 LiveLessons (Video Training), the author of Fixing PowerPoint Annoyancesand co-author of The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit.

Julie Terberg is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and featured speaker at the Presentation Summit. She is the owner of Terberg Design and has been designing presentations since the mid-1980s. She is co-author ofPerfect Medical Presentations. As contributing author for Presentations Magazine, she won awards for her Creative Techniques columns.

Echo Swinford began her career in the industry by convincing the boss to keep the presentation development work in house. This forced Echo to learn PowerPoint in a hurry! Fast forward 15 years and Echo has completed her master’s degree in New Media at the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis School of Informatics. She is the co-author ofThe PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, author of Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances, and the expert voice and instructor behindPowerPoint 2010 LiveLessons (Video Training). She’s tech edited a slew of other books and is constantly learning more about PowerPoint. Based in Indianapolis, she travels frequently, supporting clients worldwide with presentation and template consulting, development, and training. A Microsoft PowerPoint MVP since 2000, Echo has been a featured speaker for the Presentation Summit (formerly PowerPoint Live) user conference since its inception. In her spare time she fights with the Theme Builder, fosters cats for the Humane Society of Indianapolis, and trades sanity checks with Julie Terberg at least three times a day.

Julie Terberg has worked in the computer graphics industry since the time of CRT monitors, 8-inch floppy discs, and film recorders. Her background includes a BFA in Industrial Design, years of experience behind the scenes in business theater, and more than a million slides served (with backup files to prove it). Julie is the principal of Terberg Design, based in Michigan, where she lives with her husband and two teenage kids. She loves helping her clients by developing visual concepts that better communicate with an audience. Julie has been a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP since 2005. She is the co-author ofPerfect Medical Presentations and she was the tech editor for The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. As a contributing author toPresentations Magazine, Julie won editorial awards for her Creative Techniques columns. She enjoys speaking at the Presentation Summit user conference, where she met and instantly bonded with Echo Swinford.