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PowerPoint Templates – Adjusting to a Particular Theme

When working with/on PowerPoint templates the most important thing to do is to know the theme for your template. Often, people just have a general idea of how they want the template to look but have no solid idea of what it’s going to be actually used for. This can create problems with your workflow and lead to redundancy in the templates you’re creating, not to mention failing to suit the needs of a particular presentation.

Not all ideas fit all themes ‘ for a very obvious example, you would not want any bright and cheerful presentations when talking on a grim subject like war. Therefore, consider your audience carefully, as well as the circumstances under which the presentation will be given. Try to make a ‘skeleton’ of the presentation’s layout first, and then flesh it out with different elements. Consider varying geometric shapes and other alterations to the overall composition which can affect it. Generally, it’s not that hard to get the style for a presentation right after a few tries but you will have to really vary your choices of elements.

Browsing around the Internet is also a good way to get different ideas for your PowerPoint presentation’s theme ‘ have a look at the different websites with communities for sharing PowerPoint templates, and look at how some templates look like for the most common themes you can think of ‘ i.e. medical, military, etc. Take notes of the elements that are common in all of them, and try to find something that is related to the theme of your own presentation ‘ then study how it is done exactly.
Of course you should never outright steal someone’s work or ideas, but you should definitely use them as inspiration for your own projects. That is how most people get their ideas anyway ‘ they study others’ work and adapt what they’ve learned to their own styles. As time goes by, you’ll eventually develop your own style entirely, combining the things you like from other people’s work and adding your own flavor to the theme.

A well-built PowerPoint presentation can be easily adjusted to a number of themes ‘ if you’ve followed the path we described earlier, with fleshing out the presentation from an initial framework, you should have no problem taking it apart and replacing the important elements with different ones to completely change the theme of your presentation.

A good trick you can use is to avoid using images at all in the beginning. Try to get as much as you can done through colors and shapes entirely ‘ as well as proper alignment of the elements on the screen. After that, you can use images as simple supportive additions to the main picture and not as the primary objects of interest.

This is another good step towards making your PowerPoint theme adjustable and flexible, so that your work will not go completely wasted on just one presentation and you’d be able to use the same template for other purposes with just minor adjustments.