This is Camille from nuts and bolts speed training and if you've ever wanted to
build a custom PowerPoint template but didn't know where to start.
In this video I'm going to show you exactly how I would go about building a
custom PowerPoint template from scratch and you can follow along and see the
steps that I take to make sure that this template is easy to use and functional.
Part one,
setting up the framework and the layout design for your PowerPoint template in
the slide master.
Here in PowerPoint,
I've opened up a blank presentation and I'm going to use this to begin building
out my custom template.
And before you even get to this stage,
keep in mind that you want to first have created your PowerPoint themes,
which includes your colors,
the fonts as well as the effect for your shapes.
And the next thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to sit
down and answer some of the questions that I cover in the article about how to
build a custom template that you can see in the description below.
And you want to make sure that you have thought through some of these questions
so that you're building out something that is going to serve the exact purpose
that you need it for.
Now,
once you've done all those things and you have an idea about what you want to
have on your template and in your template,
the first thing that you're going to do,
or the first thing that I'm going to do is go to the design tab and I'm going to
select this dropdown here for variants,
select colors,
and I'm going to choose my custom color selection.
I've already named one PowerPoint templates,
so I'm going to select it and you'll see that the colors change.
If I insert a rectangle,
I now get these new color options here from my theme.
So that's the first thing that I'm going to do.
Okay?
Once I've set the colors,
the next thing I'm going to do is set the fonts.
So same thing,
go into design,
go into the variants and select fonts.
I'm going to pick my custom font combination that I've already created here and
you'll notice that the title changes as well as the subtitle in this first
slide.
Now the first thing that I like to do when creating a PowerPoint template is I
like to create the framework.
So I like to set the slide background and some of the design elements that are
going to appear throughout the template so that I know how much room I have to
maneuver and how many objects I have on my slide in terms of design and that
will help me create the rest of the template framework.
So to do that,
you want to make sure that you don't start editing your template here in the
normal view,
but that you actually go into the slide master view.
This is where all the template magic happens.
So I've seen people build out an entire template in the normal view here,
and then they're,
they're stuck down the road and they have to recreate it from scratch.
So hopefully this saves you a step and you probably knew this already,
but just in case,
let's make sure that we go into the slide master view.
So we can go to the view tab up here and select slide master.
Or if you know your shortcuts,
you can hit ALT W M for mother and go into slide master or M for master.
So here in the slide master,
you'll notice we have a bunch of different layouts.
The first thing to point out is we have the Parent slide,
which is the big slide here at the top.
And you'll notice these little outlines going down,
which indicate that these layouts are a part of this broader,
bigger layout.
Uh,
within this one slide master,
we have one parent slide and maybe about 10 or 12 child layouts.
Now it's important to note that you can delete these layouts,
but I don't recommend it in Julie,
uh,
Julie Terberg and Echo Swinford's book on templates,
they make a very good point that if you start to delete some of these and you're
using your templates down the road,
you may encounter some,
uh,
some serious little snafoos that you will regret.
So my tip is that unless you are 300% sure that you're not going to use some of
these layouts and that nobody in on the planet is going to send you a slide with
any of these default layouts,
then go ahead and delete them.
If you know your company,
for example,
uh,
has no business whatsoever in Asia where they might use,
uh,
you know,
sideways,
uh,
writing,
uh,
then you can go ahead and delete those.
But generally speaking,
I would say,
you're better off just keeping them in and uh,
no one who doesn't need to use them is going to use them.
So I wouldn't worry about that so much.
So,
um,
the next thing that I'm going to do when I'm in in here is I'm going to first do
the broad sweeps of formatting that I want on my uh,
parents side because this parent slide affects the entire rest of the slide master
So well you're going to put on here is going to be carried over onto each one of
these slides and then you can edit these manually one by one down the road.
But so first we want to make sure that we edit this the way we would like it to be.
And so on this slide you'll notice we have five different elements.
We have a title,
we have a content,
a title placeholder content placeholder,
and we have our foot placeholders here as well.
And these are the elements that are going to carry across the entire
presentation that we're going to want to format.
But before we do that,
what I like to do first actually is to format the background and the various
design elements that I'm going to include.
And let me show you really quickly how to do that.
So to format the background,
what I'm going to do is I've decided on a layout that's going to be quite
minimalist and modern and so I have found online a picture of a pattern that I
like and I've copied it to my clipboard.
And so what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to click into my slide and hit
control v to paste.
So I've pasted this image in now to format it to fit the layout of the slide,
which by the way is sixteen by nine when I'm going to do is with the image
selected,
I'm going to go to crop select this little dropdown here and select aspect ratio.
This is a super handy way to very quickly crop the picture to fit the dimension
of your slide.
So I'm just going to do that.
Hit escape,
and then I'm going to make the size a,
this image fit the entire slide.
I'm just going to type in 13.33 hit enter.
Then I'm going to place this over my slide space like this.
So there you can see we have this pattern.
Uh,
if you prefer instead,
let's see.
I'm just thinking maybe what I'm going to do,
I'm going to hit control Z to undo that.
What I'm actually going to do,
because I like,
I like this to be actually smaller and want the hexis to be about this size
rather than being stretched.
So what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to duplicate this,
this image.
So I'll hit control d and I'm just going to place it right here and I'm going to
have to massage it so that it fits.
I'm going to use my Arrow keys like so that looks about right.
So now I have two of these and these are gonna fit better.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to select both of them and group them
together and only at the very end when I know for sure this is what I'm going to
use,
which I'm pretty certain now,
so I'm going to go ahead and do this now,
but don't do it until you're 100% sure is I'm going to cut this control X and
I'm going to paste it in as a picture that I can then crop,
uh,
and have stay whole.
You know,
you can use your shortcuts,
control Alt V or you can right click and use your paste options here and paste
as a picture.
Again,
I'm going to crop to ratio 16 by 9 and I'm going to stretch it to fill the slide
and put it in here.
So there you go.
Now we have a nice little background and I'm just going to send this,
send this to the back to get an idea of what it looks like.
I think it looks pretty good.
Now the text is kind of hard to read.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to insert a rectangle that I'm going to put
above this,
a pattern that has a bit of transparency so that the text is,
is more easily read.
So I'm just going to draw in a rectangle.
The first thing I'm gonna do is remove the outline and then I'm going to
actually add a gradient because I'm going to have the transparency bleed out
from the center.
So what I'm going to do is right click this picture,
uh,
the shape,
sorry,
format shape,
and I'm going to go in here and I'm going to change the fill from solid to
gradient fill.
Now this remember is my last gradient fill,
which looks very weird.
Uh,
but I'm actually going to change this from linear to radial.
I'm going to select,
uh,
select a preset here and have it go out from the center.
Now I have to adjust these gradient stops.
The first thing I'm going to do is make this stop white.
They're all going to be white actually.
And I'm going to give this a transparency of five.
So it's almost a,
almost a hundred percent white.
And I'm going to move these down a little bit this way.
We'll see how that looks in a bit.
I'm going to then add a 10% transparency to this one.
Oh,
I don't know why that shifted.
Uh,
let's see.
Make this white.
Add a,
oh,
that's why add a 10% transparency.
I'm going to make this white as well.
Add a 20% transparency and I will add,
make this white and add a 60% transparency.
So I think that looks pretty good.
I might just adjust these a little bit and before I do too much more,
I'm going to send this backwards.
Um,
a few times.
Uh,
you know what,
I'll send it all the way to the back.
Then I'll select this pattern and I will send that one all the way to the back.
So that they're overlaid that way.
So that gives me a bit of an idea of how it looks.
I can continue to adjust this,
uh,
this gradient tab stop section.
Let me just drag it a little bit this way so that we have a little more solid
white behind more of the text.
But we can still see the pattern poking through in the back.
So I will close this and determine that that looks pretty good.
The next step is I'm going to,
I've decided that this layout is going to have a color spot element.
So I'm going to draw in a rectangle here.
I'll put it in about here.
Now if I remember correctly,
I wanted it about zero 65,
something like that.
I'm going to put it to the edge of the slide and I will make sure to remove the
outline for that as well.
So now I have the basic framework of uh,
of my slide and you'll notice that from this parent slide,
all the child slides received the same exact background,
the same elements here in the back.
So now that I have this set,
the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to edit the placeholders that are on
this parent slide,
which are going to affect the rest of the child layouts for this presentation.
Okay.
So the very next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to add some,
uh,
grid lines to this presentation.
Actually guides technically so that I have a sense of how much space that I
have.
And to do that,
I'm going to go to the view tab and select guides.
I had to deselect them and re select them so that they appear.
And you can see I just have the default two guides here that are across the
center and middle of the slide.
Now what I want to do with these guides is I want to give myself and future
users of this template a sense of how much space I have,
uh where things are going to be aligned and how much bleed room I want to have.
Sometimes bits of presentations get cut off and I want to have a sense of how
much space I have.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this first one and I'm going to
drag it up here and I'm going to give myself a little bit of room.
So I'm going to drag it to about three,
six,
three.
So I have a little bit of space here in case anything gets cut off with.
This basically tells me is ah,
I shouldn't put anything beyond this line because it might get cut off.
I'm going to do the same for below.
So I'm going to hover over my mouse over this guide and hit hold the control key
to drag a second one down and I'm going to go to the same distance,
so three,
six,
three and let go.
You'll notice actually that my foot is already happened to be aligned with this,
but we're gonna change.
We're gonna change that up a little bit,
uh,
soon here.
The next thing I'm gonna do is do the same for the other sides.
And I'm having trouble hovering over this.
I'm going to zoom out a little bit to be able to select it.
You'll notice that my mouse turns into these double double arrowed cursors here.
I'm going to drag this off to the side,
maybe about six,
five,
four,
hold the control key and drag a second one down to the same distance.
Six,
five,
four.
And even though I have this element here on the right side,
I'm still going to drag this guide over just that we have it here.
Um,
just as a reference point for where my bleed is.
So,
um,
that already gives us a bit of a framework.
We're going to add some more guides down the road once we've set all of our
placeholders,
but for now we'll just consider that good.
So that wraps up part one of this series where you can follow along as I build a
custom PowerPoint template from scratch.
We've set up the general design look and feel and layout of the template in the
slide master and in the next part we're going to walk through the content
placeholders on this parent slide layout and you'll see exactly how I would
customize it.
And in part three we're going to walk through each one of these child layouts
underneath the parent layout in the slide master area.
And I will show you the last steps that I always take in creating a custom
PowerPoint template.
So if you want to watch part two,
click on the button here on this screen and I'll see you there.
This is Camille from nuts and bolts speed training,
and I'll see you at happy hour.