Your task: create a presentation.

There are lots of ways to approach this depending on what you’re trying to convey to your audience, and there are many things to consider: the message, content, flow, slide design, aesthetics, and a variety of other factors involved in storytelling.

Sometimes it’s helpful to start with a template. This way, you can set aside certain aspects of the design such as layout and visual effects so that you can focus your efforts elsewhere.

The folks who run Office Online have provided everyone with a collection of slides, designed by PowerPoint MVP Julie Terberg, which you are free to use in your own presentations. They can serve as a starting point for the rest of the deck (much like a template), or you can use them simply as inspiration for some special effects. A little eye candy can really captivate an audience.

Here’s a short video showing samples from the collection:

 

For more tips, check out last week’s design intervention post, in which Julie helps a law student make some key last-minute changes to her slides. Additional design-related posts are listed here.

-Chris