PowerPoint Templates In Depth with Julie Terberg and Echo Swinford (Episode 56)

PowerPoint Templates In Depth with Julie Terberg and Echo Swinford (Episode 56)

PowerPoint templates are a key, and fundamental, feature of PowerPoint. We have all seen “templates” that are far from a true, functional and helpful PowerPoint template. Troy, Nolan and Sandy are joined by two industry experts in PowerPoint template development – who literally wrote the book on PowerPoint templates; Echo Swinford and Julie Terberg.

Our conversation dives into the depths of PowerPoint backend setup, options and best practices. This conversation may not be for everyone. If you are a presenter, producer or someone that does not really focus on the minute details of PowerPoint, we understand. More great general business topic and design concept conversations are coming!

This episode we dive deep into these topics:

1. 1. What is a definition of a PowerPoint template vs a well-designed presentation or foundational slides?
   2. What are Templates vs. Themes?
   3. PowerPoint Slide Masters, Master Layouts, and those semi-automatically created Master Layouts.
   4. What are the core components of a good template?
   5. What can and can’t a real template do for users (why are there are no automagic buttons)?
   6. What are some tips about theme colors, customizing a template color scheme, and best practices for developing a template color scheme?
   7. What are some tips about setting up template defaults; shape, text box, line, table, etc.?
   8. What is the first technical things you do in PowerPoint when starting a template design project?
   9. When are Notes and Handout Masters important, and any formatting/setup tips?
   10. Example/Boiler Plate slides can make for a very lengthy and onerous template. How do you handle this? What are the key examples you feature?
   11. Other quirks and flaws in template-building features? (yes, we took this topic directly from the back cover of your book!)