Considerations for Designing PowerPoint Backgrounds: Guest Post by Claudyne Wilder

Many people do not know that you can create more than one slide master in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, and even your own slide layouts in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. Do you use these features?

You have an opportunity to create a new company background -- or maybe even several. Answer these questions before getting started:

• Will you have just a title at the top of each slide, or will the slides have both title and subheading?
  
  
• Will you show charts that fill the whole slide?
  
  
• Will you have slides with text and pictures together?
  
  
• Will you put your logo on every slide? Is that company policy? Is it really needed?
  
  
• Will you put your customer's logo on certain slides?
  
  
• Will the presentation be divided into product categories? Do you want different slide looks for each of the products? How will you carry through one central look even with different slides looks representing different products?
  

Once you have created several looks, ask yourself these questions:

• When I look at the slide, does my eye go to a central place? Do I have so many graphical elements that the eye keeps wandering from one to another. Don't put all these elements on one slide: a busy background with images on it, a title space that has many design elements, a logo that is very large and other design elements as well.
  
  
• Will the design make it easy for the presenter to talk and show off the key points?
  
  
• Are the color combinations attractive and bring the eye into the slide? For example, some yellows, blues, and greens really make people want to look away. Tone down the colors if necessary.

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Claudyne Wilder is guest lecturer at conferences, business shows and corporate events. She is the creator of three presentation seminars: "The Winning Presentations Seminar," "The Winning Presentations Sales Seminar;" and "Creating PowerPoint Presentations That Get Your Point Across." She offers "The Winning Presentations Seminar publicly about six times a year. She also licenses this seminar to companies and consultants to teach.

Do visit Claudyne's site at Wilder Presentations to learn more.

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