Microsoft Powerpoint Guide

In PowerPoint, horizontal and vertical logic refers to two different ways of organizing and presenting information.

 

A horizontal storyline follows a linear progression, where each slide builds upon the previous one to tell a story or convey a message. You should be able to quickly flick through the presentation to get an idea of the story that the document is telling.

 

A vertical storyline is held on a single slide and builds up the action title, with each slide providing more depth and detail on that theme.

Always use left alignment for text, and not full justification. there is a profeesional judgement to be made wether full justifaction should be used, and it's much safer to use left align. Also, justification is a sophisticated mathematical process. The justification engine in Word or PPT is simplistic compared to that of more proffesional applications such as Adobe InDesign. PPT justification can often look clunky and coarse, so left-aligning is more reliable.

Each template is supplied with a cover page that includes information to help the reader understand the purpose of the PPT doc. This is to be filled out and used in most cases. There is also a standard cover page template provided that just contains the title.

An executive summary is a brief section at the beginning of a document that provides a concise overview of the content. It is intended to give the reader a quick understanding of the main points and key takeaways of the document. The executive summary is particularly useful for busy executives who may not have the time to read the entire document, but still need to understand its main points and conclusions. It is important to keep the executive summary brief and to the point, while still providing enough information to give the reader a clear understanding of the content.

A page tempalte for this is included in each PPT template.

Avoid overcrowding slides with too much text. Instead, use brief bullet points or phrases to convey key points. Your slides should complement your verbal presentation, not replicate it word-for-word.

Page transitions are fine for marketing and pitch decks, but for general PPT documents, avoid using transitions.

The templates we have provided on this site come with page guides. These split the page up into One, two, three, or four columns. This helps you format the content on each slide to be consistent and helps the presentation feel professional.

Reduce the amount of elements on a side, or combine them together. Keeping pages visually simple and as clean as possible reduces distracting elements and helps the reader focus on the content.

Images can help to get across a point and visual impact to a presentation, but they do need to be chosed very carefully as they can also cheapen the accompanying content and have a detrimental effect. When choosing an image that depicts people, please make sure this is a Marex image, and not a stock photo. We have provided a series of photos that can be used on our brand imagery page, if you need something specific, get in touch design@marex.com