BtD #001: The Essential Guide to PowerPoint Masters & Layouts
Hello and welcome to Beyond the Deck!
Rather than surface level stuff, I’m going to jump right into the heart of the matter. The single biggest mistake I see people make when creating in PowerPoint is that all the design work is created on the front-facing slides.
What this means is that Slide Masters and Layouts, instead of working for you, are working against you. Hampering your efficiency and consistency and making tedious what could otherwise be an elegant experience.
This first edition of BtD does come with a warning. It’s a wee, shall we say, thorough. It’s also a bit technical. It’s intended as a reference guide. Take what you’re ready for and come back for the rest later.
Based on my experience with clients, it’s usually a lack of time and understanding that keeps people from delving into how to do it right. But, with a tiny bit of focused attention we can flip the mystery of Masters and Layouts on its head and change the entire scope of your experience from now until forever!
Are you ready?
PowerPoint Slide Masters and Layouts are like a big dog that looks menacing but once you approach it, is actually tame, friendly and even lovable. You just have to hold your hand out for it to sniff and bingo…you’re in.
Okay, scratch that.
They are, however, organized and remarkably intuitive. Once you understand what you’re looking at and how to make good choices, you’ll never sit at your desk howling for a designer ever again!
There is a distinct relationship between Slide Masters, Layouts & Slides.
The hierarchy is: Master ⇢ Layouts ⇢ Slides
◼ The Slide Master sits behind the scenes. It’s the top slide in a hierarchy of slides that stores information about the Theme including the background, colors, fonts, effects, and placeholder sizes and positioning. You can consider the Slide Master the "parent" slide.
◻ Also behind the scenes, Layouts are like the "children" in the hierarchy. They inherit the properties of their "parent" Slide Master, such as themes, backgrounds and fonts, but each layout also can have its own unique design and elements, like placeholders for titles, text, pictures, etc.
◧ Individual slides get even more specific. Each slide uses a blueprint defined by the Slide Master and its corresponding Layout.
Much like a Layout can be designed with unique properties which are different from the Master, an individual slide can “override” the formatting it receives from the Layout.
The relationship looks a little like this:
In essence, the Slide Master defines the overall look and feel of your presentation. Layouts allow you to apply different types of content placeholders and further refine the formatting. Individual slides contain the graphics and text that convey your message.
The following nine Layouts are included in the Office Theme. They probably look familiar as these Layouts are available every time you create a new presentation. One significant feature that makes Layouts different from Slide Masters are placeholders, the preconfigured blocks formatted for specific types of content. We’ll look at placeholders more closely in just a bit.
Moving to the front-side of the deck, when you create a new presentation, the first slide will default to a ‘Title Slide Layout’ (see the above image). If you insert a new slide under the Title Slide, the ‘Title and Content Layout’ will be the default.
If you look at the image above, the ‘Title Slide Layout’ is the first Layout and comes directly underneath the Master. The second slide in the sort order is ‘Title and Content.’
What is important to understand when inserting new slides is that aside from the defaults just explained, every new slide inserted will take on the Layout of the slide before it. For example, if you’re creating a deck and you insert a new slide after a slide using a ‘Blank Layout,’ the new slide will also have a ‘Blank Layout.’
Equally important: You can easily change the Layout of any slide by right clicking on the slide in the navigation pane (found on the left), selecting Layout and picking the new Layout.
Have you ever deleted or moved placeholder on a slide to suit your needs?
When I first began creating presentations, I did this all the time.
But there’s a better way.
What I am going to explain next is the following:
Why you don’t want to delete placeholders on front-facing slides
How to utilize ‘Unicorn Layouts’ instead of deleting placeholders
How to create a Layout with placeholders
Number 1: Why deleting placeholders is a no-no.
Placeholders are pre-defined areas for media, text, charts, etc. They are built into the Layouts and appear on the front facing slides. Helping maintain alignment, font size, color, bullet styes and a whole host of other formats, placeholders are super-useful for maintaining consistency, one of my top-five must-haves for a solid deck.
Deleting a placeholder is the first step in unravelling the natural order of things and creating what often devolves into Frankenslides. Perhaps it’s not as serious as all this, but kind of. When you delete a placeholder, it doesn’t really go away.
If you move or delete a placeholder, the ‘memory’ of its proper place still lives on the Layout. All it takes is a ‘reset’ of the slide and your placeholder will return to its proper place, moving the current contents with it. The same can occur if you copy and paste the slide into another deck, moving your text and images around and making a mess of things.
There is a simple way around this: Unicorn slides.
Number 2: What to do instead.
These days, I often build entire decks using only a few Layouts. While you won’t find the term Unicorn Slide in the Microsoft help pages but you will find information about placeholders. And a Unicorn Slide, by definition, is a Layout without placeholders. Nothing to delete = No reappearance later.
The two Layouts that are great for this purpose are ‘Title Only’ and ‘Blank.’ Their names are self-explanatory. Title Only keeps the consistency of your slide title intact and leaves the remaining space on the slide open for text and graphics. Blank provides an open canvas and carte blanche to fill it.
Using either of these Layouts is preferable to deleting placeholders.
However, if we return to the purpose of placeholders, namely consistency, this may present a problem. What do you do if you want to maintain the consistency of the text and graphics in your deck and the pre-configured Layouts don’t match your most often-used formats?
Number 3: Creating your own Layout; it’s easier than you think.
Creating your own Layout slides is a skill every PowerPoint user should have at their disposal. Here are the steps:
Step 1: Navigate to the Slide Master ¦ View → Slide Master
Step 2: Choose Insert Layout from the upper left side of the Ribbon.
Step 3: Optional: Rename the Layout by right clicking on it in the Navigation Pane; select Rename.
Step 4: Optional: Delete the title placeholder if you don’t have a need for it.
Step 5: Select Insert Placeholder from the Ribbon; select the type of Placeholder you’d like to add.
Step 6: Place the Placeholder on the slide and reposition/resize as necessary.
Step 7: Repeat steps 5 & 6 to add additional Placeholders.
Step 8: Select Close Master View and return to the front facing slides.
Step 9: Test: Insert a new slide. Right click on the slide in the Navigation Pane. Select Layout and pick your new Layout. Enter your content into the Placeholder.
Step 10: Optional: Return to the Layout to modify if necessary.
Important Note: If you adjust the Layout, even after you’ve created slides using it, the changes will automatically be reflected on the slides.
If you create with PowerPoint and you want to get better at it, then mastering the understanding of Slide Masters and Layouts is essential. The good news is that if you do, you already know more than 75% of people using the software.
This is just the beginning. But it’s a solid foundation to build upon.
Thank you for being here 🤍