Understanding the Elements of a PowerPoint Slide

PowerPoint slides are conceptually quite different from spreadsheets or word processing documents with which you may already be familiar. The following sections take a look at some of the elements that make up a typical PowerPoint slide.

Choosing Design and Background Elements

The slide show you've been working on in this chapter looks pretty plain at this point, with its white background and black text. You probably want something a little more interesting. What you're looking for is the design layer of the slide. Fortunately, PowerPoint comes with dozens of predefined design templates. To select a design template, follow these steps:

1. Choose Format, Slide Design. PowerPoint displays several design template thumbnails at the right of the screen (see Figure 2.9). The list that appears varies, depending on what you or someone else has used recently.

   Figure 2.9. PowerPoint's predefined design templates enable you to create stunning and effective presentations with very little effort.

   

2. Scroll through the list of design templates until you find one you like. Click a design template to apply that design to your entire slide show (see Figure 2.10).

   Figure 2.10. A design template coordinates colors, sizes, fonts, and layouts so you don't have to.

   

A design template changes several different elements of your slides, all coordinated to create an attractive and functional effect. Templates typically consist of these elements:

• A title master, used only on title slides, that consists of a graphic background, designed to work with the size and placement of the slide's title.

• A slide master, used on all slides except title slides, is similar to the title master but is designed to work with a variety of slide layouts.

• A font style that has specific default font sizes for titles, bullets, and other text you may add.

• An overall color scheme, including font colors, shading, background colors, and other properties that coordinate well with the colors of the design.

If you don't like the effect of a design template you chose, you can select another. Although you can modify a design template, or even create your own, it's usually best to use those that come with PowerPoint until you become comfortable with PowerPoint and until you've had a chance to develop a sense of what works and what doesn't work in design templates.

Communicating by Using Objects

Unlike a word processing document that relies on strings of words to convey a message, PowerPoint slides consist primarily of several objects, placed onscreen in such a way as to communicate a message visually. Slides can contain few or many objects, depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

Consider the slide shown in Figure 2.11. How many objects do you think the slide contains? Depending on how you look at it, you might say anywhere from two objects to five or more. However, objects are only items that can be selected, added, deleted, or moved as a unit. For example, you cannot select the blue bar or the frame around the bullets because they're part of the design layer. Objects can include the following:

Figure 2.11. In PowerPoint you create and edit objects on a slide, but you can't directly select or edit elements of the design layer.

• Title placeholders

• Bulleted text placeholders

• Chart or diagram placeholders

• Text boxes

• Graphic images (for example, clip art, photos, drawings)

• Multimedia placeholders (for example, video clips, audio clips)

If you click an object, the object's frame appears, indicating what it is that you're working with. Note that in Figure 2.11 the only two objects onscreen are selected: the title placeholder and the bulleted text placeholder. The other graphic images and lines are part of the design layer and thus are not slide objects.

Organizing the Layout Structure

When you created your first slide show, you may have noticed that the organization of the first and second slides was different. This organization of objects is called the layout of the slide in that it determines where such things as the title, bullets, or other objects normally reside, and it provides placeholders for those objects. A title placeholder, for example, reserves the location and space for a title; until you actually add text to the title placeholder, no title appears when you play the slide. The location of layout placeholders is determined initially by the design template that is applied, but ultimately you can choose any layout you want or move or remove objects from a layout that doesn't quite meet your needs.

By default, PowerPoint applies the Title Slide layout (title and subtitle) to the first slide in a slide show and the Title and Text layout (bullets) to all subsequent slides. Suppose, however, that you want to change a slide to include two columns of bullets. To change the layout of a slide, follow these steps:

1. Go to the slide you want to change (for example, the "My Hobbies" slide in your slide show).

2. Choose Format, Slide Layout. PowerPoint displays a list of layout types at the right side of the screen.

3. Scroll through the list until you find the layout you need (for example, the Title and 2-Column Text layout) and click the layout to apply it to the current slide.

PowerPoint presents you with the initial objects required for the layout you've chosen (see Figure 2.12).

Figure 2.12. Layout options give you predefined arrangements of text and content objects.

Layout options are grouped as follow:

• Text layouts Nearly all slide layouts include at least a title placeholder. Text layouts include text-only combinations.

• Content layouts Content layouts include slides with placeholders for more than just text: charts, diagrams, tables, or images, in a variety of arrangements. You can also choose a blank slide layout that contains no objects.

• Text and content You can select combinations of text and content placeholders.

• Other layouts Other layouts include specific content types for example, a table or a data chart instead of multicontent placeholders found in the other groups of layouts.

Layouts provide predefined placeholders that also coordinate with your design layer. However, until you actually fill the placeholders with something, they remain invisible when you play a slide show.

Adding Objects to Slides

Placeholders are just one type of object. You can also add other objects to complement them. For example, you might want to add a text label and an arrow to draw the audience's attention to something important onscreen (see Figure 2.13).

Figure 2.13. You aren't limited to predefined layouts: You can add text or graphic objects that help present your message.

The kinds of objects you add, and especially what you do with them, is limited only by your creativity and imagination. Some of the most common types of objects include the following:

• Text objects You can add small or large amounts of text. You can rotate text, highlight it, or animate it for different effects.

• Graphic objects You can add graphic objects, including clip art images, images from the Internet, drawings you create yourself, or scanned images, including photos. You can determine the size, location, rotation, and often the colors of such objects.

• Content objects You can add content objects, including data and organizational charts, diagrams, tables, and multimedia elements. You can use layouts to add content objects, and you can also add such objects to any slide, placing them wherever you want.

To add an object to a slide, simply use the menu or toolbars to select and insert the object. For example, to add an arrow to draw the viewer's attention to one of your bullet points, follow these steps.

1. Choose Insert, Picture, AutoShapes. PowerPoint displays the AutoShapes palette. Click the Lines button to see the extended palette of line types (see Figure 2.14).

   Figure 2.14. One way to add graphic objects is to use the AutoShapes palette.

   

2. Click the type of arrow you want to insert (for example, the single-headed arrow). The mouse pointer changes to crosshairs (a large plus sign).

3. Move the mouse pointer to where you want the arrow to start.

4. Click and drag the mouse pointer to where you want the arrowhead to point.

5. Release the mouse button to insert the arrow.

6. Close the AutoShapes palette by clicking its Close button.

Don't worry yet about the details of adding a drawing object. At this point, you can just congratulate yourself on a job well done. Other chapters explore in detail how to add all sorts of objects. The important thing to know at this point is that you can add a variety of objects to help you visually communicate just about any message.