Often I’m asked by clients to create a few customized Powerpoint templates for their internal subject matter experts to use to create training courses. Sometimes I know the company and their work well, other times I don’t anything about the company.
Regardless of whether I’m familiar with the company or not, I always look at the company website. It gives me insight into the official ‘look and feel’ of the organization – including graphics, fonts, colors – and I get a feel for what they are trying to communicate to site visitors.
Armed with this information, I choose my base templates. I normally create two customized templates for clients – one that is simple, fairly generic, and can apply to many types of content. The second is more theme-based, reflecting what the company does.
If I’m working with a manufacturing company, the second template may used elements like black/yellow striped bars, corrugated steel background, a strong, straight font. If the company is a service-based company I may lean more towards elements like office furniture, a desktop, a computer screen.
So, to make customized templates quickly, I often re-work existing templates – giving them the look and feel of the company in several easy ways.
Use Color Schemes as Branding
Adopting the corporate color scheme as a branding theme is an easy and subtle way to customize templates. The color scheme doesn’t take up any screen real estate, but still effectively communicates the branding message.
Here is an example I created for NetCasters Inc. Below is the website, followed by the PowerPoint template.
NetCasters Website
Custom NetCasters Template
You can use the colors in several ways: as headings, highlight colors, shape colors, etc. An easy to way to implement the colors is to create a custom theme in PowerPoint. When you do that, the colors will be used by default as shapes and text are added to the template.
To learn how to create a custom theme, watch this screencast from the E-Learning Heroes website.
Add a Few Relevant Graphics
Depending on what the company does, select a few graphics to use in the template. Maybe the background for the text has the faded image of a set of gears, or perhaps the text is displayed on a chalkboard.
In the above example I used the world graphic in the background of the header – just to give some continuity between the website and the template.
I’ve also used company background graphics, applying artistic effects (using PowerPoint 2010), and colorizing to reduce the saturation. The result is a subtle background graphic that ties the template to the corporate image.
If you are creating a theme – like a desktop, or a notebook, some pages may not use all of the graphical elements. (A multimedia page, for example.) In that case, make sure the elements are available for SME’s to pull into slides as needed.
Add Company Logo
(in an unobtrusive place, preferably as small as possible)
Company logos are popular, but take up screen real estate and generally distract from the course content. But there are a couple of ways to use the logo without so much distraction.
Add the logo to the bottom of the page – where the footer would normally be. Depending on the layout of the page, put it in the center or bottom corner to balance another graphic. Keep it small – remember it’s in the footer – so you still maximize space for content.
Another option is to add the logo to the ‘player’ template, if you have one. If you’re creating a SCORM course, your course will load in a ‘player’. Add the logo to the player and it takes nothing away from the course content.
Need Assistance Creating a Template?
If you’re a TrainCaster client and you would like us to create a custom-branded PowerPoint template for your organization, please let me know! We’re happy to help.
