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Should you still care about PowerPoint?

Hello everyone! I am the founder of Reprezent, a professional presentation design company. For 7 years we have been creating presentations for Ukrainian and foreign companies, startups, and speakers at conferences, including TEDxKyiv.

At the start, we were making presentations in Photoshop and exported each image to a separate slide. But it was not convenient for us or the client: if there is a typo on the slide or the title moved by a couple of pixels, and the client starts a meeting in 10 minutes, we frantically opened Photoshop, waited for it to load, corrected the error (and prayed it to be the last!), saved and exported again.

Now we are working in PowerPoint and teaching others to "tame" this tool.

From time to time we come across scepticism, because first of all PowerPoint is associated with strange animations, standard built-in templates, Word Art and school presentations.

I want to share why you should use PowerPoint in order to make presentations quickly and beautifully.

1. PowerPoint has enough features to make beautiful slides.

For clipping and colour correction of photos, we use Photoshop, for editing vector graphics Illustrator, but we crop the photo, insert shapes, align objects on the slide, set a gradient, set up animation, etc. PowerPoint only.

2. The client can correct the presentation himself without involving you

We always give the client the final version of the presentation in an editable .pptx format. Thus, if desired, they themselves can quickly replace the text, change the order of the slides, change the picture, etc. and do not depend on the designer.

3. The speed of creating and editing presentations is faster than in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Did you know that you can duplicate an object not with the standard Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V combination, but simply by pressing Ctrl and dragging?

And our favourite combination for creating timelines is Ctrl-D. It duplicates an object and places it at a specified distance, which can be edited. It places a copy of the object at the same distance when reapplied.

4. PowerPoint is updated regularly and offers useful new features.

Morph: transition between slides, which allows you to make smooth animation in PowerPoint in 1 click. We often use it in our work to create dynamism and a wow effect.

AI Slide Design: PowerPoint offers design options for your content. Let's say you inserted a picture, title and text on the slide, but have not yet placed them. The program analyzes the content and offers about 10 slide design options. We almost never use this feature, but it can be quite useful for budding designers and non-designers.

Built-in icons: on the Insert tab, the Icons button has appeared. When you click on it, a menu with different categories of icons appears. They are inserted on the slide with vector objects that can be scaled, recoloured and even changed for yourself.

Inserting images directly from the stock: the same mechanism as with icons. Upon request, you can find any pictures and insert them directly onto the slide. The function is quite fresh, suitable for simple queries (for example, building, sky, costume).

5. If the client does not have PowerPoint or the presentation is needed in several formats, it can be easily converted to Google Slides and Keynote.

In order to convert your presentation to Google Slides, you just need to upload it to Google Drive and click the "Open in Google Slides" button. If you need a Keynote version, you can open your presentation in Keynote and save it as .key. In both cases, we recommend that you double-check so that nothing gets misplaced.

6. PowerPoint can be used for more than just presentations.

The slide size in PowerPoint can be easily adjusted for any need: make a vertical A4 to quickly typeset reports for clients or make a creative resume. Or adjust the square size of the slide and export it to pictures for Instagram. The slide size can be adjusted in the Design tab - Slide size.


We believe PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool. We strive to help more people simplify the process of creating a presentation. Check out our portfolio of pitch decks if you are interested in presentations.

And what do you use for making presentations?

What is your preferred tool for making presentations?
  1. I use PowerPoint
  2. I have macOS, so it's Keynote for me
  3. I choose everything but PowerPoint
Vote
  1. 2

    I love this. What would you say makes a good slide deck?

    1. 2

      I believe a good slide deck is a presentation that achieves the goals of the speaker, as well as helps them to convey the ideas in a clear manner. Basically, even a black and white presentation can be outstanding if its structure is logical, content is relevant and the story is compelling.

      1. 1

        That makes total sense.

  2. 1

    Thanks for the information. I didn't even know that fully photoshoping a deck was a thing.

    I came across this new tool lately called Pitch. I don't use them but they caught my eye because their website is just beautiful...

    Seems like they're doing some collaborative slideshow creation.

    I mainly use Keynote. I have Powerpoint for MacOS and it works great, but I work with Keynote faster.

    Maybe it can be good for your team...

    1. 1

      Agree; Pitch seems a promising instrument for collaboration. In addition, I liked that the tool has quite a lot of beautiful templates and an intuitive interface.

      Keynote is a fantastic tool too :)

      1. 1

        Since then I started using Pitch myself. I'm in love.

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