ms powerpoint presentation design

This simplistic presentation example employs several different colors and font weights, but instead of coming off as disconnected, the varied colors work with one another to create contrast and call out specific concepts.

What I like: The big, bold numbers help set the reader's expectations, as they clearly signify how far along the viewer is in the list of tips.

10. “Pixar's 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling,” Gavin McMahon

This presentation by Gavin McMahon features color in all the right places. While each of the background images boasts a bright, spotlight-like design, all the characters are intentionally blacked out.

What I like: This helps keep the focus on the tips, while still incorporating visuals. Not to mention, it's still easy for me to identify each character without the details. (I found you on slide eight, Nemo.)

11. “Facebook Engagement and Activity Report,” We Are Social

Here's another great example of data visualization in the wild.

What I like: Rather than displaying numbers and statistics straight up, this presentation calls upon interesting, colorful graphs, and charts to present the information in a way that just makes sense.

12. “The GaryVee Content Model,” Gary Vaynerchuk

This wouldn‘t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk presentation if it wasn’t a little loud, am I right?

What I like: Aside from the fact that I love the eye-catching, bright yellow background, Vaynerchuk does a great job of incorporating screenshots on each slide to create a visual tutorial that coincides with the tips. He also does a great job including a visual table of contents that shows your progress as you go .

13. “20 Tweetable Quotes to Inspire Marketing & Design Creative Genius,” IMPACT Branding & Design

We‘ve all seen our fair share of quote-chronicling presentations but that isn’t to say they were all done well. Often the background images are poor quality, the text is too small, or there isn't enough contrast.

Well, this professional presentation from IMPACT Branding & Design suffers from none of said challenges.

What I like: The colorful filters over each background image create just enough contrast for the quotes to stand out.

14. “The Great State of Design,” Stacy Kvernmo

This presentation offers up a lot of information in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.

What I like: The contrasting colors create visual interest and “pop,” and the comic images (slides 6 through 12) are used to make the information seem less buttoned-up and overwhelming.

15. “Clickbait: A Guide To Writing Un-Ignorable Headlines,” Ethos3

Not going to lie, it was the title that convinced me to click through to this presentation but the awesome design kept me there once I arrived.

What I like: This simple design adheres to a consistent color pattern and leverages bullet points and varied fonts to break up the text nicely.

16. “Digital Transformation in 50 Soundbites,” Julie Dodd

This design highlights a great alternative to the “text-over-image” display we've grown used to seeing.

What I like: By leveraging a split-screen approach to each presentation slide, Julie Dodd was able to serve up a clean, legible quote without sacrificing the power of a strong visual.

17. “Fix Your Really Bad PowerPoint,” Slide Comet

When you‘re creating a PowerPoint about how everyone’s PowerPoints stink, yours had better be terrific. The one above, based on the ebook by Seth Godin, keeps it simple without boring its audience.

What I like: Its clever combinations of fonts, together with consistent color across each slide, ensure you're neither overwhelmed nor unengaged.

18. “How Google Works,” Eric Schmidt

Simple, clever doodles tell the story of Google in a fun and creative way. This presentation reads almost like a storybook, making it easy to move from one slide to the next.

What I like: This uncluttered approach provides viewers with an easy-to-understand explanation of a complicated topic.

19. “What Really Differentiates the Best Content Marketers From The Rest,” Ross Simmonds

Let‘s be honest: These graphics are hard not to love. I especially appreciate the author’s cartoonified self-portrait that closes out the presentation. Well played, Ross Simmonds.

What I like: Rather than employing the same old stock photos, this unique design serves as a refreshing way to present information that's both valuable and fun.

20. “Be A Great Product Leader,” Adam Nash

This presentation by Adam Nash immediately draws attention by putting the company's logo first — a great move if your company is well known.

What I like: He uses popular images, such as ones of Megatron and Pinocchio, to drive his points home. In the same way, you can take advantage of popular images and media to keep your audience engaged.

And if you want more templates and examples, you can download them here .

PowerPoint Presentation Examples for the Best Slide Presentation

Mastering a PowerPoint presentation begins with the design itself.

Get inspired by my ideas above to create a presentation that engages your audience, builds upon your point, and helps you generate leads for your brand.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

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How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish.

We’ll break down every step of the design process, from choosing colors and images to using whitespace properly. After reading through this you should be all set to design your own beautiful presentation slides that will put your coworkers to shame.

Using a pre-built PowerPoint template can be a good starting point for many people (we collected some of the best PowerPoint templates for you!). But if you’re wanting to design your own from start-to-finish, you’re in the right place!

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A Word About Content

I usually make a big deal about content preceding design, and presentations are no exception. Ideally, you’ll have the topic and much or all of the content outlined before you even think about design. This will in every way shape the appearance of your design, which is why working from pre-built templates isn’t always the best move (though generic templates can and do work great in some circumstances).

The reason that I bring this up is that I don’t really have an actual presentation in mind for this project. I’ll be running with a basic theme, but the textual information will be entirely placeholder copy. Your image, font, color and layout selection shouldn’t necessarily match mine but instead reflect the topic and content you’re working with.

Choosing A Color Scheme

Before I even open Photoshop (yes, I design PowerPoint/Keynote slides in Photoshop and drop them in), I want to find a color scheme on which to base my entire design. When I need to quickly find several colors that go together I usually start with Adobe Color CC . Not only is it a great way to build your own color schemes, it’s an outstanding source to find schemes built by others that you can just grab for your projects.

As luck would have it, I liked the very first color scheme I saw upon opening Color. This scheme was featured on the home page and looked like a great place to start for our presentation design.

Now, if you wanted to get everything exactly right, you could make a list of the RGB or Hex values, but I prefer a quicker, more direct route. What I usually do is snap a screenshot of the color scheme, paste it into my document and stretch it across the canvas on its own layer for easy access. This way I can quickly activate the layer, eyedropper the color I want, then hide the layer and get back to work. It’s a bit like having a palette of colors to dip your paintbrush in.

Designing Your Cover Slide

Now that we have a color scheme, the design work is going to be much simpler. One trick that designers often use in presentations is to leverage the color scheme as heavily as possible. If you’re new to design, you’ll likely think that this is too easy, too plain or even that it’s cheating somehow, but trust me, it’ll be much more attractive and professional than that horrid Microsoft clipart library you love so much.

To start, simply grab one of your colors from the scheme you chose and flood the background of your slide with it (I chose #631c25). Good job, there’s your background. Don’t freak out. It’ll look great. Now let’s throw in some typography.

Choosing a Font

Font choice is a major issue for non-designers. The tendency is to think that most fonts are “boring” and to look around for something exciting and fun. This inevitably leads to the use of Comic Sans or some other equally hideous font.

Unless you’re an elementary school teacher, your presentations should never look like this. Instead, why don’t you try one of those “boring” fonts to see if you can come up with something you like.

Combining fonts can be a tricky task and can take a trained eye to pull off. Fortunately, font designers have already created collections that work well together and if you’re not a designer, they make it easy to pull off great typography. The trick is to just stay in a family. Again, I know this sounds lame, but it works really well if you make sure the two styles you choose are very different.

For instance, I chose a Helvetica Bold Condensed and a Helvetica Light for my cover slide. Notice how different the fonts are from each other in terms of thickness. Choosing two styles that are relatively close causes visual confusion and should be avoided as a general rule of thumb. Instead, what you want is contrast and plenty of it.

Alignment and Layout

Notice a few things about the way I set up this slide. First, I used a strong left alignment for the text. As I say in just about every design article I write, center alignment should be a last resort, not a first. It tends to be the weakest text alignment that you can choose, having a hard edge increases readability considerably (notice that book pages aren’t center-aligned).

Also, notice the generous whitespace that I used. Remember that you don’t have to eat up every inch of space. Giving your text room to breathe helps your layout immensely and gives the design a clean look.

Adding an Image

At this point you might be wondering why you wasted your time reading so I could give you such plain advice. The truth is, most people that create presentations could improve them by 100% from following the advice above. However, I realize minimalism may be too extreme for some folks so let’s throw in an image to make it look nice.

Since our text is on the left, I wanted to find something a little heavy on the right. The general theme that I’ll go for is “City photos” assuming I had some sort of architecture or city-centric presentation to give. Again, you’ll have to choose iamges relevant to your own topic.

I grabbed this Flickr Creative Commons image from photographer Ben Spreng .

Now, if we just made this image our background, the text would become unreadable and we would be ditching our color scheme. What we’re going to do instead is set it on top of the colored slide and set our blending mode to Overlay. Then throw your opacity to around 45%.

As you can see, this helps the slide look much more interesting but keeps the text and colors fairly intact. It’s a simple solution that adds a lot of interest to an otherwise plain design.

Adding Content Slides

The cover may seem like it’s only a tiny part of the battle, but you’ve actually already set the tone for the entire presentation. You’ve got your theme, color scheme and fonts already in place. Now you just need to set up a few different layouts for your content.

The thing to keep in mind is to keep everything extremely simple, and that includes the level of content that you include. Apart from design, these are just good presentation tactics that you’ll learn in every public speaking class. Filling your slides with everything you’re going to say makes you unnecessary. You could just email everyone the slides and shut up.

Instead, the slides are merely meant to be a visual aid. Show a slide with your overall topic or main point, then speak the rest, without reading. Nothing is worse than watching a guy read his note cards word-for-word for thirty minutes, except perhaps watching a guy turn his back to the audience so he can actually read his slides out loud to you the whole time! You may laugh, but I’ve seen it happen folks.

For our first content slide, we’ll grab another Flickr photo and set it to the bottom portion of our slide at full bleed. Then we’ll set the top to another color from our scheme and toss in some text using the same exact formatting that we used on the cover.

See how this closely resembles the theme we’ve already established while still looking significantly different? This is they key to good presentation design: cohesiveness without redundancy.

Now for our third slide, we can simply do the inverse of the second slide with a new color and a new image .

Adding Informational Elements

It would be nice if every slide ever presented could work in a full bleed image, but the truth is that this simply isn’t practical. It will often be the case that you’re presenting graphical information or some other item that isn’t necessarily a photo.

My advice here is to try to stick as close to your theme as possible. For the slide below I flooded the entire background with a solid color from our original scheme and made a quick 3D graph with white columns (I drew a few flat boxes in Illustrator and applied a 3D effect).

As you can see, this slide is very information-focused and yet it doesn’t sacrifice the aesthetics and simplicity we’ve already established.

You’re All Set

From here you might come up with one or two more alternate slide designs and then rotate between them for the duration of your speech. The result is a presentation that is beautiful, very readable and highly professional. The bonus is that the simple, straightforward design will probably result in less work than a clip-art-filled horror show.

Most of the time, great design doesn’t mean being particularly artistic or knowing how to create amazing complex layouts. Instead, it’s about presenting information in an attractive and user-friendly way. With this goal in mind you realize that you’re probably trying way too hard if your end result is ugly. Try cutting out half or more of the elements on one of your slides and giving what’s left a strong left or right alignment with plenty of whitespace.

I hope this article has convinced you to abandon that clip art gallery once and for all. The benefits of clean, minimal design in presentations are clear: the information is easier to take in and the end result is more professional than the mess of information you typically see in presentation slides.

Of course, if you’re looking to get started quickly, flick through our collection of the best PowerPoint templates to find a beautiful set of pre-made designs!

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Create beautiful presentations with visually appealing powerpoint templates.

Use our 100% editable presentation templates to create awesome slides that wow your audience.

1. Find a presentation template

Browse our curated selection of 50,000+ presentation templates to match any topic or specific need. Quickly pinpoint the ideal design, setting the stage for your presentation content with a new style.

2. Download & edit the presentation

Customize your chosen template with ease, adjusting visuals and incorporating data to reflect your unique brand and message. Our 100% editable slides ensure your presentation is both professional and personalized.

3. Present to your audience

Engage and captivate your audience with a eye-catching presentation design. Our PowerPoint templates are crafted to enhance your narrative, ensuring a smooth and impactful delivery that leaves a lasting impression.

PowerPoint templates for professional presentations

When creating a slide deck , most of the time should be spent on your content and message. A PowerPoint presentation’s visual aid is only as good as how much it empowers the presenter’s message. Based on this premise, our PowerPoint templates are created to help you save time creating your presentation decks. You can focus on your message while our designers generate the slideshow templates most suitable for the scenario you need.

The process is simple: download a presentation template that matches your needs and fill the gaps with your content. Leave the complex task of designing visually engaging PowerPoint templates to our team of professional designers, who are listening to the business trends and their design needs. Impress your audience with professional PowerPoint templates that appeal to global audiences.

PowerPoint themes that cover your needs

Our gallery provides a wide range of presentation designs. These apply to different purposes. You can search the gallery for specific content, for example, the Marketing Plan PowerPoint Templates , or alternatively, you can look at generic PowerPoint background themes . Be it to improve your existing slide deck or create a new presentation from scratch within a trendy and coherent design.

Microsoft PowerPoint templates will add a color palette and a visual pattern to your presentation and define the layouts and slide composition structures that are most suitable for combining content. These layouts result from centuries of design principles, represented by artists and publicists, and the development of modern design.

The sum of the parts is more significant than the whole.

When you combine different styles and objects from different presentation templates, you will realize there is no just thing as the template covering all your needs for all scenarios. The attractiveness of our PPT templates gallery is not only each presentation template itself but the ability to combine them into more sophisticated presentation decks.

Using Copy & Paste, you can move shapes, objects, and graphics on the PowerPoint slide templates or copy the PowerPoint templates into each other; adapt your slides into the existing theme with a few clicks.

Use the PowerPoint templates and work in the presentation tool you prefer

You can download the presentation themes as a PowerPoint file and work them on your computer, or you can edit them in your favorite presentation tool. The 100% editable PowerPoint templates are professionally designed and ready to be compatible with popular presentation tools such as Google Slides, Apple Keynote, and Open Office.

A constantly growing library of presentation templates

Our content and design teams are working hard to grow our library with relevant business templates. Our PowerPoint designs are based on business trends and our user’s suggestions. We always listen to our audience’s needs and improve our presentation template designs with their valuable feedback. Our fields of study include Marketing, Strategy, Planning, Operations, Corporate and Business Frameworks, Data-Driven Dashboards, Public Speaking, and Education.

Where can I find customizable presentation templates?

To find customizable presentation templates, you can browse the collection of 100% editable business presentation templates for PowerPoint or search for PowerPoint templates . Discover the slide template that best fit your needs, download it and customize the presentation slides.

What kind of presentation templates can I find online compatible with PowerPoint?

You can find a wide variety of presentation templates online that are compatible with PowerPoint, catering to different themes, industries, and visual styles. This includes, corporate templates which usually include slides for introductions, agendas, data representation, and conclusions, educational Templates, mainly designed with teachers and students in mind creative slide templates with vibrant colors and creative layouts (Ideal for industries like design, art, or media). They often incorporate unique fonts, vibrant colors, and creative layouts. Technology and Startup Templates (perfect for tech companies or startups, these templates might include futuristic designs, graphs, and charts to showcase data and trends).

How do I use pre-made PowerPoint templates?

Once you found a PowerPoint template and color palette that fits your needs, including the content in the PPT template is a very simple process. It consists of replacing placeholders, whether text or graphics, in the elements identified for that purpose. In a few clicks, your presentation will be ready, finishing your work in less time.

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5 golden rules of PowerPoint design

april 30, 2024

by Deb Ashby

Wondering how to design the perfect PowerPoint presentation? It's easier than you think–just follow five simple rules to get started:

1. Consider using templates

When building a slide deck, it’s important to maintain consistency throughout. We want to ensure we are using consistent font styles, colors and themes. This can be tricky when designing from scratch, so why not start from a template?

Microsoft Create contains hundreds of pre-made, customizable PowerPoint templates, which means you don’t have to start from scratch and the fonts and colors are already set for you.

Simply choose a template from the gallery, customize it as needed, and you are done!

2. No walls of text

We’ve all seen PowerPoint presentations where slides contain too much text. The human brain struggles to listen and read at the same time. If you are presenting to an audience, keep the text on slides to a minimum.

Consider employing the “5-5-5" rule. No more than 5 lines, no more than 5 words, no more than 5 minutes. Think short and sharp memory joggers instead of rambling paragraphs.

Where possible, consider replacing text with visuals to represent your point. People remember images more than words.

3. Be mindful of colors and fonts

No one wants their audience to leave with a headache after an hour of straining to read slides. We need to ensure that our presentation is easy to read for everyone – even for those in the nosebleed seats at the back! Think about the font you are using. Is it appropriate for the presentation? What about the font size? Can people at the back easily read? What about people with visual impairment? Ensure all text is at least 24pts.

When it comes to color, ensure all slides have good contrast. Dark backgrounds should have light font and vice versa.

4. Use animation sparingly

Animation can really liven up an otherwise flat presentation. However, it should be used thoughtfully and sparingly. Too much of the wrong type of animation with objects flying in and zooming around the screen, while fun, can look confusing and unprofessional.

Animation should be subtle (especially for pitch decks and other formal presentations). With every animation you add, ask yourself, "Is this going to enhance my presentation or distract from it?"

5. Engage your audience

When presenting to an audience, there is usually an awkward time before the presentation begins while the speaker waits for everyone to arrive. During this time, people may start scrolling on their phones or get distracted with work emails, and it can be hard to pull the audience back.

To avoid this issue, work to grab your audience's attention before the presentation even starts. Instead of just having the title slide on the screen, consider creating "kiosk slides." These are a series of slides that contain a combination of interesting things for the audience to look at or engage with. Maybe you have an interesting image? A funny quote or fun facts? Or maybe there is a question you want them to think about prior to the session?

Create these slides and have them automatically cycle round before the presentation starts.

Related topics

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Step-by-Step)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• January 22, 2024

In this beginner’s guide, you will learn step-by-step how to make a PowerPoint presentation from scratch.

While PowerPoint is designed to be intuitive and accessible, it can be overwhelming if you’ve never gotten any training on it before. As you progress through this guide, you’ll will learn how to move from blank slides to PowerPoint slides that look like these.

Table of Contents

Additionally, as you create your presentation, you’ll also learn tricks for working more efficiently in PowerPoint, including how to:

• Change the slide order
• Reset your layout
• Change the slide dimensions
• Use PowerPoint Designer
• Format text
• Format objects
• Play a presentation (slide show)

With this knowledge under your belt, you’ll be ready to start creating PowerPoint presentations. Moreover, you’ll have taken your skills from beginner to proficient in no time at all. I will also include links to more advanced PowerPoint topics.

Ready to start learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation?

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start with a blank presentation.

Note: Before you open PowerPoint and start creating your presentation, make sure you’ve collected your thoughts. If you’re going to make your slides compelling, you need to spend some time brainstorming.

For help with this, see our article with tips for nailing your business presentation  here .

The first thing you’ll need to do is to open PowerPoint. When you do, you are shown the Start Menu , with the Home tab open.

This is where you can choose either a blank theme (1) or a pre-built theme (2). You can also choose to open an existing presentation (3).

For now, go ahead and click on the  Blank Presentation (1)  thumbnail.

Doing so launches a brand new and blank presentation for you to work with. Before you start adding content to your presentation, let’s first familiarize ourselves with the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint interface

Here is how the program is laid out:

• The Application Header
• The Ribbon (including the Ribbon tabs)
• The Quick Access Toolbar (either above or below the Ribbon)
• The Slides Pane (slide thumbnails)

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

• The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

Each one of these areas has options for viewing certain parts of the PowerPoint environment and formatting your presentation.

Below are the important things to know about certain elements of the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint Ribbon

The Ribbon is contextual. That means that it will adapt to what you’re doing in the program.

For example, the Font, Paragraph and Drawing options are greyed out until you select something that has text in it, as in the example below (A).

Furthermore, if you start manipulating certain objects, the Ribbon will display additional tabs, as seen above (B), with more commands and features to help you work with those objects. The following objects have their own additional tabs in the Ribbon which are hidden until you select them:

• Online Pictures
• Screenshots
• Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

This is where you can preview and rearrange all the slides in your presentation.

Right-clicking on a slide  in the pane gives you additional options on the slide level that you won’t find on the Ribbon, such as  Duplicate Slide ,  Delete Slide , and  Hide Slide .

In addition, you can add sections to your presentation by  right-clicking anywhere in this Pane  and selecting  Add Section . Sections are extremely helpful in large presentations, as they allow you to organize your slides into chunks that you can then rearrange, print or display differently from other slides.

The Slide Area (A) is where you will build out your slides. Anything within the bounds of this area will be visible when you present or print your presentation.

Anything outside of this area (B) will be hidden from view. This means that you can place things here, such as instructions for each slide, without worrying about them being shown to your audience.

The  Notes Pane  is the space beneath the Slide Area where you can type in the speaker notes for each slide. It’s designed as a fast way to add and edit your slides’ talking points.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about adding, printing, and exporting your PowerPoint speaker notes, read our guide here .

Your speaker notes are visible when you print your slides using the Notes Pages option and when you use the Presenter View . To expand your knowledge and learn the ins and outs of using the Presenter View , read our guide here .

You can resize the  Notes Pane  by clicking on its edge and dragging it up or down (A). You can also minimize or reopen it by clicking on the Notes button in the Status Bar (B).

Note:  Not all text formatting displays in the Notes Pane, even though it will show up when printing your speaker notes. To learn more about printing PowerPoint with notes, read our guide here .

Now that you have a basic grasp of the PowerPoint interface at your disposal, it’s time to make your presentation.

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Notice that in the Slide Area , there are two rectangles with dotted outlines. These are called  Placeholders  and they’re set on the template in the Slide Master View .

To expand your knowledge and learn how to create a PowerPoint template of your own (which is no small task), read our guide here .

As the prompt text suggests, you can click into each placeholder and start typing text. These types of placeholder prompts are customizable too. That means that if you are using a company template, it might say something different, but the functionality is the same.

Note:  For the purposes of this example, I will create a presentation based on the content in the Starbucks 2018 Global Social Impact Report, which is available to the public on their website.

If you type in more text than there is room for, PowerPoint will automatically reduce its font size. You can stop this behavior by clicking on the  Autofit Options  icon to the left of the placeholder and selecting  Stop Fitting Text to this Placeholder .

Next, you can make formatting adjustments to your text by selecting the commands in the Font area and the  Paragraph area  of the  Home  tab of the Ribbon.

The Reset Command:  If you make any changes to your title and decide you want to go back to how it was originally, you can use the Reset button up in the Home tab .

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

Now that you have your title slide filled in, it’s time to add more slides. To do that, simply go up to the  Home tab  and click on  New Slide . This inserts a new slide in your presentation right after the one you were on.

You can alternatively hit Ctrl+M on your keyboard to insert a new blank slide in PowerPoint. To learn more about this shortcut, see my guide on using Ctrl+M in PowerPoint .

Instead of clicking the New Slide command, you can also open the New Slide dropdown to see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template. Depending on who created your template, your layouts in this dropdown can be radically different.

If you insert a layout and later want to change it to a different layout, you can use the Layout dropdown instead of the New Slide dropdown.

After inserting a few different slide layouts, your presentation might look like the following picture. Don’t worry that it looks blank, next we will start adding content to your presentation.

If you want to follow along exactly with me, your five slides should be as follows:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Picture with Caption

Adding Content to Your Slides

Now let’s go into each slide and start adding our content. You’ll notice some new types of placeholders.

On slide 2 we have a  Content Placeholder , which allows you to add any kind of content. That includes:

• A SmartArt graphic,
• A 3D object,
• A picture from the web,
• Or an icon.

To insert text, simply type it in or hit  Ctrl+C to Copy  and Ctrl+V to Paste  from elsewhere. To insert any of the other objects, click on the appropriate icon and follow the steps to insert it.

For my example, I’ll simply type in some text as you can see in the picture below.

Slides 3 and 4 only have text placeholders, so I’ll go ahead and add in my text into each one.

On slide 5 we have a Picture Placeholder . That means that the only elements that can go into it are:

• A picture from the web

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

• Click on the  Picture  icon
• Find  a picture on your computer and select it
• Click on  Insert

Alternatively, if you already have a picture open somewhere else, you can select the placeholder and paste in (shortcut: Ctrl+V ) the picture. You can also drag the picture in from a file explorer window.

If you do not like the background of the picture you inserted onto your slide, you can remove the background here in PowerPoint. To see how to do this, read my guide here .

Placeholders aren’t the only way to add content to your slides. At any point, you can use the Insert tab to add elements to your slides.

You can use either the Title Only  or the  Blank  slide layout to create slides for content that’s different. For example, a three-layout content slide, or a single picture divider slide, as shown below.

In the first example above, I’ve inserted 6 text boxes, 3 icons, and 3 circles to create this layout. In the second example, I’ve inserted a full-sized picture and then 2 shapes and 2 text boxes.

The Reset Command:  Because these slides are built with shapes and text boxes (and not placeholders), hitting the  Reset button up in the  Home tab  won’t do anything.

That is a good thing if you don’t want your layouts to adjust. However, it does mean that it falls on you to make sure everything is aligned and positioned correctly.

For more on how to add and manipulate the different objects in PowerPoint, check out our step-by-step articles here:

• Using graphics in PowerPoint
• Inserting icons onto slides
• Adding pictures to your PowerPoint
• How to embed a video in PowerPoint
• How to add music to your presentation

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

If you have Office 365, your version of PowerPoint comes with a new feature called Designer (or Design Ideas). This is a feature that generates slide layout ideas for you. The coolest thing about this feature is that it uses the content you already have.

To use Designer , simply navigate to the  Design tab  in your Ribbon, and click on  Design Ideas .

NOTE: If the PowerPoint Designer is not working for you (it is grey out), see my troubleshooting guide for Designer .

Change the Overall Design (optional)

When you make a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll want to think about the overall design. Now that you have some content in your presentation, you can use the Design tab to change the look and feel of your slides.

For additional help thinking through the design of your presentation,  read my guide here .

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

If you have PowerPoint 2013 or later, when you create a blank document in PowerPoint, you automatically start with a widescreen layout with a 16:9 ratio. These dimensions are suitable for most presentations as they match the screens of most computers and projectors.

However, you do have the option to change the dimensions.

For example, your presentation might not be presented, but instead converted into a PDF or printed and distributed. In that case, you can easily switch to the standard dimensions with a 4:3 ratio by selecting from the dropdown (A).

You can also choose a custom slide size or change the slide orientation from landscape to portrait in the Custom Slide Size dialog box (B).

To learn all about the different PowerPoint slide sizes, and some of the issues you will face when changing the slide size of a non-blank presentation,  read my guide here .

 B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

The next thing you can do is change the theme of your presentation to a pre-built one. For a detailed explanation of what a PowerPoint theme is, and how to best use it,  read my article here .

In the beginning of this tutorial, we started with a blank presentation, which uses the default Office theme as you can see in the picture below.

That gives you the most flexibility because it has a blank background and quite simple layouts that work for most presentations. However, it also means that it’s your responsibility to enhance the design.

If you’re comfortable with this, you can stay with the default theme or create your own custom theme ( read my guide here ). But if you would rather not have to think about design, then you can choose a pre-designed theme.

Microsoft provides 46 other pre-built themes, which include slide layouts, color variants and palettes, and fonts. Each one varies quite significantly, so make sure you look through them carefully.

To select a different theme, go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon, and click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Themes section .

For this tutorial, let’s select the  Frame  theme and then choose the third Variant in the theme. Doing so changes the layout, colors, and fonts of your presentation.

Note: The theme dropdown area is also where you can import or save custom themes. To see my favorite places to find professional PowerPoint templates and themes (and recommendations for why I like them), read my guide here .

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

The next thing to decide is how you want your background to look for the entire presentation. In the  Variants area, you can see four background options.

For this example, we want our presentation to have a dark background, so let’s select Style 3. When you do so, you’ll notice that:

• The background color automatically changes across all slides
• The color of the text on most of the slides automatically changes to white so that it’s visible on the dark background
• The colors of the objects on slides #6 and #7 also adjust, in a way we may not want (we’ll likely have to make some manual adjustments to these slides)

Note: If you want to change the slide background for just that one slide, don’t left-click the style. Instead, right-click it and select Apply to Selected Slides .

After you change the background for your entire presentation, you can easily adjust the background for an individual slide.

Inside the Format Background pane, you can see you have the following options:

• Gradient fill
• Picture or texture fill
• Pattern fill
• Hide background

You can explore these options to find the PowerPoint background that best fits your presentation.

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

Another thing you may want to adjust in your presentation, is the color scheme. In the picture below you can see the Theme Colors we are currently using for this presentation.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own color palette. By default, the Office theme includes the Office color palette. This affects the colors you are presented with when you format any element within your presentation (text, shapes, SmartArt, etc.).

The good news is that the colors here are easy to change. To switch color palettes, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab in the Ribbon
• In the Variants area, click on the  dropdown arrow  and select  Colors
• Select  the color palette (or theme colors) you want

You can choose among the pre-built color palettes from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

As you build your presentation, make sure you use the colors from your theme to format objects. That way, changing the color palette adjusts all the colors in your presentation automatically.

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

Just as we changed the color palette, you can do the same for the fonts.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own font combination. By default, the Office theme includes the Office font pairing. This affects the fonts that are automatically assigned to all text in your presentation.

The good news is that the font pairings are easy to change. To switch your Theme Fonts, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Variants  area
• Select  Fonts
• Select  the font pairing you want

You can choose among the pre-built fonts from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

If you are working with PowerPoint presentations on both Mac and PC computers, make sure you choose a safe PowerPoint font. To see a list of the safest PowerPoint fonts, read our guide here .

If you receive a PowerPoint presentation and the wrong fonts were used, you can use the Replace Fonts dialog box to change the fonts across your entire presentation. For details, read our guide here .

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

The final step to make a PowerPoint presentation compelling, is to consider using animations and transitions. These are by no means necessary to a good presentation, but they may be helpful in your situation.

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust animations engine designed to power your creativity. That being said, it’s also easy to get started with basic animations.

Animations are movements that you can apply to individual objects on your slide.

To add a PowerPoint animation to an element of your slide, simply:

• Select the  element
• Go to the  Animations tab in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  animation  you want

You can add animations to multiple objects at one time by selecting them all first and then applying the animation.

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

• Click on the Preview button in the Animations tab
• Click on the little star  next to the slide
• Play the slide in Slide Show Mode

To learn other ways to run your slide show, see our guide on presenting a PowerPoint slide show with shortcuts .

To adjust the settings of your animations, explore the options in the  Effect Options ,  Advanced Animation  and the  Timing  areas of the  Animation tab .

Note:  To see how to make objects appear and disappear in your slides by clicking a button,  read our guide here .

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

The best way to manage lots of animations on your slide is with the Animation Pane . To open it, simply:

• Navigate to the  Animations tab
• Select the  Animation Pane

Inside the Animation Pane, you’ll see all of the different animations that have been applied to objects on your slide, with their numbers marked as pictured above.

Note: To see examples of PowerPoint animations that can use in PowerPoint, see our list of PowerPoint animation tutorials here .

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust transition engine so that you can dictate how your slides change from one to the other. It is also extremely easy to add transitions to your slides.

In PowerPoint, transitions are the movements (or effects) you see as you move between two slides.

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

• Select the  slide
• Go to the  Transitions tab in the Ribbon
• In the Transitions to This Slide area, click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  transition  you want

To adjust the settings of the transition, explore the options in the  Timing  area of the Transitions tab.

You can also add the same transition to multiple slides. To do that, select them in the  Slides Pane  and apply the transition.

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview your PowerPoint transitions (just like your animations):

• Click on the Preview  button in the Transitions tab
• Click on the little star  beneath the slide number in the thumbnail view

Note:  In 2016, PowerPoint added a cool new transition, called Morph. It operates a bit differently from other transitions. For a detailed tutorial on how to use the cool Morph transition,  see our step-by-step article here .

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

After you’ve built your presentation and made all the adjustments to your slides, you’ll want to save your presentation. YOu can do this several different ways.

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

• Navigate to the  File tab
•  Select  Save As  on the left
• Choose  where you want to save your presentation
• Name  your presentation and/or adjust your file type settings
• Click  Save

You can alternatively use the  Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save your presentation. I recommend using this shortcut frequently as you build your presentation to make sure you don’t lose any of your work.

This is the standard way to save a presentation. However, there may be a situation where you want to save your presentation as a different file type.

To learn how to save your presentation as a PDF, see our guide on converting PowerPoint to a PDF .

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

Once you’ve created a presentation that you like, you may want to turn it into a template. The easiest – but not technically correct – way, is to simply create a copy of your current presentation and then change the content.

But be careful! A PowerPoint template is a special type of document and it has its own parameters and behaviors.

If you’re interested in learning about how to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch, see our guide on how to create a PowerPoint template .

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

After finishing your PowerPoint presentation, you may want to print it out on paper. Printing your slides is relatively easy.

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

• Hit Ctrl+P on your keyboard
• Or go to the Ribbon and click on File and then Print

Inside the Print dialog box, you can choose from the various printing settings:

• Printer: Select a printer to use (or print to PDF or OneNote)
• Slides: Choose which slides you want to print
• Layout: Determine how many slides you want per page (this is where you can print the notes, outline, and handouts)
• Collated or uncollated (learn what collated printing means here )
• Color: Choose to print in color, grayscale or black & white

There are many more options for printing your PowerPoint presentations. Here are links to more in-depth articles:

• How to print multiple slides per page
• How to print your speaker notes in PowerPoint
• How to save PowerPoint as a picture presentation

So that’s how to create a PowerPoint presentation if you are brand new to it. We’ve also included a ton of links to helpful resources to boost your PowerPoint skills further.

When you are creating your presentation, it is critical to first focus on the content (what you are trying to say) before getting lost inserting and playing with elements. The clearer you are on what you want to present, the easier it will be to build it out in PowerPoint.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our PowerPoint training courses and other presentation resources by  visiting us here .

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Create a new presentation with Copilot in PowerPoint

Note:  This feature is available to customers with either a Copilot for Microsoft 365 (work) or Copilot Pro (home) license.

Using the on-canvas experience

Note:  This feature is currently rolling out to Microsoft 365 Insiders and will be coming soon for all Copilot subscribers. If you don't see it yet, you can still create presentations with Copilot Chat .

Create a new presentation in PowerPoint.

Select the  Create a presentation about...  option in the  Copilot  menu above your slide.

Complete the prompt with a description of the presentation you'd like Copilot to help you draft.

Review and modify the topics that Copilot generates for you.  To refine your prompt and regenerate a new set of topics, select the pencil   button.

Add a topic by selecting the   button, then describe your topic.

If you're happy with your topics, select  Generate slides  and Copilot will draft a presentation for you!

Create a presentation with Copilot Chat

Note:  This feature is currently available for all Copilot subscribers.

Create a new presentation in PowerPoint.

Select the Copilot button in the Home tab of the ribbon.

Select or type Create a presentation .

Complete the prompt with what you would like Copilot to help you draft.

Select Send and Copilot will draft a presentation for you!

Edit the presentation to suit your needs, ask Copilot to add a slide , or start over with a new presentation and refine your prompt to include more specifics. For example, "Create a presentation about hybrid meeting best practices that includes examples for team building."

Create a presentation with a template

Copilot can use your existing themes and templates to create a presentation. Learn more about making your presentations look great with Copilot in PowerPoint .

Open an existing presentation with your theme or create a new presentation using a theme or template from File > New or Office.com .

Enter your prompt or select Create presentation from file to create a first draft of your presentation using your theme or template.

Copilot will replace your current presentation with a new one. If needed, s ave a copy first and rerun the steps above. If you already have a copy, confirm with Copilot to proceed with creating your new draft.

Edit the presentation to suit your needs, ask Copilot to add a slide , organize your presentation, or add images.

Create a presentation from a file with Copilot

Note:  This feature is available to customers with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license for full options, or a Copilot Pro license for limited options.

With Copilot in PowerPoint, you can create a presentation from an existing Word document—or a PDF if you have a Copilot for Microsoft 365 (work) license. Point Copilot in PowerPoint to your document, and it will generate slides, apply layouts, create speaker notes, and choose a theme for you.

Select or type Create presentation from file .

Select the document you want from the picker that appears. If you don't see the document you want, start typing any part of the filename to search for it. You can use a Word document—or, if you have a Copilot for Microsoft 365 (work) license, you can use a PDF, and encrypted documents are available as well.

Note:  If the file picker doesn't appear, type a front slash (/) to cause it to pop up.

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Leverage word styles to help copilot understand the structure of your document.

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Start with your organization's template

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Create PowerPoint Presentations with ChatGPT: 4 Easy Ways

You probably know that ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool for generating text and answering questions. However, it can do much more than that. In fact, ChatGPT is changing how we approach presentation design.

Crafting professional PowerPoint presentations can be time-consuming and challenging, especially if you’re not a design expert. Luckily, ChatGPT makes it easier, helping you save time and create high-quality, engaging presentations.

In this article, we’ll explore how to use ChatGPT to create a PowerPoint Presentation. Let’s look at three simple ways ChatGPT can improve your presentation process.

Keep scrolling for step-by-step instructions, or check out the screenshots and GIFs to make the most of using ChatGPT for presentations.

Here are the topics we'll cover:

Can ChatGPT make a PowerPoint?

Why use chatgpt for powerpoint presentations.

• How to use ChatGPT to create a PowerPoint presentation?

Tips for Using ChatGPT to Create Presentations

Why 24slides beats ai in presentation design.

Technically, no. ChatGPT doesn't create PowerPoint files directly and can't design visual elements. However, it can be a useful tool in the presentation creation process.

ChatGPT can help you create content, suggest slide outlines, and provide ideas to enhance your presentation. Here are some other ways ChatGPT can save you time and effort in creating your next PowerPoint:

• ChatGPT can generate VBA code to create slides. Although the slides may be basic, they can be a good starting point for your presentation.
• Don’t know where to start? The AIPRM extension helps you get the most out of ChatGPT with ready-made prompts for your next PPT. 
• Want to maximize any AI presentation tool ? ChatGPT can help you craft the perfect prompt. The AI tool will then turn ChatGPT's output into a PowerPoint presentation.

Later, I’ll show you how to use ChatGPT to generate a PowerPoint presentation for each of these methods.

Using ChatGPT can be a game-changer for creating PowerPoint presentations. Here’s why:

• Save Time: Making a presentation not only requires effort but also time. ChatGPT quickly provides content, speeding up the process and saving you from starting from scratch.
• Enhance Content: It helps refine your message, suggest improvements, and create engaging text. It also simplifies complex concepts for your slides.
• Generate Ideas: ChatGPT gives you fresh ideas and unique insights for your slides, helping you present your material in a more compelling way.
• Automate Tasks: ChatGPT can generate VBA code to automate repetitive tasks, like formatting and slide design. This makes it easier to handle large presentations.
• Ensure Consistency: ChatGPT ensures consistency in language, quality, and tone, giving your presentation a professional touch. It also minimizes grammar and language errors, making your slides clear and well-written.
• Seamless Integration: With tools like the AIPRM extension , you can use pre-made prompts to get a jump start on creating effective presentations.

How to use ChatGPT to create a PowerPoint presentation

Now that we know ChatGPT helps create PowerPoint presentations, let's explore the different ways we can use it. 

Feel free to explore the method you find most useful!

• Use ChatGPT for Slides Outline and Content
• Use ChatGPT to Create a PowerPoint Using VBA Codes
• Use ChatGPT AIPRM Extension to create a PowerPoint

Use ChatGPT with an AI Presentation Tool

1. use chatgpt for slides outline and content.

ChatGPT can help you brainstorm and outline your slides. You can generate detailed content for each slide by providing key points to cover in your presentation.

Step 1: Ask ChatGPT for a Table of Contents

First, you need a strong prompt. It should clearly state the topic, audience, objective, and slide count to ensure the content is relevant, well-organized, and has the right tone.

Use this ChatGPT prompt format:

“As an expert in [field/topic], create an outline for a PowerPoint presentation on [list of topics] for [target audience]. The objective is [state the objective]. Structure it to fit [number] slides. Use a [tone/style] tone.”

Here’s an example:

Step 2: Refine the ChatGPT Output

Once the outline is created, you have a good starting point to refine the content. You can expand or reformulate the information on each slide. The goal is to help ChatGPT get the result you're looking for.

Use this ChatGPT prompt to improve the content:

"Please expand the information for each slide. Include interesting facts to enhance engagement and provide more value."

Step 3: Add ChatGPT content to your PowerPoint

Once you have the content for your slides, you can transfer it directly to your PowerPoint presentation. Just copy and paste the content generated by ChatGPT, making sure you keep the structure.

Format the text by adjusting fonts and sizes to match your slide design. Here’s an example:

You now have a great starting point. From here, You’ll need to add design elements and media, plus adjust the layout and content to enhance visual appeal.

2. Use ChatGPT to create a PowerPoint using VBA codes

By using ChatGPT to provide VBA code, you can streamline the process of creating presentations. But before we start, let's answer this question:

What is VBA?

VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications, is a programming language that automates tasks in Microsoft Office apps like PowerPoint. By using ChatGPT, you can quickly generate VBA code to create and customize PowerPoint presentations, making the process faster and easier.

Step 1: Ask ChatgPT for the VBA PowerPoint code

You can use a ChatGPT prompt like "Write me VBA PowerPoint codes on [topic]..." However, the more detailed your explanation of the content, the better the result will be. Here’s an example:

Write me a VBA code for a PowerPoint presentation on [list of topics] for [target audience]. As an expert in [field/topic], structure it to fit [number] slides with a [tone/style] tone. The objective is [state the objective].

Then, ChatGPT will provide an output like this:

This is the code used to create a presentation in Powerpoint.

Step 2: Open PowerPoint and copy the VBA code

• Open PowerPoint and press ALT + F11 to open the VBA editor.
• Go to Insert > Module to create a new module.
• Copy and paste the code into the module.

Step 3: Create and refine the PowerPoint Presentation

• Press F5 to run the code and create the presentation.
• Check the content and make changes as needed.

Of course, we will need to add images and media. If needed, you can ask ChatGPT for more information and repeat this process to generate a new VBA code.

3. Use ChatGPT AIPRM Extension to create a PowerPoint

This is one of the easiest methods to simplify your PowerPoint creation process. There's no need for any ChatGPT prompts. But first, let's answer this question:

What is AIRPRM?

AIPRM is an extension designed to enhance ChatGPT's capabilities for creating and refining content, including PowerPoint presentations. 

This AI tool provides pre-made ChatGPT prompt templates to streamline your PowerPoint creation process. With AIPRM, users get automated suggestions, better formatting, and tailored content within the ChatGPT interface.

Using AIPRM Extension for PowerPoint

• Step 1: Open your browser and search for "AIPRM ChatGPT prompts." You can use this link .
• Step 2: Download and install the AIPRM extension.
• Step 3: Log in to your ChatGPT account.

Once the extension is installed, your ChatGPT interface will have new options and templates. Here’s an example:

• Step 4: Type “PowerPoint” in the search bar. This will give you a list of AIRPRM ChatGPT prompts for PowerPoint.

• Step 5: Select a prompt and click on it. It will appear in the chat bar.

• Step 6: Follow the format. Add the presentation topic and VBA instruction. In this prompt, the format is as follows: PowerPoint, Slides, VBA.

For this example, I will use Digital Marketing, 10, VBA.

• Step 7: Hit Enter. ChatGPT will generate a VBA code as in the previous method (#2).

After ChatGPT generates the VBA codes, paste the code into the Visual Basic Editor in PowerPoint. Next, run the code to generate the slides. To do this, follow the steps in the previous method (#2). 

Here’s a summary:

• Open PowerPoint.
• Press Alt + F11 to open the VBA editor.
• Insert a new module by clicking Insert > Module.
• Press F5 to run the macro and create the presentation.

Step 1. Choose Your AI Presentation Tool:

• Research and choose the best AI presentation tool for your needs. Our last article, “ 10 Best AI Tools for Creating Impactful Presentations ,” can help you.

For this example, I will use Gamma. In our review, this AI maker scored 4.5/5 for ease of use. Additionally, it offers a free plan. Use this link to sign up.

Step 2. Ask ChatGPT for a Presentation Outline

• First, you need a strong prompt. To ensure accuracy, I’ll reuse the prompt from method #1

• Once you have the outline, you can refine and expand the content for each slide. The aim is to help ChatGPT generate the best results.

Use a ChatGPT prompt like this to improve the initial output:

"Please expand the information for each slide. Include interesting facts to enhance engagement and provide more value." 

Step 4. Copy and paste the ChatGPT output into the AI tool

Since we're using Gamma for this example, here's what we'll do:

• In Gamma, choose “ Paste in text .” You already have the outline from ChatGPT.
• Copy and paste the ChatGPT prompt and click “ Continue .”
• Set the number of “ Cards ” to match your slides.
• Click “ Continue ”.

Step 5. Generate and Refine Your PowerPoint Presentation

• Select your favorite theme and click “ Generate .”
• Wait a moment while Gamma AI generates the presentation.
• Review the slides and refine the content.

You have a strong starting point. Enhance the visual appeal by adding media, adjusting the layout, and refining the content.

• Use Specific Prompts: The more detailed your prompt, the better the result will be. You should clearly mention the topic, audience, objective, and the number of slides. This will keep the content relevant.
• Understand ChatGPT’s Capabilities: ChatGPT excels at generating content but doesn't create visuals or handle design elements. Since Chat GPT doesn't have a presentation maker, you'll need to complement its outputs.
• Review the Content: Always review and edit the generated content to ensure it is accurate, coherent, and aligned with your presentation goals. ChatGPT can make mistakes, so check important info.
• Refine Your Output: Even if you're very specific, it's hard to get the perfect content for your presentation on the first try. Feel free to adjust your prompts based on initial outputs. The first outputs often highlight what is needed for the best outcome.
• Integrate ChatGPT into Your Workflow: Refining an existing idea is easier than starting from scratch. Use ChatGPT to generate fresh ideas and create outlines for your presentation. You can tailor your prompts based on your specific experience and needs. Additionally, consider using VBA code to automate repetitive tasks like summarizing information and creating bullet points.

AI tools like ChatGPT are excellent for generating content and speeding up the design process. 

However, refining prompts to achieve a decent result can be time-consuming. In contrast, 24Slides lets you create a professional, on-brand presentation with just a few clicks.

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What's Your Story

What’s your story: lex story.

Published August 22, 2024

By Johannes Gehrke , Technical Fellow Lex Story , Model Maker

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In the Microsoft Research Podcast series What’s Your Story , Johannes Gehrke explores the who behind the technical and scientific advancements helping to reshape the world. A systems expert whose 10 years with Microsoft spans research and product, Gehrke talks to members of the company’s research community about what motivates their work and how they got where they are today.

In this episode, Gehrke is joined by Lex Story , a model maker and fabricator whose craftsmanship has helped bring research to life through prototyping. He’s contributed to projects such as Jacdac , a hardware-software platform for connecting and coding electronics, and the biological monitoring and intelligence platform Premonition . Story shares how his father’s encouragement helped stoke a curiosity that has informed his pursuit of the sciences and art; how his experience with the Marine Corps intensified his desire for higher education; and how his heritage and a sabbatical in which he attended culinary school might inspire his next career move …

Learn about the projects Story has contributed to:

• Microsoft Premonition
• Project Eclipse
• Project PRISM
• 3D Telemedicine
• Audio Devices

Subscribe to the Microsoft Research Podcast :

• Apple Podcasts

[MUSIC PLAYS UNDER DIALOGUE]

LEX STORY: Research is about iteration. It’s about failing and failing fast so that you can learn from it. You know, we spin on a dime. Sometimes, we go, whoa, we went the wrong direction. But we learn from it, and it just makes us better.

JOHANNES GEHRKE: Microsoft Research works at the cutting edge. But how much do we know about the people behind the science and technology that we create? This is What’s Your Story , and I’m Johannes Gehrke. In my 10 years with Microsoft, across product and research, I’ve been continuously excited and inspired by the people I work with, and I’m curious about how they became the talented and passionate people they are today. So I sat down with some of them. Now, I’m sharing their stories with you. In this podcast series, you’ll hear from them about how they grew up, the critical choices that shaped their lives, and their advice to others looking to carve a similar path.   

[MUSIC FADES]

In this episode, I’m talking with model maker and fabricator Lex Story. His creativity and technical expertise in computer-aided industrial design and machining are on display in prototypes and hardware across Microsoft—from Jacdac, a hardware-software platform for connecting and coding electronics, to the biological monitoring and intelligence platform Microsoft Premonition. But he didn’t start out in research. Encouraged by his father, he pursued opportunities to travel, grow, and learn. This led to service in the Marine Corps; work in video game development and jewelry design; and a sabbatical to attend culinary school. He has no plans of slowing down. Here’s my conversation with Lex, beginning with hardware development at Microsoft Research and his time growing up in San Bernardino, California.

GEHRKE: Welcome, Lex.

LEX STORY: Oh, thank you.

GEHRKE: Really great to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing here at MSR (Microsoft Research) …

GEHRKE: … and how did you actually end up here?

STORY: Well, um, within MSR, I actually work in the hardware prototype, hardware development. I find solutions for the researchers, especially in the areas of developing hardware through various fabrication and industrial-like methods. I’m a model maker. My background is as an industrial designer and a product designer. So when I attended school initially, it was to pursue a science; it was [to] pursue chemistry.

GEHRKE: And you grew up in California?

STORY: I grew up in California. I was born in Inglewood, California, and I grew up in San Bernardino, California. Nothing really too exciting happening in San Bernardino, which is why I was compelled to find other avenues, especially to go seek out travel. To do things that I knew that I would be able to look back and say, yes, you’ve definitely done something that was beyond what was expected of you having grown up in San Bernardino.

GEHRKE: And you even had that drive during your high school, or …

STORY: Yeah, high school just didn’t feel like … I think it was the environment that I was growing up in; it didn’t feel as if they really wanted to foster exceptional growth. And I had a father who was … had multiple degrees, and he had a lot of adversity, and he had a lot of challenges. He was an African American. He was a World War II veteran. But he had attained degrees, graduate degrees, in various disciplines, and that included chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering.

GEHRKE: Wow. All three of them?

STORY: Yes. And so he was … had instilled into us that, you know, education is a vehicle, and if you want to leave this small town, this is how you do it you. But you need to be a vessel. You need to absorb as much as you can from a vast array of disciplines. And not only was he a man of science; he was also an artist. So he always fostered that in us. He said, you know, explore, gain new skills, and the collection of those skills will make you greater overall. He’s not into this idea of being such a specialist. He says lasers are great, but lasers can be blind to what’s happening around them. He says you need to be a spotlight. And he says then you have a great effect on a large—vast, vast array of things instead of just being focused on one thing.

GEHRKE: So you grew up in this environment where the idea was to, sort of, take a holistic view and not, like, a myopic view …

STORY: Yes, yes, yes.

GEHRKE: And so what is the impact of that on you?

STORY: Well, as soon as I went into [LAUGHS] the Marine Corps, I said, now I can attain my education. And …

GEHRKE: So right after school, you went to the …

STORY: I went directly into the Marine Corps right after high school graduation.

GEHRKE: And you told me many times, this is not the Army, right?

STORY: No, it’s the Marine Corps. It’s a big differentiation between … they’re both in military service. However, the Marine Corps is very proud of its traditions, and they instill that in us during boot camp, your indoctrination. It is drilled upon you that you are not just an arm of the military might. You are a professional. You are representative. You will basically become a reflection of all these other Marines who came before you, and you will serve as a point of the young Marines who come after you. So that was drilled into us from day one of boot camp. It was … but it was very grueling. You know, that was the one aspect, and there was a physical aspect. And the Marine Corps boot camp is the longest of all the boot camps. It was, for me, it was 12 weeks of intensive, you know, training. So, you know, the indoctrination is very deep.

GEHRKE: And then so it’s your high school, and you, sort of, have this holistic thinking that you want to bring in.

STORY: Yes.

GEHRKE: And then you go to the Marines.

STORY: I go to the Marines. And the funny thing is that I finished my enlistment, and after my enlistment, I enroll in college, and I say, OK, great; that part of my … phase of life is over. However, I’m still active reserve, and the Desert Shield comes up. So I’m called back, and I said, OK, well, I can come back. I served in a role as an NBC instructor. “NBC” stands for nuclear, biological, chemical warfare. And one of the other roles that I had in the Marine Corps, I was also a nuke tech. That means I knew how to deploy artillery-delivered nuclear-capable warheads. So I had this very technical background mixed in with, like, this military, kind of, decorum. And so I served in Desert Shield, and then eventually that evolved into Operation Desert Storm, and once that was over, I was finally able to go back and actually finish my schooling.

GEHRKE: Mm-hmm. So you studied for a couple of years and then you served?

STORY: Oh, yes, yes.

GEHRKE: OK. OK.

STORY: I had done a four-year enlistment, and you have a period of years after your enlistment where you can be recalled, and it would take very little time for you to get wrapped up for training again to be operational.

GEHRKE: Well, that must be a big disruption right in the middle of your studies, and …

STORY: It was a disruption that …

GEHRKE: And thank you for your service.

STORY: [LAUGHS] Thank you. I appreciate that. It was a disruption, but it was a welcome disruption because, um, it was a job that I knew that I could do well. So I was willing to do it. And when I was ready for college again , it made me a little hungrier for it.

GEHRKE: And you’re already a little bit more mature than the average college student …

STORY: Oh, yes.

GEHRKE: … when you entered, and then now you’re coming back from your, sort of, second time.

STORY: I think it was very important for me to actually have that military experience because [through] that military experience, I had matured. And by the time I was attending college, I wasn’t approaching it as somebody who was in, you know, their teenage years and it’s still formative; you’re still trying to determine who you are as a person. The military had definitely shown me, you know, who I was as a person, and I actually had a few, you know, instances where I actually saw some very horrible things. If anything, being in a war zone during war time, it made me a pacifist, and I have … it increased my empathy. So if anything, there was a benefit from it. I saw some very horrible things, and I saw some amazing things come from human beings on both ends of the spectrum.

GEHRKE: And it’s probably something that’s influenced the rest of your life also in terms of where you went as your career, right?

GEHRKE: So what were you studying, and then what were your next steps?

STORY: Well, I was studying chemistry.

GEHRKE: OK, so not only chemistry and mechanical engineering …

STORY: And then I went away, off to Desert Storm, and when I came back, I decided I didn’t want to study chemistry anymore. I was very interested in industrial design and graphic design, and as I was attending, at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, there was this new discipline starting up, but it was only for graduates. It was a graduate program, and it was called computer-aided industrial design. And I said, wait a minute, what am I doing? This is something that I definitely want to do. So it was, like, right at the beginning of computer-generated imagery, and I had known about CAD in a very, very rudimentary form. My father, luckily, had introduced me to computers, so as I was growing up a child in the ’70s and the ’80s, we had computers in our home because my dad was actually building them. So his background and expertise—he was working for RCA; he was working for Northrop Grumman. So I was very familiar with those. 

GEHRKE: You built PCs at home, or what, what … ?

STORY: Oh, he built PCs. I learned to program. So I … 

GEHRKE: What was your first programming language?

STORY: Oh, it was BASIC …

GEHRKE: BASIC. OK, yup.

STORY: … of course. It was the only thing I could check out in the library that I could get up and running on. So I was surrounded with technology. While most kids went away, summer camp, I spent my summer in the garage with my father. He had metalworking equipment. I understood how to operate metal lathes. I learned how to weld. I learned how to rebuild internal combustion engines. So my childhood was very different from what most children had experienced during their summer break. And also at that time, he was working as a … in chemistry. So his job then, I would go with him and visit his job and watch him work in a lab environment. So it was very, very unique. But also the benefit of that is that being in a lab environment was connected to other sciences. So I got to see other departments. I got to see the geology department. I got to see … there was disease control in the same department that he was in. So I was exposed to all these things. So I was always very hungry and interested, and I was very familiar with sciences. So looking at going back into art school, I said, oh, I’m going to be an industrial designer, and I dabble in art. And I said, wait a minute. I can use technology, and I can create things, and I can guide machines. And that’s the CAM part, computer-aided machining. So I was very interested in that. And then having all of this computer-generated imagery knowledge, I did one of the most knuckleheaded things I could think of, and I went into video game development.

GEHRKE: Why is it knuckleheaded? I mean, it’s probably just the start of big video games.

STORY: Well, I mean … it wasn’t, it wasn’t a science anymore. It was just pursuit of art. And while I was working in video game development, it was fun. I mean, no doubt about it. And that’s how I eventually came to Microsoft, is the company I was working for was bought, purchased by Microsoft.

GEHRKE: But why is it only an art? I’m so curious about this because even computer games, right, there’s probably a lot of science about A/B testing, science of the infrastructure …

STORY: Because I was creating things strictly for the aesthetics.

GEHRKE: I see.

STORY: And I had the struggle in the back of my mind. It’s, like, why don’t we try to create things so that they’re believable, and there’s a break you have to make, and you have to say, is this entertaining? Because in the end, it’s entertainment. And I’ve always had a problem with that.

GEHRKE: It’s about storytelling though, right?

STORY: Yes, it is about storytelling. And that was one of the things that was always told to us: you’re storytellers. But eventually, it wasn’t practical, and I wanted to be impactful, and I couldn’t be impactful doing that. I could entertain you. Yeah, that’s great. It can add some levity to your life. But I was hungry for other things, so I took other jobs eventually. I thought I was going to have a full career with it, and I decided, no, this is not the time to do it.

GEHRKE: That’s a big decision though, right?

STORY: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

GEHRKE: Because, you know, you had a good job at a game company, and then you decided to …

STORY: But there was no, there was no real problem solving for me.

GEHRKE: I see. Mm-hmm.

STORY: And there was opportunity where there was a company, and they were using CAD, and they were running wax printers, and it was a jewel company. And I said, I can do jewelry.

GEHRKE: So what is a wax printer? Explain that.

STORY: Well, here’s … the idea is you can do investment casting.

GEHRKE: Yeah.

STORY: So if you’re creating all your jewelry with CAD, then you can be a jewelry designer and you can have something practical. The reason I took those jobs is because I wanted to learn more about metallurgy and metal casting. And I did that for a bit. And then, eventually, I—because of my computer-generated imagery background—I was able to find a gig with HoloLens. And so as I was working with HoloLens, I kept hearing about research, and they were like, oh yeah, look at this technology research created, and I go, where’s this research department? So I had entertained all these thoughts that maybe I should go and see if I can seek these guys out. And I did find them eventually. My previous manager, Patrick Therien, he brought me in, and I had an interview with him, and he asked me some really poignant questions. And he was a mechanical engineer by background. And I said, I really want to work here, and I need to show you that I can do the work. And he says, you don’t need to prove to me that you can do the work; you have to prove to me that you’re willing to figure it out.

GEHRKE: So how did you do that, or how did you show him?

STORY: I showed him a few examples. I came up with a couple of ideas, and then I demonstrated some solutions, and I was able to present those things to him during the interview. And so I came in as a vendor, and I said, well, if I apply myself, you know, rigorously enough, they’ll see the value in it. And, luckily, I caught the eye of …was it … Gavin [Jancke], and it was Patrick. And they all vouched for me, and they said, yeah, definitely, I have something that I can bring. And it’s always a challenge. The projects that come in, sometimes we don’t know what the solution is going to be, and we have to spend a lot of time thinking about how we’re going to approach it. And we also have to be able to approach it within the scope of what their project entails. They’re trying to prove a concept. They’re trying to publish. I want to make everything look like a car, a beautiful, svelte European designed … but that’s not always what’s asked. So I do have certain parameters I have to stay within, and it’s exciting, you know, to come up with these solutions. I’m generating a concept that in the end becomes a physical manifestation.

GEHRKE: Yeah, so how do you balance this? Because, I mean, from, you know, just listening to your story so far, which is really fascinating, is that there’s always this balance not only on the engineering side but also on the design and art side.

STORY: Yes!

GEHRKE: And then a researcher comes to you and says, I want x .

STORY: Yes, yes, yes. [LAUGHS]

GEHRKE: So how do you, how do you balance that?

STORY: It’s understanding my roles and responsibilities.

GEHRKE: OK.

STORY: It’s a tough conversation. It’s a conversation that I have often with my manager. Because in the end, I’m providing a service, and there are other outlets for me still. Every day, I draw. I have an exercise of drawing where I sit down for at least 45 minutes every day, and I put pen to paper because that is an outlet. I’m a voracious reader. I tackle things because—on a whim. It’s not necessarily that I’m going to become a master of it. So that’s why I attended culinary school. Culinary school fell into this whole curiosity with molecular gastronomy. And I said, wait a minute, I don’t want to be an old man …

GEHRKE: So culinary school is like really very, very in-depth understanding the chemistry of cooking. I mean, the way you understand it …

STORY: Yeah, the molecular gastronomy, the chemistry of cooking. Why does this happen? What is caramelization? What’s the Maillard effect?

GEHRKE: So it’s not about just the recipe for this cake, or so …

STORY: No … the one thing you learn in culinary school very quickly is recipes are inconsequential.

GEHRKE: Oh, really?

STORY: It’s technique.

STORY: Because if I have a technique and I know what a roux is and what a roux is doing—and a roux is actually gelatinizing another liquid; it’s a carrier. Once you know these techniques and you can build on those techniques, recipes are irrelevant. Now, the only time recipes matter is when you’re dealing with specific ratios, but that’s still chemistry, and that’s only in baking. But everything else is all technique. I know how to break down the, you know, the connective tissue of a difficult cut of meat. I know what caramelization adds. I understand things like umami. So I look at things in a very, very different way than most people. I’m not like a casual cook, which drove me to go work for Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen, outside of Boston. Because it wasn’t so much about working in a kitchen; it was about exploration, a process. That all falls back into that maddening, you know, part of my personality … it’s like, what is the process? How can I improve that—how can I harness that process?

GEHRKE: So how was it to work there? Because I see food again as, sort of, this beautiful combination of engineering in some sense, creating the recipe. But then there’s also the art of it, right? The presentation.

STORY: Yes …

GEHRKE: And how do you actually put the different flavors together?

STORY: Well, a lot of that’s familiarity because it’s like chemistry. You have familiarity with reactions; you have familiarity and comparisons. So that all falls back into the science. Of course, when I plate it, that falls … I’m now borrowing on my aesthetics, my ability to create aesthetic things. So it fulfills all of those things. So, and that’s why I said, I don’t want to be an old man and say, oh, I wish I’d learned this. I wanted to attend school. I took a sabbatical, attended culinary school.

GEHRKE: So you took a sabbatical from Microsoft?

STORY: Oh, yes, when I was working in video games. Yeah.

STORY: I took a sabbatical. I did that. And I was like, great. I got that out of the way. Who’s to say I don’t open a food truck?

GEHRKE: Yeah, I was just wondering, what else is on your bucket list, you know?

STORY: [LAUGHS] I definitely want to do the food truck eventually.

GEHRKE: OK, what would the food truck be about?

STORY: OK. My heritage, my background, is that I’m half Filipino and half French Creole Black.

GEHRKE: You also had a huge family. There’s probably a lot of really good cooking.

STORY: Oh, yeah. Well, I have stepbrothers and stepsisters from my Mexican stepmother, and she grew up cooking Mexican dishes. She was from the Sinaloa area of Mexico. And so I learned a lot of those things, very, very unique regional things that were from her area that you can’t find anywhere else.

GEHRKE: What’s an example? Now you’ve made me curious.

STORY: Capirotada . Capirotada is a Mexican bread pudding, and it utilizes a lot of very common techniques, but the ingredients are very specific to that region. So the preparation is very different. And I’ve had a lot of people actually come to me and say, I’ve never had capirotada like that. And then I have other people who say, that is exactly the way I had it. And by the way, my, you know, my family member was from the Sinaloa area. So, yeah, but from my Filipino heritage background, I would love to do something that is a fusion of Filipino foods. There’s a lot of great, great food like longganisa; there’s a pancit. There’s adobo. That’s actually adding vinegars to braised meats and getting really great results that way. It’s just a … but there’s a whole bevy of … but my idea eventually for a food truck, I’m going to keep that under wraps for now until I finally reveal it. Who’s, who’s to say when it happens.

GEHRKE: OK. Wow, that sounds super interesting. And so you bring all of these elements back into your job here at MSR in a way, because you’re saying, well, you have these different outlets for your art. But then you come here, and … what are some of the things that you’ve created over the last few years that you’re especially proud of?

STORY: Oh, phew … that would … Project Eclipse.

GEHRKE: Eclipse, uh-huh.

STORY: That’s the hyperlocal air-quality sensor.

GEHRKE: And this is actually something that was really deployed in cities …

STORY: Yes. It was deployed in Chicago …

GEHRKE: … so it had to be both aesthetically good and … to look nice, not only functional.

STORY: Well, it had not only … it had … first of all, I approached it from it has to be functional. But knowing that it was going to deploy, I had to design everything with a design for manufacturing method. So DFM— design for manufacturing —is from the ground up, I have to make sure that there are certain features as part of the design, and that is making sure I have draft angles because the idea is that eventually this is going to be a plastic-injected part.

GEHRKE: What is a draft angle?

STORY: A draft angle is so that a part can get pulled from a mold.

GEHRKE: OK …

STORY: If I build things with pure vertical walls, there’s too much even stress that the part will not actually extract from the mold. Every time you look at something that’s plastic injected, there’s something called the draft angle, where there’s actually a slight taper. It’s only 2 to 4 degrees, but it’s in there, and it needs to be in there; otherwise, you’re never going to get the part out of the mold. So I had to keep that in mind. So from the ground up, I had designed this thing—the end goal of this thing is for it to be reproduced in a production capacity. And so DFM was from day one. They came to me earlier, and they gave me a couple of parts that they had prototyped on a 3D printer. So I had to go through and actually re-engineer the entire design so that it would be able to hold the components, but …

GEHRKE: And to be waterproof and so on, right?

STORY: Well, waterproofing, that was another thing. We had a lot of iterations—and that was the other thing about research. Research is about iteration. It’s about failing and failing fast so that you can learn from it. Failure is not a four-lettered word. In research, we fail so that we use that as a steppingstone so that we can make discoveries and then succeed on that …

GEHRKE: We learn.

STORY: Yes, it’s a learning opportunity. As a matter of fact, the very first time we fail, I go to the whiteboard and write “FAIL” in big capital letters. It’s our very first one, and it’s our “First Attempt In Learning.” And that’s what I remember it as. It’s my big acronym. But it’s a great process. You know, we spin on a dime. Sometimes, we go, whoa, we went the wrong direction. But we learn from it, and it just makes us better.

GEHRKE: And sometimes you have to work under time pressure because, you know, there’s no …

STORY: There isn’t a single thing we don’t do in the world that isn’t under time pressure. Working in a restaurant … when I had to, as they say, grow my bones after culinary school, you work in a restaurant, and you gain that experience. And one of the …

GEHRKE: So in your sabbatical, you didn’t only go to culinary school; you actually worked in this restaurant, as well?

STORY: Oh, it’s required.

GEHRKE: It’s a requirement? OK.

STORY: Yeah, yeah, it’s a requirement that you understand, you familiarize yourself with the rigor. So one of the things we used to do is … there was a Denny’s next to LAX in Los Angeles. Because I was attending school in Pasadena. And I would go and sign up to be the fry cook at a Denny’s that doesn’t close. It’s 24 hours.

GEHRKE: Yup …

STORY: And these people would come in, these taxis would come in, and they need to eat, and they need to get in and out.

GEHRKE: As a student, I would go to Denny’s at absurd times …

STORY: Oh, my, it was like drinking from a fire hose. I was getting crushed every night. But after a while, you know, within two or three weeks, I was like a machine, you know. And it was just like, oh, that’s not a problem. Oh, I have five orders here of this. And I need to make sure those are separated from these orders. And you have this entire process, this organization that happens in the back of your mind, you know. And that’s part of it. I mean, every job I’ve ever had, there’s always going to be a time pressure.

GEHRKE: But it must be even more difficult in research because you’re not building like, you know, Denny’s, I think you can fry probably five or 10 different things. Whereas here, you know, everything is unique, and everything is different. And then you, you know, you learn and improve and fail.

STORY: Yes, yes. But, I mean, it’s … but it’s the same as dealing with customers. Everyone’s going to have a different need and a different … there’s something that everyone’s bringing unique to the table. And when I was working at Denny’s, you’re going to have the one person that’s going to make sure that, oh, they want something very, very specific on their order. It’s no different than I’m working with, you know, somebody I’m offering a service to in a research environment.

GEHRKE: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s true. I hadn’t even thought about this. Next time when I go to a restaurant, I’ll be very careful with the special orders. [LAUGHTER]

STORY: That’s why I’m exceptionally kind to those people who work in restaurants because I’ve been on the other side of the line.

GEHRKE: So, so you have seen many sides, right? And you especially are working also across developers, PMs, researchers. How do you bridge all of these different gaps? Because all of these different disciplines come with a different history and different expectations, and you work across all of them.

STORY: There was something somebody said to me years ago, and he says, never be the smartest guy in the room. Because at that point, you stop learning. And I was very lucky enough to work with great people like Mike Sinclair, Bill Buxton—visionaries. And one of the things that was always impressed upon me was they really let you shine, and they stepped back, and then when you had your chance to shine, they would celebrate you. And when it was their time to shine, you step back and make sure that they overshined. So it’s being extremely receptive to every idea. There’s nothing, there’s no … what do they say? The only bad idea is the lack of …

GEHRKE: Not having any ideas …

STORY: … having any ideas.

GEHRKE: Right, right …

STORY: Yeah. So being extremely flexible, receptive, willing to try things that even though they are uncomfortable, that’s I think where people find the most success.

GEHRKE: That’s such great advice. Reflecting back on your super-interesting career and all the different things that you’ve seen and also always stretching the boundaries, what’s your advice for anybody to have a great career if somebody’s starting out or is even changing jobs?

STORY: Gee, that’s a tough one. Starting out or changing—I can tell you about how to change jobs. Changing jobs … strip yourself of your ego. Be willing to be the infant, but also be willing to know when you’re wrong, and be willing to have your mind changed. That’s about it.

GEHRKE: Such, such great advice.

STORY: Yeah.

GEHRKE: Thanks so much, Lex, for the great, great conversation.

STORY: Not a problem. You’re welcome.

To learn more about Lex and to see pictures of him as a child or from his time in the Marines, visit aka.ms/ResearcherStories.

Meet the authors

Johannes Gehrke

Technical Fellow

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