How to Use Design Ideas in PowerPoint

Earlier this year, Microsoft rebranded the Office 365 suite as Microsoft 365. The change is not limited to just a new name. With Microsoft 365, the company is adding a number of features to Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Microsoft Excel is getting money integration, while Word adds the Microsoft Editor to track grammatical errors. Microsoft PowerPoint is getting upgrades for its Design Ideas function, which helps the regular consumer create attractive slides.

You may wonder what exactly are Design Ideas in PowerPoint and how it can improve your workflow in the app. As the name suggests, Design Ideas provides you with ready-to-use design ideas for your application in PowerPoint slide. You only need to add relevant information to the slide and let Design Ideas do the heavy lifting.

Design Ideas have been a part of PowerPoint for a while. But with the latest Microsoft 365 update, the company is adding video background support that takes your boring PPT slide to the next level.

In this post, we will discuss how to use Design Ideas in PowerPoint, customize it to your liking, and more.

Where to Find Design Ideas in PowerPoint

When you create a slide, add all the information such as text, title, subtitle, and images. Now go to the Design tab in the menu bar. In the right corner you will see Design Ideas. Tap on it and you will see a separate menu of Design Ideas on the right side of the slide.

Apply Design Ideas in PowerPoint Slides

With the use of Design Ideas, anyone with basic PowerPoint knowledge can quickly make a stunning presentation. And that is the biggest reason behind the added function. Empowering regular consumers with AI tools that increase overall productivity and enable them to get things done.

Note: Before we begin, let me make it clear that Design Ideas only apply to paid Microsoft 365 subscribers. You can access the Design Ideas function on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Web. Since most people will use the desktop to create PowerPoint presentations, we will focus on Windows for this post.

You need to make sure you are running the latest version of PowerPoint on the device. To do this, open PowerPoint software and go to File > Account > Update Options and select Update Now. This will check and install any pending updates.

Follow the steps below to learn more about Design Ideas and how to use them in PowerPoint. Let’s start from scratch, shall we?

Stage 1: Open the PowerPoint application and select a relevant template.

Step 2: If this is your first time using Design Ideas, use a simple template with a white background..

Stage 3: Add a title and subtitle. Now go to the Design menu and you will see a lot of attractive themes and variants. This is how people have been using PowerPoint for years.

Step 4: Tap on Design Ideas and you will see a separate menu of Design Ideas on the right side of the slide.

Step 5: Depending on your content, you’ll see eye-catching, ready-to-use design ideas to implement on the slide.

Step 6: The first few design ideas will have a video background. Tap on it and PowerPoint will download the necessary media for you. You can press the play button to preview the live video playback on the slide.

Depending on the PPT topic, you can choose from a variety of backgrounds to get your presentation off to a great start. For example, you can choose a financial background for a quarterly report. Or you could use a technical background for an IoT (Internet of Things). The possibilities are endless here.

You can use custom images or company logo and use the Design Ideas menu to get the best design among text, logo and image background. In the example below I added a company logo, name and simple text and took a look at what Design Ideas has to offer.

Customize Themes and Use Design Ideas

You don’t want every slide in your presentation to look significantly different from the others. In this case, you can always choose themes from the menu above.

Design Ideas are also useful when you want to add bullet points for a topic. It is smart enough to understand the context of the sentence and based on that and will automatically add a relevant symbol to it.

In the example below, I’ve included some talking points and matching icons that voluntarily integrate Design Ideas. You will also get a number of styles that you can choose from the Design Idea menu.

You can also use Format Background option to set solid or gradient or image as background. Design Ideas will automatically change the suggestions based on your preferences.

First Impression is Last

PowerPoint remains unrivaled in the presentation space. And you can clearly see why. You can easily make professional looking PPT in few hours using Design Ideas. It also saves you the time you spend on an elegant presentation with the least possible effort.

Next: Do you know you can add YouTube videos to PowerPoint? Read the post below to learn how to do this and a few more tricks.