1.6 – Building Your Presentation With PowerPoint and Designer Lesson

Lesson Overview

This lesson focuses on elevating a draft presentation into a polished, ready-to-present slide deck using PowerPoint’s Designer and a few simple enhancements. After you’ve generated your slides with AI and inserted your data visuals, your project likely has the right structure but still looks unrefined. PowerPoint Designer steps in here, allowing you to quickly experiment with professional layout options on a slide-by-slide basis. You also learn to incorporate subtle animations—such as making charts fade in—and apply transitions between slides, helping your audience follow along and making your deck feel more dynamic.

This finishing process is essential for anyone looking to move from a simple AI-generated output to a high-quality, deliverable presentation. By the end of the lesson, you’ll see how a few thoughtful enhancements can make your content shine—whether you need an internal team update, a client pitch, or a class project. These visual improvements not only make your presentation more appealing but also ensure your message lands with clarity and professionalism.

Who This Is For

If you want your presentations to stand out rather than look generic, this lesson will help you make that leap.

• Marketers preparing client or campaign decks
• Educators assembling lectures or lessons
• Business professionals needing to deliver clear executive summaries
• Students polishing final project presentations
• Entrepreneurs pitching ideas with data-driven visuals
• Anyone updating AI-generated slides with a professional finish

Where This Fits in a Workflow

You will use these skills immediately after you’ve pulled your base presentation content together—whether created with AI tools or by hand. Once your slides are in place with the key points and visuals, applying Designer themes and enhancements turns the content into a product you can confidently share or present. For example, a business analyst might start with AI-generated slides, add charts, and then use this process to ensure their project update is visually consistent and easy to follow. Similarly, a teacher could start with auto-generated lesson slides and use Designer to customize layouts before class. This lesson bridges the gap between rough content and a show-ready presentation.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Previously, enhancing a presentation meant manual formatting—changing layouts, colors, and effects slide by slide, which could be slow and inconsistent. With PowerPoint Designer, you can now quickly try out professional designs tailored to each slide, saving considerable time over manual adjustments. The same goes for animations and transitions; setting these up with simple options like “fade in” or “fade between slides” takes just a few clicks, but makes a big difference in how polished your presentation feels. For instance, animating a chart lets you reveal data at the right moment, adding impact without distraction. Overall, using these integrated features boosts the clarity and appeal of your slides, making even AI-generated content look thoughtfully produced and visually coordinated.

Practice Exercise

To apply what you’ve learned, open the PowerPoint deck you created previously with AI assistance.

1. Select the first title slide and use PowerPoint Designer to browse and apply a layout you find visually appealing.
2. Move through each subsequent slide, choosing suitable layouts. Add a fade-in animation to any chart or key graphic, and use the transitions tab to apply a fade between slides.
3. Preview your presentation by starting the slideshow from the beginning.
   

As you review, ask: Does the visual style stay consistent? Do the animations and transitions help highlight key information, or distract? Adjust as needed to get the right balance.

Course Context Recap

At this stage of the course, your presentation is going from basic structure to finished, professional product. Previously, you refined content and added supporting visuals. Now, you’re using PowerPoint’s built-in tools to polish the look and enhance engagement. The next lesson will introduce generating presentations in Gamma, giving you another creative route for building decks. Continue through the course to discover alternative methods and tools for building high-impact, AI-powered presentations.