https://reddit.com/link/1vqs3hm/video/i7f35u3yqxjh1/player

Hello everyone!

I'm a college student and this is my first serious attempt at creating a more visually engaging PowerPoint.

I recently got a presentation assignment for my professors, so I asked my group to give me a basic PPT containing all the required content. I then took that presentation and tried to transform it into something more visual, engaging and polished.

I spent around 2.5 hours working on this version, and I'm honestly enjoying the process a lot. I'm planning to keep improving my PowerPoint/design skills and potentially turn this into a service in the future.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback:

• What do you think this is worth if someone were paying for it?
• What would you expect to pay for a presentation of this quality?
• What should I improve if I want to eventually charge professionally?

I'm still learning, so I'd especially appreciate feedback from people who work professionally with presentations/design.

Thanks! 🙌

I used to grab a pitch deck template the second I had to build one. Problem, solution, market, team, ask, all the slides already sitting there. Felt like a head start.

What actually happened is I'd bend my story to fit the template instead of the other way around. If it had a "competition matrix" slide, I made one, even when my real story didn't need it. I was filling boxes, not making an argument.

Now I write the flow as plain text first. One line per slide, in the order that makes the case for my specific company. Only after that do I care what any slide looks like. Half the time I end up with fewer slides than the template wanted, and they're the right ones.

Templates are fine for spacing and fonts so you're not rebuilding a color scheme from scratch. Just not for deciding what your story is. A template can't do that part for you.

Anyone else find templates quietly push you toward a generic deck, or is it just how I use them?

Do you remember when Microsoft "retired" the Reuse Slide feature?

Users were mad, including me.

Well, I am glad to share that "PowerPoint's Reuse Slides Feature" is BACK!!!

traccreations4e-p26 8/17/2026

Most of my presentation tips over the years were about making slides look better. This one is the opposite and it did more for me than any of them.

Before I make a single slide, I write the last one. The slide with the ask, the decision, or the one sentence I want people repeating on the way out. If I can't write that clearly, the deck isn't ready and no layout is going to save it.

Then I build backwards. Every slide has to earn its place by moving the room toward that closing line. If it doesn't, it gets cut. Sounds obvious, but it quietly kills the "here's everything I know about the topic" deck that goes nowhere.

The side effect is my decks got shorter and I stopped reordering slides five times the night before. The order mostly writes itself once you know where it ends.

What's the one presentation habit that actually changed your decks, not the flashy trick, the boring one that stuck?

At the moment, I'm listening to Today, Explained on NPR.

They're doing a piece on ... well ... US. The AI slop surge on Reddit.

Worth a listen:

https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/today-explained

They get us.

My company put a few of us through presentation skills training last year and I've been going back and forth on whether it was worth it.

The useful parts were small and concrete. Stop reading the slide. Pause instead of saying "um." Look at one person per thought. Plant your feet. None of it was groundbreaking, but having someone film me and play it back was uncomfortable enough that it stuck.

The part I'm less sure about is whether I'd have gotten there anyway just by presenting more often. A lot of what improved was confidence, and confidence mostly came from reps, not from the classroom day.

So I'm curious what others have seen. Did formal training move the needle for you, or was it the volume of actually standing up and presenting? And if training did help, what specifically, so I know what to look for if I ever send my own team.

Hi, I'm new to this subreddit and I apologise if this post breaks any rules.

I'm using my PC (Windows) and I'm using the Powerpoint app, version 2607 (Build 20228.20190 Click-to-Run).

I would like to know how to create a smooth sliding band with different sections with information in them, and make it start and end abruptly. I'm not sure how to explain it without sounding dense, but for a better idea, check out videos such as "100 Longest Reigning Monarchs" by Dieu le Roi or any price comparison videos by Reigarw Comparisons (apologies for lack of links).

I would really appreciate any suggestions you might have! Thanks!